by Barbara Nimri Aziz July 2, 2025

What further avenues help us to reach Palestine?

We witness repeated attacks and compounded injustices against unarmed Palestinians, day after day. The baffled world is stunned into silence. Helpless, we merely fill hours exchanging stories of others’ suffering, citing merciless actions repeated hour-after-hour by Israeli forces. “We never knew; we never knew”, we repeat, learning just how long Israel has been committing massacres on Palestinians under occupation. How could this have remained ‘off the radar’ for so long? Only after those desperate actions of October 2023 and the massive Israeli retaliation, did Palestinians’ real status under enemy occupation become as evident as it was undeniable.

Millions began to recognize the gross bias of American and European media sources. They started to see beyond Israel’s deceptively polished public image. Even when learning the reality, what are the options for change?

One is public protest. This rose, fell, rose again here and there, replaced (largely in the US) by personal concerns over immediate losses of hard-won entitlements. Then, as happened in 2024 on university campuses, suppressed rage bursts out in unexpended venues alarming the establishment.

Not unrelated to quietly spreading public alarm and those thunderous rallies is an urgency to better educate oneself. Dissatisfied with standard news sources, many Palestine sympathizers have been turning to books and films.

The search may start with former U.S. President Jimmy Carter’s Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid published 2006 (largely buried by Israeli partisans). We learn of the writings of an earlier generation of Palestinian authors and activists like novelist Ghassan Kanafani, poet Fadwa Tuqan, and comparative literature scholar Edward Said.

As powerful and relevant as those writings are, we need voices immediately connected to today’s crisis. Gazan professor and poet Refaat Alareer wrote “If I Must Die” in 2011. When he was assassinated by Israeli in late 2023 his plea turned poignantly urgent. Such is the power of his martyrdom that it represented the accumulating, uncounted martyrs on all sides – past, present and future. Alareer’s Gaza Writes Back (his 2014 collection from Just World Books) was re-released, along with a special edition of his farewell pronouncement. That awakened other quiet bystanders.

Such is the power of those personal testimonials that we seek out more. And find them. Anywhere, when freedom is under threat, writers become an essential bridge to truth. Not to serve the market, but rising from their own pain. Determined to cling to their history, declarations by a new generation of Palestinians penetrate our numbed state.

“Ask the Night for a Dream: Palestinian Writing from the Diaspora” is a new collection of such voices. Its editor Susan Muaddi Darraj has assembled work by twenty-four Palestinian writers. All speak from across the diaspora, invoking their ancestors from Haifa and Nazareth, Gaza City and Jerusalem. Some are well-known published authors, others newcomers. Some are mixed Palestinian-Lebanese, Jordanian or American. They live in Portugal, Finland, Jordan, the UK, USA and France. The breadth of the diaspora is matched by the diversity of their messages. Wherever they live, and whatever their heritage, they remember (and represent Palestine) in new personal idioms. “We Never Left” a thundering poem by the audacious and highly respected author Susan Abulhawa is the final entry here.

This collection and other recent releases from Palestinian authors represent a deeply-grounded and still evolving literary heritage. They are not a specific response to the genocide quantified in daily news headlines. Rather they are a means of defining the meaning of Palestine for today’s generation. It is not simply a gift to a market hungry for lyrical Palestinian testimonials to displace the horrific realities from the ground. It is a record of Palestine’s permanence.

“Ask the Night” is the second book from the newly established Palestine Writes Press, an outcome of the Palestine Writes conference convened by Susan Abulhawa in 2023. (PWP’s first release is an expanded edition of a biography of Ghassan Kanafani. Future publications will tap Palestine’s escalating voices on an even broader scale.)

During recent months, in city after city, community after community, the public has welcomed Palestinian poets standing side-by-side with other talented writers to address injustices emanating from the occupied homeland. All speak from a determination to demonstrate pride and to beckon victory. A flood of books on the Palestinian experience by Palestinians authors ensures this is not a passing issue. Among them is The Coin, a novel by Yasmine Zaher which won a major international literary prize, Betty Shamieh’s celebrated novel “Too Soon” and Heaven Looks Like Us edited by George Abraham and Noor Hindi. More books for children include the much praised “Homeland: My Father Dreams of Palestine” by Hanna Moushabek, Simon Sakkab’s Palestine A to Z, and “We are Palestinian” by renowned children and food writer Reem Kassis. “The Eyes of Gaza”, a diary by Palestinian journalist Plestia Alaqad, is due soon.

Ask the Night for a Dream is available through Palestine Writes Press, or directly at PWPress@PalestineWrites.org.