Palestinian resistance: “We are history”

JVL Introduction

This is a report of Dr. Ramzy Baroud presentation at a Palestine Day event in Belfast; he talked of history and the importance of sharing stories. “We tell stories because memory is our primary defense,” he said. “I grew up in a household in Gaza where stories about the village we had never seen, about the homeland we had never lived in, were told almost daily.”

He speaks of how Israel tried to erase a people as well as places but has failed.  Dr. Baroud has written a new book “After the Flood” that tells the story of his own family but that has, of course, resonance for thousands of others. (I recommend it by the way, LL).  He has lost over 100 members of his own family since October 2023, including his sister.

He speaks of resistance and of how “Sumud” is much more than steadfastness and of how resistance is not only armed resistance but the resistance of insisting on living, recalling how so many Palestinians walked back to the sites of their damaged and even destroyed homes.

This article was originally published by Palestine Chronicle on Sun 9 Aug 2026. Read the original here.