As events in Gaza rapidly unfold, Hard Crackers spoke with Noor Salah, a Palestinian-American activist living in the United States.
Hard Crackers: Tell us about yourself.
Noor Salah: I’m Palestinian-American, first generation born in the United States. I come from a family of activists on both sides, especially my maternal side. My father was particularly active when I was growing up, and both of my parents gave us a lot of political education on Palestine. Both sides of my family come from the West Bank. Today I am a part of a Palestinian community here in the United States.
My mother’s father and grandfather were both very active in their communities. They were community mediators for the village they lived in, so they were very well known and were targeted by Zionists during the 1967 uprising. A lot of our family ended up leaving Palestine during that time. I have many family members from my dad’s side in Jordan. My dad’s side of the family left Palestine in the decades before the 1948 Nakba, a mass violent displacement of Palestinian Arabs by Zionists, when groups like Irgun and Haganah were beginning the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
Growing up I visited Jordan every summer. My dad was worried about taking me and my brother to Palestine, but I needed to see it with my own eyes. On one of my trips to Jordan, I went to see Al Quds for the first time. I didn’t make it back to Palestine until more recently when I got a work opportunity that takes me over there a couple times a year.
HC: Tell us about your recent experiences visiting Palestine. What, as the young people say, was the vibe?
NS: The last time I was there, earlier this year, it was a particularly wretched vibe. The young people may say, the vibe was way off. I was there during the commemoration of Nakba day, which the Zionist state refers to as its independence day. I watched news coverage depicting crowds of anti-Arab demonstrators waving Israeli flags, screaming things like “You don’t belong here,” “Why are you Muslims here,” and “Arabs go home.” I was thinking, this is our home! There was a lot of grief because there had been dozens of people martyred in the weeks prior. Even in the time I was there, four youths were killed in Nablus, not far from where I was. No matter the time of year, you will always hear of instances of settler violence. When my friends and I would go hiking or visit places near settlements, we were on high alert as it’s quite common to see settlers brandishing weapons in public.
There were also a lot of protests in ‘48 Palestine…
HC: Can you define that for our readers?
NS: 1948 Palestine is a way that Palestinians and allies refer to what was considered historic Palestine, and now called “Israel.” In Arabic, we refer to it as “inside” or “48.” Palestinians usually prefer not to use the term “Israel” to describe this land. Our siblings who remained steadfast on their land obtained “Israeli” citizenship but remain second class citizens. Not referring to “Israel” by name is a basic form of resistance against a colonial power: to keep our own names, to resist erasure.
The Zionist state refuses to define its borders and continues to, with the full support of the West, green light the expansion of settlements and encourage more dispossession. Gaza and the West Bank have no sovereignty. In addition, Israel controls basic necessities such as water, power, mobility and communication. Gaza has a population of 2.2 million people who have been living under brutal siege for more than sixteen years and have endured relentless bombardment by artillery and airstrikes during this time. Imports are heavily regulated with Israel allowing in just enough food to meet the basic caloric needs of the population, to name just one of the sadistic policies applied to Palestinians in Gaza.
HC: So back to these protests…
NS: They were led by liberal Israelis, basically calling on their government to be nicer to the Palestinians. I wasn’t paying much attention to it because it seemed like a bunch of bullshit. All of this was happening simultaneously. There was a big reactionary right-wing Israeli presence, and also a liberal Zionist presence, and lots of tension among Palestinians. At the airport, I waited for five hours to be asked where my parents were born and have the interrogator cheekily reveal the results of a basic Google search of my name to me. The reason why I was asked about my parents was to determine if I was entitled to a Palestinian huwiya, or identification card. Palestinian holders of a huwiya, even if they are also American citizens, are not permitted to fly into Tel Aviv and are denied entry. The checkpoints this most recent time were also much more aggressive. On one occasion, I was made, at gunpoint, to turn my shirt inside out because it said Palestine on it. That shirt was also confiscated from my suitcase on the way home. Like my grandfather’s land, I want it back.
HC: Did you get any sense that anything of the magnitude of the October 7th offensive, Operation Al-Aqsa Flood (عملية طوفان الأقصى), was on the way?
NS: As Palestinians, we’re accustomed to something horrible happening all of the time. There’s always a sense that any one of those terrible things could be a spark that starts a fire. There tends to be a tension building before any major Israeli aggression on Gaza or any major land grab. Lately, there’s just been insult upon insult upon insult, violence upon violence upon violence, and violations of international law. The international community has been greenlighting the new Israeli settlements to be built, like the ones that were attacked, constantly taking over more and more Palestinian land.
Economically, in Palestine right now there are few opportunities in the West Bank and Gaza for people to work. Unemployment is around 50% and that same number lives in poverty. You still see people doing all the normal jobs people do everywhere else, but all jobs are very hard to come by. Palestinians can travel to ‘48 to work as laborers but this is a very time consuming daily trip, through onerous checkpoints. At the job site, they lack the basic labor rights available to settlers, including compensation for injured workers. These jobs are also rare; just 20,000 workers are allowed to exit Gaza to work, out of 2 million, and this requires costly registration fees. On top of that, there is basic public assistance provided by the Palestinian Authority, but Palestinians who take work outside lose access to these benefits. Just this January, Hamas began the Bottleneck Project to broaden roads while giving more Gazans the opportunity to work. Of course that is now on hold.
Palestinians are some of the best educated people in the world, but there are few opportunities to work. In Gaza you have Fulbright scholars who have been sent back to Gaza, and while they were in the United States, their department has been blown up. So there’s nowhere to work. And where will someone with a PhD in engineering work in an open air prison. In terms of the West Bank, because the West Bank is so economically dependent on ‘48 to function, you have lots of people for whom it is more financially lucrative to go work a retail job in ‘48 than to work as an accountant or an engineer. I know people with degrees in many different areas, like physical therapy, where it is normally not difficult to find a job, but because they’re Arab they cannot find a job in ‘48. And because of the economic conditions in the West Bank, they are unable to find a job there either.
Another problem is the NGOs in the West Bank. The scholar Dr. Hana Masud has written on this subject. The NGOs there are paying expat Americans and Europeans more than Palestinians who work for the same NGO. Their excuse is of course: “We need to attract international blah blah blah,” but meanwhile they’re paying Palestinian workers much less even though they have the same degree. Meanwhile, the people working for the government directly, or a social service agency connected to the government, have their salaries furloughed.
Most tragic of all are the deaths of our children! The school year was officially canceled for the rest of the term. Children have been left orphaned, injured, disabled, and psychologically scarred from this ongoing genocide. A generation of our youth are being ethnically cleansed and it’s streaming on social media.
HC: Please tell us a bit about the organized force that carried out Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.
N: The media has portrayed this as a Hamas versus Israel conflict. That’s really not the case at all. The resistance movement is a multi-group coalition that includes fighters from Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and Marxist brigades, the Qassam Brigades from Hamas, and brigades from other political parties from across Palestine. It’s really a classical national liberation effort. It is not just one political party versus a state.There’s even a newly formed crew of anarchist zoomers called Fauda – they have a social media presence on Instagram and Telegram and have done some interviews with anarchist publications in the States.
I obviously cannot speak to how long the Flood was being prepared, but the level of detail that went into it suggests that it was a well-planned and strategic resistance offensive. A lot of people are talking about it like it’s simply a proxy war and Palestinians are simply proxies of other powers like Iran. This completely disregards that there is a group of very intelligent people leading a resistance offensive. When you have the same argument as Barack Obama, it is time to reconsider your argument. There are of course geopolitical issues superimposed onto the situation, but if we make a simple cause and effect argument, it discounts the agency of the Palestinian resistance movement.
Think about it this way. It looks like many of the missiles fired at ‘48 on October 7th were missiles originally dropped on Gaza by the Zionists that malfunctioned and didn’t explode. It must have taken a long time to collect and refurbish all of these powerful weapons. People died in the process. That kind of determination and resolve cannot be overlooked.
HC: It seems like no matter how you look at the offensive, Hamas nonetheless remains a central actor. In the United States, many people associate Hamas with right-wing theocracy. How do Palestinians fighting for liberation in these different secular organizations, or just ordinary people who don’t adhere to Islamism, reconcile with this aspect of Hamas?
NS: I would encourage people to actually educate themselves about the political party Hamas who were democratically elected in 2006. Reading from sources like Electronic Intifada and Mondoweiss will give a better picture of Hamas the governing body rather than the typical narrative of Hamas the bloodthirsty terrorist group. I am not saying Hamas is the perfect governing body. You will hear reports of men being heckled by cops for not keeping a beard, but there are worse reports coming out of the West Bank related to harassment and assault by the Palestinian Authority (PA). The PA have even been targeting protestors taking the streets in the West Bank in support of Gaza. Hamas meets people’s material needs, repairing infrastructure, and providing vital relief in ways other political parties are unable to do. There’s a lot of bad information floating around about Hamas, whether about their charter, or false quotes attributed to their leaders.
I encourage you to watch translated videos of some of the leaders who have been martyred. The things they are saying are consistent with what we in the United States might call a “tankie.” Check out this video from martyred Hamas leader Nizar Banat. He’s basically a tankie! Hamas leaders have read all the same theorists that Western leftists have read, and they’re integrating it into their struggle. They’re smart. They’re not just a reactionary right-wing religious group. It’s much more complex. But it’s easier in the West to just say: “Hamas is Isis” and move on.
HC: And this position, of course, leaves open space for critical engagement.
NS: You know how in the US we say “Fuck the Democrats, they’re trash,” and so on, but lots of people get involved with them anyway because in terms of electoral politics, they’re the only game in town? In Palestine you have plenty of people who affiliate with Hamas, and integrate their leftist ideology into their thought, just like the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) relates to the Democrats in the United States. There are many gradients within Hamas. It’s a big political party. I’m certain that there are secular and leftist people involved.
HC: Tell us a bit about the recent conflict between Palestinians and Zionist settlers predating October 7.
NS: During Ramadan of this year, the Zionists came into Al-Aqsa and fired on people while they were praying. This is meant to humiliate people religiously, and also is just so violent and despicable. That was a big factor leading up to it. Also just this year, there were over 200 Palestinians killed before October 7th, by both the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) and armed settlers not wearing uniforms. It has been a pressure cooker; the violence, the economics, not knowing if your kid is going to come home, many of the same problems you see in marginalized communities all over the world.
Thinking just about the settlements that were attacked, they have been constructed for decades across Palestine with the support of the international community. Historically, Israel has consistently refused to define its borders. This enables Israel to build settlements almost anywhere and then argue that the territory falls within its borders. You also have many incidents like in Sheikh Jarrah, in which Zionist settlers have simply claimed Palestinian homes as their own. Mohammed El Kurd’s house was stolen in 2021 and you can follow the writing of his sister, Muna el-Kurd, who is also a journalist.
So the settlements keep expanding and squeezing Palestinians into smaller and smaller spaces that are harder and harder to access because of the checkpoints and other travel restrictions. So what would be a twenty minute drive to come visit you becomes a five hour drive. If you are my brother, maybe I’ll see you once or twice a year. It doesn’t make sense to regularly take that five hour trip, even though you’re only twenty minutes away. A lot of people end up leaving Palestine, but there’s an equal number who refuse to leave.
HC: In the United States it remains extremely controversial to claim that Israel is carrying out “ethnic cleansing,” which is just a euphemism for genocide. But it sounds like what you are describing is exactly that.
NS: I’m of course not the first person to say so! There’s even an Israeli scholar named Ilan Pappé who wrote a book called The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine documenting this history from 1948, and even prior to that. I’m not a scholar of international law and don’t know the technical definitions, but when you’re watching people being forcibly removed from their homes, either made to go somewhere else or just wiped out, collectively punished… all of these things are consistent with what we’ve called ethnic cleansing and genocide in other areas. But it seems like there’s an exception when it comes to Palestine.
HC: Many people who identify as supporters of Palestinian liberation, and even of extra-parliamentary proletarian revolution, have expressed uneasiness with the Flood offensive and have sought to carve out a position that simultaneously denounces its tactics, and the purported anti-semitism of Hamas, while remaining supportive of Palestine. What do you have to say to these people?
NS: I’m wondering where that gut reaction to condemn the violence is, when the violence is coming from the other side. How many of your readers heard about the 200 martyrs that we had prior to October 7th? Where were they to condemn that violence? As a Palestinian, I don’t like being backed into a corner to condemn violence. Nobody is delighting in violence. But people who are reacting so strongly to the events of October 7th need to ask themselves where their sympathies come out, and where they don’t come out. I just hope that everyone who feels so strongly about the Israeli deaths have been vocal throughout a year of Palestinian death. And if not, I think they should ask themselves why.
I also need to emphasize that much of the spectacular violence, like the supposed beheadings, and many other reports of specific brutality, did not happen. Many of these stories are now being retracted, even by the IDF. There was an elderly woman taken captive who was released this morning. There’s a video of her shaking hands with her captors. She gave an interview describing how as a prisoner, she was treated well and her captors explained to her that Islam there are specific rules about how to treat captured prisoners. There is an effort to label everyone who participated in the offensive as a terrorist. Meanwhile, when American soldiers return from the Middle East, they are welcomed as heroes, even though they were engaged in brutal acts of violence, with a disproportionate amount of power behind them. Most wouldn’t dare condemn a veteran.
On the matter of anti-semitism, Hamas has no problem with Jews. Their issue is with Zionists and always has been. I wonder if a member of the Black Panther Party would’ve been asked about their “reverse racism” by Hard Crackers in the 1970s. Even if Hamas did have anti-semitism in their literature, it’s ultimately Israel’s fault for putting a big Star of David on the bombs they’re dropping on peoples heads, and quoting the Old Testament comparing Palestinians to Amalek, the sworn enemy of the Jews. The state of Israel has positioned itself as a representative for all Jews, even though it’s not, and that type of rhetoric has consequences. It’s a crime against Judaism for it to be associated with the state of Israel and the Zionist project at large.
HC: Do you think it is possible to talk about liberation, revolution, or social change of the magnitude necessary to free Palestine, without accepting that there will be significant casualties, and not just among people holding guns?
NS: I think with any liberation struggle, the goal should never be to be on the other side of the whip. What most people don’t understand is that all efforts for diplomacy and peaceful resistance have failed over the course of 75 years. We have reached a point where violent resistance is inevitable. At the same time, my understanding is that the Hamas fighters follow the Islamic rules of warfare to the best of their abilities and that the reports coming out of Israel describing horrendous crimes are fabricated. These rules of war include prohibitions on torture with fire, killing captives, looting, and desecrating dead bodies and also include obligations to tend to the wounded and protect prisoners of war. Violence is not a yes or no question, but a constant ethical problem.
HC: What are the immediate needs on the ground in Gaza right now?
NS: People in the United States and the broader international community need to put pressure on the powers that be to implement an immediate ceasefire. This would allow for dignified burials for the deceased in these overflowing morgues and ice cream trucks that people are being stored in right now, and also those under the rubble. This is for basic dignity but also to prevent the spread of disease. A ceasefire would also enable the restoration of food, water, fuel, medical supplies, and different types of humanitarian aid to get through. You need to remember that Gaza is a very small piece of land, roughly the size of Manhattan, and 2.5 million people live there. So much infrastructure has been destroyed: residential buildings, hospitals, and schools have been destroyed. These buildings need to be rebuilt, and none of this can happen without a ceasefire.
There needs to be an emphasis on protecting medical facilities and making sure that the inhumane evacuation orders for the hospitals don’t go back into effect. We need to put pressure on the powers that be to facilitate safe passage for casualties and critically ill people who are in need of medical treatment. And of course the people in Gaza reject forced displacement, but the border crossings need to be open for people who want to evacuate, and for the entry of medical and rescue teams and their equipment.
HC: How about longer term?
NS: After the ceasefire and after dealing with the immediate emergencies, after working to immediately repair the infrastructure destroyed by Israeli airstrikes — energy, water, communications — then it becomes time for the global community to start sending in medical professionals, emergency responders, experts who know how to rebuild for the long term after such a man-made catastrophe. This cannot be a slow effort to rebuild. And these changes need to be sustainable, they cannot be temporary.
Anything that happens in Gaza moving forward needs to be part of a sustainable long-term plan. Gaza is completely cut off with the rest of the land considered Palestinian, primarily the West Bank. You can’t have a country when two pieces of it are separated in this way. Whatever happens next has to be part of a long term solution, which will require Israel coming to terms with the questions: “Are we going to be able to keep this identity as a Jewish state? Or do we need to move toward a singular, secular state where people are able to live together without these artificial hierarchies between people, propped up by Western powers?”
HC: How have the events of the last few weeks been impacting Palestinian communities in the United States?
NS: It’s really bad. Issues in Palestine have always impacted not just Palestinians, but all Middle Easterners, or anyone perceived to be Middle Eastern, in the United States. There’s been an increase in hate crimes, discrimination, people being fired from their jobs. I’m not willing to give identifiable information in this interview because I’m concerned about the things I’m saying being taken out of context. People are being surveilled, censored, their livelihoods put at risk, and their safety is being threatened across the US. From Portland to Chicago, Minneapolis to Detroit, there have been acts of violence committed against Palestinians at protests. People bringing guns, shooting at the crowd, running over demonstrators…
HC: Amid all this chaos, what is the horizon for the Palestinian resistance movement?
NS: The resistance movement has always been clear that it is our goal to have historic Palestine recognized. The people who were removed from their villages in historic Palestine, from 1948 onward, should have the right to return. There should be reparations. There needs to be acknowledgement of historic Palestine.
I’m not a spokesperson of all Palestinians, and I’m not going to pretend all Palestinians are on the same page about this. Some Palestinians would be happy with a two-state solution, involving Gaza detached from the West Bank, and the West Bank being a center of power. There are also people who would be happy with the 1967 borders. But I think if you’re committed to justice then you will understand that the only solution moving forward is a one state solution. And as an anarchist, I hate to advocate for any state! But I guess we can start there for now.