'For us to exist, we have to resist'

Haidar Eid's Banging on the Walls of the Tank weaves grief with political insight of Israel's war

- Aarti Bhana

In December 2023, Haidar Eid left Gaza with his wife and two young daughters. He came to South Africa, not with the hope of starting a new life, but with a prayer in his heart to return to his home one day.

He left his extended family behind, including his brother and sister, as well as his colleagues at the university where he worked. He has lost 65 relatives, 38 colleagues and many students since 7 October 2023, when Palestinian resistance group Hamas launched attacks on Israel, and Israel retaliated.

Eid said he hesitated to check his WhatsApp out of fear of learning of another loss of a loved one stuck in the throes of Israel's genocide in Gaza — which he pointed out did not start on 7 October 2023; it escalated.

He refers to it as an “incremental genocide” in his latest book, Banging on the Walls of the Tank: Dispatches from Gaza, a reference to a form of resistance through people writing their own narrative.

Eid is an academic in literature and cultural studies. He used to teach at the Al Aqsa University in Gaza, Palestine, before it was turned to rubble. He obtained a PhD from the University of Johannesburg and is an associate professor at the University of Pretoria.

He draws on the South African experience with apartheid to inform his framework of Israel's system of oppression of Palestinians, which he said has reached new heights of injustice and dehumanisation.

“Occupation is only one form of oppression of the Palestinian — you have occupation, you have apartheid and you have settler colonialism, and now you have genocide.”

He explains in his book, which chronicles his experiences from the 22-day war in January 2009 to his reflections in October 2024 (one year after the 7 October attack) of how Israel has managed to convince the international community not to do anything.