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Ramzy Baroud

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Ramzy Baroud in 2023

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.

Baroud 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 having 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 highly praised by Richard Falk and by Gilad Atzmon who called it a "heartbreaking" "masterpiece" which narrates "a tragic journey of a rural self-sufficient population that is driven into total dispossession, humiliation and absolute poverty."

Career

In 1999, dissatisfied with the failure of mainstream outlets, including Palestinian news sources, to cover the day by day realities of Palestinian lives, in September he began a personal blog The Palestinian Chronicle, which became a newspaper of which he remains chief editor. He has served as managing editor of Middle East Eye, editor-in-chief of the Brunei Times and as a deputy managing editor of Aljazeera online and once headed Al Jazeera's English's Research and Studies department. He has also taught mass communication at the Malaysia Campus of Australia's Curtin University of Technology. In 2015 he received a PhD in Palestinian Studies at the University of Exeter with a doctorate on a "People's History of Palestine", under the direction of Ilan Pappé.

Baroud subscribes to the One-state solution and actively supports the One Democratic State Campaign.

Works

Baroud is the author of five books. some prefaced with, or containing afterwords by Kathleen Christison and Bill Christison, Jennifer Loewenstein, Khalida Jarrar and Richard Falk.

  • Searching Jenin: Eyewitness Accounts of the Israeli Invasion, Cune 2003 ISBN 978-1-885-94234-0
  • The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle, Pluto Press 2006 ISBN 978-0-745-32547-7
  • My Father Was a Freedom Fighter:Gaza's Untold Story, Pluto Press 2010 ISBN 978-0-745-32882-9
  • The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story, Pluto Press, 2018 ISBN 978-1-786-80288-0
    Of this book, Noam Chomsky wrote: "In the finest tradition of people's history, these sensitive, painful and evocative pieces provide a human face to the painful saga of Palestinian torment and the remarkable courage and resilience of the victims".
  • These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons, SCB Distributors, 2019 ISBN 978-1-949-76210-5
  • (with Ilan Pappé) Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak Out, Clarity Press, 2022 ISBN 978-1-949-76244-0

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 the Israeli Labor Party. He notes that the offer in the Oslo Accords of the right of Palestinians to have a flag and national anthem was just a "symbolic achievement" (Sharabani 2016).
  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" (Atzmon 2010; Baroud 2010, p. 132)
  3. "A deeply moving chronicle of the persisting Palestinian ordeal. This book, more than any I have read, tells me why anyone of conscience must stand in solidarity with the continuing struggle of the Palestinian people for self-determination and a just peace" (ICAHD 2020).

Citations

  1. Miles 2010.
  2. ^ Atzmon 2010.
  3. ^ Baroud 2018.
  4. Baroud 2024.
  5. ^ ICAHD 2020.
  6. McCann 2023.
  7. RB.

Sources

External links

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