Breaking the Silence: Palestinian Voices Amidst Genocide
As Gaza endures its darkest chapter—where children die from starvation while the world debates politics—the voices of Palestinian writers and poets carry an unbearable weight. These are not distant literary figures crafting abstract art, but witnesses documenting genocide in real time, their words emerging from beneath bombardment, from hospitals under siege, from refugee camps where entire families have been erased.
We write about Palestinian literature not to aestheticize suffering, but because Palestinian writers themselves have chosen to speak even as they face systematic destruction. Their testimonies demand our attention not as cultural artifacts, but as evidence of humanity’s refusal to be silenced even in the face of annihilation.
The Urgency of Witness
Today’s Palestinian writers document not metaphorical oppression but the concrete reality of genocide. Over 42,000 Palestinians have been killed, including more than 16,500 children. Writers, teachers, students, and entire intellectual families have been systematically targeted. Libraries burn, manuscripts lie buried under rubble, yet some voices persist—not as symbols of resilience, but as desperate cries for the world to witness what is happening to an entire people.
Every word written under bombardment, every story transmitted despite destroyed communications, every poem shared from beneath the ruins becomes an act of resistance against erasure itself. These writers carry the impossible responsibility of ensuring the world cannot claim ignorance while Palestinian children starve and communities face systematic obliteration.
“Free Words: A Poet from Gaza”
Within this context of ongoing catastrophe, “Free Words: A Poet from Gaza,” directed by Abdullah Harun İlhan, takes on profound urgency. The documentary follows Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha, whose voice emerges not from abstract artistic inspiration but from the epicenter of what international legal experts increasingly recognize as genocide.
When Mosab was detained by Israeli forces, the international literary community’s response underscored a crucial truth: Palestinian voices matter precisely because their silencing is systematic, deliberate, and part of a broader project of cultural destruction. The film captures the weight of creating art while witnessing the potential destruction of one’s entire people.
Through intimate interviews and readings of Mosab’s work, İlhan’s documentary reveals what it means to bear witness when survival itself becomes uncertain. This is not poetry emerging from general hardship, but testimony from within an active campaign of extermination where Palestinian life is treated as expendable.
Beyond Individual Voices: A People Under Assault
Palestinian writers from Gaza today work under conditions that challenge every assumption about artistic creation. They write as hospitals are systematically destroyed, as universities are reduced to rubble, as children die not from natural disaster but from imposed starvation. Their literature emerges from a reality where the very act of surviving to write tomorrow requires navigating deliberate campaigns of cultural and physical annihilation.
These voices represent not just personal expression but collective testimony to atrocities that demand immediate international intervention. Writers like Refaat Alareer—murdered by Israeli airstrikes in December 2023 along with his family—become martyrs not just to literature but to the Palestinian people’s right to exist, to remember, to be heard.
The Broader Context of Destruction
The documentary and the literary voices it represents must be understood within the broader context of systematic destruction. Gaza has endured what experts describe as destruction exceeding the bombing of Dresden, with a daily death rate higher than any conflict in the 21st century. This is not merely warfare—it is the implementation of what many legal scholars term genocidal intent.
Palestinian writers today document not just their own experiences but serve as chroniclers of potential genocide, witnesses to the systematic targeting of Palestinian children, the destruction of civilian infrastructure, and the implementation of policies designed to make life in Gaza impossible.
Our Moral Imperative
The Institute for Experimental Arts presents these voices not as cultural curiosities but as urgent moral testimony. We share Mosab Abu Toha’s story and the documentary about his experience because Palestinian writers themselves insist on speaking, even as they face systematic attempts to silence them forever.
“Free Words: A Poet from Gaza” challenges us to confront an uncomfortable reality: art cannot be separated from the conditions of its creation. When Palestinian poets write today, they write knowing their words may be their final testimony, their last witness to lives and communities facing organized destruction.
This is not about celebrating the beauty of resistance—it is about confronting the horror of genocide and recognizing our obligation to amplify voices that powerful forces seek to silence permanently. Palestinian writers ask not for our admiration but for our action to stop the ongoing destruction of their people.
The question facing us is not whether Palestinian literature deserves our attention—it is whether we will listen while voices still remain to be heard, whether we will act while Palestinian children can still be saved, whether we will stand against genocide while it can still be stopped.
The Institute for Experimental Arts stands with Palestinian artists and all those working to preserve human dignity in the face of systematic destruction. We recognize that cultural support without political action becomes complicity in ongoing atrocities.
