On ‘Voices of Resistance: Diaries of Genocide’
By Assia Belgacem
It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words. And indeed, the world has been witnessing nothing less than a live-streamed genocide and forced displacement of Palestinians in Gaza. Our screens overflow with what is deemed “sensitive images” by social media companies and therefore blurred—a luxury that Gazans don’t have.
With all of these images circulating, one can only wonder, What could there be left to say, to write? Are words still relevant, necessary? What could they add to the shocking, raw images that document the pain and annihilation of Palestinian life? A new collection published by Comma Press in July 2025 offers readers an impactful answer to these questions. After all, who knows Gaza better than Gazans themselves, and who knows Gaza as intimately as Gazan women? Who can fight against the annihilation of Gazan life better than Gazan women? Rather than opposing images and words, rather than questioning the relevance of words next to that of an image that supposedly speaks for itself, Batool Abu Akleen, Sondos Sabra, Nahil Mohana and Ala’a Obaid’s voices and words come together in Voices of Resistance to give a fuller picture of those snippets that are being shared on social media. Their words go beyond the frame, enlarging the picture the world is seeing. And what they beautifully manage to do, is to make the audience stay in Gaza for more than thirty seconds. Voices of Resistance: Diaries of Genocide requires of the reader an emotional strength to see Gaza in depth, to follow day by day—or for as long the genocide allows them to write—the thoughts of Batool, Sondos, Nahil and Ala’a.
The four writers are all experiencing and surviving the same genocide, and several themes thread through and intertwine across the collection. Writing is one the most prominent leitmotifs of Voices of Resistance; the strongest opposition to erasure, death, and pain. All four women pour their hearts into their diaries, because writing helps them endure the most horrid situations, creating art and beauty … something Batool has unfortunately become too well-acquainted with as she says, “When I finish writing a poem and it seems perfectly crafted, I look at it with tears welling in my eyes and heart. Oh God, how beautiful it is. And how ashamed I am that pain looks so beautiful”.
In the meantime, Sondos works to provide psychological support for Gazan children in which a first step towards writing is to create a space in children’s minds that is void of the word “war”—a seemingly impossible task. Nahil’s work before the genocide consisted in helping students improve and enhance their creative writing skills to allow them “to express their experiences through stories” a work she keeps on doing in tents regardless of the numerous attempts to bomb schools. While Gazans are stuck in a vicious circle of destruction, they find ways to surpass the barbarous technique of the zionist state to create their very own circle of survival and counterattack. Voices of Resistance is the epitome of that counterattack, it embodies the collective strength of Gazans, where each person contributes what they can. In this case, some write and share their writing skills and legacy with the future generation of Gazans to see writers such as Batool, the youngest of the four, blossom through the beauty of words in the midst of devastation. As Nahil puts it, Gazans “outfox the occupation through simple community collaboration” from the use of daily basic amenities to establishing a more subtle support system—one that is emotional and psychological—to carry the trauma of trying to survive an ethnic cleansing.
But as much as community collaboration and collective strength are an immense tool of resistance, they have their own limits. Everything we have seen on our screens and from the comfort of our homes has led us to see Gazans as an unbreakable body, stronger together, relying on the community to stand up. This is true up to a certain point, because even a strong body does break down eventually, and where the collective cannot help, the individual steps in. The glorification of their resistance—a resistance that comes at a heavy price—should not remove from the picture the struggles Palestinians in Gaza face every single minute.
Grief is surely among the most difficult hurdles to overcome. Similarly to Nahil, Sondos highlights the importance of community in processing grief, the shared sorrow and pain of uninterrupted loss, whereas Batool refuses it. She expresses instead the harsh truth behind survival: “You pray for the one who was killed and you grieve, but your joy is greater than all of this: your joy that you didn’t die and that no one you loved died. You rejoice while others grieve. […] Survival is individual, always individual. Joy is individual, and so is grief. […] You continue to grieve while the world goes on with its life. Your neighbours laugh, and you sit alone with your pain. No matter how hard we try to portray ourselves as one people, no matter how united we are, individualism will always prevail.” This reality soon also catches up with Ala’a Obaid as she suffers her first loss during the genocide, that of her maternal grandmother, Umm Adnan. She writes, “When I heard the news, I cried alone. I longed to hug my mother, to be by her side in her grief […] My grandmother left with no goodbye; I didn’t get to kiss her forehead. My displacement prevents me from hugging my mother. We can’t share our loss.”
Irrespective of their audience, Batool, Sondos, Nahil, and Ala’a write their truths, their perspectives and thoughts, raw or processed, immediate or reflected, not as a plea to the world to end the genocide, nor trying to appeal to anyone. Indeed, they have seen, they know that their slaughter, despite being broadcast to the entire planet in 4K, will not be ended by the mere action of sharing images.
Instead, their words etch their testimony in stone, freezing time, forever remembering the emotional and psychological violence that goes hand in hand with survival and the fear of being the next to be killed, massacred, slaughtered; waking up every day not understanding how they have managed to escape death. The diaries of Batool, Sondos, Nahil, and Ala’a are like a pandora’s box—but one that contains the consequences of Israel’s atrocities against Gazans. Every word, punctuation, and space in their diaries is the reflection of something beyond survivor’s guilt, a disorder that requires an end to the atrocities; beyond post-traumatic stress disorder, a condition that only develops after traumatic events, as they keep living through one traumatic event after the other. It is even more striking with Nahil who opens many of her entries with gratitude, almost like a ritual: “Thank God we are still alive. Thank God for the blessing of a new day.”
Yet despite all the chaos and destruction brought upon Gaza, it still remains home to Gazans. “The city may not be safe. But it is home” writes Sondos. “I don’t know anywhere in the universe safer than my own home” writes Nahil. Ala’a father refuses to abandon his home. “I wish for the disappearance of this homeland itself” writes Batool, only to remember her family home a few lines later.
The writers’ relationship to their home, to their houses, to their land, is unyielding and while they write about destruction and rubble, Palestinian poet Fadwa Touqan’s voice resonates long after her poem “I Shall Not Cry” was published:
On the chaos of the houses’ ruins
Between spikes and rubbles
I stood and told my eyes
Let’s cry together
On the remains of those who are gone and left the house behind
The house calls for those who built it
The house wails for those who built it
And the heart is crushed and says,
“What has time done to you, house?
Where are your indwellers?
Have you, after all this time, heard from them?
Here, they were,
Here, they dreamt,
Here, they drew
projects of forthcoming days
So where is the dream, where is the future, and where are they?
Where are they?
The rubbles of the house did not utter a word
Only their absence was heard
Only the silence of the silence, abandonment were heard”
(Translated by Assia Belgacem)
Despite all the pain, tears, and cries contained in this poem and these diaries that tear the heart into pieces as the reader profoundly feels his helplessness and weakness, one still finds hope, laughter, and life in Gaza—by far the greatest forms of resistance.
Throughout the different diaries, humor is present and slowly finds its footing. Laughing in the face of oppression is neighbors finding out they’re still alive and telling each other “The good people die, and those like you live,” and genuinely laughing at the dark joke. It’s asking your dear friends if they remember what meat or watermelon tastes like. But it is in Nahil’s diary that humor culminates and transforms itself into a satirical commentary of war and the struggle to survive. Nahil’s written diary carries the legacy of the oral story-telling tradition. Reading her diary entries is equivalent to listening to her narrate her daily life during the genocide, making ample use of the power of satire and absurdity.
While Nahil’s diary is imbued with satire and other forms of humor, Ala’a’s is filled with love. It is no coincidence that Ala’a is the one to conclude Voices of Resistance. As she writes her war journal and tries to survive, she is also carrying life—the true antithesis of death. She plays a major role in reuniting two souls for life. She is nicknamed “Ala’a, the Matchmaking Society”. She learned about love from her brother Mohammed and keeps holding on to it dearly to pass it to her children, despite the pain, despite the chaos. We’re left breathless, tension and emotions rising as we follow the journey of her pregnancy during the genocide, a journey whose end laughs in the face of all the efforts at annihilating Palestinian life. Ala’a beautifully concludes on a hopeful note of love that drives Gazans and their fellow Palestinians to resist as best they can.
Nahil writes, “When women gather in one place, the conversation flows differently” and this is indeed exemplified by Voices of Resistance, a safe place where four Gazan women—along with the women translators Basma Ghalayini and Ayah Najadat—are gathered together to share their reflections, fears, daily struggles, small wins, and moments of happiness. They are at the core of their resistance against the eradication of their existence by a genocidal entity, which relentlessly pursues this goal with all its might, yet continuously fails.
Voices of Resistance: Diaries of Genocide was published by Comma Press on July 2025, with a foreword by Gillian Slovo and an introduction by Caryl Churchill, edited by Basma Ghalayini, James Harker, and RA Page.
Assia Belgacem is a French-Algerian writer and literary critic based in Bordeaux, France. Her work focuses on decolonization, French politics and North African affairs.