A Rebel in Gaza

An outspoken advocate for democratic reform in Gaza, al-Ghoul exposes human rights violations in Gaza in her articles published throughout the world, which reach English speaking readers through Al-Monitor and Arabic readers through her Facebook.

The book illustrates why Asmaa’s life is at risk because of her relentless criticism of Hamas and Fatah. As a mother, journalist, and activist, she must protect herself and others within and outside of her extended family.

Asmaa al-Ghoul is part of the explosion of online media and social networking as a tool for social justice, radical organizing, and defiance against dictatorships in the Middle East. Her work has gone viral, and she has reached readers at an exponential rate.

Although Al-Ghoul aggressively confronts the violation of human rights, she is a thoughtful and articulate speaker unafraid to question her own beliefs.

At the age of 18, Al-Ghoul won the Palestinian Youth Literature Award. In 2010, she received a Hellman/Hammett award from Human Rights Watch, aimed at helping writers “who dare to express ideas that criticize official public policy or people in power.”

In 2012, Al-Ghoul was awarded the Courage in Journalism Award by the International Women’s Media Foundation. She works for Lebanon’s Samir Kassir Foundation, which lobbies for media freedom.

Al-Ghoul’s work has been translated into English, Danish and Korean. Her Facebook page is followed by more than 22,500 people from across the globe. In Facebook comments, she has been described as one of the last free women in Gaza.

Al-Ghoul’s coauthor Selim Nassib — also a war correspondent like Al-Ghoul — is a recognized novelist (Europa Editions: The Palestinian Lover [2007] and I Loved You for Your Voice [2006]), and he brings this elegance to bear in crafting a coherent memoir from the spontaneous conversations, the aborted phone calls under siege, and Asmaa’s texts and emails.

A Rebel in Gaza was written with Nassib over the course of the “Arab Spring” and the siege of Gaza in 2014, when Israel conducted Operation Cast Lead in response to several rocket attacks by Hamas. Despite being shelled, losing close family members to a precision Israeli missile, and news reporter friends in the bombing, as well as fearing for her life and her children’s lives, she is never anti-Semitic but instead frames the problems of Gaza in political and humanitarian terms.

Al-Ghoul has reported on the war from Gaza, many times risking her life, and Nassib captures these moment in a breathless prose, which offers a view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that American readers don’t commonly hear and most could never imagine.

Al-Ghoul’s personal story involves her uncle, a commander in Hamas who she publicly confronts, risking her life doing so; being jailed in Gaza and severely beaten; co-organizing a Gazan “Arab Spring,” and avoiding being co-opted or silenced by political forces; having two children and two divorces; teaching girls in a madrassah; and losing nine family members at once to an Israeli missile strike that prompted her blog post “Never Ask Me About Peace Again,” which went viral (https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/08/rafah-gaza-war-hospitals-filled-bodies-palestinians.html). Hamas is regularly condemned for installing themselves among the civilian population, which increases casualties counts when Israel responds to Hamas' rocket attacks.

Al-Ghoul searches for ways to open dialog with her society, including with women who cover their head while Asmaa does not, and she comes down squarely on the side of writing, reading books, education and culture being the tools that will eventually liberate Gaza and promote peace in the Middle East.