Israel’s relentless response to the October 7th murders on its southern border has turned Gaza yet again into a bloodbath, bringing unimaginable suffering to its inhabitants. There have always been two opposing tropes about those who inhabit the Strip: On the one hand, they are crazed terrorists. On the other, they are perpetual victims.

Each characterization feeds a dehumanization of Gaza’s Palestinians. While in no way diminishing the horrors that have been visited on the Strip in recent weeks, or the prior suffering of those forced to live in what was effectively an open prison, Mohammed Omer, born and raised in southern Gaza, here presents a necessary corrective: What the news reports have never shown are the ways in which, prior to Israel’s onslaught, the people of Gaza were able to rise above their hardship, to experience the simple joys of human existence despite the bombs and barbed-wire fences. In these pages Omer takes the reader on a tour of this most misunderstood and hidden territory, allowing us to discover the community spirit, the enduring family ties, the festivals and recreations, and the creativity and resourcefulness of people, who, in lives now tragically lost, refused to surrender to the deprivations visited on them.

Now, more than ever, we need to recognize the humanity of people referred to by Israel’s defense minister as “animals”, and by news organizations around the world by numbers of nameless dead. With the sensitivity and compassion available to someone who comes from inside the community, Mohammed Omer’s magnificent book parts the smoke and dust to show us the extraordinary resilience of people whose lives war is now destroying.