CHIMAMANDA ON GAZA: DON'T SKIP THE BEGINNING!

In her 4 April 2025 interview with Al Jazeera's Redi Tlhabi (@reditlhabi on X), award-winning Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (@chimamandareal on X) didn't just talk about her new novel, 'Dream Count.' She also tore into Israel's ongoing massacre of Palestinians in Gaza.

According to medical journal The Lancet, Israel's US-backed onslaught on Gaza had killed an estimated 186,000 people by July 2024. In a 5 April 2025 statement, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) reported that Israel's massacres since 7 October 2023, have left nearly 40,000 Gazan children orphaned, with over a third losing both parents. The orphan crisis in Gaza today is the largest in modern history, according to PCBS President Dr. Ola Awad.

Adichie expressed disbelief at how world powers who have the capacity to bring the 'mass murder' of civilians to an end, sit and watch the carnage continue, while constructing narratives that justify the indiscriminate targeting of an entire population. She warned that 'the danger of a single story' can be observed in the manner that the Palestinian narrative is often told, where campaigns by Hmas are emphasised, but not the decades of ethnic cleansing and occupation that came before them. This, she said, would be like beginning the story of Native Americans without first telling of European invasion and the gnocide of Native Americans on their land.

Chimamanda's remarks serve as a timely reminder that the story of Palestine does not begin with 7 October 2023, but dates back to events like the Balfour Declaration of 1917, the Nakba of 1947-49, and the subsequent theft, occupation and blockade of Palestinian territories.

Video credit: @ajenglish (x)

Sources

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqA3vvZPhOo

https://www.google.co.ke/books/edition/Dream_Count/y-4jEQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA4&printsec=frontcover

https://www.aaiusa.org/library/history-didnt-begin-or-end-on-october-7th

https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2018/11/2/more-than-a-century-on-the-balfour-declaration-explained

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/7/8/gaza-toll-could-exceed-186000-lancet-study-says

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)01169-3/fulltext

https://www.science.org/content/article/native-tribes-have-lost-99-their-land-united-states