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Ramzy Baroud is an American-Palestinian journalist and writer. He is the author of several books on the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

Early life and background

His father came from the village of Bayt Daras, just south of Jaffa. In 1948, when his father was 9 years old, the Baroud family was driven out and finished up as refugees in the Gaza Strip His father became an autodidact with a particular passion for Russian literature enthusiast.

He was born and raised in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, where from the age of 6, he attended an UNWRA Elementary School for Boys . The school was separated from Bureiji refugee camp by an Israeli military encampment, whose soldiers frequently handcuffed and detained students for displaying pictures of the Palestinian flag.One of his UNWRA schoolmates, Raed Muanis, was shot dead by Israeli soldiers when they sighted him running with one such small flag. As a high-school student he joined other youths in throwing stones as IDF soldiers shot their way when the First Intifada broke out. In was experience that enabled him to become fully aware of his identity.

He grew up resenting that his Palestinian identity was denied. His Israeli-issued travel document described him as have an ‘undefined’ nationality.

He has recounted much of his family’s history, within the wider historical context of the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem since 1948, in his memoir, My Father was a Freedom Fighter which has been described by Gilad Atzmon as a 'heartbreaking' 'masterpiece' which narrates ‘a tragic journey of a rural self-sufficient population that is driven into total dispossession, humiliation and absolute poverty.’

Notes

1. Baroud challenges as a myth the common perception that Israeli politics has a separate pro-peace leftist party and rightwing hostile to compromise. Most of the abuses of the occupation were instituted by Israeli Labor Party. He notes that the offert in the Oslo Accords of the right of Palestinians to have a flag and national anthem was just a ‘symbolic achievement’.
2. “Engulfed by my own rebellious feelings, I picked up another stone, and a third. I moved forward, even as bullets flew, even as my friends began falling all around me. I could finally articulate who I was, and for the first time on my own terms. My name was Ramzy, and I was the son of Mohammed, a freedom fighter from Nuseirat, who was driven out of his village of Beit Daras, and a grandson of a peasant who died with a broken heart and was buried beside the grave of my brother, a little boy who died because there was no medicine in the refugee camp’s UN clinic. My mother was Zarefah, a refugee who couldn’t spell her name, whose illiteracy was compensated for by a heart overflowing with love for her children and her people, a woman who had the patience of a prophet. I was a free boy; in fact, I was a free man”

Citations

1. Miles 2010.
2. ^ Atzmon 2010.
3. ^ Baroud 2018. sfn error: no target: CITEREFBaroud2018 (help)
4. Baroud 2024.
5. Sharabani 2016.
6. Baroud 2010, p. 132. sfn error: no target: CITEREFBaroud2010 (help)

Sources

• Atzmon, Gilad (5 February 2010). "A Book Review". Foreign Policy Journal.
• Baroud, Ramzy (27 June 2024). "Growing up in Nuseirat – Where Massacres Become Routine". CounterPunch.
• "ICAHD UK Interview with Ramzy Baroud". ICAHD.
• Miles, Jim (20 April 2010). "Review of Baroud 2010". Countercurrents.
• Joe, McCann (23 August 2023). "Ireland is a Pillar of Solidarity for Palestinians': Interview with Ramzy Baroud". BelfastMedia.com .
• Sharabani, Soud (12 February 2016). "Israeli Myths: An Interview with Ramzy Baroud". CounterPunch.