Dr. Ramzy Baroud, a Palestinian historian and author, in his new book, “Before the Flood: A Gaza Family Memoir Across Three Generations of Colonial Invasion, Occupation, and War in Palestine,” traces the long arc of Palestinian resistance to the Zionist settler-colonial state leading to its current form in Hamas. It is resistance, defined by Palestinians themselves, as Dr. Baroud explains, that is the “sole leverage” of the Palestinian people in their struggle for existence, which began before the Nakba of 1948.

In this episode, Chris Hedges speaks with Professor Baroud about his deep personal connection to this struggle. Dr. Baroud’s family lived in the village of Beit Daras before being forcibly displaced to Gaza during the Nakba. In the current war, more than a hundred of his family members have been murdered by the Israeli Occupying Forces, including his sister, Dr. Soma Baroud, who was a physician and community leader. His losses go beyond that. Professor Baroud explains that due to the decades of confinement in Gaza, “everyone who dies in Gaza is somehow family, friend, neighbor, relative, connection of some kind.”

Dr. Baroud describes the “slow-motion genocide” of Palestinians through the blockade of Gaza and regular attacks, cruelly referred to by Zionists as ‘mowing the lawn’, which led to the Palestinian uprising on October 7, 2023. The world watched as the Israeli state waged a full-blown genocide that destroyed 92% of Gaza. Now, Palestinians are being squeezed into an even smaller area without the infrastructure they relied on previously. He describes the situation as more dire than before as “[Gazans] are being asked to engineer a miracle of survival while the world is looking on somewhere else.”

Hedges and Baroud discuss what the future holds for Palestine. Baroud is hopeful that Palestine will prevail given the steadfastness and ingenuity of Palestinians in their fight for survival. In his book, a type of people’s history that challenges the mainstream Zionist narrative, Baroud explains that even though there are divisions in Palestinian society - as there are in all societies and national liberation movements – there is an underlying unity he refers to as the “secret code of Gaza.” Palestinians also have a long history of “scholar-warriors” who have led successive liberation movements and have fostered connections with other liberation movements around the world. The Zionist state can only exist through military force, and Palestinians have demonstrated their powerful abilities to resist. Dr. Baroud admits proudly, “I don’t want to say [we are] super humans in Gaza, but our story speaks for itself.”