Praise

“Urgent, poignant, and erudite. Haidar Eid provides a much-needed analysis on how the genocide in Gaza did not start in 2023 and why Palestinians continue to bang on the walls of their imprisonment to affirm their humanity and their inalienable rights to freedom, equality, and return. Drawing on the example of South Africa, among others, Eid’s collection of essays make the strongest case for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign, international solidarity, and why the only way forward is a single democratic secular state between the river and the sea.”

– Leila Farsakh, professor, University of Massachusetts Boston; editor of Rethinking Statehood in Palestine

“In his dispatches from Gaza, Haidar Eid transforms Ghassan Kanafani’s question,“Why didn’t you bang on the walls of the tank?!” into a defiant cry: “We are banging on the walls of the tank!” For almost a century, Palestinians have never stopped knocking, and now, as Gaza’s ongoing genocide unfolds in real time before the world, the moral responsibility is no longer theirs to cry out but on humanity to listen.”

– Abdul-Rahim Al-Shaikh, Palestinian poet and critic

“This book offers an authentic and powerful Palestinian perspective on the killing fields of Gaza through an impressive fusion of historical analysis intertwined with moving personal anecdotes. In Banging on the Walls of the Tank, the people of Gaza appear as they really are: resilient and incredibly courageous in the face of a genocidal campaign against them. It is clear from this moving collection that one cannot wipe out Gaza as one would not be able to expunge Palestine as a whole as an idea, a nation, and a country. This is a must-read for anyone who wants to comprehend fully what it means to live in the biggest prison on earth, constantly in danger of annihilation.”

– Ilan Pappe, author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine

“This book brings us back to ourselves, humbled, enraged, and reminded of why Gaza is all of Palestine at once, and the centre of the world. For those of us who have watched in bewilderment the silence of the world through year after year of starvation by siege in Gaza, and war after war, Haidar Eid brings all the memories back with Banging on the Walls of the Tank. For those just tuning in, it is all that you need to understand what brought us here and to move us to the liberated future we yearn for. Listen to this insurgent voice of Gaza, to its fiery depth and pained defiance. Gaza can teach us all that is worth knowing. How to be free. How to be human.”

– Dr. Jamila J. Ghaddar, assistant professor, Department of Media Studies, University of Amsterdam

“Haidar Eid’s essays from inside the Israeli siege and wars on Gaza in the twenty-first century are a journey alongside Palestine’s enduring writers for freedom. The book’s title is taken from Ghassan Kanafani’s iconic story of the three Palestinian refugees who suffocated unheard in a truck, Mahmoud Darwish’s love poem, Silence for Gaza opens the book, and Eid’s life’s writing is steeped in Edward Said’s work. This is a book to discover Gaza today.”

– Victoria Brittain, journalist and author