- In the days after the genocide began, a video circulated across social media of IOF soldiers kidnapping and torturing a Deaf Palestinian named Ihab Tanboura.
- Tanboura is a young Deaf man from Beit Lahia. Israeli soldiers filmed themselves torturing and abusing him as Tanboura lay shirtless and bruised on the ground, whilst a booted soldier stepped on his head. In the video, which horrified the Palestinian Deaf community, the soldiers tied Tanboura’s hands behind his back, rendering him unable to communicate while he bled all over the floor. The soldiers proceeded to taunt Tanboura with their guns and laughed as they stepped on his head with their boots. Whilst Tanboura screamed in pain, the soldiers kicked him in his skull, back and chest.
- … Any Palestinian would tell you that the Zionist apartheid colonial project is an experience of racism and colonisation. For Deaf Palestinians, Zionism is also experienced as audism — a form of oppression and discrimination directed against Deaf people. Since October 2023, I have gotten to know members of the Palestinian Deaf community across the Gaza Strip. In sharing their accounts, it is my hope that readers will begin to understand their uniquely horrific experiences of the genocide, and how their Deaf and Palestinian identities are inextricably embedded within them.
Continue reading at https://overland.org.au/2024/06/what-it-means-to-be-deaf-and-palestinian-in-gaza/