Underground Resistance, Above-Ground Relationships: A Conversation with Hadeel Assali of Gaza Mutual Aid Solidarity
How do we gather in pursuit of love and pleasure while cousins are being obliterated? A conversation about care, resistance, and regeneration.
I’ve been thinking a lot about what makes Queer Aperitivo meaningful to me—beyond creating a cute party, beyond good drinks and food (all of which I literally dedicate my life to, don’t get me wrong). For me, it’s about practicing queer culture and values, which include collaboration and sharing resources. That’s why we’ve chosen to go deep rather than wide, regularly directing our community benefit funds to a small handful of projects that we’re in actual relationship with. One of the main ones is Gaza Mutual Aid Solidarity, led by my longtime comrade Hadeel Assali.
Hadeel and I met over two decades ago at the first Student Divestment Conference in Berkeley. We reconnected in the midst of this nightmare of genocide, and I’m grateful we found each other again. We can generate humble but not insignificant resources through QA, and I can rely on Hadeel’s relationships and stewardship of the essential mutual aid work on the ground.
We’re sharing this conversation on Indigenous People’s Day as a way to honor the ongoing struggle worldwide led by Indigenous communities for their land, water, culture, and people in the face of colonial violence and greed. Note: This conversation took place before the Trump brokered ceasefire deal that Israel will surely reverse if our global pressure does not continue.
Ora: Let’s start at the beginning. When we first met in 2001, you were organizing for boycott and divestment from Israel while studying chemical engineering at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. How did you go from there to running Gaza Mutual Aid Solidarity and doing PhD research on Palestinian resistance?
Hadeel: I did like engineering in the beginning, and eventually started working in environmental remediation but in a corporate setting. There I really started to question things, and to see through the “objectivity” of science - everything was driven by profits, even environmental work. At the same time, I was still deeply concerned about Palestine and the need for community building in Houston, where I ended up working. So I founded the Houston Palestine Film Festival, one of many Palestine film festivals that were sprouting up around the world. These were not purely cinematic events. They were much more community focused as spaces for gathering, for educating our youth about Palestine, and it was almost entirely community-funded. It was a wonderful experience, where I learned so much and was so supported by the Houston community. But I felt I wanted to go further into social research around the topics that interested me, especially since I had sort of found the “limits” of corporate-based environmental work.
I had come across a family story that confounded me: one of my great uncles was a victim of a secret Israeli transfer scheme in 1969 to remove 60,000 Palestinians from Gaza and dump them in Paraguay. At the time, he was a 19-year-old kid who thought he was signing up for a worker program in Brazil, but instead was taken to a country he had never heard of. There is more to the story, but at the time, I really had no idea how to do the kind of research necessary to substantiate his story. So for a variety of reasons, and largely driven by this story, I decided to pursue graduate studies in anthropology.
I did indeed substantiate his story - God rest his soul, he has passed away now - but my research focused on a different Gaza story. One thing I had kept noticing, from the film festival work to my sort of entrance into Palestine studies, is that Gaza has often been excluded or marginalized, even in scholarship on Palestine. Those who have focused their scholarship on Gaza (Sara Roy, for example) have long lamented this lack of attention to Gaza. Edward Said described it as one of the cores of the Palestinian cause - the other being Jerusalem - but until now there are been so little attention to Gaza, despite the sort of extreme occupation it suffered. There are many reasons for this research negligence - difficulty of access being one of them. But within Palestinian and surrounding Arab societies, there has long been a kind of discrimination toward Gaza, a looking down on it because it tends to be more conservative, it is the “south,” it is mostly a refugee population, and so on. But it has also always been a fierce site of resistance. So now, it is wild to go from writing early academic papers pointing out how little attention Gaza gets to this moment — where it’s everywhere, which is good, but also heartbreaking. Still now, as before, Gaza’s hypervisibility always happens in extremes - either in moments of war / genocide or as a humanitarian case. Only during this genocide did people realize how many universities, scholars, archives, and so on we have been neglecting all this time.
Ora: Yes Gaza has become visible finally at a horrific cost…And now you’re at Columbia as a lecturer and researcher, though I know that comes with its own complications given the targeting of Palestinian and ally activists on campus.
Hadeel: [Laughs] Yeah, I’m unfortunately still at Columbia. Looking at exit strategies— trying to get good at pottery. But seriously, one of the things I’ve learned is that academia really devalues collective work, such as mutual aid work. After October 7th, many academics insisted “Now’s the time to publish your book!” But my family had not even buried their dead yet. I threw myself into mutual aid work almost fulltime, and despite the tremendous amount of work we did (with our small collective of people), it is not the kind of work that earns a tenure track job, let alone recognition by this institution… Meanwhile, you’ve got Columbia entirely ignoring the genocide and instead (falsely) claiming anti-semitism on campus in every single one of their communications alongside the complete chilling of free speech and the criminalization of activism on campus. I even have a discrimination charge against me for stating that Israel is an apartheid state on a campus listserv. Of course that is nothing compared to the students who have been expelled, the librarians and lecturers who have been fired, and especially compared to students like Mahmoud Khalil abducted by ICE. All this for what? We are not doing anything wrong - all this for trying to stop a genocide? On the one hand, we could ask: what did we expect considering Columbia’s own history and its predatory relationship with Harlem? On the other hand, Columbia does serve as a major staging ground for cultural / narrative battles, which the student movement fought very valiantly. I was very proud to support them and will forever be grateful for how much they lifted all our spirits.
Ora: Back when you and I met, I was on national speaking tours, I was in the news as a spokesperson for the BDS movement. I was on a certain trajectory and I received more attention and support. But when I started focusing on collaborative, community-based work—the kind you don’t get individual credit for—it changed. If you haven’t fashioned yourself as an individual figurehead, you’re almost illegible in this culture.
Hadeel: Exactly. In academic circles, doing mutual aid work that is literally saving lives is not valued the way publishing a book is.
Ora: So tell me—how did Gaza Mutual Aid Solidarity actually start?
Hadeel: It really started with my great aunt Amina, who was living in Khan Yunis. I spent time with her on one of the rare times I was able to get into Gaza. I didn’t get to grow up with my grandmother—she lives in Saudi Arabia—but Amina is my grandmother’s younger sister, and she reminds me so much of her. She has long been a community-oriented pious woman of service. She was a corpse washer for the dead, and just had a strong, caring presence. It is hard to describe, but there is a lot of trust and love between us.
At the beginning of this current iteration of the genocide, I asked if she needed anything. She insisted they were fine because they were still in their home (they’ve since been displaced), but there were all these displaced people around her. She said, “If you want to send something, I’ll distribute it.” She was so careful—taking notes of names and amounts, showing me the ledger even when I told her that I trusted her and and she didn’t have to do all that.
Also, if you follow our instagram page, you see my cousin Abu Shukri all over it. He’s a hustler in the best way—a mover and shaker, construction guy, just very active. During the 2012 bombardment, we did a small GoFundMe for him and his brother to start a chicken business, and they turned it into a restaurant. He is born and raised in Rafah, and in November 2023, he really wanted to feed the displaced people coming to his area. So we started with a small GoFundMe that immediately blew past its goal.
Of course it grew, more family and friends got involved on our side, and in Gaza we have our folks doing whatever needs to be done in the moment - distributing food, water, tents, fixing water wells, fixing sewer systems, and so on. We of course take their lead on what is needed since they are there on the ground.
Ora: Your family is there on the ground dealing with all of the dynamics I’m sure. Dynamics that emerge as the result of occupation, poverty, trauma, anxiety, fear, loss…
Hadeel: Yes, exactly! That’s the thing about mutual aid work—it’s not pristine. There are so many things behind the scenes - typical social dynamics and relations that get strained even more during genocide. Right now, the team is me, my mother, my sister, (you can imagine some of the arguments) and another family friend in Houston. Over there, there’s my aunt and her kids who are now displaced from Khan Yunis to Al-Mawasi. Abu Shukri and his family are also displaced to the middle area as well. We had three small teams in the north that are now all displaced to the middle after the recent Gaza City invasion (although now some are returning). A few of them have gotten together to build a new camp for displaced people. There was a point where they were rebuilding Rafah and we were supporting that project, but then Israel re-invaded Rafah.
One of the most beautiful things in this incredible dark moment has been our incredible, creative community of supporters. We’re blown away all the time— i always tell people our first fundraiser was by a dumpling artist in Mexico City. We have had quilters, book makers, filmmakers, potters, Korean raves, a queer Jello wrestling party, Twitch streamers, a pole dancer in Austin, bartenders in Brooklyn giving all their tips - and so so much more. Like, you guys need this money too, you know? It’s hard for us to accept people giving everything. The hardest part has been the guilt of not being able to say thank you to everyone because there’s amazingly such a large number of supporters. It’s just impossible to keep track with the few braincells we have functioning.
Ora: It’s always those with the least that give the most in this society. And it’s beautiful to see people all trying to do what they can, being who they are with what they know how to do.
How do you stay in touch with your family and partners on the ground?
Hadeel: They’re all on WhatsApp and the younger people are active on Instagram. We gave Abu Shukri’s son Ahmed and my aunt’s daughter Mariam the Instagram login so they can feel ownership and post themselves. Sometimes they’ll ask us to help translate, though lately their English has been pretty impressive—survival skills, you know?
Ora: Let me ask you something that’s been weighing on me. How do I—how do we—keep doing this? Gathering in a bar in Brooklyn to indulge in drinks and food and fun when cousins are being obliterated? For me, I constantly ask myself this question, not to shut down the work, but to make sure I stay on course.
Part of how I answer it is: we need to keep our sanity and humanity as robust as possible so we’re not burned out, lost, disconnected, isolated, or depressed. So we can show up with our able bodies, with our freedom of movement, with our ability to redistribute resources. But we have to make sure Gaza is in the room, on our minds, in our hearts. We’re gathering in this space of sweet connection, enjoying the bounty of local food and spirits—sourced from and supporting a local, ethical, sustainable food economy—to hopefully fill our cups so we can continue to pursue justice and freedom. That’s why partnering with you and Gaza Mutual Aid Solidarity matters so much. You’re a bridge for us to remain in touch with Gaza throughout that.
Hadeel: Yes if there is anything we learn from Gaza, it is to do whatever it takes to sustain life, to LIVE. So long ago, the UN predicted Gaza would be unlivable without naming the reason why… and it turns the people into these humanitarian cases as if they are simply living in coffins waiting for the deadline set out by the UN report. But that has never been the case there - every time I have gone, Gaza has been teeming with life. So we all have to be careful not to overly victimize people surviving a hostile world - whether it is the Palestinian people there or queer communities here. I myself am guilty of isolating too much, and I am inspired by groups like yours who really insist on maintaining thriving social relations and communities. So thank you for the commitment to this work. Relations really are everything. One thing I’ve learned about mutual aid is that once you establish meaningful relationships, or once you make those commitments to people on the ground, you can’t just walk away. Our mutual aid work wasn’t meant to be such a long-term project, and that’s something we’re grappling with. But I’m grateful you’re still walking with us on this journey.
Ora: Speaking of the connections between here and Gaza…Your academic work focuses on the tunnels under Gaza, right? Tell me about that.
Hadeel: My PhD research started from the tunnels. I’m a former engineer, and I’ve always been blown away by the tunnels and the fact that there is no technology to find them (despite what Israel claims). People have a hard time accepting that because they think technology can do anything and surveil everything, that Israel is omnipresent and we have no ability to resist or evade them. But actually, there’s no way to surveil the underground—the literal, material underground. That’s an important lesson for all of us.
I’ve been thinking about and with the underground for a long time, both literal and metaphorical. I think there are a lot of lessons for us to learn from Palestine about underground resistance, which has always been present in various forms, especially under conditions of hyper-surveillance. Here, we really need to work seriously to create underground infrastructures as movement builders facing increasing fascism.
Antonio Gramsci, one of my favorite political thinkers, also hints at the need for an underground. He is more known for his discussion on two forms of war: war of position (actual war) and war of maneuver (cultural war). But when he is introducing these concepts, he also mentions underground war as an essential element. He never defines it or talks about it again, which to me is a lesson in the need for an underground always (also a lesson from Palestine), but that the underground stays underground!
Ora: We love us some radical Italian thinkers here at Queer Aperitivo!
Hadeel: I remember speaking with one of my cousins in Gaza before all this happened. He said, “Don’t get it twisted—we all have our above-ground life and our below-ground life.” People are running businesses and taking care of daily life as well as training. I don’t know that we’ve actually cultivated that here, you know?
Ora: We used to have an underground here that COINTELPRO very deliberately destroyed. So many Black and brown folks paid with their lives—their actual lives or their lives outside of incarceration.
It’s so disappointing that people haven’t learned lessons from how COINTELPRO used outright murder as well as informants and stoking internal conflict to weaken and tear apart movement organizations such as the Black Panthers. Our people in this movement for Palestinian liberation need to cultivate the self-awareness necessary to check our egos, distrust, rage, and baggage. It’s so frustrating to witness people attacking fellow travelers online for instance – it’s so unstrategic! It just hands the empire what they want and drains and paralyzes our organizing efforts.
This connects to why I came into food and hospitality work after years doing grassroots organizing around Palestine. I chose food as a vehicle – and hospitality as a medium – for community and movement building because it centers care and connection. Food production and service require collaboration.
Controlling and/or destroying food systems are central to colonial projects, as Israel is demonstrating and has always demonstrated. And food is crucial to building sovereignty and self-determination, the ability to be self-reliant in resistance and ultimately create autonomous spaces. It’s very materialist and concrete. At the same time, it can help infuse our movement with positivity, beauty, and more tending to our physical and spiritual needs. It’s a culture bearer.
I think we share this sensibility. You’re making ceramics, you produced film festivals—we’re trying to figure out ways to nurture our movements.
Hadeel: Absolutely. I made a short film called “Daggit Gazza” in 2008 about a specific Gazan salad, dagga. I believe in the power of food not just for all the things you’ve said, but also as a soft entry point. When I was running the film festival, there was so little representation of Gaza - its specific dialect, its culture, its food. So this little film is me sharing this quintessential dish with my uncle’s voice speaking over the phone.
We always made sure we had delicious food at film festival events, and often it was homemade Palestinian food. Food, breaking bread together, is such a community builder. It is also such a source of joy, especially for the foodies among us. My paternal uncle Hossam, whose voice is in the short film i mentioned earlier, lost all his family in November 2023 to a missile strike. He has one one surviving daughter, and he has been stuck in the West Bank this whole time, depressed. But you start bringing up food and he instantly perks up. So when we talk, I always try to elicit some joy in him by asking what he ate that day or for his favorite recipes.
Food is powerful in so many ways, not just for social media content. Especially when it is understood to be highly political, but also so nurturing, especially if cultivated in ways that are in good relations with the land.
Ora: Exactly. Made in ways that honor the earth and the people.
Hadeel, I learned a lot from this conversation. Thank you for sharing your work, your family’s collective care and leadership, and these lessons about underground resistance. We’re with you. Always holler if you need anything.
Hadeel: Come do an uptown event! Everything is always in Brooklyn.
Ora: Deal. We’ll work on it.
Learn More & Get Involved
Follow Gaza Mutual Aid Solidarity
Read Hadeel’s Work:
“The Family That Israel Sent to South America” - London Review of Books (Paraguay story)
Notes on the Underground in Gaza, From the Series: Anthropology in a Time of Genocide: On Nakba and Return
Check out her short film on dagga, the quintessential Gazan salad
Support the Work:
Every Queer Aperitivo gathering features support for projects such as Gaza Mutual Aid Solidarity. Our upcoming pop ups – in California! – will be raising funds for the Arab Resource & Organizing Center and the Palestinian Union of Agricultural Work Committees.