F#ck Fascism Friday: Be a Salwa
On August 26, 2024, my friend and colleague Salwa Duaibis died of a brain aneurysm. Salwa was 64 years old. She spent her life fighting Israeli fascism.
I met Salwa in November 2016. Military Court Watch, an organization she founded with her partner, Gerard Horton, had been recommended to me. I was leading my first tour of Israel/Palestine, and I was looking for more ways to educate people about the Israeli occupation.
After introducing Salwa and Gerard, I sat stunned as they explained how Israel routinely arrested and detained Palestinian children. I have never been the same.
Some of you have met Salwa. Others of you know Salwa from my documentary, The Law and the Prophets. She was the best of us because even though she was afraid, sometimes, and hopeless, sometimes, she fought and she fought and she fought.
I want to share a few things from her obituary, which can be read in its entirety here.
Salwa was born in 1960 in the city of Nazareth, one of the few Palestinian cities that was not forcibly depopulated in 1948. Thus Salwa was an Israeli citizen.
Salwa’s family moved to the West Bank city of Nablus in 1972.
It was their childhood in Nablus that Salwa and her siblings described as rooting them in their Palestinian identity. It was also where Salwa came to understand that she was destined to always swim against prevailing currents. She bristled at a conservative society’s expectations that girls can’t ride bicycles, laugh aloud in the street, or challenge male authority, activities all embraced by Salwa.
Be a Salwa.
In 1976, during a time of strikes and protests against Israel’s 9-year occupation, an Israeli soldier in Nablus stalked a 17-year-old school girl down a back-lane and executed her with five bullets, two in the neck, two to the chest and one in the heart. The girl, Lina Nabulsi, was Salwa’s best friend. Lina was targeted because she had leadership potential and was prominent in the recent protests. This was the moment Salwa knew she would dedicate her life to challenging the inevitable injustice that comes with never-ending foreign military rule.
Be a Salwa.
Salwa was a biochemistry major at Birzeit University in the West Bank, where “she never accepted anything without question, as one of her professors later put it.”
The usual path for a female graduate back then was – marriage, a respectable profession or all-encompassing allegiance to a political faction – none appealed to Salwa. Instead, she chose to work at Mattin, a largely women’s co-operative that, among other things, produced exclusive lingerie for the New York (Saks Fifth Avenue / Victoria’s Secret), London (Harrods) and Hebron markets. As well as showcasing Palestinian business acumen and craftsmanship, the initiative provided well paid jobs to over 30 women and challenged US and European customs’ authorities to acknowledge that products made in the West Bank were not “made in Israel”. US customs officials eventually relented and said the lingerie could be designated: “Made in the Israeli occupied West Bank” – a label exceeding the length of an average G-String.
Be a Salwa.
Salwa and Gerard met in 2007. They married in 2012, and founded Military Court Watch in 2013.
Between 2013 and 2024, Salwa collected hundreds of testimonies from children detained, abused and forcibly transferred by Israeli forces in the West Bank. She also travelled extensively in Europe, North America and Australia warning of the dangers of tolerating widespread violations of international law.
The evidence collected by Salwa featured prominently for 10-years in US State Department reports so nobody could say, with credibility, that they did not know. Salwa organized hundreds of visits to Ofer military court, near Jerusalem, where politicians, diplomats, lawyers and others witnessed the daily injustices of military rule.
Be a Salwa.
It was always Salwa’s hope that out of the thousands of politicians, journalists, diplomats, lawyers, religious leaders (Christian, Muslim, Jewish), artists, student groups and general members of the public she met and briefed over the years, a handful might prove to be genuine change makers – a hope she held onto tightly to the end.
We are Salwa’s hope, you and I. We can continue the fight. We must.
In the moments before Salwa was wheeled into the operating theatre to stem the flow of blood in her brain caused by an aneurysm, she turned to each of the loved ones gathered by her side and without a trace of fear, commanded them: “Be happy.” Loving and fearless, our lioness.
Loving and fearless. What a beautiful combination.
Salwa was my friend. I miss her.
Be a Salwa.