In almost every news story about the genocide in Gaza, there will be a paragraph somewhere near the bottom of the page that says something to the effect of “The Israeli military launched a campaign in Gaza in response to the Hamas-led attack on Southern Israel on 7 October 2023…” This caveat seems akin to a troublemaking child’s defense of “but, but, but, he started it.” For the casual reader with only a passing familiarity with the situation in Gaza, the seventy-plus years of conflict and context is whitewashed by such a caveat. Even worse, it plays into the Western, Islamophobic narrative of the violent Arab and erases the truth on the ground as to who is the occupier and who is occupied.
Banging on the Walls of the Tank: Dispatches from Gaza collects the writings of Gaza-based professor of postcolonial and postmodern literature, Haidar Eid. These “dispatches” begin shortly after the establishment of Israel’s blockade of Gaza (deemed illegal under international law) and continued up until Israel’s current genocidal campaign. Through Eid’s eyes, we are given much-needed context. The horrors visited upon the Gazan people by their occupiers seems almost cyclical, as they, in the parlance of the Israeli military complex, “mow the lawn” every few years. The book focusses around Israel’s several bombing campaigns against Gaza between 2009 and present day.
Eid writes from the perspective of an intellectual, an academic and a frustrated leftist, disapproving of violent resistance while disappointed with Marxist and other left-wing groups who work under the thumb of the Palestinian Authority (a proxy organization of the occupying government). Rather than believe the hasbara that decrees all Gazans to be in league with Hamas, we see the diversity within the resistance to Israel’s violent occupation. It is always worth remembering that the Palestinians fighting for their right to self-determination have been from all political stripes, from communists to the theocratic right. Although we in the West are often led to believe that Palestinians are radical jihadists with an innate antisemitic desire to attack Israel, it becomes clear, the more we read the history, that Palestinian resistance groups have been very diverse, with nothing in common besides the goal of liberation.
It becomes clear, the more we read the history, that Palestinian resistance groups have been very diverse, with nothing in common besides the goal of liberation.
Throughout the book, Eid draws a comparison between Apartheid South Africa and Apartheid Israel. His inevitable conclusion is that the BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions) movement is the only way forward. He states, correctly, that Israel has been allowed to violate international law with the aid of Western allies. That lack of accountability has led to a sense of impunity, which becomes more and more clear as Eid depicts the atrocities committed by Israel in 2009, 2012, 2014, 2018 and now. He also unpacks and analyzes the genocidal rhetoric that help create a culture of dehumanization of Palestinians.
One doesn’t have to get too deep into this book before it becomes clear that many of the Israeli Occupation Forces’ actions that we have witnessed since October of 2023 are patterns of behavior.
One doesn’t have to get too deep into this book before it becomes clear that many of the Israeli Occupation Forces’ actions that we have witnessed since October of 2023 are patterns of behavior. The restriction of food, aid, power and water, the indiscriminate bombing and shooting of civilian targets, the genocidal rhetoric are all features of a military occupation that is built on a philosophy of favouring one ethnic group at the expense of another. Whether resistance comes in the form of crudely-built Hamas rockets or peaceful marching, the end result is the same, many, many Palestinian civilians are murdered.
The bulk of the book covers Israeli aggression towards Gaza prior to October 7th, 2023. Eid describes Israeli actions as “genocidal” even before the current genocide, and he makes a strong case. His dispatches after the Hamas attack leave no doubt. The people of Gaza have always been an inconvenient truth for hardliners in the Israeli settler movement (and their allies in the Knesset) driving forward with their Eretz Israel agenda. The Hamas attack gave them the excuse they’d sought to bring forth an agenda of ethnic cleansing and genocide. Banging on the Walls of the Tank is journalism, memoir and documentation of the West’s biggest moral blind spot. Eid’s writing is both astute and compassionate, a vein of hope running throughout the book. His perspective from inside Gaza is a valuable one and the context he provides helps see through the silt stirred up by Israel and their allies in Western media. Readers understand the rhetorical techniques and the violent tactics used again and again against the Palestinian people and their quest for self-determination. Underlying each dispatch is a hope in the BDS movement and the power of civil society to strive for equality and justice. One cannot read this book and not feel that the push for Palestinian human rights is incumbent on us all.
Banging on the Walls of the Tank is journalism, memoir and documentation of the West’s biggest moral blind spot … One cannot read this book and not feel that the push for Palestinian human rights is incumbent on us all.
Haidar Eid is an associate professor of postcolonial and postmodern literature at Al-Aqsa University in Gaza, Palestine and a research associate at the Centre for Asian Studies at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. He is a policy advisor with Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network, on the advisory board of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), and a member of the Board of Directors of BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights. He is the author of Worlding Postmodernism: Interpretive Possibilities of Critical Theory, Countering the Palestinian Nakba: One State for All, and Decolonizing the Palestinian Mind.
Publisher: Between the Lines (May 6, 2025)
Paperback 8″ x 6″ | 240 pages
ISBN: 9781771136754
Jeff Dupuis is a writer and editor living in Toronto. He is the author of The Creature X Mystery novels and numerous short stories, which have been published in The Ex-Puritan and The Temz Review among others. Jeff is the editor, alongside A.G. Pasquella, of the anthology Devouring Tomorrow: Fiction from the Future of Food, which will be published in 2025 by Dundurn Press.
