ON GAZA

With this Special focus, the academic journal *From the European South* 15 (Fall 2024) wishes to join the widening community of voices that are speaking in sorrow and outrage over the war and humanitarian crisis in Gaza. We mourn the immense loss of Palestinian lives, including authors, poets, artists, journalists, thinkers, students and academics, and the destruction of sites of care and encounter, homes, hospitals, schools, universities, museums, libraries, and mosques that are all essential to the life and future of a cultural community. We share the ongoing anguish of women, children and men, who are the actual victims of a war allegedly against Hamas by the Israeli government and, as a result, have become the target of enduring genocidal violence which is staving off urgent humanitarian interventions and prevents the onset of lasting peace and justice in the region. We are worried about and wish to resist the widespread curtailing of freedom of expression in matters concerning Israel and Palestine, in university campuses and in civil societies around the world. It is in the name of open expression and human rights that we champion the freedom to speak and to write, recognizing the power of the word to transform the world. We are persuaded that “the battle for language” is pivotal in the battle for decolonial justice.