Abstract:
Amid imposed starvation and Israel’s genocidal assault, Palestinians in Gaza return to their foremothers’ ovens, practices, and recipes to survive. Ancestral food practices such as baking bread in a clay tabun oven in the absence of fuel and electricity, and foraging for edible and medicinal herbs, become practices of sumud and material survival. Through Palestine’s foremothers, the seeds of steadfastness had long been planted. Gaza’s food vloggers assert an Indigenous presence and a refusal to be erased even in the darkest hour of genocide. I argue that Gaza’s digital storytellers provide the source material for Indigenous survival made possible by the creativity of the Gazan people and the lessons they carry from their foremothers.