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I caught up with AfSL volunteer Shireen Malik to talk about the sustainability workshop she developed to help inform children about environmental issues in a fun and interactive way. Shireen will be holding the workshops in Manchester until February 2014, so get in touch if you are interested or know someone who is.

Tell us a little about yourself and how you got involved with AfSL?

I’m a full-time mum of three children (aged 9, 7 and 3). I first became involved with AfSL by coming along to a local project of theirs, Old Moat Gardeners (OMG), which was an allotment they had set up in a back garden of a house that was being renovating. I received a letter in my son’s school bag and thought that this would be a fabulous opportunity for my kids to learn about growing own our food! They loved it, especially the younger two. After approximately 2/3 months of going the Local Project Managers of OMG were leaving Manchester and asked if I would be interested in taking over. AfSL offered training, which I completed, and as a result Little Green Feats was born!!

What are the workshop’s aims and why did you want it to be targeted at kids?

The workshops are aimed at children aged 9-11. I have been volunteering in school for some time before I became a Local Project Managers (LPM), and was aware of the ability of this age group so I geared my workshop for them. I have also volunteered for an Islamic charity, the Islamic Society of Britain, in which I delivered workshops to teach children of this age group about Islam which have been very successful. So, I thought why not teach children about sustainability?!

I aimed it at children because they are in their prime for learning, and ideas and thoughts are developed at this time. I also remember where my interest in sustainability came from, and it was by watching Blue Peter when I was at school age! Children are custodians of the future, and I feel that by teaching them how they can make their world better for their future, is important for them.What has the reaction to it been from the parents, kids and staff?

So far, the reactions I have got from children and their parents have been great! Children have enjoyed taking part and parents have said they are applying what they have learnt at home, which is just what we wanted! Teachers have felt that it has supplemented their teaching very well, and confirmed that the children enjoyed every minute of it. I think when you start something new you never expect positive responses straight away, so just to get the response I got was really quite surprising!

Why is sustainability important to you?

Sustainability is important to me mainly because of two things. First of all, in my Islamic faith there are clear instructions to protect the environment and respect the laws of nature. Understanding sustainability and acting upon it, is a form of worship because we are abiding by the religion’s teachings. Secondly, my passion for sustainability has come from regular viewing of the one and only Blue Peter, and related animal and environment conservation programmes when younger.

How can people help support the project and take part?

People can help support the project by volunteering with AfSL and joining the workshops when they take place. They can also help by spreading the word about Little Green Feats to anybody who works in primary schools. We are trying to make LGF available to schools all over Manchester so help from anyone outside central Manchester would be welcome to save journey time to schools in that area. If anyone wishes to volunteer then they can contact myself at shireen.malik@afsl.org.uk or Erika Nagae, (Sustainability and Schools Coordinator for Manchester) at erika.nagae@afsl.org.uk.

Partner organizations & Funders:

- Ward Regeneration Officer (Chorlton and Chorlton Park)

- Manchester City Council and AfSL

Interview conducted by Arwa Aburawa, co-editor of Manchester Climate Monthly

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This is OFFICIALLY the first article I’ve ever written for children and I can honestly say, it was lots of fun. It was difficult to really really tone down the vocabulary and say things simply and clearly but I couldn’t miss the opportunity to speak to young Muslims about the environment. A great opportunity from an up and coming magazine called Discover. Check it out here. To read the article, just click on the image above.

Some e-waste campaigners raised concerns that a blanket ban would in fact starve highly skilled repairers in the developing world of vital resources. This in turn would mean more e-waste was sent to landfills rather than being re-used and access to computers for those less well-off in developing countries would be undermined.

E-waste, or electronic waste, is believed to be the largest illegally traded toxic hazardous waste in the world. The UN estimates that up to 50 million tonnes of electrical and electronic goods are thrown away every year and this figure is set to rise to 73 million by 2015. Part of the reason for the continued rise is that emerging economies have flourishing consumer electronic markets but lack the infrastructure to dispose of e-waste effectively.

In the UAE, research has shown that between 75 and 85 percent of e-waste is sent directly to landfill or an incinerator. And although there are no concrete statistics on the amount of e-waste produced, with the high per capita income of residents and an electronics market valued at USD 2.8 billion, there is no doubt that a real problem is slowly gaining momentum.

BAN, an environmental NGO that campaigns for a ban on e-waste imports into the developing world states that accurate statistics on the amount of e-waste traded worldwide are not available. They explain that as most of the trade is believed to occur illegally, they rely on evidence from independently tracking shipping containers from the US and Europe. What their anecdotal evidence shows is that whilst some e-waste shipping containers do contain some useful materials, most of it is waste which ends up on informal dumps where it contaminates the surrounding land and water resources, and negatively impacts the local people’s health.

In fact, one aspect of e-waste that has been well documented is its highly toxic nature. Electronic circuit boards contain cadmium, mercury, arsenic, lead and computer plastics are coated with polybrominated flame retardants which are some of the nastiest chemicals around—especially when burnt.

“I’ve definitely seen children mining e-waste for raw metals … It’s an area of concern, and stricter enforcement of environmental laws is necessary,” says Kyle Wiens, who is currently touring through Africa and Asia for a documentary on repairers called Fixer. “But the repair industry isn’t like that at all. Fixing things is a skill, and it takes time to get good. Conditions are quite safe because people need a predictable, safe working environment to do repairs.”

During his time in Cairo, Wiens met highly skilled and professional repairers who were able to fix everything from mobile phones, computers, TVs and cars. “Mechanics in Cairo are some of the most imaginative people in the world but they need raw materials to work with. Attempts to cut them off from their supply chain [via a ban on exports] will harm the Egyptian economy in the long run.”

According to recent statistics, the number of Egyptians using the internet increased 39 percent to 13.5 million between 2008 and 2009, and the number of people who owned a mobile phone went from 30 million to 48 million in the same period. The repair industry has no doubt played an important role in making such technologies available to those Egyptians on the lowest wages.

For Wiens, a ban is simply too blunt a tool to deal with the complexities of the e-waste problem and may even aggravate it by pushing more electronic products into landfills rather than repairers workshops. He also adds that “it’s rather disingenuous to ban imports of products that could be refurbished and create local jobs while allowing imports of new, equally toxic electronics.”

Jim Puckett from BAN, however, argues that “a lot of nasty imports are justified by the repair pretext” which creates hazardous waste (all be it over the course of a few years) that cannot be dealt with safely or effectively in developing countries. Anyone stating that they want to help developing nations bridge the digital divide by sending them electronic cast-offs also need to be questioned, as “e-waste is a toxic waste that needs to be dealt with and not traded with—we need to stop exporting our problems to others to deal with.”

There are distinct advantages of shipping off e-waste from developed nations, where environmental legislation makes it expensive to deal with properly, to regions where regulation is not so stringent. However, these e-waste products do have some value and create jobs and cheaper products for those in the developed world. What happens to these products when they reach the end of their extended life remains problematic. Clearly, there needs to be a balance so that developing countries can make the most of e-waste but also protect themselves from those only interested in ‘exporting their problems’.

Tackling the West’s throwaway culture so that computers are not replaced every two years is one way of dealing with the growing e-waste problem and the temptation to dump it on others. Manufacturing computers and electronics so that they are not toxic in the first place is another solution—and one that can be done, insists Puckett. The big task, however, is to place more responsibility for the recycling and repair of electronics in the hands of manufactures. As e-waste campaigners state, this is ultimately the most efficient way to ensure that e-waste in the developed and developing world alike is dealt with properly—and not traded or dumped in irresponsible ways.

:: Originally published at The Majalla.

Set up in 1999, the Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Race Relations Centre was named after a Bangladeshi boy murdered in a racially motivated attack in Burnage in 1986. It is a resource centre on everything from the criminal justice system in the United States to the history of the local Pakistani community of Manchester.

Louis Kushnick OBE is the driving force behind the centre and has been involved in race relation issues in Manchester since the late 1960s. It was his personal collection of books, journals, articles and news cuttings that formed the basis of the archive which is located in the University of Manchester campus today. Arwa Aburawa spoke to him about the history of the centre, the projects it has worked on, the changes he has witnessed in the education system and the impact of the recent government cuts on the centre’s future.

Louis Kushnick, who was born in Brooklyn and studied at Yale, came for a one-year scholarship at the University of Manchester in 1963 and decided to stay. Now a retired professor, he has worked as a senior lecturer at the university for forty years, alongside other responsibilities such as chairing the Research Institute for Race Relations and editing the quarterly journal ‘Race Relations Abstracts’. By 1998, he had acquired such a substantial amount of material on race relations issues that it required a separate office to house it.

“It was getting out of hand so the question was well what do we do with it?,” he recalls. “A group of us got together and decided that if we gave all this material to the University of Manchester John Rylands library it would continue to used by academics but that would be it. So what we wanted to do is create some sort of centre that anyone could access.” As there was no money available for a centre, the group approached Martin Harris, vice-chancellor of the University of Manchester at the time, to ask for financial assistance. Harris agreed to support the project as it would be located within the university and he hoped it would help encourage a greater diversity of people to attend the university, which had a reputation as a place for white, upper-middle class students.

The group was given a space behind the Blackwell’s bookshop on Oxford Road which had been empty for some time; the rent was paid by the University. Once the premises had been cleaned, the group bought some cheap shelving and started moving books into the archive, categorizing them with the support of MMU postgraduate students.

The Centre Opens & The Macpherson Report

The formal opening of the centre was on February 9th 1999 and in the same week, the Macpherson Report, which identified institutional racism not only in the Metropolitan police but also in the wider criminal justice system, was launched. “I remember that on Radio Manchester that morning, Selina (the oldest daughter of the Ullah family) said that for what it was worth, at least her family got some sort of closure as the boy who killed Ahmed was convicted. She thought the Steven Lawrence family would never get that and she was right.”

When the centre opened there were three people sharing a 0.5 post which was paid for by the University of Manchester. However, the money soon ran out and so the group began looking for more support which they soon found in the Progress Trust, which works to ensure that BME communities in Greater Manchester access urban regeneration funding. The funding allowed the centre to expand its activities beyond its focus on keeping the centre open for visitors, to creating outreach programmes for teachers and working with schools.

Murder and Racism in the Playground

Working in the the education sector, racism in education and the power of anti-racism education are issues close to Kushnick’s heart. It was one of the reasons why he decided to contact the family of Ahmed Iqbal Ullah to ask if they could name the centre in his memory. Ahmed Iqbal Ullah was a 13 year old boy of Bangladeshi origin who went to Burnage High School, where a fair amount of racist bullying went on. In 1986, a fight in the playground broke out and Ahmed came to the aid of some younger Asian boys when a 13-year old white pupil took out a knife, stabbed and killed him.

“The boy [who stabbed Ahmed] himself came from an extremely disturbed background and it was a tragedy all round,” states Kushnick. “but the incident did raise the issue of racism in schools, how whiteness becomes an identity. So we wanted to send a signal and use the material in outreach programmes to teachers in schools with limited resources, a narrow curriculum and encourage an environment where all children could flourish. We wanted to challenge stereotypes that Asians should be doctors or that you don’t expect anything from working class children – we wanted to encourage more inclusive ways of teaching and encourage teachers to expect all their pupils to succeed.”

Breaking Down The Stratified Education System

Armed with funding from the Progress Trust, the Millennium Awards and pro bono support of the University of Manchester (which allowed them to use the premises rent-free and also did their payroll), the centre began to put together materials for teachers.

“At the time, Britain had a highly stratified education system. Working class students were 8 times less likely to pass the 11+ exams than middle class ones,” says Kushnick. “Meanwhile teachers went to school everyday and very few of them woke up thinking ‘another day to mess over some working-class kids, another day to lessen their self-esteem and another day to convince them to have no or very limited aspirations.’ But everyday they went to school thinking that white working class parents didn’t care about education, that girls will go off and work in Woollies for a couple of years, get married and have kids. Meanwhile the lads could get an apprenticeship, settle down, marry the girl who used to work at Woollies and have kids…”

People from Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) communities were also approaching the centre and them asking it about their history in the country and in Manchester. The team quickly realised that whilst they had lots of really great resources on race relations, there was very little primary information or secondary sources when it came to the local level. “The people’s stories about how they came to this country, their experiences, how they created their own religious and housing education, how they dealt with the education of young children – we had very little of that,” remarks Kushnick. The centre decided to tackle both these issues through their outreach work at schools by asking pupils to collect information and stories about their communities. Not only would this help fill a gap in the archive but it would also raise the confidence of BME pupils whilst educating others about the history of the wider BME community.

Collecting Stories from Manchester’s BME Communities

BME pupils interviewed their grandparents and found that some had great aunties who worked in the Land Army in World War Two or family who served in the British Army. The interviews – 144 of them – were transcribed, printed and kept in the archive alongside family photographs and heirlooms. Children from Sikh, Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Chinese and Afro-Caribbean communities contributed interviews, and four girls from Levenshulme turned these interviews into a book called ‘Strength of Spirit’ which is full of interviews and photos from the Bangladeshi community. The centre also spent a year working with Refugee Action to put together an exhibition and teaching information pack on refugees in Manchester and the hardships they face on their journey to the UK.

Over the years, more and more of the centre’s projects consisted of producing material which would contribute to the archive and also help build a record of the local BME community which was later used for teaching materials, travelling exhibitions and the annual Black History Month. Working with primary schools in Rusholme, Moss Side and Whalley Range, the centre helped to put a book together retelling the story of Olaudah Equiano, an eighteenth-century slave who was freed in London and became one of the leaders campaigning against the slave trade. A book was also published on the life of the former slave Mary Prince (c.1788- death date unknown), who presented her testimony about the horrible conditions endured by the enslaved in the Caribbean, and Noor Inayat Khan who was captured and imprisoned by the Gestapo and was executed at Dachau in 1944. Khan was posthumously awarded the French Croix de Guerre in 1946 and the British George Cross in 1949.

Kushnick says that the centre’s future projects will continue to focus on anti-racism education and adding material to the archive. Some of the projects currently underway include school schemes exploring international folk tales as well as a funded initiative looking into the Yemeni community in Salford and documenting its experience. However, the cuts in government funding are worrying for the centre, which will be looking to find new forms of financial support in March 2012. “In this crisis no one is sure how they are going to be affected,” says Kushnick. “Of course we hope everything will be okay and we can keep the centre open but, in all honesty, we have no idea what will happen.”

The Race Relations Archive is located near Manchester Piccadilly station and includes over 8,000 resources available for use by students, practitioners and the general public. For more information and visiting hours see the centre’s website.

Article by Arwa Aburawa.

Originally published at Manchester’s Radical History.

The Leaf Street Community Garden in Hulme was set up in 2000 when local residents from the Bentley House (‘Redbricks’) estate decided to transform a grassed-over pathway between two rows of three-storey flats into a communal garden. After a 72-hour permaculture course and community consultation, the layout of the community garden was decided and locals got on with making the garden a reality. Although they have faced opposition from the council, which has threatened to turf over the garden on a couple of occasions, as well as leadership issues, the garden remains an example of successful radical gardening in Manchester.

:Image via northern green  pixie/flickr.

Need some ideas to help inspire Muslims on environmental issues? Here are my ten top tips…

As much as I’d like to tell you that there is an easy and foolproof way to capture the imagination of every Muslim when talking about the environment, the reality isn’t so simple. Sadly, there’s no magic formula to dazzle every Muslim into going green or at least I haven’t found it yet! Fear not though, intrepid blogger, because there is something you can do to improve your chances of firstly tapping into a Muslim readership and secondly, encouraging them to green their way of life.

1.  Do Your Research- Whilst no one expects you to be an expert in Islamic jurisprudence, a basic understanding of Islam and Muslim culture will help you when you are blogging. Doing your research about the topic you’re discussing and referring to Green Islamic principles will show the reader that you’re serious about green Muslims and consequently they’ll take your work seriously.

2.  Do Keep Things Varied- From news, reviews and interviews keep things interesting with a diverse range of blogs that reflect the diversity of the Muslim readership. Remember to appeal to them on lots of diverse topics- whilst faith shapes many Muslim lives, they still have interests and passions so if you can appeal to them in these areas you will have a better chance of success.

3.  Do Celebrate Green Successes- Highlighting the existing work of Green Muslims is an important aspect of blogging for a Muslim audience as it will appeal to them directly and also show them that there is a well established link between environmentalism and Islam. This will also help you build networks with the leading green Muslims. Just remember to ask them to keep you updated with exciting goings on and other Green Muslims worth talking to!

4.  Do Use Social Media Networks – Sites such as Linkedin, Twitter and Facebook are vital for keeping ahead of the news, getting in touch with people and even getting pictures to use on the your blogposts. As evidenced by the recent Arab revolutions that made the most of the social media networks, the Muslim world really is online- so make sure you’re signed up and are kept updated.

5.  Do Ask For Advice- If all else fails, just ask. We all learn through each other, so if after scouring the Internet you’re still not sure about a topic or issue then it may be worth dropping someone an email. The online Muslim community is pretty friendly and there are lots of people out there willing to help or at least try and help you.

6.  Don’t Rely On Islamic Verses Alone- The green roots of Islam should be a starting point onto other aspects of the environmental movement and ways to green the Muslim way of life. If you are just going to repeat the reasons Muslims should be environmentally friendly according to the Qur’an and hadith over and over again, it’s going to get very boring and repetitive very quickly. Trust me.

7.   Don’t Be Rude! - No, I am not talking about sex and swearing (Muslims are just open to these are the average person!) but certain topics which Muslims will be more sensitive about. Whether you’re reporting on topics such as the pilgrimage of Hajj or poisoned holy water, remember to apply a little bit sensitivity and care.

8.   Don’t Be Afraid To Tackle Controversial Topics- Debate and discussion are at the heart of every blog so embrace controversial topics and remember that nothing is off-limits if it is done with care and is backed with research. There will inevitable be some topics that must be approached with care when blogging for Muslims but that doesn’t mean that they should be ignored altogether.

9.  Don’t Preach- Avoid the temptation of seeing blogging for Muslims as an opportunity to teach them about being green and instruct them how to live their lives. This is a two-way street and there is probably a lot you can learn about being green from Muslims themselves. Listen out for their feedback and comments (you’ll be surprised how well informed some of your readers may already be) as these will also help you judge what blogs and topics attracted their attention and which ones don’t.

10.  Don’t Forget To Have Fun! After all these do’s and don’ts I just want to remind you the blogger to have a little fun with it all, add your own personality and flair to your blogs and stay positive. Engaging with Muslim audience will put you on a steep learning curve which is as fun as it is hard work- you can expect a lot feedback and encouragement, so good luck!

:: First Published at Green Prophet.

:: Image via Mrehan/Flickr.

On the 20^th of July 1969 as Neil Armstrong took his giant leap for mankind on the moon, Mark Edwards was lost in his own lunar landscape of the Sahara Desert. The aspiring photographer had graduated from art school with a great curiosity to see the world and ended up completely lost in the deserts of Niger. Luckily for him he was rescued by a Tuareg nomad who not only saved his life but also inspired a forty-year project which culminated in his ‘Hard Rain’ exhibition which was at Copenhagen during the climate change summit and more recently on display at the London School of Economics university.

Getting lost in the Sahara, admits Edwards, is not particularly difficult especially as there are no signposts or even roads. Even so, relief is probably the only word to describe how he felt after he was found by the Tuareg nomad. “He took me back to his people and reappeared from a tiny little hut with two bits of wood and a beaten up cassette player, “ he recalls.

“He put the wood together and made a fire and we had a nice cup of tea. Then he warmed the cassette batteries, turned it on and Bob Dylan sang a hard rains gonna fall. I was just astonished by the lyrics in this song, by the presentation of it- one of the things that Dylan does is to conjure up with very few words, very vivid images. I just got the idea to illustrate each line and over the years I did it.”

‘Hard Rain: Our headlong collision with nature’, which has been seen by over 12 million people and displayed in the United Nations headquarter building in New York, sets powerful photos of environmental degradation and its impact on the poorest against lyrics from Bob Dylan’s famous song. Forest destruction in Haiti, oil spills and urbanisation all sit alongside kids swimming to polluted water for plastic to recycle and Bangladeshi refugees. For Edwards, climate change is handcuffed to poverty.

Edwards was also keen not to just show beautiful abstract pictures but also their context: how did we get here and what do we need to do next. “We are in the art school now and there is an exhibition of great, big, beautifully printed photographs but they have no content. It’s art. I don’t want ‘Hard Rain’ to be seen like that, it is not art. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle of pictures that define the challenges of the twenty first century held together by Bob Dylan’s lyrics. So, it’s not art.”

The exhibition is accompanied by 5,000 words of text so that people can read that if we keep burning fossil fuels, ice on land will melt causing sea levels to rise, and if the sea level rose by just one metre it would make 20 million people homeless in Bangladesh and India alone. “Where will they go?” he asks during the slide-show presentation at Manchester Metropolitan University. “There is nowhere for 20 million people to go,” he responds.

Picture after picture is shown of the devastation humans have wreaked on this planet; how fragile it is and how fragile our existence is. Edwards insists that we need to change the way we think for there to be real change. We have to realise that we are all interdependent. There is no ‘us’ and ‘them’ he reminds us- there is only us and we all running out of time. Change can either be bloody or beautiful and the choice is ours. Coming to the end of his presentation, Edwards asks the audience not to applaud and tension of what we have just seen- our choices laid out in such stark terms- stays with us.

Inspired by the likes of Cartier-Bresson and Andre Kertesz, classic masters of reportage, Edwards also boldly claims that ‘Hard Rain’ gave him the opportunity to present the pictures in a way that was honest to his own experience. Something, he says, he never had the chance to do working in the media as an environmental photographer. “I’ve never came back from a picture story with a journalist and felt that we told the full story,” he admits.

“Rather than the well crafted photo which might deceive people, it’s the story that is too neat. When you are out in a difficult situation, its all got jagged edges, it’s not clear cut and journalists make out, in my mind, that the story is clear cut. So, I just felt that we had these stories that were too neat, with a neat beginning, a cover, continuity pictures, a coherent story and the conclusion. You know, it wasn’t like that at all. We were left with lots of question marks.”

In fact, Edwards does have a few gripes with the press and says he sees through the media games played around Copenhagen which have been lowering expectations so that leaders can say that we all did well at the climate summit this December. “All silly stuff,” he remarks. To counter this, Edwards hopes that his book and exhibition, which will be on display during the climate talks, will help focus people’s attention on decisions that need to be made in Copenhagen and put pressure on our leaders to make sure that they make the right ones.

So what does he believe should come out of Copenhagen? Edwards replies that he simply wants our government to start listening to the scientists. “What they are saying is that what governments have to do is get down to pre-industrial levels of CO2 emissions. When scientists say something to government, give a directive like what to do in the BSE crisis, they follow it. It’s not a decision that we have to make. We can’t disobey science or what our scientists are saying.”

Copenhagen, Edwards states, is the last opportunity for government to govern on the issue and if they fail, it becomes a citizens imperative to take action. “Those of us who have seen the effects of climate change, which we are beginning to see in Africa and tropical countries, have a responsibility … I mean I’m not an expert- I am a witness.” Seeing the exhibition makes us all witnesses in a way and in the words of Bob Dylan, now ‘what’ll you do?’

by Arwa Aburawa

Israel has many weapons that it deploys against the Palestinian national movement and one of them is a powerful public relations machine. For years, it has allowed Israel to extend illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, demolish homes, erode the rights of Palestinians and imprison and torture them, all in the name of democracy and security. In the days leading up to last winter’s attacks on Gaza, Israel’s public relations machine was oiled up to give its version of events and without the watchful eye of journalists — who were denied entry into the territory — and it appeared likely to succeed. Yet Palestinians “citizen journalists” in Gaza and a few internationals living in the middle of the conflict decided to report a very different story than the carefully controlled Israeli narrative. Sharyn Lock was one of these voices.

Originally from Australia but now living in the UK, Lock has worked in Palestine with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) since 2002 when she shot by an Israeli soldier in the stomach. After being refused entry into Palestine from 2005 to 2006, Lock finally made it back to Gaza on the first “Break the Siege” boat sponsored by the Free Gaza Movement. She was in the Gaza Strip during Israel’s 22-day invasion last winter and her blog “Tales to Tell” documented the daily events she witnessed during the conflict not only with humanity but also humor. These posts have recently been published in the short book Gaza: Beneath the Bombs. The following is an edited interview with Lock about her experience in Gaza and why she feels privileged to have spent time with Palestinians there.

Arwa Aburawa: Why did you decide to stay during the attacks?

Sharyn Lock: With the announcement from Israel for internationals to leave, we assumed — correctly, as it turned out — that this was the start of the land incursion which followed the air attacks which had become regular. ISM were there mainly because of the isolation and the dreadful siege and so at a time when Israel wanted to isolate the Palestinians more, we made a decision that we didn’t want to leave. Also the fact that Israel wanted internationals to leave made us think, well, what is it you don’t want us to see, what is it you don’t want us to document? Whatever that is we want to be here for it.

AA: Did you realize at the time that you were one of very voices few coming from Gaza?

SL: It took a while for me to realize that I was seeing things that nobody else was seeing and that I needed to write them down. We didn’t have anyone telling us what to do and so we just got in the middle of things and were able to able to document them. It was up-to-the-minute reporting and I would try to get to a computer at the end of every day so that what I wrote would have been what I’d seen in the last hours. And once again, it was the least that we could do and it was really encouraging that people used it and responded to it by holding vigils and taking action based on the information that we were getting out to them.

AA: As your book is focused on the war in Gaza, was it hard to talk about anything but the suffering?

SL: It was important for me to portray the humanity and not just the suffering because that is the [story of the] Palestinians. That’s why I go, that’s why it’s a privilege to be there and to spend time with these people who just face something that we would just be crushed by, with courage and determination to keep hold of the things that they value. Basically, that’s what’s made it all possible and worthwhile, the negative experiences were totally outweighed by the positive experiences. That’s not to say that if you’re Palestinian, you wouldn’t want to get the hell out of somewhere where you have to battle to just exist, but people do it with courage and grace and manage to find humor. I guess that’s one of the ways that they survive.

AA: Did any of the events you witness and write about truly shock you?

SL: I am not sure if I can answer that question as all the things that happen all across the world seem to be near me, in front of me and I’m a witness to them even if I am not there. So, I tend to live in this state of mind and so nothing surprises me. Like the fact that civilians were so targeted in these attacks, that’s been Israeli policy for a long time and nothing stops them. And so when people were saying “this is horrifying, this is shocking,” it’s only a continuation of a policy that has existed for a long time.

There was one particular image which stunned people and that was of the baby that some of my medic colleagues retrieved which had been burned and chewed out by probably Israeli army dogs. And that’s a terrible image of something to happen to a child. But I wasn’t shocked by what I saw because that’s what this occupation is and it’s what we currently accept is going on. Also when these things get written up as evidence of war crimes, I do get a little confused as I’m thinking, “well, this was happening at the time and you’re speaking about war crimes now?” I just wish we realized things at the point at which we could try and stop them.

AA: What do you hope for the future of Gaza?

SL: I want to see the occupation end, I want to see the siege end. Weirdly, there was a CIA report that came out when I was there that predicted that in 20 years there would be one state for what is now Israel and Palestine. I feel like that’s what I want to hope for and certainly the Palestinians that I have spoken to have said that that’s what they hope for. Some Palestinians have said to me, “I don’t care whether it’s one state or two states, I just want to be on what’s historically our land, in peace, with equal rights to whoever is living with us and we don’t mind who that is.” There isn’t a sense that it’s us against them, they just want there to be justice for all.

Arwa Aburawa (http://arwafreelance.wordpress.com/) is a freelance journalist based in the UK.

Related Links

• Purchase Gaza: Beneath the Bombs on Amazon.com