This week, in the second instalment of “Women of the Resistance”, I interviewed Palestinian-Canadian artist Rehab Nazzal.
Why I launched “Women of the Resistance”
I inaugurated this series of interviews on August 6, when I interviewed Lebanese journalist, Marwa Osman.
I launched this initiative with two objectives: first, to highlight the under-reported but vital contribution that women make every day to the resistance in West Asia to Western hegemony, and second, to challenge false Western narratives about the groups and individuals in the region who are determined to achieve self-determination.
In my view, these objectives have been made all the more pressing by the growing potential for a devastating, all-out war between Israel and Iran.
How I learned of Rehab Nazzal
I first came to know Rehab in 2015.
At the time, she was pursuing doctoral studies at Western University in London, Ontario, and I was a partner in a London-based law firm.
In December of that year, local media reported that Rehab had been shot by an Israeli sniper in the occupied West Bank while she was photographing the activities of an Israeli ‘skunk truck’:
This was not the first time that Rehab’s family had been targeted with violence by Israel.
In 1986, Rehab’s brother, Khaled Nazzal, was brutally murdered in the streets of Athens, Greece by agents of the Mossad:
At the time of his murder, Khaled Nazzal was the Secretary of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. After his death, Palestinians in occupied Jenin erected a stone monument in his honour. Two weeks later, Israel’s military stole the monument, but the people of Jenin established another one in his memory.
In April of this year, Rehab and I visited the monument while we reported on Israel’s atrocities in the Jenin area.
Israel’s killing of Khaled Nazzal was not only an unlawful extrajudicial assassination. It was also a gross violation of the sovereignty of Greece.
Despite this, the current Greek government of Kyriakos Mitsotakis stands unequivocally on the side of Israel’s genocidal regime.
The Trudeau government’s indifference to Israel’s crimes
In December 2015, upon learning that an Israeli sniper had shot Rehab, I contacted her and offered to represent her on a pro bono basis. She agreed to retain me.
My mandate as her lawyer was to pressure the Canadian government to ensure that the soldier who shot Rehab was held accountable.
For two years, I wrote letters to Canada’s Foreign Ministry, its representatives in the occupied Palestinian territories, and Canada’s then-Ambassador to Israel, Deborah Lyons. I provided to them sworn evidence (including contemporaneous photographs) that an Israeli sniper had targeted Rehab while she posed no threat to anyone. I requested, and then demanded, that they pressure Israel’s government to identify and punish the culpable soldier.
During that time, I also advocated publicly and repeatedly for Canada to defend its citizen.
The Trudeau government ignored me. As far as we know, it did nothing to vindicate Rehab’s rights.
Three years later, an Israeli sniper shot Canadian-Palestinian doctor Tarek Loubani in Gaza. It is entirely possible that the Trudeau government’s indifference to the shooting of Rehab encouraged Israel’s lawless military to target another peaceful Palestinian-Canadian.
Within days of Loubani’s shooting, Deborah Lyons travelled from Israel to Toronto to tell a Zionist gathering of her deep love for Israel.
After Israel’s genocide began last year, Trudeau elevated Lyons to the post of Special Envoy on Combating Antisemitism. Since then, Lyons has used her publicly-funded post to whitewash Israel’s genocide and smear its critics.
Rehab’s courage and artistry
Although Rehab has the option of residing in Canada, where she would avoid direct contact with Israel’s genocidal military, she has chosen to live in the occupied West Bank.
There, through her artistry, she has documented the Palestinian struggle for freedom.
That Rehab continues to do so is nothing short of extraordinary.
Rehab’s latest project is a short documentary titled “Vibrations”. She produced it shortly before Israel’s genocide began. Her award-winning documentary features the struggles and beauty of deaf children in Gaza.
You can find the trailer for Vibrations here.
You can watch and listen to my interview of Rehab here:
Admirable lady.
And to think that others like her are killed every day in Gaza; and so are little children who could have become great artists, musicians, teachers, or simply people useful to and loved by their community.
I just read the story of a mother in Gaza who says that the situation is worse than what we see on TV.
That when they run away from one place to another they walk on charred corpses…
Thank you, Dimitri,and Rehab, and all those who try to help saving people from this hell.