WATCH: A Diary Of Genocide, With Atef Abu Saif --  The Chris Hedges Report

Chris Hedges

July 31, 2024

Those who attempt to transmit the truth from war zones — whether factual or artistic — in the face of death, violence, and sickness vanquish the lies told by the killers, determined to make those of us far from the carnage understand. This is why writers, photographers, and journalists are targeted by aggressors in war, including the Israelis, for obliteration.

Atef Abu Saif, the Palestinian novelist who has served as the Minister for Culture in the Palestine Authority since 2019, chronicled his experience surviving the most recent onslaught in Gaza that has persisted since last October in his book, “Don’t Look Left: A Diary of Genocide.” 

Born in Gaza, Saif has known war his whole life. 

“I was born during war, and I might die during war, actually,” he tells Hedges in this interview. “This is our life as Palestinians.”

By detailing the trauma of his experience through horrifyingly vivid imagery and tragic tales of murdered loved ones and permanently injured family, Saif illustrates how life in Gaza, as he says, “is timeout for survival. The normal discourse is to be killed and for your house to be destroyed, like my house in this war. So what we live is like a timeout. It's rest. So it's not the normal thing to live.” 

This spacey description of existing in the face of genocide is reflected in the Minister for Culture’s words to his niece Wissam when she lost her legs and one of her hands after her family was bombed by the Israelis: 

“We are all in a dream…all our dreams are terrifying.”  

In this first episode of the new and independent iteration of The Chris Hedges Report, Saif and Hedges explore these experiences, and the meaning behind them, in a substantive and powerful conversation. Through it, the texture of the genocide and the damage it inflicts on its victims is captured, as Saif’s eloquence and vulnerability reveals the weight of the tragedy in a way that only facts and data simply would not be able to.

TRANSCRIPT

Chris Hedges