Malaka Mohammad knows a lot of people on Facebook. The 23-year-old Palestinian student at Sheffield University has nearly 8,000 followers on the popular social network site. She has been using her outreach online to post regular updates about the recent Israeli invasion of her hometown of Gaza where she grew up and where her family still lives.
On July 19, she posted a status related to demonstrations taking place in London in solidarity with the Palestinians. Abdul Rahman, her 19-year-old neighbour back in Gaza, wrote a comment on her post.
The next day he was dead. The Israelis had killed him. “One of the loveliest persons we have in our street,” says Malaka. “He loves life and he is like really inspiring, I can’t imagine that we lost him. Only the day before yesterday he was commenting on one of my status [updates] on Facebook about what we have been saying at the demonstration and stuff like that. He was just like really happy for people queuing for Palestine and for freedom.”
Rahman did not die alone. Around 10 members of the Iskafy family were killed. “My best friend and her daughter are the only survivors,” says Malaka. “Her husband, her husband’s father, another three sons — it is really horrible to describe this. It’s like if you are living in one place and one rocket comes and just demolishes everything.” Her friend who survived has a daughter, Wafa, who is only a year old.
I met Malaka for the interview at St Pancras station, London. It feels like a world away from Gaza and the horrors being inflicted there. Malaka is wearing a headscarf and a black shirt with red coloured font which reads: ‘Walak I’m Palestinian we don’t keep calm.’ After the interview she is catching a train back to Sheffield.
Malaka came to the UK last September to study a Masters in Global Politics and International Law at Sheffield University. Her experiences are unlike those of a typical student at university worrying about issues such as studying and going out. Malaka’s concerns are on a whole different scale.
Following the recent Israeli invasion of Gaza Malaka’s family was forced to evacuate from their home after repeated warnings from the Israelis. “My house, I don’t even think there is a house anymore,” she says. Evacuating home often means staying with strangers: “Imagine you go and live with someone who you don’t know. And you have your breakfast and your suhour with them and you live with them.”
She is very concerned about the life her siblings are going through since leaving home. “My sisters and my brothers say they had to walk over the corpses of casualties,” she tells me. “It is really horrible.” Not everyone evacuates when they get the warning. “Lots of people don’t leave and they choose to die under houses, and lots of people choose to leave and the moment they leave they start bombing.”
Malaka feels the latest invasion has been worse then previous ones. She tells me she spotted her aunt and cousin with their children on television evacuating their homes. “I could not hold myself. I started crying.” Malaka’s neighbourhood of Al Shujaiyya, where her family lives, was the site of an Israeli massacre in which some 70 people were killed only a few days ago. Now she worries about the safety of her own family.
Malaka feels social media is really important. Sites such as Facebook and Twitter have played a prominent role in the reporting of the most recent invasion of Gaza. Part of the reason has been the failure of the British media to paint a balanced picture. “I don’t think that there is anyone who is satisfied with the UK media and how it covers the situation in Gaza,” says Malaka. “They are like really biased, especially the BBC. So many demonstrations so far have been going on in front of the BBC headquarters in London.”
One recent post on Malaka’s Twitter page is about what to do if you encounter a phosphorous bomb. In a previous Israeli invasion a few years back her mother was injured by one such bomb and her health was affected for a few months. She is better now. Malaka tries to explain the effects of phosphorous as she struggles to find the right words: “It is smelly. It changes the skin of the body. You know like when you have fire on your hand, the skin will change.”
Not everyone is appreciative of her social media efforts. Malaka has written in one of her recent posts on Facebook about receiving “death wishes” and “threats” online. When I ask her about it she tells me “Zionists” were behind such messages and that it was “normal.” One person on Twitter wrote to her: “I wish the IDF will bomb your house you are a terrorist.” Malaka keeps her calm: “All these stupid things only make us stronger.”
“I receive lots of messages saying why are you talking about Gaza? Why are you talking about the children in Gaza? Talk about the children in Israel — come on, what have the children in Israel suffered in comparison with us in Gaza? We have had more than 500 people killed. More than 120 children killed. How many in Israel have been killed?”
Malaka tells me how she witnessed an attack by the Israelis in Gaza a few years ago. She remembers being only a few metres away from where a rocket had left its mark. “I went to see what happened,” she says. “So many people were there, two had been killed. There was a river of blood and lots of students because there is a school near where the attack was. And it was just when the students were to leave school. It was just full of students.”
Her experience of the attack was included in a book about Palestinian women in Gaza titled “Remember US”. Malaka recalls many people were traumatised. “I remember one of those people,” says Malaka. “She lost her ability to move. I just had to sit with her and calm her down — put some water on her face. It was horrible. My father started calling out to me, ‘Malaka where are you’. We live in Al Shujaiyya, the first to be hit in an Israeli invasion. And my father also was really worried about me. And I could not leave this girl alone.”
Another account included in the book is a correspondence Malaka once had with famous American intellectual Noam Chomsky. “I sent him a letter when he was in Gaza and he responded to this letter so I published this correspondence between us.” They discussed BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions). “You know his political views about BDS, he is not 100 per cent supportive of BDS. So we are corresponding about my views as a Palestinian living in Gaza and [why] we should support BDS fully.”
She has received many messages from people who have changed their views about Palestine after learning more about the occupation. She tells me about a Jewish friend of hers who changed her views. “She used to live in Israel,” says Malaka. “And she came to Sheffield to study for her undergrad. Then she met some Palestinian people and her views completely changed. She was challenged by her parents. They told her that she was no longer their daughter if she didn’t change her mind. And she told them that it was not their life, it was her life.”
Malaka is working at Sheffield’s student union for a year after winning the election to become an Education Officer. “After that I am planning to work in anything related to human rights and international law just because I believe that there is a need for a Palestinian voice in this international community.”
Her grandparents belonged to Yaffa (Jaffa) and were forced to leave by the Israelis in 1948. “They told us about how lovely Yaffa was. Yaffa was the most developed city in the Arab countries after Beirut before 1948, before the Nakba. Yaffa is famous for oranges. So if you want the best oranges you go to Yaffa.”
She believes being a refugee means never giving up her right to return. I ask her if she hopes to go back one day. “Yeah one day we will,” she says.
Growing up in Gaza, life was never really normal. “You will start realising how it is not normal when you come here [to the UK] and you find people living with electricity, with internet connections, with clean water,” she says. “With children running everywhere and no one is afraid of bombs. While in Gaza you will have eight hours of electricity.” With the invasion even the little electricity Malaka’s neighbourhood of Al Shujaiyya got was cut off.
For the time being she remains busy raising awareness online about her people’s suffering under the Israeli invasion. “Even this morning on Twitter the first hashtag that trended on the international scale is about Gaza,” she tells me, “which is really good. Lots of people are Tweeting and talking about this.”
In her online posts she often shares snippets of conversations from her life. Malaka once had an interesting discussion with one of her professors at Sheffield University who wanted to know her views on a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Malaka told him of her belief in a one-state solution where there wouldn’t be any problems with having people of different faiths as her neighbours, but not in a “political background.”
She explained to her professor that the problem was not the Jewish religion, but “those Jewish or non-Jewish who turn into occupiers trying to use their political ideology.” Her professor looked shocked saying he assumed “that will not work.” Malaka assured him it will, mentioning that a lot of changes have taken place in the past few years in how the world views Palestine. She gave him the example of Stephen Hawking and the American Studies Association’s academic boycott of Israel. “Who could imagine that the South African Apartheid system would fall? Nothing is impossible,” she told the professor.
Another more recent conversation she shared is one she had with her sister during the latest invasion by Israel. Her sister told her: “There is no safe place in Gaza. But you know what is the good point here? If we’re killed, you will stay alive. It’s good that you are away. We will have one member of our family alive. I love you. Stay. Tell the world what it is like to live in Gaza.”
Syed Hamad Ali is a writer based in London.
