Written during Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, the volume brings together deeply personal accounts by Palestinian journalists, doctors, teachers, artists, volunteers and community leaders. Its contributors document displacement, bereavement and destruction while preserving the relationships, memories, humor, love and forms of care that remain essential to Gaza’s identity.

Each account belongs to a named individual with a life, a family and a history. Together, these voices preserve dimensions of Palestinian experience that disappear from casualty statistics and daily news reports.

“This is far more than a book on genocide—it is a testament to humanity itself. It stands as a vital record of what Israel has done, how Palestinians refused to surrender their humanity, and how the rest of the world reacted,” the Gaza-born Baroud said.

Baroud emphasized that Gaza Rising demands careful study because it shatters the perception of Palestinians as powerless victims, refusing to allow them to be lectured, judged or pitied.

“The reality is far more complex,” he said, adding that the book serves as a powerful testament to that truth.

For Pappé, the volume conveys a determination rooted in Gaza’s long history of resistance to dispossession and expulsion.

“This book conveys the people of Gaza’s resolve that neither the 2023 genocide nor the incremental genocide that followed will drive them from their homes and homeland,” Pappé said. “It shows that resilience and resistance in Gaza transcend faction, generation, and gender. Gaza continues to hope, dream, and rise and it will endure.”

“Rather than offering an academic analysis of these aspirations, this book lets the people themselves express them with power and poignancy,” he added.

For her part, Rubeo stressed that the volume does not romanticize survival or separate Palestinian resilience from the devastating conditions under which it has emerged.

“The message of Gaza Rising is not to romanticize what the people of Gaza are enduring, nor to turn their survival into a comforting story of resilience,” Rubeo said.

“It is to reflect the full complexity of Gaza’s humanity under genocide—its grief, fear, love, anger, humor and determination—while conveying the hope, steadfastness and resistance that continue to emerge from Gaza’s own accounts,” she continued.

“These voices remind us that even amid an attempt to annihilate a people, Palestinians in Gaza continue to assert their humanity on their own terms.”

Gaza Rising includes a preface by Ilan Pappé, an introduction by Ramzy Baroud, Romana Rubeo’s diaries of a fallen journalist, an afterword by international law scholar Richard Falk and a coda by former Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu.

The book is dedicated to Dr. Soma Baroud and Palestinian journalist Wafaa Aludaini, both of whom were killed by Israel during the genocide. Several contributors were also killed before the volume appeared in print. Their published words now carry the added weight of testimony preserved against attempted erasure.

The collection will be of particular interest to general readers, journalists, educators, researchers, students, libraries, human rights organizations and institutions seeking first-person Palestinian testimony grounded in history, memory and everyday life.