No University Left Standing in Gaza

Within the first 100 days of its war on Gaza, the Israeli military systematically destroyed every single university on the strip. International human rights monitors have found significant evidence that Palestinian scholars and intellectual figures have been targeted by Israeli strikes. The Israeli military has decimated Gaza’s education system and its infrastructure. This week on Deconstructed, Natasha Lennard, a columnist for The Intercept, fills in for Ryan Grim and speaks with Dr. Ahmed Alhussaina, the vice president of Israa University, one of Gaza’s most celebrated institutions of higher education and research. At the start of the war, Israel turned the university into military barracks, and later destroyed it in a massive, controlled explosion. In mid-November, Alhussaina fled Gaza; he has been able to escape to Egypt with his direct family members. Israel’s current war has killed 102 of his relatives. Alhussaina told Lennard about academic life in Gaza before October 7, the unending terror and desperation for Palestinians since the war began, and his hopes for the future of Palestinian intellectual life.

Natasha Lennard: Welcome to Deconstructed. I’m Natasha Lennard, a columnist for The Intercept, sitting in for Ryan Grim this week.

It is day 126 of Israel’s war on Gaza. Not a single university on the besieged strip has survived the military onslaught. Israeli forces have bombed hundreds of schools and educational institutions, including libraries, heritage sites, and museums. All schools are closed.

Human rights monitor Euromed, a Geneva-based independent nonprofit, reports that the Israeli army has targeted academic, scientific and intellectual figures, bombing their homes without prior notice. Over 94 academics have been killed, alongside hundreds of teachers and thousands of students. Every university has been systematically destroyed.

In a video shared by Israeli soldiers on social media, a soldier walks through the rubble of Al-Azhar University.

[Social media audio of the soldier.]

He says, “To those who say why there is no education in Gaza, we bombed them. Oh, too bad, you’ll not be engineers anymore.”

Today I speak to Dr. Ahmed Alhussaina, the vice president of another destroyed university, al Israa. Israeli forces seized his university soon after they invaded Gaza, using the buildings as a barracks and a detention center to interrogate Palestinians.

In mid-November, the Israeli military released a video showing a massive explosion. The IDF had flattened al Israa in a controlled detonation.

Dr. Alhussaina, speaks to us from Egypt, where he and his family have fled. Dr. Alhussaina, thank you for joining us. 

Ahmed Alhussaina: Thank you very much.

NL: You are joining us from Egypt, but you were previously in Gaza, and working at Israa University. Tell us a little bit about the university before it was destroyed.

AA: The Israa University was established in 2014. We started teaching in the fall of 2015, September 2015. When this university was established by pioneers and academics, and our vision was: poverty, would not stand an obstacle in front of any Palestinian that wants to pursue a college degree. And we followed this with action.

We had so many scholarships; for minorities, for females, for divorced women. We had, at that time, right before the war, we had 4,300 students, which mostly 65 percent were females.

We were about to open the building of the first university hospital in Gaza, we had accredited for the Bachelor of Medicine, which we just started teaching a couple of weeks before the war started; that was our first semester for that. We had a museum that [housed pieces] from a lot of collectors and regular people around Gaza. We had 3,000 artifacts in it, and we were going to open it to the public, we were just about to finish the building.

The small building next to the main campus building also was destroyed and looted. All that was gone, over 3,000 artifacts from the pre-Islamic [period], from the Roman Empire, from all the history of Palestine. We had all the currencies from the state of Palestine, 1905, 1920s, all these times. Like I said, we have ancient, we have recent modern history, and that’s all gone. Nothing is there. They looted it before they destroyed it, and then they just booby trapped the building. 

Like I said, we had a lot of hopes for the university. We were moving up the scale. We became number three in Gaza, as the [third] largest university on record in Gaza.

We were moving up. Last year we joined the Scopus, you know, the credential? You know what Scopus is, right? We were the first university [in Palestine] — [with] our journal of applied science — to join Scopus, the research database.

NL: Yes, this was in the midst of crucial work, and building work.

I want to talk a little bit about daily life before the Israeli bombardments began, but also, just because you mentioned it, the looting and sacking of artifacts, and the eradication of histories and culture, and ways in which Palestinians could speak of their own history, and their own sources of memory. Of course, numerous museums and heritage sites have been desecrated and decimated.

Can you talk a little bit more about what that means going forward, for being able to speak of Palestinian history and culture, and preserve that kind of knowledge production?

AA: Like I said, that’s all gone. And all the news knows that, like you just mentioned, most of the places that have cultural value or archaeological value to the Palestinian is gone. I think it’s a deliberate act of deleting, or just getting rid of everything that points or shows an estate or a people, actually. And they destroyed everything. I don’t know how we’re going to get all that stuff back. These irreplaceable things like that.

I don’t know where to find it, god knows where they’re going to get it. How are you going to get it? I mean, these are limited things that cannot be replaced. It’s not something that we can just build. And we can build new buildings, but I don’t know how we’re going to preserve this sentimental and archaeological value of our culture and heritage, and everything that proves that there were people living there. 

That’s what defied the occupation. Propaganda says people with no land came to a land with no people. I mean, they’re saying the Palestinians had no people, there was no such thing as Palestine, and this thing defies it, and I think that’s one of the main reason they attack these kind of things.

They uproot trees. They uproot, even, cemeteries. They uproot churches; the third-oldest church in Palestine was bombed. So many mosques, hundreds of mosques, hundreds of schools. Every single university was hit somehow. Some of them partially damaged, some of them totally destroyed. Schools are all mostly gone. Mosques, hospitals, medical centers. Even, like I said, libraries, the oldest library — Gaza City Library — also was destroyed.

I don’t know, what else can you explain [about] this? It is what it is. It is a destruction of everything Palestinian. They want to make Gaza unlivable and they want to destroy its history. Even if you go there now, you’re not going to see anything but rubble and destruction. Over 70,000 of the buildings were destroyed, and I don’t know where people are going to even have a life.

NL: No, absolutely. So, yes, speaking of that — have a life — tell us a little bit about daily life before this particular war. You told us a little bit about what the university was building… Your life, and the life of your colleagues and students — can you give us a sense of what that looked like?

Especially because, obviously, it’s not like history began on October 7th. I am curious about some of the existing challenges for academics, university life, in Gaza and Palestine more generally under Israel’s blockade and occupation. 

AA: Like I said, we were teaching, life was going fine. We had actually graduated our fourth class of last year, 2023, in August we had the last graduation ceremony for our fourth class of the university.

Life was going on. Like I said, we just got accredited for the Bachelor of Medicine, we had so many new programs we just started. We started the Center for Statistics and Surveys to do polls and surveys in Gaza. We had the building ready, also, inside the main campus, and that is also gone. We had so many hopes for the future.

Like I said, the obstacles, we had so many hundreds, even when we were building the building, you have to get approved for every single piece of cement, they have to get… Let’s say you get two tons of cement? You have to get approved by the Israeli side, they have to know where it’s going, and they have to be supervised by the UNDP and the staff of the UNRWA.

They have to see it. They had a storage house with cameras [where] you have to pick up exactly the amount that you need for this particular area. Let’s say you’re going to build a hundred meters, square meters, that’s what you’re going to need, cement for this much, and stones for this much. They calculate everything. So, you have to wait in lines, with delays and all of that.

Other than that, everything that you need to buy for laboratories, equipment for laboratories, also was delayed for years. You know, we ordered, for example, when COVID 19 happened, we had purchased a real-time PCR. You know, that’s the instrument that you use to test for coronavirus. We ordered at that time, we still haven’t gotten it up until now. They say that it’s not allowed, it’s not permittable. 

We had to get involved with the Red Crescent, the ICRC also couldn’t help. They helped us before. Last year, we got one of the instruments they [obtained] themselves after so many negotiations. It took us years to get it in. We got it, but the PCR never got there. They say, this is forbidden and it’s not permissible. “I don’t know, it says dual use. What are you going to use it for?” I have no idea. 

There’s so many things that you’re not allowed to bring in, even pipes. That’s, oh, they say it’s for dual use. Anything they want to deny entry to Gaza, they have the excuse of saying, it’s dual use, they can use it for something else. And so many things go under that category.

Also, when our academics and intellectuals try to travel, there’s always restrictions on who can travel. You need a permit from the Israeli side to go to the West Bank. If you want to go to attend a scientific conference, or you go to visit a university, or even go to the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research. You need to apply for a permit months ahead, and most of the time it’s rejected, for no reason. It’s a security reason, sometimes they don’t even tell you a reason, sometimes they just tell you it’s still pending, and it takes six months or seven months, when the occasion is gone, the conference’s date is expired and it’s gone. So you don’t even need to travel after that, if you get approved.

Same thing for traveling overseas. If you want to go through that, you have to go through the same thing. If you’re going to go through the border crossing, it’s also hell, because it’s not open all the time, and there’s so many restrictions on it.

So, we missed a lot of conferences, and even for our academics to go to another university, to go overseas. We had so many invitations. A lot of people had to cancel.

NL: Yes. So, even before this war, academic life was under a lot of control and faced many obstacles. Now it has been decimated or put into exile.

As mentioned, I’m speaking to you while you’re in Egypt, and if you’re able to, would love to hear more about your life after October 7th, what you’ve been through. And your journey to Egypt, and what your life is looking like now.

AA: Before the war, I was the Vice President for Financial and Administrative Affairs at the university, and I also was teaching in the business department. And we had my house, I had a nice house. I had a vehicle I had just purchased, which is also worth now, it cost about $45,000.

The house was almost totally destroyed. Not totally; it was mostly, it’s unlivable right now. And, of course, the university is gone, you don’t know what to go back for. We left the house after it was unlivable.

We left the house on November 14th, trying to go to the south. We were living in the city of Gaza, in the north side. So, we tried to leave, we’ve been trying to leave since the beginning of the war, my family and I. We had so many obstacles, it was so dangerous. You know, you get in the car, they shoot the cars, you walk, they shoot at people. There’s so many snipers after they started their ground operation.

On November 14th, I decided to leave with the family. So, we took a small car, which dropped us far away from, you cannot get close to where they are, because they shoot anything that moves. Then you have to walk, pull your bag on sand, of course, because all the roads were uprooted by the bulldozers and tanks, so you have to walk in the sand pulling those bags.

And, once you get there, there’s some cameras, and you have to go through a whole container or something, you walk through a little room. And then there’s cameras and all kinds of stuff, and then you walk. And then once you cross the room, they gather you in batches of 200 people, or 150 people. You stand in front of the Israeli army, which is about 100 yards away, and they’re looking at you with binoculars and cameras and all that. And then you have to stand up and hold your ID in your hand like that. And we stood in this position for two and a half hours.

And it was sunny. It was 12 o’clock and it was kind of hot. You’re feeling dizzy and you can’t even sit down because, if you move, you might get shot. And if you drop something, you cannot bend down to pick it up. You’re not allowed to move, so if you drop something, you lose it. So, that’s how bad it was.

And then, while you’re standing there, they’re making fun of you. They’re calling people donkeys and stuff. “You, red donkey with the red shirt, come on out. You come out.” They call you, you come out. You get close to them about, I guess I’d say 30 yards. There’s a big ditch in the sand, they make you go in there and take your whole clothes off. Everything, totally butt-naked. I’m sorry to say that. Naked. And a lot of people got through that. Even a 65-year-old man was there, they have him totally naked.

And then you need to make a turnaround, I don’t know what they’re scared of. Then they come out, handcuff you, blindfold you, and take you inside. They arrest people. Some people, they make them just sit on the side, they use them as a human shield overnight, and let them go in the morning. Some people got arrested and went away to unknown places.

Then after, like I said, the two-and-a-half-hour ordeal, they told us, you can walk, just start walking that way. So we start walking. We pulled our bags, our luggage, and what was left of our dignity. We walked about another mile, and then we got to a place where there’s a car pulled by donkeys that we rode on for another mile and a half that we have to pay for. And then, a mile and a half later, you get where some people are, you find a taxi, which we took, rented to the border, to Rafah crossing, where the Egyptian side is.

While we’re going, walking through, there were bodies on both sides of the road. Once you start walking from the Israeli side, where the Israeli army is, there’s bodies on both sides of the road. There’s nobody to pick them up, they’ve started to decompose. There’s a lot of them decomposing already. And we look at … You cannot see this kind of stuff ahead. My granddaughter, she’s three years old. I had to cover her eyes just not to see this kind of stuff.

And once we got there, we went to the border, and we crossed to Egypt.

NL: And which is, actually, of course, something that many people are also not even able to do, even this ordeal many people are hoping to do. It’s expensive, it’s difficult, and not possible. So, this ordeal that you went through is also something that many, many Gazans wish they could.

AA: Yes. Like I said, we were the lucky ones that day. Two days later, people were not allowed even to carry luggage. You have to walk with barefoot, bare hands, nothing in your hands. I mean, we were lucky enough to get one luggage of our clothes, we had some clothes, but other people when they crossed after — I heard stories from my cousin — two days later, he left after me, and he went to the south side, he just went to Rafah to stay there. He said it’s safe, safe to stay there.

They had to go on there with no nothing, with no luggage or anything. And they had no clothes, just whatever they wearing. No food, no money, and they had to go stay in another city where they didn’t know anybody. I don’t know how they are making it right now. People are living in tents, and in this cold weather, and it’s been raining for so many days. There’s no food, people are very hungry, and if you find food, it’s very, very expensive, that you can’t afford. Whatever it was, for five dollars right now, it’s like ten-fold over, ten times. They can’t afford it. Nobody has any money right now. Where are they going to get money from? 

NL: Those who are not able to get to Egypt, but also relatedly, are you in contact with your colleagues from the university? Family members who have not been able to cross with you? Other people you may have worked with in Palestinian academia or students?

Have you been able to maintain contact, and know how the people you worked with every day are doing?

AA: I still have family there, I still have brothers and sisters back in Gaza. I have a brother and sisters in northern [Gaza], still in the Gaza city where I used to live close by. And they can’t find food, and they keep moving from one place to another, because the bombing is close by. And then they move, then they come back to the house, and you just go back and forth.

My other brother moved with his family to the south side of Gaza. They went to Khan Yunis, where the bombing is. He’s been living there for a month and a half with his family, his kids, and wife, and grandchildren. And that’s how they’re doing.

I mean, you keep worrying, you try to get in touch. You have to call, like, ten times to get [through] sometimes, and sometimes you will never get it. Sometimes you just send messages by using social media, WhatsApp, or any means of contact to get an answer back in a couple of days. They’re saying, we are OK, how are you doing?

All day we’re watching the news, that’s what we’re doing. We’re seeing Al Jazeera, we’re seeing all other kinds of news channels. And we listen to it, we’re watching it, and every time we hear a bombing close to where they live, we have to call them and send… Because you don’t know. You don’t know who’s next and who’s not.

Last night, it just happened. They bombed the house where my cousin lived in Ra’a, like, the border of Rafah. They bombed the top apartment above their head. And when we had seen the building, and they said it belonged to these people, we thought they were gone. And they were the rest of the family, you know? We had to keep calling and calling until we got somebody. They left. The bomb didn’t come there, so, once they bombed the top, they just ran out. They walked out. I mean, they made it [out] alive, but it’s something I wanted to mention.

Like, one week later, on the 23rd, I think, after I left, seven or eight days later, they found the block where I lived, and 102 of my family and relatives have been killed there. A few of my nephews, my nieces, a couple of my cousins, my uncles, their grandchildren, their wives, their kids, a lot of their families been wiped off the world, of the register, you know? And the problem is they’re still under rubble till now. I mean, it’s been two months, almost, or 50 days now, and they’re still, most of them are still under rubble.

Because you can’t get anybody, there’s no equipment whatsoever, they bombed everything that you can use. And you can’t even drive in the street with that. If you call somebody to help, they bomb those kind of things. You have to use hands, and now, you cannot pull all this concrete, this heavy concrete, and you can’t take it out, you can’t pull it out. So, they’re still under there, they’re probably decomposed already, you know, with bones or whatever. I don’t know how you’re going to recognize them, and then, God knows when is this going to end. And I feel sorry for the parents who cannot even bury their own children, still.

My sister goes there. She lost her two only boys. They’re still in the rubble. I mean, they’re old enough, they’re 25 and 24. She goes there in front of the building with all the rubble. And I heard them, my other sister, she goes there every day in the morning. She’s like, I smell my kids. And just, every single day.

NL: I’m so sorry for your loss. It is intolerable.

Tell me about your life in Egypt now. You mentioned that you’re now glued to the news, of course, trying to keep in contact when possible. What is day-to-day life aside from that? Your place of work, destroyed, partially destroyed.

AA: There’s nothing to do in here, like I said. We are just, refugees right now. I mean, we just, like I said, the news, watching the news all day. Sometimes I try to walk around just to look like, you know … To feel that you’re doing something. We walk around to the market and come back, that’s all we’re doing. And we’re not working and there’s nothing to do. You know, there’s no working. Anyway, even if you tried to, it’s just, so many people are out of work here.

So, all you do is just sit down in the house, or just walk around and watch things, and just to move your bones or whatever, just so you don’t have to sit in the house all day. And, like I said, my kids, also, my two sons here, and they lost their uncles and cousins. And, you know, so many things, it’s…

My brother lost his son with his kids, his grandchildren, all together. My brother’s an American citizen. I know how hard it is, but there’s nothing to do. It’s just, like I said, news, and I try to get in touch with people back home all day.

I get in touch with people sometimes, with my colleagues, like I said. Some of them — not all of them — there’s some of them already got killed. One of them, Dr. Fadel Abu Hein, he’s the most prominent psychologist, he used to — he’s the head of the department of clinical psychology at our university. He got killed with his family, they also bombed his house. Everything was gone. So many people that I know have passed away like that, and just got killed.

NL: And indeed, a number of human rights monitors have noted that there seems to be incontrovertible evidence that academic intellectual figures were not just killed in the bombardments, but also targeted.

AA: Yes, that is a proven fact. They target so many intellectuals and professors, and most of the university. Like you said, the president of the university has been found with his family, his wife and kids, so many doctors that I personally know, professors, intellectuals, they were killed.

Like journalists, where they were threatened. Actually some of them were threatened; Dr. Refaat Alareer, he was teaching English literature. He was a poet, also, he was raising awareness, he was conveying our message to the world. And he was threatened, and he was killed, he was bombed with his house.

I think they’re targeting intellectuals because they are role models for people, they teach nationalism, and they shape opinions. We teach our students self-confidence. We sow resistance in people, and we organize opposition. And, as intellectual academics, we can expose the barbaric nature of this regime, this occupation, and that’s probably why, mostly, they try to target these sections of people. It is deliberate. 

They aim to obscure the truth, like I said. They don’t want … These intellectuals are the best people to convey, or to make our tragedy reach the outer world, the Western world. And, especially if most of [us] went to schools or colleges in other countries, Western countries — most went to Europe or United States — so, we are the best people to represent our case on a struggle, both to America and the Western world, and that’s probably the main reason [why] they want to conceal the truth, and they want to oppress the people. Not to show, like I said, the true nature, barbaric nature of this regime.

NL: Yes, indeed. And, in the words of Dr. Refaat Alareer, have indeed echoed through the poem he left: “If I must die, you must live to tell my story.” And that is … These stories that so much death make impossible to share.

So, let’s talk a little bit about international reception, international support, lack thereof, or where it has been present for you and your family. Can you talk a little bit about feelings around international support that you have been able to receive, or not? And what you would hope to see shifting.

AA: I was lucky enough. My family and I had the State Department help us to get out of there. I mean, you know, I can thank them for that. They’re the one who posted our names to the Israeli side and Egyptian side so that we could cross the border. As you know, there’s nobody allowed to cross the border, except for these people with dual citizenship, and all their own countries get them out. Or other people like, you know, injured people, which… [there are] not much [of them] coming out of there.

They helped us out through that, and they drove us to a hotel for a couple of days, and then they told us, you’re on your own. I guess that’s the only help that we got so far from anybody.

Back home — I mean, in Gaza — they did not get any help. I’m talking to my sisters and brothers. Every day, the kids go around, and they try to find food even to buy. You don’t find it, especially in the north, you can’t find anything to buy. Even if you had the money, money can’t help you much, because there’s not much things to buy. Everything is gone, everything has ran out. You know, it’s been four months, and there’s nothing coming into North Gaza, there’s nothing in, except a couple of bags of flour. That’s what they need every day to make bread, and it’s not much. And, like I said, the prices went up like ten times. 

They don’t find food, they don’t find much stuff in there. Even chips, potato chips used to be there. Whatever they find, they buy. I mean, there’s nothing left in the stores. Most of the supermarkets are shut down, closed, either bombed, or there’s nothing in there to sell. And you just buy from the black market. People walk in the street and try… They find something, they try to sell. That’s their daily life.

My other brother in the South, he sleeps in a tent. They’re sleeping in a tent with their kids and their grandchildren. And one tent, you know, it doesn’t even stop the cold or the air coming in, you know? The wind is moving the tent, and even the water from the rain, rainwater goes underneath them. That’s how they live their day-to-day life. And the same thing, it’s very hard to find food in the whole shelter. Whatever you had on you, that’s what you’ve got.

They say the United Nations is helping out, they give out food sometimes, the flour that comes as international aid from other countries, from Kuwait, and Algeria, and Turkey, and then other European countries, Spain and France. They send the food, also, and supplies, medical supplies. But, like everybody knows, it doesn’t go [far]. 

Before the occupation, Gaza used to have 500 to 600 trucks going into Gaza from the borders. That’s how much they use every single day: 500, 600 trucks, those trailer trucks. Right now, what goes in is, like, 20, 100. Now they’re saying it was going up to 80, so I don’t know what the numbers are. But that’s not enough for one day, let alone if nothing got in for four months. If they get a thousand a day, that’s not even going to be enough, and you have to keep bringing stuff in.

And, in the south, because of the displacement and exodus of people, there are so many people in Rafah close to the Egyptian border, it’s over, say, 1.5 million. There’s more than half of the population that are already living there in tents, and in one town, because that’s what the Israeli army told them is a safe place to go to. They told them to go to Khan Yunis; Khan Yunis got bombed, you know? They’re bombing it right now. They went to the hospital, and they bombed the hospital yesterday in Khan Yunis, which is the main hospital, Nasser Hospital. You know, there’s no safe place to go there.

During the war before we left there was no safe place. We were thinking that we might just get killed every single minute, any minute now, you know? We’d sit there at night, we just said our prayers and goodbyes to each other with the family. We’d gather in one room. So, let’s say, if we die, we die together, and we say we don’t even know who’s going to make it to the next morning. That was the feeling every single night until we left.

And I know that’s even worse for them now. God knows what on their mind. Especially when you move one place, from one house to another, from one tent to another. I know you keep running around, and you don’t know when is the next hit is going be. It’s really hard.

NL: And in terms of not just since this particular onslaught, but the treatment of Palestinian scholarship and scholars internationally, you mentioned before, the sheer difficulty of leaving the strip for scholars based in Gaza to attend international conferences, and be part of international communities. Those of us based in the U.S. are certainly aware of some of the difficulties Palestinian voices have had in holding standing in U.S. universities, and that’s true of non-Palestinian academics who support Palestinian liberation.

How do you feel about the international support and lack thereof of Palestinian scholarship, in your experience, prior to this war, and now, and thoughts going forward?

AA: There was some international, at least, let’s say, sympathy with the Palestinians. But if you have a Palestinian passport, it doesn’t get you anywhere. That’s one of the main obstacles, also, for Palestinian intellectuals or academics or scholars. If you try to travel anywhere in the world, you always need a visa. It’s not a strong nationality or a passport that you can go to so many countries without a visa, like the American passport, or any other countries. Even in the Arab world, the Palestinian passport is not considered a passport. They treat you like one of those third-class citizens or whatever.

You’re always subject to a stop or an interrogation. You have to sit aside for a couple of hours waiting before they stamp your passport, they have to find out who you are. Even if you go to any Arab country, your passport, it’s a flag. You’re always a suspect if you’re a Palestinian, especially coming out of Gaza.

No matter how, how prominent or a known scholar you are, you have to go through this horrendous — I don’t know how you call it — treatment every single time. If you’re lucky enough to have a different passport, a dual citizenship, that might help you a lot if you’re going into Arab countries, or even other European countries, it’s easier for you to get a visa. You could do it online with a lot of countries, if they require a visa to start with. But if you have a Palestinian passport, you have to wait, probably, a couple of months before you can get a visa.

Once you go in there, they don’t cover, exactly, even your expenses most of the time, because, I guess Palestine is not a recognized state according to their standard. In some countries, not all. Some other places, you go there, they respect you and they treat you right, like your other colleagues of other countries, but that’s in rare conditions.

That’s before the war. After the war, I haven’t tried to … There’s nobody, there’s nothing to do. There are no scholars to go anywhere, to see if the treatment has changed or not. But I don’t know if it’s going to change much, to be honest with you, the way I see it. 

NL: And, given that that feels like the case, and there’s a lot of evidence to believe that is the case, tell me a little bit about what it felt like to observe —as was televised and shared in video around the world by the Israeli military — images of the university you were part of, you were building, and strengthening, being detonated and raised to the ground, in a video that was then shared widely.

AA: It’s hard to describe this feeling, because we have so many memories in that building. We built every single piece of it. Because, when we started the university in 2014, it was in a small campus in the north of Gaza. At that time we were building this main building. This is one of the biggest or the nicest buildings in Gaza. We built it and we followed every single step of it. So, it’s like, you know, we have emotional relations to this place, we have attachments to this place.

And we would go on there every single day when we started teaching, when we opened the building at the campus, people were coming and just taking pictures of the place. The place was very nice — I don’t know if you’ve seen pictures of the building — it was one of the largest and nicest buildings in Gaza. And a lot of people, when they come there, they get impressed.

And, like I said, we had medical laboratories, we had all kind of laboratories, everything was there. Everything was destroyed and is gone right now. We got attached to it, because we spend more time in there, probably more than we spend with our families in our houses. We were there every day from 8 o’clock in the morning till 5 o’clock in the afternoon, every single day.

When you get attached to this kind of … It’s like your house. And if you lose your house and it gets destroyed, also, you have a lot of memories in there. You can’t describe it. I don’t know how long it’s going to take to get this back up, if we ever get a chance to rebuild what we had in there.

A lot of students are now out. A lot of our students have been killed, their families have been killed. A lot of staff members, I have coworkers that have been killed with their family. Some of them were detained by Israel. So, it’s like I say, catastrophe. And you can’t comprehend it, can’t even keep up with it.

When you sit there alone and start thinking about it, you feel frustrated, despair, I don’t know how optimist— you don’t know — pessimistic. You don’t know. I don’t know what to feel, to be honest with you.

NL: Is it possible to think about the future at all? And, if it is, if there is a sight of hope or desire for what you hope the future could look like, what do you think about in those terms? 

AA: I hope this ordeal will end at first, that this war stops the killing, and the genocide, and ethnic cleansing. That it stops now, right now. Not tomorrow, not today, right now at this minute. I hope this will stop and, once this stops, we will start thinking about rebuilding. Of course, we will rebuild. We’re not going anywhere. That’s the way I feel, the way everybody, every Palestinian feels. We want to rebuild, and we want to live our life in the same place, in Gaza. We are not going nowhere.

And I think that the world will help us. I think God is will help us stay in there, Inshallah, God willing. We will stay there. We will go back and rebuild again. This is another, like I said, catastrophe from the Nakba, 1948, when people got kicked out of their homes. My father and my grandfather worked there and they went through that.

My uncle, he’s 95 years old, he was telling us about the Nakba in 1940, when they left their houses, they were thrown out of their house, and then left it. They still have keys for the house. He got killed, also, in the last bombing a couple of months ago. Him, and my father, and everybody was telling us about what happened in 1948.

I think this history is repeating itself exactly to us, but we are not going anywhere. We will go back. Whenever we get the chance, we will go back and rebuild again and go on with our lives.

NL: Thank you so much, sir, for joining me today on Deconstructed. I wish you well. 

AA: Thank you, Natasha. Thank you, everybody there. And I would love for this, the word, to get to everybody, every American. I know a lot of Americans don’t know what’s going on. This is my granddaughter. 

NL: Just for listeners, a beautiful little girl has popped into screen. How old is she?

AA: She’s three years old.

[Small child saying hello.]

NL: Hello. It’s lovely to meet you. And it was wonderful to talk to you, sir. Thank you so very much.

AA: Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you, guys.

NL: That was Dr. Ahmed Alhussaina, the vice president of al-Israa University, a university near Gaza City that Israel first turned into a military base and, later, bombed and destroyed.

Deconstructed is a production of The Intercept. José Olivares is our lead producer. Our supervising producer is Laura Flynn. The show is mixed by William Stanton. Legal review by David Bralow and Elizabeth Sanchez. Leonardo Faierman transcribed this episode. Our theme music was composed by Bart Warshaw. Roger Hodge is The Intercept’s Editor-in-Chief. And I’m Natasha Lennard, a columnist for The Intercept.

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