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The Drone Eats with Me: A Gaza Diary
An ordinary Gazan’s “devastating contemporary war journal” that chronicles his struggle to survive Israel’s invasion of Gaza (Michael Ondaatje, author of The English Patient)
The Drone Eats with Me is an unforgettable rendering of everyday civilian life shattered by the realities of twenty-first-century warfare. Israel’s 2014 invasion of Gaza lasted 51 days, killed 2,145 Palestinians (578 of them children), injured over 11,000 people, and demolished more than 17,000 homes.
Atef Abu Saif, a young father and novelist, puts an indelibly human face on these statistics, providing a rare window into the texture of a community and the realities of a conflict that is too often obscured by politics.
The Drone Eats with Me is an unforgettable rendering of everyday civilian life shattered by the realities of twenty-first-century warfare. Israel’s 2014 invasion of Gaza lasted 51 days, killed 2,145 Palestinians (578 of them children), injured over 11,000 people, and demolished more than 17,000 homes.
Atef Abu Saif, a young father and novelist, puts an indelibly human face on these statistics, providing a rare window into the texture of a community and the realities of a conflict that is too often obscured by politics.
258 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2015
78 people are currently reading
2104 people want to read
About the author
Atef Abu Saif
10 books40 followersAtef Abu Saif is a Palestinian writer, born in Jabalia refugee camp in the Gaza Strip in 1973, to a family originally from Jaffa. He holds a BA from Birzeit University, an MA from the University of Bradford (UK) and a PhD in Political and Social Sciences from the University of Florence, Italy.
He teaches Political Science at the University of Al-Azhar, Gaza, and is Chief Editor of Siyasat magazine, published by the Public Policy Institute in Ramallah. He is the author of six novels and was shortlisted for the 2015 International Prize for Arabic Fiction. He has also published two collections of short stories, three plays and a number of books on political science.
He teaches Political Science at the University of Al-Azhar, Gaza, and is Chief Editor of Siyasat magazine, published by the Public Policy Institute in Ramallah. He is the author of six novels and was shortlisted for the 2015 International Prize for Arabic Fiction. He has also published two collections of short stories, three plays and a number of books on political science.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 88 reviews
September 5, 2023
This is a piercing monument to collective grief, and life inside it. I cannot imagine what it took, both in terms of writerly stamina and perseverance amid emotional, practical, technological, and sociopolitical disaster, to write this, nor the continuous slights to one’s dignity that come with needing to write to prove one’s personhood. Saif does all of this and more with powerful, elegant prose and hardly-contained rage. An absolutely necessary book.
March 28, 2016
This story of survival has touched me like no other. I always knew I didn't agree with war, but this book illustrated all the reasons I could never quite articulate and it did it in an elegant and engaging way. It's so beautifully written that it makes the horror of war that much more sickening. I found myself shaking with rage. As a white American, I will never truly know the fear that these families felt and continue to feel, but even just reading about it set me on edge like nothing before. This book is genuinely a gem, a glimpse into Gazan devastation and Israel's overwhelming and undeserved military power. I suggest it to anyone and everyone. The physical beauty of Gaza can be destroyed, but it seems that the beauty of the Gazan people and their hope can never be tarnished.
March 24, 2019
Update: When I originally published this review, I mentioned that if the author had written about the actions of the Palestinians, particularly Hamas, had done that lead to the drone strikes, his and his family's lives might have been endangered. On March 18, 2019,, he was attacked: " Comma Press, a not-for-profit publisher that worked with Abu Saif, said that the beating on Monday night had almost killed him.
“He was hospitalised with a broken leg, broken arm, fractured skull, and lacerations to his face and upper body. Most notably, the assailants broke his fingers in right arm – a recognised punishment for writers,” Ra Page, founder of Comma Press, said in an email."
THE DRONE EATS WITH ME is the diary of a Gazan during Operation Protective Edge, the fifty-day battle between Hamas and Israel in 2014. The author, Atef Abu Saif, a writer and journalist with a Ph.D. in politics, lives in Gaza with his wife and five children. He describes on an almost daily basis what life was like for the people in Gaza as they saw their lives disrupted and sought shelter in areas they hoped would be safe. Many lost their homes. They all suffered from power and water outages, food shortages, deaths of family members, friends, and neighbors, and curfews as well as the almost constant sound and tremors from drones and bombs during that period. He describes all the events in graphic, often gory detail. He also lists the names of many of the Gazans who died as a result of the battles.
The book is a well-written and very comprehensive perspective of Operation Protective Edge in Gaza during July and August 2014. I wish Mr. Saif had gone beyond the Hamas/Gaza storyline and included reasons for what was happening. It only increases the flames of anger and hatred. Had he done that, I would have certainly given it a higher rating.
This is a very long review because I want to counter some of Saif’s statements when he analyzes and politicizes, describing the Israelis as enthusiastically targeting innocent Gazans instead of just writing about what is happening at a given time.
What is not included in THE DRONE EATS WITH ME tells as much as what is written there. I had hoped that he would write the full story of the Operation. For most of the book, it bothered me that it was so strongly anti-Israel but later on realized that if he told the whole story, he and his family might be in danger. Hamas is not held accountable for any of its actions that led to the war, prolonged it, and caused so many deaths and destruction. While Saif complains about the lack of supplies to repair the buildings, especially the homes, damaged or destroyed in the previous war seven years earlier, he doesn’t ask how Hamas was able to get supplies to build a large network of tunnels between both Gaza and Israel and Egypt or the supply of weapons to bombard Israel on a regular basis.
He writes about electrical outages causing refrigerators to not work and, after one three day period, having to throw out everything, including bread and vegetables. Yet many people don’t even keep those items refrigerated and they last longer than three days.
He writes of the constant hum of drones as well as the sound of bombs hitting Gaza targets from Israeli airplanes and ships. He claims that Israel randomly hit targets in Gaza without supplying any reasons why those specific locations were selected. Most targets were the building, storage or launch sites of missiles and rockets launched from Gaza to Israel by Hamas, frequently from residential and other civilian sites (hospitals, schools, mosques). He doesn’t mention the sound or sight of the 3800 rockets launched at Israel from Gaza during July and August. Hamas randomly targets Israel without regard if their bombs land in civilian or military areas. Some Hamas missiles even land in Gaza due to their poor aiming.
Saif claims the kidnaping and murder of three Israeli teenagers as the cause for the war without noting that more than 180 rockets and missiles were launched at Israel from January through June 2014 before Israel retaliated. While he lists the names of most of the Palestinians who died during the operation, he omits those of the senior members of Hamas who were killed in some of the Israeli raids when their apartments were bombed nor the fact that many of the dead were members of Hamas.
He writes about the end of cease fires but omits it was Hamas that broke the cease fires and that it refused, for a long time, to end the hostilities. He rightly talks about the effect of the bombings on civilians but doesn’t ask why, since Hamas knew it was going to continue its attacks, it didn’t build bomb shelters for the civilians. He does write about the warnings given by Israel before bombs were dropped on apartments but doesn’t mention that Hamas refused to let the residents escape to safety. British Commander Richard Kemp has stated that the IDF forces are more careful than US and UK forces when choosing the targets.
He refers to the Goldstein report but Goldstein had repudiated it long before Saif wrote this book. He tells the story of the deaths of the four boys on the beach but gives the “official” reason: They were killed by Israeli bombs. That story was proven to be false. Hamas set up the scene and spread the story to increase pressure on Israel.
He says there are water and electrical shortages (rolling blackouts) since Israel bombed the Gaza Power Station seven years ago. He doesn’t explain why Hamas hasn’t repaired it in all that time. Since the operation took place in July and August, the lack of electricity would have caused a few serious problems but most of the time was daylight? (During Ramadan, meals are eaten at night.) If the power shortages were so severe, why were the men watching televised sports and why did the children use electricity for their mobile phones, to play games on their computers or PlayStations. One would think they would be conserving electricity for more important things and turning to books, games, crafts, art, music, writing, etc. for entertainment.
He claims that youth feel trapped, unable to travel, study, or make a career outside the Gaza Strip. Yet he was able to travel to Italy for his has Ph.D. There are universities in The West Bank. He doesn’t explain they why there are travel restrictions. Follow up: Despite the continuing missile and rocket attacks from Gaza and the murders of civilians in Israel by Palestinians, in 2015, more than 15 million Palestinians crossed from Gaza and the West Bank into Israel for work, praying at Al Aksa Mosque, and other reasons. It was an increase of 160% from Gaza. In addition, 115.000 tons of agricultural goods were shipped from Gaza into Israel, the West Bank and abroad and 100,000 merchants came into Israel from Gaza.
He states that Jabalia is the largest refugee camp in Gaza. People have been living for generations and it is to be part of a future Palestinian State. Israel demolished all its Jewish settlements and property when it left Gaza in 2005. But all the infrastructure was left to allow the Gazans to easily build a viable economy. Why are Gazans still living in refugee camps?
He accurately states, “Journalists like catastrophes. They like numbers, statistics, data. They like the sight of tears and emotions in front of the camera. Destruction is a rich meal for the camera....Gaza is consummately professional in the production of new material: cooking up new TV food, so tasty and delicious for a carefree audience. Other signs of normal life–of love, of joy, of quiet resilience, of humanity–do not make it to press.” At another point when a journalist gets excited because his video of a bombing will be a scoop, Saif wrote, “His career is built on the suffering of others. This is why so many people in Gaza hate journalists and the media in general. They realize, of course, the importance of their coverage, but they know also that they stoke the fire of conflict.” Hamas knew how to play the media to be sure it provided Hamas’s side of the story.
Saif mentions that his friend, the former director general of the Ministry of Culture, Ahmad Dahbour, one of the greatest living Palestinian poets eventually left Gaza, “like so many writers.” When and why did he leave? Where did he go?
Regarding every day life, he says the people in West travel freely and without humiliation through checkpoints and borders. I am a 75-year-old white woman and live in the United States. When I go to board a plane at an airport, I have to be scanned, take off my shoes, and have all my carry-on items x-rayed. I cannot enter the gate areas if I don’t have a boarding pass. When I go to a theater, if I am carrying a large bag, it is inspected and often will not be permitted to be carried inside. When I go to Canada, I am questioned and, at times, have had my car searched. This has all happened since 9/11. I don’t feel humiliated. It’s a nuisance, but realize it has become necessary for everyone’s safety. Israel has even more reason to be cautious.
He describes the Gazan spirit as being part resilience, part indefatigability, and part resourcefulness and he claims Gaza has no one to help it. The people have only hope and their own resilience to fall back on. He ignored the money that the Palestinians receive in international aid. In 2013, that amounted to $2,610,419,000. Most of it went to the West Bank but much did go to Gaza. Much of that was stolen by the leaders of Hamas enabling there to be more than 1,700 millionaires and billionaires in Gaza with expensive shops, restaurants, homes, and entertainment to benefit them.
Saif claims, “The people of Gaza no longer care if a truce has been declared or not; they want to have their own truce, even if the pilot of the F16 doesn’t want one, or the drone operator sitting at his desk doesn’t want one, or the captain of the warship doesn’t like the idea of his prey moving freely in the streets.” The Israelis do want peace. They have not been the aggressors but they do respond to provocation. But the Palestinian leadership refuses to sign a peace agreement because it would mean that they would have to admit they can not have everything and they can’t destroy Israel. They must make compromises, e.g., recognizing Israel as a Jewish State, stop inciting violence against Israel and Israelis, and acknowledging the descendants of the people who left Israel in 1948 will not be able to return. Like the millions of refugees throughout the world since the end of World War II, they will have to assimilate into new homes. In the case of the Palestinians, it will be easier because they are already living in Gaza and the West Bank.
At one point, Saif asks,“Who can tell it to stop? Who can put an end to this?” The answer is contained indirectly in what he doesn’t say: Hamas and the people of Gaza. Stop blaming Israel for all the problems. If the Gazan leaders devoted their resources to helping Gaza become a viable, independent country instead of focusing on destroying Israel, the wars would stop. Israel retaliates; it doesn’t initiate the conflict. Stop making heroes out of terrorists. This should be easy to accomplish if, as he cites the people’s negative reaction to the sheiks’s telling them about how they will be rewarded in Heaven for their suffering. Instead, they should honor the people who work towards a fair, peaceful settlement and help build Gaza into a country where everyone can prosper.
I received an uncorrected proof of this book from LibraryThing Early Reviewers.
“He was hospitalised with a broken leg, broken arm, fractured skull, and lacerations to his face and upper body. Most notably, the assailants broke his fingers in right arm – a recognised punishment for writers,” Ra Page, founder of Comma Press, said in an email."
THE DRONE EATS WITH ME is the diary of a Gazan during Operation Protective Edge, the fifty-day battle between Hamas and Israel in 2014. The author, Atef Abu Saif, a writer and journalist with a Ph.D. in politics, lives in Gaza with his wife and five children. He describes on an almost daily basis what life was like for the people in Gaza as they saw their lives disrupted and sought shelter in areas they hoped would be safe. Many lost their homes. They all suffered from power and water outages, food shortages, deaths of family members, friends, and neighbors, and curfews as well as the almost constant sound and tremors from drones and bombs during that period. He describes all the events in graphic, often gory detail. He also lists the names of many of the Gazans who died as a result of the battles.
The book is a well-written and very comprehensive perspective of Operation Protective Edge in Gaza during July and August 2014. I wish Mr. Saif had gone beyond the Hamas/Gaza storyline and included reasons for what was happening. It only increases the flames of anger and hatred. Had he done that, I would have certainly given it a higher rating.
This is a very long review because I want to counter some of Saif’s statements when he analyzes and politicizes, describing the Israelis as enthusiastically targeting innocent Gazans instead of just writing about what is happening at a given time.
What is not included in THE DRONE EATS WITH ME tells as much as what is written there. I had hoped that he would write the full story of the Operation. For most of the book, it bothered me that it was so strongly anti-Israel but later on realized that if he told the whole story, he and his family might be in danger. Hamas is not held accountable for any of its actions that led to the war, prolonged it, and caused so many deaths and destruction. While Saif complains about the lack of supplies to repair the buildings, especially the homes, damaged or destroyed in the previous war seven years earlier, he doesn’t ask how Hamas was able to get supplies to build a large network of tunnels between both Gaza and Israel and Egypt or the supply of weapons to bombard Israel on a regular basis.
He writes about electrical outages causing refrigerators to not work and, after one three day period, having to throw out everything, including bread and vegetables. Yet many people don’t even keep those items refrigerated and they last longer than three days.
He writes of the constant hum of drones as well as the sound of bombs hitting Gaza targets from Israeli airplanes and ships. He claims that Israel randomly hit targets in Gaza without supplying any reasons why those specific locations were selected. Most targets were the building, storage or launch sites of missiles and rockets launched from Gaza to Israel by Hamas, frequently from residential and other civilian sites (hospitals, schools, mosques). He doesn’t mention the sound or sight of the 3800 rockets launched at Israel from Gaza during July and August. Hamas randomly targets Israel without regard if their bombs land in civilian or military areas. Some Hamas missiles even land in Gaza due to their poor aiming.
Saif claims the kidnaping and murder of three Israeli teenagers as the cause for the war without noting that more than 180 rockets and missiles were launched at Israel from January through June 2014 before Israel retaliated. While he lists the names of most of the Palestinians who died during the operation, he omits those of the senior members of Hamas who were killed in some of the Israeli raids when their apartments were bombed nor the fact that many of the dead were members of Hamas.
He writes about the end of cease fires but omits it was Hamas that broke the cease fires and that it refused, for a long time, to end the hostilities. He rightly talks about the effect of the bombings on civilians but doesn’t ask why, since Hamas knew it was going to continue its attacks, it didn’t build bomb shelters for the civilians. He does write about the warnings given by Israel before bombs were dropped on apartments but doesn’t mention that Hamas refused to let the residents escape to safety. British Commander Richard Kemp has stated that the IDF forces are more careful than US and UK forces when choosing the targets.
He refers to the Goldstein report but Goldstein had repudiated it long before Saif wrote this book. He tells the story of the deaths of the four boys on the beach but gives the “official” reason: They were killed by Israeli bombs. That story was proven to be false. Hamas set up the scene and spread the story to increase pressure on Israel.
He says there are water and electrical shortages (rolling blackouts) since Israel bombed the Gaza Power Station seven years ago. He doesn’t explain why Hamas hasn’t repaired it in all that time. Since the operation took place in July and August, the lack of electricity would have caused a few serious problems but most of the time was daylight? (During Ramadan, meals are eaten at night.) If the power shortages were so severe, why were the men watching televised sports and why did the children use electricity for their mobile phones, to play games on their computers or PlayStations. One would think they would be conserving electricity for more important things and turning to books, games, crafts, art, music, writing, etc. for entertainment.
He claims that youth feel trapped, unable to travel, study, or make a career outside the Gaza Strip. Yet he was able to travel to Italy for his has Ph.D. There are universities in The West Bank. He doesn’t explain they why there are travel restrictions. Follow up: Despite the continuing missile and rocket attacks from Gaza and the murders of civilians in Israel by Palestinians, in 2015, more than 15 million Palestinians crossed from Gaza and the West Bank into Israel for work, praying at Al Aksa Mosque, and other reasons. It was an increase of 160% from Gaza. In addition, 115.000 tons of agricultural goods were shipped from Gaza into Israel, the West Bank and abroad and 100,000 merchants came into Israel from Gaza.
He states that Jabalia is the largest refugee camp in Gaza. People have been living for generations and it is to be part of a future Palestinian State. Israel demolished all its Jewish settlements and property when it left Gaza in 2005. But all the infrastructure was left to allow the Gazans to easily build a viable economy. Why are Gazans still living in refugee camps?
He accurately states, “Journalists like catastrophes. They like numbers, statistics, data. They like the sight of tears and emotions in front of the camera. Destruction is a rich meal for the camera....Gaza is consummately professional in the production of new material: cooking up new TV food, so tasty and delicious for a carefree audience. Other signs of normal life–of love, of joy, of quiet resilience, of humanity–do not make it to press.” At another point when a journalist gets excited because his video of a bombing will be a scoop, Saif wrote, “His career is built on the suffering of others. This is why so many people in Gaza hate journalists and the media in general. They realize, of course, the importance of their coverage, but they know also that they stoke the fire of conflict.” Hamas knew how to play the media to be sure it provided Hamas’s side of the story.
Saif mentions that his friend, the former director general of the Ministry of Culture, Ahmad Dahbour, one of the greatest living Palestinian poets eventually left Gaza, “like so many writers.” When and why did he leave? Where did he go?
Regarding every day life, he says the people in West travel freely and without humiliation through checkpoints and borders. I am a 75-year-old white woman and live in the United States. When I go to board a plane at an airport, I have to be scanned, take off my shoes, and have all my carry-on items x-rayed. I cannot enter the gate areas if I don’t have a boarding pass. When I go to a theater, if I am carrying a large bag, it is inspected and often will not be permitted to be carried inside. When I go to Canada, I am questioned and, at times, have had my car searched. This has all happened since 9/11. I don’t feel humiliated. It’s a nuisance, but realize it has become necessary for everyone’s safety. Israel has even more reason to be cautious.
He describes the Gazan spirit as being part resilience, part indefatigability, and part resourcefulness and he claims Gaza has no one to help it. The people have only hope and their own resilience to fall back on. He ignored the money that the Palestinians receive in international aid. In 2013, that amounted to $2,610,419,000. Most of it went to the West Bank but much did go to Gaza. Much of that was stolen by the leaders of Hamas enabling there to be more than 1,700 millionaires and billionaires in Gaza with expensive shops, restaurants, homes, and entertainment to benefit them.
Saif claims, “The people of Gaza no longer care if a truce has been declared or not; they want to have their own truce, even if the pilot of the F16 doesn’t want one, or the drone operator sitting at his desk doesn’t want one, or the captain of the warship doesn’t like the idea of his prey moving freely in the streets.” The Israelis do want peace. They have not been the aggressors but they do respond to provocation. But the Palestinian leadership refuses to sign a peace agreement because it would mean that they would have to admit they can not have everything and they can’t destroy Israel. They must make compromises, e.g., recognizing Israel as a Jewish State, stop inciting violence against Israel and Israelis, and acknowledging the descendants of the people who left Israel in 1948 will not be able to return. Like the millions of refugees throughout the world since the end of World War II, they will have to assimilate into new homes. In the case of the Palestinians, it will be easier because they are already living in Gaza and the West Bank.
At one point, Saif asks,“Who can tell it to stop? Who can put an end to this?” The answer is contained indirectly in what he doesn’t say: Hamas and the people of Gaza. Stop blaming Israel for all the problems. If the Gazan leaders devoted their resources to helping Gaza become a viable, independent country instead of focusing on destroying Israel, the wars would stop. Israel retaliates; it doesn’t initiate the conflict. Stop making heroes out of terrorists. This should be easy to accomplish if, as he cites the people’s negative reaction to the sheiks’s telling them about how they will be rewarded in Heaven for their suffering. Instead, they should honor the people who work towards a fair, peaceful settlement and help build Gaza into a country where everyone can prosper.
I received an uncorrected proof of this book from LibraryThing Early Reviewers.
July 31, 2016
This book chronicles what it is to live in war, day by day. It exposes the expected consequences--dead or injured citizens and children--while also looking at the unexpected humiliations that an audience who hasn't lived through war wouldn't consider. Don't let anyone try to justify this to you: human rights should be non negotiable and not used as a bargaining chip in any political game.
June 7, 2016
I based my rating on two main components of this book:
1. There were numerous syntactical, grammatical, and spelling errors throughout the writing. At times , this made it extremely difficult to understand. I found myself having to read the same paragraph many times to try and decode the errors.
2. This was an extremely subjective account. I found it hard to relate to the author or the story as it read as a rage filled rant rather than a memoir. Perhaps I would have found the story to be more relatable had the author included any objective historical context outside of the subjective experiences of his family, or had he included any positive aspects. It is impossible to believe there is only 1 side to this war and it is only negative experiences for one party and positive for another.
TL;DR (in short), "The drone eats with me" read more as a long, rage filled facebook post. If you are looking for a historical account, or intelligent memoir, look elsewhere.
1. There were numerous syntactical, grammatical, and spelling errors throughout the writing. At times , this made it extremely difficult to understand. I found myself having to read the same paragraph many times to try and decode the errors.
2. This was an extremely subjective account. I found it hard to relate to the author or the story as it read as a rage filled rant rather than a memoir. Perhaps I would have found the story to be more relatable had the author included any objective historical context outside of the subjective experiences of his family, or had he included any positive aspects. It is impossible to believe there is only 1 side to this war and it is only negative experiences for one party and positive for another.
TL;DR (in short), "The drone eats with me" read more as a long, rage filled facebook post. If you are looking for a historical account, or intelligent memoir, look elsewhere.
Read
August 2, 2025"I do not want to be a number, a piece of news, a name on the tongue of a beautiful TV presenter waiting impatiently to finish reading boring news from Gaza. I do not want to be a small number in a large one, a part of the data."
If you're finding yourself hitting the point of fatigue or disengagement with the genocide in Palestine - if you're starting to see the toll in numbers instead of human life - I highly, highly recommend picking up this memoir of the 2014 war. Atef Abu Saif rejects the tidiness of converting death into neat statistics with this raw collection of journal pages, written while actively under siege. Each time he references a victim of the Israeli occupation, he names them, even as the lists grow horrifyingly longer and longer. As he chronicles the destruction of buildings and landmarks, he names them, describes them, provides historical and personal significance to them. And his fierce love and terror for his family practically bleed from these pages, demanding the reader look at him and see him as a human being like themselves, deserving of peace and security.
If you read this, I have a recommendation: take your time, and look up the names that Atef Abu Saif mentions. Learn about these victims. Look up the streets, the businesses, the landmarks. If they still exist, find them on a map; pull up street view if it's available. Walk around Gaza, to the extent that you can. This is a real place, where real people are attempting to live real lives.
The hardest part of reading this book is knowing that all of the people who survived this atrocity are once again suffering today under the worst assault since the 1948 Nakba.
"'We are OK in Gaza.' But it’s a lie; we are never OK. Nonetheless, hope is what you have even at the worst of times. It is the only thing that can’t be stripped from you. The only part of you the drones or the F16s or the tanks or the warships can’t reach. So you hug it to yourself. You do not let it go. The moment you give it up you lose the most precious possession endowed by nature and humanity."
If you're finding yourself hitting the point of fatigue or disengagement with the genocide in Palestine - if you're starting to see the toll in numbers instead of human life - I highly, highly recommend picking up this memoir of the 2014 war. Atef Abu Saif rejects the tidiness of converting death into neat statistics with this raw collection of journal pages, written while actively under siege. Each time he references a victim of the Israeli occupation, he names them, even as the lists grow horrifyingly longer and longer. As he chronicles the destruction of buildings and landmarks, he names them, describes them, provides historical and personal significance to them. And his fierce love and terror for his family practically bleed from these pages, demanding the reader look at him and see him as a human being like themselves, deserving of peace and security.
If you read this, I have a recommendation: take your time, and look up the names that Atef Abu Saif mentions. Learn about these victims. Look up the streets, the businesses, the landmarks. If they still exist, find them on a map; pull up street view if it's available. Walk around Gaza, to the extent that you can. This is a real place, where real people are attempting to live real lives.
The hardest part of reading this book is knowing that all of the people who survived this atrocity are once again suffering today under the worst assault since the 1948 Nakba.
"'We are OK in Gaza.' But it’s a lie; we are never OK. Nonetheless, hope is what you have even at the worst of times. It is the only thing that can’t be stripped from you. The only part of you the drones or the F16s or the tanks or the warships can’t reach. So you hug it to yourself. You do not let it go. The moment you give it up you lose the most precious possession endowed by nature and humanity."
June 28, 2016
Atef Abu Saif, a Palestinian novelist and political scientist from Gaza, kept a daily wartime journal, selections of which appeared in the New York Times, The Guardian, Slate and elsewhere as the war raged. The newly published collection of those journal entries, The Drone Eats With Me: A Gaza Diary, is an eloquent, intimate, and searing account of family life during wartime.
Excerpt from review I wrote for In These Times Magazine
http://inthesetimes.com/article/19189...
Excerpt from review I wrote for In These Times Magazine
http://inthesetimes.com/article/19189...
March 25, 2016
This tells of the war on the Gaza Strip as lived from the inside. Like any war, it is so unfair to the civilians. It breaks your heart to think how this is going to affect children for the rest of their lives. I would recommend this book to be read by anyone and everyone - Will we ever learn to live together in peace?
October 23, 2025
It’s a long night of man-made lightning and man-made earthquakes. And it’s a night of questions too. Who will convince this generation of Israelis that what they’ve done this summer is a crime? Who will convince the pilot that this is not a mission for his people, but a mission against it? Who will teach him that life cannot be built on the ruins of other lives? Who will convince the drone operator that the people of Gaza are not characters in a video game? Who will convince him that the buildings he sees on his screen are not graphics, but homes containing living rooms, and kitchens, bathrooms, and bedrooms; that there are kids inside, fast asleep; that mobiles hang over their beds; that teddy bears and toy dinosaurs lie on the floor; that posters line the walls? Who will convince him that the orchards his craft flies over in the dark aren’t just clusters of pixels?
How life goes on in Palestine is beyond me. This demographic of people constantly keeps showing us that the life we take for granted is nothing but a huge gift of Allah SWT. This book is different from the other Palestinian book I read. This was a memorabilia written in the form of a diary that was maintained by the author during the Israeli attack on Gaza in 2015. The author breathed life into the statistics we are so used to seeing on the TV screens. Every statistic of dead and injured has a name, has a family, was a loved one, and was someone's only surviving member of the family. This book honors their sacrifices by making them more than a statistic and continuing their legacy as Palestinians and natives of the land of Palestine.
Fair warning: This book will bore you — like, who wants to read the same news you saw on AJ in a nondescript piece of literature? But if you just push through a few pages, if you just stay persistent enough, you will feel like you have been next-door neighbors with Atef in his flat in Saftawi. If you let this book stay on your shelf for a while longer, you will befriend Atef's friends, you will feel like you know Hanna (Atef's wife) and his kids, you will feel close to Nafiz, who was once a successful farmer but had his farms utterly destroyed by the bombs. If you stick long enough, you will experience a pinch of Palestinian life, and that is more than enough to awaken the sleeping *Ruh* of ours and stand up for what's right.
The more I read this book, the more I was convinced that Allah sent these people with more than enough resilience to cover the world. On every other page, there were real reports of someone or the other being murdered by the IOF. If it wasn't about murder, then it was about life in the Jabalia refugee camp. It's extremely tragic to think of the fact that Gazan people had their homes, had steady lives, had big families — and within the strike of just one missile, all of it could be gone. The one with the most gorgeous house on the block could be living in the refugee camp the next morning. The sheer uncertainty of their lives would've caused mass mental collapse nationwide. But we don't see that among Palestinians because it is their resilience that makes them stronger than others.
Gaza has no one to help it. The people have only hope and their own resilience to fall back on.
Another thing the author highlighted was how every casualty was just a bunch of numbers on the screen. This dehumanizes the population very subtly. The US and its allies have made sure that the Middle Eastern people never experience a day of calm nor experience safety within their homes. With the vast number of casualties, everyone just becomes a bunch of numbers. Their names, legacies, their families — everything is reduced to a few numbers like dead person number 156. The author made sure that whoever read this book at least becomes aware of that fact and sees the numbers differently.
Everything is turned into numbers. The stories are hidden, disguised, lost behind these numbers. Human beings, souls, bodies — all are converted into numbers.
While reading, I could not help but feel helpless at the situation. In his diary, he wrote about the Jabalia refugee camp. You can't expect much from a refugee camp, yet the ones coming in here were never meant to be refugees in the first place. Everyone was stripped of their privacy and space and made to share a bathroom between around 30 people. This seriously highlights the unbearable and unhygienic living situations that Palestinians have to face because of Israel. And yet, even after all this, Israel and the US still haven't paid for what they did and are doing to this region.
Reading through the book, you will find stories of loss etched in every corner of their lives. The author lost his stepbrother to the war. An incident was such that there was a poor person who loaned money and bought five goats, and all of those goats and his house were destroyed due to bombs. His main source of income was gone, and he still had to pay off the loan. Another person was picking through the rubble of his home, which he built with sixty years of his family's savings. What's even crazier is that Atef's oldest son was 11 years old during the 2015 war, and he had already seen five wars. How has this become the reality?
Even against all odds, Gazans survive. But how they survive is another tragic story. One time, the author's father took in two of his sons so that the whole family would not die if, God forbid, they were bombed. It's a common strategy there. It's astounding how the definition of “common” or “normal” varies from everyone else in Gaza.
Books like this remind me of my reasons for boycotting the terrorist regime and its supporters. It's stories like Atef's and Hind Rajab's that make me want to keep telling people about how their choices have consequences. *In sha Allah,* I will not stop till Palestine is free — from the river to the sea.
All in all, go read it and don't stop talking against Israel and its cronies. Free Palestine. Intifada Zindabad.
June 16, 2015
REVIEW OF THE DRONE EATS WITH ME
Diaries from a city under fire
Atef-Abu Saif
Not for the faint-hearted
Comma Press publishes new writing and has championed the short story. Most excitingly, it has brought translated works to the wider world. With well-chosen and diverse titles, it brings insight into lives from little known places via the best of short stories.
Gaza is ‘foreign’ to the outside world in the full meaning of the word. Few live in an area constantly surrounded by force from land, sea and air. What is known of Gaza comes from news pictures of its many wars and accusations of attacks from both Palestine and Israel. And so it was Comma Press’s wish to show what it means to be a Palestinian “through stories of ordinary characters struggling to live with dignity in what many have called 'the largest prison in the world’”. The resulting anthology The Book of Gaza was edited by Atef Abu Saif, one of the authors. Grimly, as it was published, 51 days of another war began.
During Israel’s 'Operation Protective Edge’, Saif wrote a diary entry each day in English. The Guardian, Slate, Sunday Times, Guernica and New York Times all ran sections of the diarry. Compiled by Comma Press into a single book, The Drone Eats with Me, the title becomes quickly understandable as having two meanings. The author likens the strikes the drone makes to the sating of its hunger (for lives). Secondly, the constant presence of the drones culminates in targeted strikes which appear to coincide with the two main meals of the Gazan day. Although there are battleships whose guns strike the shore, armoured tanks at the borders and F16s bombing key buildings, it is the drones that dominate the horrors of the narration. Whereas the bombs may decimate entire buildings, they are less discriminate, more neutral. It is the frequent mention of a single operator sitting at his computer control picking out his distant target that shocks the reader. According to Saif, the child in the street, the family sitting at dinner, the young motorcyclists have all been deliberately targeted.
The drones supervise and threaten even during truces. The truth is that the drone has sensors which provide an all-seeing eye to select targets anywhere in Gaza.
How to review a book like this - a first-hand and on-the-spot account of life during another episode of Israeli/Palestinian conflict? The diary is not a political invective, although it is taxing to do the work justice without making political comment. It is a piece of history in the making, but cannot be put in context without countless pages of analysis. The writer is a journalist, and the book can be discussed as journalism, but he is not on location, he lives there, he was born there, he knows no other place as home. He writes from the guts of the endangered man unable to protect those he knows and those he loves.
If this book were fiction, we might criticise saying that the crisis should be about three quarters of the way into the narrative, whereas this book is all crisis. But this is non-fiction, and the 51 days have little other than crisis. The reader is on the edge of his seat dreading the next bomb to be a direct hit on the narrator and his family. As it is he ‘only’ loses a step-brother, whereas other individuals and families are mangled into lumps of flesh by the bombs. A child sees his father and uncle reduced to merged body bits and his family “are having difficulty calming him down.”
Were it fiction we might criticise the lost opportunity for impassioned words over the horrors described. The dreadfulness of family losses and gruesome deaths are recorded with a kind of paralysed dissociation.
Throughout the book Saif adds footnotes naming those killed: the four boys playing football on the beach, the entire families wiped out by a single strike - a common occurrence. Saif notes that he “doesn’t want to be a number” so perhaps naming those killed is some attempt to honour them and properly respect their death. Funerals are too dangerous for many to attend, stretchers carry body parts not bodies, even the cemetery - a strange source of perceived threat - is bombed, so that the dead die twice.
The journalist risks his life walking out in the evening to see friends, to check on the progress of the war - that is, the extent of devastation during the previous hours and its exact locations. He is constantly aware that he is “alive by chance” and that he will die by chance and wonders how many chances he has used up. His days suffering the fear of annihilation, his nights tormented with the noise of bombing and the nightmares where he dreams he is running through it with his little daughter, all result in a dazed confusion between what disaster has happened and what might happen. His awakenings take time before he can accept that is truly still alive.
Saif is a family man, whose 11-year-old son has now lived through four wars. His four sons and baby daughter understand little of the bombardment around them. They know that they cannot leave the flat where they have taken refuge often for days on end and that their parents argue about whether the older boys may go with their father a four minute walk away. Their desire: to play computer games at the internet cafe - one of the few places in Gaza where there is fairly reliable electricity. It takes little imagination to guess what they play on the computers. The chosen game is unlikely to be Pacman, although that game closely resembles the daily life of a Gazan as described by Saif.
The children know that ‘truce’ is something to yearn for and that it means less outside noise. If boys are killed playing football on the beach, Saif’s sons make sense of it as ‘football is not allowed on the beach’. Will the promise of an ice-cream from the shop be kept “after the drone (has gone)? Farmers cannot risk collecting produce from their fields, the souks dare not open, housewives rush out to buy anything they can during any lull but they cannot stockpile because electricity is only available for an unpredictable hour or so. The mother struggles to keep the five children safe by not allowing them out and the reader imagines her coping with all of then in a confined space, day after fearful day, often in the dark. But this family are lucky. They are only sharing with her father. Others are crowded, whole extended families of ten or more, into relatives’ small houses. Far more have rushed to the accepted places of ‘safety’, the refugee camps such as Jabalia Camp. 100,000 live in its 1.4 square metres and now many more rush in, many made homeless by the bombing. They take refuge in United Nations schools. But bombs fall there too.
If this were a work of fiction, I would liken it to Golding’s Pincher Martin, for the close description of demise.
Should Saif’s record fail to conjure up a sufficiently vivid picture of the devastation, it is shown in the video by D.R Nyheder, Broadcast and media production. The background noise must be the drone, an insistent, though miserable wasp.
Throughout this daily account, the reader searches for meaning behind the onslaught the Gazans suffer. Why are they so feared, what dreadful acts have caused the Israelis’ determination? How far do the Israelis mean to cause this suffering? The Telegraph interviewed an Israeli commander. Major Yair stressed how he avoids innocent deaths. Hamas operatives, says, routinely exploit this restraint by hiding behind civilians. “It is sometimes frustrating because you feel that you’re fighting with your hands tied. There are a lot of situations where you see your targets, but you will not engage because they’re next to kindergartens, because they’re driving with their wives and their kids.” Should Yair read Saif’s book, what disenchantment for him to learn how signally these aims have failed. The Independent’s data gives approximately 1/4 of the total killed in that episode of the war as children.
To read this book is to marvel that its pages were not blasted into smithereens together with its author. But the miracle - the win - is to have survived. The underlying thought is that survival was not the intention of the attacker, or perhaps to add, ‘to have survived this time.’
Diaries from a city under fire
Atef-Abu Saif
Not for the faint-hearted
Comma Press publishes new writing and has championed the short story. Most excitingly, it has brought translated works to the wider world. With well-chosen and diverse titles, it brings insight into lives from little known places via the best of short stories.
Gaza is ‘foreign’ to the outside world in the full meaning of the word. Few live in an area constantly surrounded by force from land, sea and air. What is known of Gaza comes from news pictures of its many wars and accusations of attacks from both Palestine and Israel. And so it was Comma Press’s wish to show what it means to be a Palestinian “through stories of ordinary characters struggling to live with dignity in what many have called 'the largest prison in the world’”. The resulting anthology The Book of Gaza was edited by Atef Abu Saif, one of the authors. Grimly, as it was published, 51 days of another war began.
During Israel’s 'Operation Protective Edge’, Saif wrote a diary entry each day in English. The Guardian, Slate, Sunday Times, Guernica and New York Times all ran sections of the diarry. Compiled by Comma Press into a single book, The Drone Eats with Me, the title becomes quickly understandable as having two meanings. The author likens the strikes the drone makes to the sating of its hunger (for lives). Secondly, the constant presence of the drones culminates in targeted strikes which appear to coincide with the two main meals of the Gazan day. Although there are battleships whose guns strike the shore, armoured tanks at the borders and F16s bombing key buildings, it is the drones that dominate the horrors of the narration. Whereas the bombs may decimate entire buildings, they are less discriminate, more neutral. It is the frequent mention of a single operator sitting at his computer control picking out his distant target that shocks the reader. According to Saif, the child in the street, the family sitting at dinner, the young motorcyclists have all been deliberately targeted.
The drones supervise and threaten even during truces. The truth is that the drone has sensors which provide an all-seeing eye to select targets anywhere in Gaza.
How to review a book like this - a first-hand and on-the-spot account of life during another episode of Israeli/Palestinian conflict? The diary is not a political invective, although it is taxing to do the work justice without making political comment. It is a piece of history in the making, but cannot be put in context without countless pages of analysis. The writer is a journalist, and the book can be discussed as journalism, but he is not on location, he lives there, he was born there, he knows no other place as home. He writes from the guts of the endangered man unable to protect those he knows and those he loves.
If this book were fiction, we might criticise saying that the crisis should be about three quarters of the way into the narrative, whereas this book is all crisis. But this is non-fiction, and the 51 days have little other than crisis. The reader is on the edge of his seat dreading the next bomb to be a direct hit on the narrator and his family. As it is he ‘only’ loses a step-brother, whereas other individuals and families are mangled into lumps of flesh by the bombs. A child sees his father and uncle reduced to merged body bits and his family “are having difficulty calming him down.”
Were it fiction we might criticise the lost opportunity for impassioned words over the horrors described. The dreadfulness of family losses and gruesome deaths are recorded with a kind of paralysed dissociation.
Throughout the book Saif adds footnotes naming those killed: the four boys playing football on the beach, the entire families wiped out by a single strike - a common occurrence. Saif notes that he “doesn’t want to be a number” so perhaps naming those killed is some attempt to honour them and properly respect their death. Funerals are too dangerous for many to attend, stretchers carry body parts not bodies, even the cemetery - a strange source of perceived threat - is bombed, so that the dead die twice.
The journalist risks his life walking out in the evening to see friends, to check on the progress of the war - that is, the extent of devastation during the previous hours and its exact locations. He is constantly aware that he is “alive by chance” and that he will die by chance and wonders how many chances he has used up. His days suffering the fear of annihilation, his nights tormented with the noise of bombing and the nightmares where he dreams he is running through it with his little daughter, all result in a dazed confusion between what disaster has happened and what might happen. His awakenings take time before he can accept that is truly still alive.
Saif is a family man, whose 11-year-old son has now lived through four wars. His four sons and baby daughter understand little of the bombardment around them. They know that they cannot leave the flat where they have taken refuge often for days on end and that their parents argue about whether the older boys may go with their father a four minute walk away. Their desire: to play computer games at the internet cafe - one of the few places in Gaza where there is fairly reliable electricity. It takes little imagination to guess what they play on the computers. The chosen game is unlikely to be Pacman, although that game closely resembles the daily life of a Gazan as described by Saif.
The children know that ‘truce’ is something to yearn for and that it means less outside noise. If boys are killed playing football on the beach, Saif’s sons make sense of it as ‘football is not allowed on the beach’. Will the promise of an ice-cream from the shop be kept “after the drone (has gone)? Farmers cannot risk collecting produce from their fields, the souks dare not open, housewives rush out to buy anything they can during any lull but they cannot stockpile because electricity is only available for an unpredictable hour or so. The mother struggles to keep the five children safe by not allowing them out and the reader imagines her coping with all of then in a confined space, day after fearful day, often in the dark. But this family are lucky. They are only sharing with her father. Others are crowded, whole extended families of ten or more, into relatives’ small houses. Far more have rushed to the accepted places of ‘safety’, the refugee camps such as Jabalia Camp. 100,000 live in its 1.4 square metres and now many more rush in, many made homeless by the bombing. They take refuge in United Nations schools. But bombs fall there too.
If this were a work of fiction, I would liken it to Golding’s Pincher Martin, for the close description of demise.
Should Saif’s record fail to conjure up a sufficiently vivid picture of the devastation, it is shown in the video by D.R Nyheder, Broadcast and media production. The background noise must be the drone, an insistent, though miserable wasp.
Throughout this daily account, the reader searches for meaning behind the onslaught the Gazans suffer. Why are they so feared, what dreadful acts have caused the Israelis’ determination? How far do the Israelis mean to cause this suffering? The Telegraph interviewed an Israeli commander. Major Yair stressed how he avoids innocent deaths. Hamas operatives, says, routinely exploit this restraint by hiding behind civilians. “It is sometimes frustrating because you feel that you’re fighting with your hands tied. There are a lot of situations where you see your targets, but you will not engage because they’re next to kindergartens, because they’re driving with their wives and their kids.” Should Yair read Saif’s book, what disenchantment for him to learn how signally these aims have failed. The Independent’s data gives approximately 1/4 of the total killed in that episode of the war as children.
To read this book is to marvel that its pages were not blasted into smithereens together with its author. But the miracle - the win - is to have survived. The underlying thought is that survival was not the intention of the attacker, or perhaps to add, ‘to have survived this time.’
November 23, 2016
Beautifully written, desperately important, and almost impossible to read. I had to struggle to get through this book; it was so harrowing. Mr. Abu Saif gives us a civilian's-eye view of modern warfare: that is, warfare conducted by remote control against civilians and civilian infrastructure. He, his wife, their five young children, and their families and friends struggle to survive during Israel's relentless assault on Gaza in the summer of 2014. If you want to know what drone warfare is like, and what our tax dollars are funding, you should read at least part of this book. It is eye-opening.
As a sample of Mr. Abu Saif's style, here is the passage from which the title is taken: (pgs 31 and 32, American paperback edition)
"The food is ready. I wake the children and bring them in*. We all sit around five dishes: white cheese, hummus, orange jam, yellow cheese, and olives. Darkness eats with us. Fear and anxiety eat with us. The unknown eats with us. The F-16 eats with us. The drone, and its operator somewhere out in Israel, eats with us."
(* tThe assault took place during the holy month of Ramadan, when Muslim families do not eat during the day.)
As a sample of Mr. Abu Saif's style, here is the passage from which the title is taken: (pgs 31 and 32, American paperback edition)
"The food is ready. I wake the children and bring them in*. We all sit around five dishes: white cheese, hummus, orange jam, yellow cheese, and olives. Darkness eats with us. Fear and anxiety eat with us. The unknown eats with us. The F-16 eats with us. The drone, and its operator somewhere out in Israel, eats with us."
(* tThe assault took place during the holy month of Ramadan, when Muslim families do not eat during the day.)
August 25, 2018
The diary of Atef Abu Saif makes me cry. Because I remember the destruction and the sorrow and also the terror. He does not about Hamas and its archaic rule because it's a human story, not a political campaign. I think a story like Atef's is important so that people can relate to each other, not seem themselves as separate from the violence. Regardless of where they are in the world or whether they are holding a gun in their hands, or not.
August 16, 2016
No matter your politics, deep inside, you must have compassion. And this diary from inside the Gaza strip during a 50-day “conflict” can only raise your hackles that the world powers play with words to hide their deeds. If I’m conflicted over what I’ll have for dinner. No one dies. Israel and Palestine are conflicted over who should own what land. Slaughter. Indiscriminate, eeny-meeny-miney-moe, you hold the short straw slaughter. I never read such an intimate non-political rendering of trying to persist day-to-day buying food and separating your family so that at least some of them might survive. God save us all
An advanced copy of this book was provided for an honest review.
An advanced copy of this book was provided for an honest review.
October 3, 2022
A diary of the war in the Gaza Strip. This was a very detailed narrative showcasing all the confusion and fear of being in such a place. It also gave the reader some pertinent insights into the way western society views such conflicts. The mention of people dying on the news becomes an ordinary part of everyday life. Although the story showed how monotonous warfare actually is, I think it could have been shorter and more impactful.
September 20, 2016
Terrorism takes many forms. While many fear an attack by a person or a small group of people, others are terrorized by a government. A government with missiles, tanks, and drones that show no mercy. The constant whirring of a drone overhead watching like a bird of prey. It wants to indiscriminately pluck you as one of its many war casualties.
Atef Abu Saif describes this Terror in his book, The Drone Eats With Me. He is describing the Gaza War of 2014, a 51-day invasion by Israel after a series of events (from kidnapped Israeli teenagers to missile attacks from Hamas). One has to wonder what the point is. Instead of a few dead, now thousands are dead, mostly Gazans. In reading this book, one can truly understand terror. Advanced weapons can kill at a distance. When will your time be up? Worse, as your family sits in fear, there is nothing you can do to protect them. You live on luck in a time of terror.
Favorite Passages
A moment later, the war introduces itself properly. We hear an an explosion, some way to the north, echoing across the city. Hearing a bomb in real life, for the first time in a couple of years, is its having a PTSD flashback. It jolts you to exactly where you were two years ago, five years ago, four decades ago, to the most recent, or very first time you heard one. As the noise of this new explosion subsides it's replaced by the inevitable whir of a drone. sounding so close it could be right beside us. It's like it wants to join us for the evening has pulled up an invisible chair. P3
Then more attacks. Mostafa wakes up by himself the thunder of the shells doing what the musaharatis would have. He wakes his brothers, leaving only Jaffa to sleep through it all. Afterwards, as I lay awake in bed, unable to sleep due to the ever-present whir of a drone, I reflect on how the children are already adjusting to the logic of the war, learning things I learned so long ago. In the afternoon. I play cards with the whole family just to kill some time. P11
It feels, right now, as if we are all living in a cloud of slow moving sand: we inch forward through it, nervously, not seeing a yard in front of us, and when we come across a pile of orange trees, scattered at our feet like an assassin's victims, we know that we are lucky. They were mistaken for us. Death is so close that it doesn't see you anymore. It mistakes you for trees, and trees for you. You pray in thanks for this strange fog, this blindness. P. 21
Our fates are all in the hands of a drone operator in a military base somewhere just over the Israeli border. The operator looks at Gaza the way an unruly boy looks at the screen of a video game. He presses a button and might destroy an entire street. He might decide to terminate the life of someone walking along the pavement, or he might uproot a tree in an orchard that hasn't yet borne fruit. The operator practices his aim at his own discretion, energized by the trust and power that has been put in his hands by his superiors. P31
When a human being Is made into a number, his or her story disappears. Every number is a tale: every Martyr is a tale, a life is lost, Or rather part of that life is lost the rest tells another tale. The tale after. When a father is killed, or a mother, there me chil-dren left behind who are not heroes or supermen, but humans with little but sadness and sorrow to steer in through life: they are children who have lost a father or a mother. There is a tale that is lost and a tale that has yet to begin. The four children who the gunships tore to pieces while playing football on the beach were not the number "FOUR: They were four stories, four heroes. The Kawareh family—from Khan 'Monis, whom the drone decided to prevent from enjoying a meal on the roof of their small building under the moonlight—they were not just "SIX:* They were six infinitely rich, infinitely unknowable stories that came to a stop when a dumb missile fell from a drone and tore their bodies apart. Six novels that Mahfouz, Dickens, or Marquez could not have written satisfactorily. Novels that would have needed a miracle, a genius, to find the structure and poetry they deserved. Instead, they are tales that have cascaded into the news as numbers: moments of lust; onslaughts of pain; days of happiness: dreams that were Postponed: looks, glances, feelings, secrets.... Every number is a world in itself. P77
Nobody will uncover the beauty of the lives they led--the beauty that vanishes with every attack, disappears behind this thick, ugly curtain of counting. P78
You feel everything is about to collapse, like the whole city is about to plummet to a great depth. Everything shifts with each strike. It's like you're part of a disaster movie. You're not a lead character in the movie though; you're one of the background figures, the extras, being terrorized or falling prey to the disaster en masse. Your role is simply to engender terror in the viewers, and then to die. P112
Atef Abu Saif describes this Terror in his book, The Drone Eats With Me. He is describing the Gaza War of 2014, a 51-day invasion by Israel after a series of events (from kidnapped Israeli teenagers to missile attacks from Hamas). One has to wonder what the point is. Instead of a few dead, now thousands are dead, mostly Gazans. In reading this book, one can truly understand terror. Advanced weapons can kill at a distance. When will your time be up? Worse, as your family sits in fear, there is nothing you can do to protect them. You live on luck in a time of terror.
Favorite Passages
A moment later, the war introduces itself properly. We hear an an explosion, some way to the north, echoing across the city. Hearing a bomb in real life, for the first time in a couple of years, is its having a PTSD flashback. It jolts you to exactly where you were two years ago, five years ago, four decades ago, to the most recent, or very first time you heard one. As the noise of this new explosion subsides it's replaced by the inevitable whir of a drone. sounding so close it could be right beside us. It's like it wants to join us for the evening has pulled up an invisible chair. P3
Then more attacks. Mostafa wakes up by himself the thunder of the shells doing what the musaharatis would have. He wakes his brothers, leaving only Jaffa to sleep through it all. Afterwards, as I lay awake in bed, unable to sleep due to the ever-present whir of a drone, I reflect on how the children are already adjusting to the logic of the war, learning things I learned so long ago. In the afternoon. I play cards with the whole family just to kill some time. P11
It feels, right now, as if we are all living in a cloud of slow moving sand: we inch forward through it, nervously, not seeing a yard in front of us, and when we come across a pile of orange trees, scattered at our feet like an assassin's victims, we know that we are lucky. They were mistaken for us. Death is so close that it doesn't see you anymore. It mistakes you for trees, and trees for you. You pray in thanks for this strange fog, this blindness. P. 21
Our fates are all in the hands of a drone operator in a military base somewhere just over the Israeli border. The operator looks at Gaza the way an unruly boy looks at the screen of a video game. He presses a button and might destroy an entire street. He might decide to terminate the life of someone walking along the pavement, or he might uproot a tree in an orchard that hasn't yet borne fruit. The operator practices his aim at his own discretion, energized by the trust and power that has been put in his hands by his superiors. P31
When a human being Is made into a number, his or her story disappears. Every number is a tale: every Martyr is a tale, a life is lost, Or rather part of that life is lost the rest tells another tale. The tale after. When a father is killed, or a mother, there me chil-dren left behind who are not heroes or supermen, but humans with little but sadness and sorrow to steer in through life: they are children who have lost a father or a mother. There is a tale that is lost and a tale that has yet to begin. The four children who the gunships tore to pieces while playing football on the beach were not the number "FOUR: They were four stories, four heroes. The Kawareh family—from Khan 'Monis, whom the drone decided to prevent from enjoying a meal on the roof of their small building under the moonlight—they were not just "SIX:* They were six infinitely rich, infinitely unknowable stories that came to a stop when a dumb missile fell from a drone and tore their bodies apart. Six novels that Mahfouz, Dickens, or Marquez could not have written satisfactorily. Novels that would have needed a miracle, a genius, to find the structure and poetry they deserved. Instead, they are tales that have cascaded into the news as numbers: moments of lust; onslaughts of pain; days of happiness: dreams that were Postponed: looks, glances, feelings, secrets.... Every number is a world in itself. P77
Nobody will uncover the beauty of the lives they led--the beauty that vanishes with every attack, disappears behind this thick, ugly curtain of counting. P78
You feel everything is about to collapse, like the whole city is about to plummet to a great depth. Everything shifts with each strike. It's like you're part of a disaster movie. You're not a lead character in the movie though; you're one of the background figures, the extras, being terrorized or falling prey to the disaster en masse. Your role is simply to engender terror in the viewers, and then to die. P112
February 21, 2025
How one seeks to find logic and maintain sanity under the piercing eyes of drones hovering above one’s head, eating hungerly and indiscriminantly from it prey below. Slow-paced and repetitive, reflecting the day-to-day reality on the ground, all whilst trying to hold on to a form of routine amidst the chaos. It describes the war in the summer of 2014, although nothing seems to have changed. While the absence of a plot made it more difficult for me to get through it, the book is full of heartbreaking, reverberating quotes about the awful reality of war and how one attempts to cope with it.
July 10, 2024
crazy diary tbh. crazy was die durchgemacht haben 2014, and it is much worse now... free palestine
April 28, 2016
Book: The Drone Eats With Me
Author: Atef Abu Saif
Beginning as a short-story project aiming to depoliticize Gaza, this wartime diary instead proves just how politically charged Gaza is. The book retains the project’s original purpose of showing the daily routine of Gazans, but instead shows routine during a time of all too frequent Gazan chaos.
This non-fiction diary written by Gazan writer and editor Atef Abu Saif shows the will to survive amongst hardened Gazans. It follows the 51-day Israeli offensive on the Gazan strip after the death of three Israeli teenagers. The diary tells the story of Gazan logic and routine amidst unpredictable war. It is a story of loss, love, family, life, and death. It is a story of Gazans learning to live with the constant whirring sound of drones overhead, and the constant likelihood and presence of death.
The hardships in Gaza may be caused by political motives, but Gazans themselves are people who, through no fault of their own, find themselves caught in the middle of violent politics. This book is a great read for people looking to know more about the civilians affected by politics, not the political situation itself. Readers looking for a fast-paced soldier war story may want to steer clear of this diary, but overall it is a read essential to understanding the impact of war on the people behind the scenes: the families, martyrs, and everyday heros enduring the horrors of a war they had no part in creating.
Overall the Drone Eats With Me provides readers with a gripping account of human perseverance in a time of modern war. Atef Abu Saif writes a moving firsthand account of the mindset and heart to survive amongst the Gazan people.
Author: Atef Abu Saif
Beginning as a short-story project aiming to depoliticize Gaza, this wartime diary instead proves just how politically charged Gaza is. The book retains the project’s original purpose of showing the daily routine of Gazans, but instead shows routine during a time of all too frequent Gazan chaos.
This non-fiction diary written by Gazan writer and editor Atef Abu Saif shows the will to survive amongst hardened Gazans. It follows the 51-day Israeli offensive on the Gazan strip after the death of three Israeli teenagers. The diary tells the story of Gazan logic and routine amidst unpredictable war. It is a story of loss, love, family, life, and death. It is a story of Gazans learning to live with the constant whirring sound of drones overhead, and the constant likelihood and presence of death.
The hardships in Gaza may be caused by political motives, but Gazans themselves are people who, through no fault of their own, find themselves caught in the middle of violent politics. This book is a great read for people looking to know more about the civilians affected by politics, not the political situation itself. Readers looking for a fast-paced soldier war story may want to steer clear of this diary, but overall it is a read essential to understanding the impact of war on the people behind the scenes: the families, martyrs, and everyday heros enduring the horrors of a war they had no part in creating.
Overall the Drone Eats With Me provides readers with a gripping account of human perseverance in a time of modern war. Atef Abu Saif writes a moving firsthand account of the mindset and heart to survive amongst the Gazan people.
June 19, 2024
Atef Abu Saif’s diary entries which detailed every day of the 51 day “war” in 2014. The entries were heartbreaking and tragic. I am grateful to Palestinian writers and artists for the effort put into their work while experiencing some of the most devastating human rights violations and for continuing to share their work with the world even though the world remained silent for so long.
This is definitely a heavy, but necessary read! There are so many parallels to today that reinforce that the Nakba never ended and that this has always been the goal of the occupation. I definitely recommend this as it’s important to continue elevating stories/books told by Palestinian authors. They have their own voices and it’s our job to amplify them.
This is definitely a heavy, but necessary read! There are so many parallels to today that reinforce that the Nakba never ended and that this has always been the goal of the occupation. I definitely recommend this as it’s important to continue elevating stories/books told by Palestinian authors. They have their own voices and it’s our job to amplify them.
May 28, 2016
Imagine war; all of the images from the news, crumbling buildings and crying faces. Now imagine that you are in the middle of it, trying to live while dodging bombs and bullets, not sure if you will ever get a moment’s peace again. For 51 days, that was the regular routine of novelist Atef Abu Saif, author of five novels and numerous newspaper articles, as he lived through the 2014 Israeli offense against the Gaza Strip. His latest entry in the canon of Israeli-Palestinian conflict writing, “The Drone Eats With Me: A Gaza Diary,” is a personal and often fearless account of Saif’s life during wartime. If there is a bias in his writing that would not be evident in his more measured newspaper writing, it is the bias of the maligned civilian who has found himself an unwilling target of powers beyond his control and comprehension.
You can read my full review of THE DRONE EATS WITH ME at the Current independent student newspaper website. A reviewer copy of the book was provided for free by the Goodreads giveaway program and Beacon Press; no other compensation was offered for this review, nor was a review required to receive the book.
You can read my full review of THE DRONE EATS WITH ME at the Current independent student newspaper website. A reviewer copy of the book was provided for free by the Goodreads giveaway program and Beacon Press; no other compensation was offered for this review, nor was a review required to receive the book.
May 15, 2016
Israel was created from the land called Palestine. In order to right the wrongs committed against the Jews, the UN created Israel, displacing the Palestinians who had occupied the land for thousands of years. Once again, two wrongs don't make a right. But now the Israelis, forgetting their own history, are determined to wipe out the Palestinians rather than let them share the land that was rightfully theirs to begin with. Always their actions are justified by actions taken by a minority against some Israeli(s). Might makes right, apparently. And the Israelis make sure to show their might at every opportunity. This serves to only to make matters worse. And thus, the story in this memoir shows the effect on everyday Palestinians. It is cruel and only serves to make more terrorists among the Palestinians. When you read this book you realize how helpless and hopeless the people feel, a recipe for the perfect storm. I am convinced that we don't need more aid to Israel, we need aid for both sides in the form of serious peacemaking efforts
November 19, 2016
Emotionally, this was a difficult book to read so it took me awhile to read it. Atef Abu Saif has written about life in Gaza in a modified diary form detailing Israel’s 2014 invasion of the Gaza Strip which lasted 51 days and how it affected the everyday life of the civilian residents, men, women and children.
I tried not to let political considerations color my reactions to the destruction of so many lives and so many homes but it was an emotional roller coaster ride. That aside, I recommend this book just for the unique look at a modern war and how it affects the people who live there.
I was given this book in exchange for a review from the publisher via the LibraryThing website.
I tried not to let political considerations color my reactions to the destruction of so many lives and so many homes but it was an emotional roller coaster ride. That aside, I recommend this book just for the unique look at a modern war and how it affects the people who live there.
I was given this book in exchange for a review from the publisher via the LibraryThing website.
June 28, 2016
I received this book from Good Reads.
Every American who blindly believes Israel is being persecuted should read this book. Written in English as a diary by a Palestinian who lives in Gaza, his diary and this book is concentrated on his entries during the 2014 invasion of Gaza by Israel. Horrific and heart wrenching.
Highly recommended for those who want to understand this part of the Middle East.
Every American who blindly believes Israel is being persecuted should read this book. Written in English as a diary by a Palestinian who lives in Gaza, his diary and this book is concentrated on his entries during the 2014 invasion of Gaza by Israel. Horrific and heart wrenching.
Highly recommended for those who want to understand this part of the Middle East.
October 8, 2016
This book educates the reader about what it’s like to be up close to war. There is plenty to discuss: parenting, whether to lie to your children in order to calm them down, human dignity, fear, trauma, survival, and how ritual/routine can be a calming force in times of chaos.
October 28, 2015
Please read this book. The grammar isn't perfect and it can be hard to get through at times, but it holds incredibly important truths that we all need to become aware of.
August 27, 2018
An exceptional and necessary book. This 51-day diary is a heartbreaking read. It's also devastating, more so due to Atef Abu Saif's restraint. His goal here isn't to lace into Israel via polemics or diatribes; Saif lets the wanton, inhumane destruction of Gaza four years ago this summer speak for itself. Rather, his personal day-to-day struggles -- to calm his young children, to secure water and food, to plan electricity use for the one or two hours a day it is available, to comfort neighbors and extended family over the deaths and maiming of their loved ones, to try to simply keep his family and himself safe and sane -- are the focus of this diary, and the unadorned, bracing prose starkly delineates Saif's circumstances and plight.
I decided to read this diary, which begins on July 6, 2014 -- the day Israeli's bombardment and subsequent invasion of Gaza began -- last month, on the 6th. The timing was no coincidence. I wanted to approach this diary, to try to get just a little closer to what Saif was writing about and experiencing, by reading each daily entry on its month and day. The last entry, on Aug. 26th, the day the war ended, is also the day, four years later, that I finished it. I don't pretend to know in any way, shape, or form how it was for Saif, his family, or his neighbors to be living under a near-constant threat of death via a drone/fighter-jet/tank/battleship attack for almost two full months. However, reading this essential book in "real time" put to rest the idea that a 51-day war is, at least, "short."
I decided to read this diary, which begins on July 6, 2014 -- the day Israeli's bombardment and subsequent invasion of Gaza began -- last month, on the 6th. The timing was no coincidence. I wanted to approach this diary, to try to get just a little closer to what Saif was writing about and experiencing, by reading each daily entry on its month and day. The last entry, on Aug. 26th, the day the war ended, is also the day, four years later, that I finished it. I don't pretend to know in any way, shape, or form how it was for Saif, his family, or his neighbors to be living under a near-constant threat of death via a drone/fighter-jet/tank/battleship attack for almost two full months. However, reading this essential book in "real time" put to rest the idea that a 51-day war is, at least, "short."
Read
December 14, 2025No stars, just words. “Five stars for sharing your trauma” feels wrong, as does any critique. This is essentially the author’s war diary.
I’m glad I read it. It’s hard to read and my brain kept trying to actively dissociate the whole time. Very upsetting, but important, and well-written.
I’m glad I read it. It’s hard to read and my brain kept trying to actively dissociate the whole time. Very upsetting, but important, and well-written.
April 6, 2024
People who want to know about what it’s like on the ground in Gaza for the Palestinians, should read this.
October 14, 2017
It seems futile to try and write about the endless atrocities committed by the Israeli Government against the Palestinians and the people in Gaza. Yet in his book, The Drone Eats With Me: A Gaza Diary , Atef Abu Saif documents with vigor and lucidity, the 51-day war 'Operation Protective Edge', that was launched on Gaza in 2014.
Reading Abu Saif's memoir, you might notice a few things:
1) The ubiquity of death. Death is rampant in all of Gaza, it is an all-consuming presence, unleashed by the Israeli war machines; drones, F16s, missiles, tanks, the same machines that were used to slaughter civilian families, bombard homes and buildings, leaving countless people without a roof above their head. (It is estimated that 2,100 Palestinians were killed in this war, 500 of which were children, and leaving 11,000 others injured).
Confronted with this grotesque reality, there is a threat every second that you might "cease to exist and become a news items" as Abu Saif fears for himself, "you swap your existence for TV airtime, radio coverage", only to be doomed for oblivion, to be buried within the margins of history and never to be remembered again. Yet time and time again, Abu Saif writes against this ugly weight of history that will consume us all, documenting the names of civilians murdered by Israeli bombardments, families killed in single strikes mostly consisting of small children, ages known and unknown, , giving voice to the voiceless people of Gaza, whose dreams and ambitions were erased by a drone operator standing behind his screen.
2) You will be awed by the capacity that Gazans have for life. Being faced with the grotesque reality of these camps, enforced by Israel, it is easy to succumb to despair and misery. Yet Gazans never despair, starting each day with a thirst for life, rising anew from the ashes of war like a phoenix, building their houses from the rubble: "We are surrounded by death but the only thing Gazans can think about, in their never-ending, daily calculations, is life. Surrounded by death and destruction, we demonstrate the genius we have for living." Such inspiring words in our age of humanitarian crises, moral and ethical impotence.
3) As an eyewitness to the 2014 war on Gaza, Abu Saif documents every day of the war without indulging too much in subjectivity and moral judgments, recounting his daily comings and goings, the ever-looming threat of a drone strike, the hopes and fears of his family, the perspective of his 3 little children as they experience war, one of whom, Mostafa, has already witnessed 2 wars during his 11-year old life.
This gives space for the reader to make-up his own judgement on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, making inferences and not just simply trying to influence the opinion of the reader, as if Abu Saif is saying to his audience: "Here, witness what is being done to the people of Gaza, and be your own judge."
It is a crucial read for anyone who is interested in familiarizing her/himself with the conflict, and with the violation of humanitarian laws that Israel commits on daily basis.
Reading Abu Saif's memoir, you might notice a few things:
1) The ubiquity of death. Death is rampant in all of Gaza, it is an all-consuming presence, unleashed by the Israeli war machines; drones, F16s, missiles, tanks, the same machines that were used to slaughter civilian families, bombard homes and buildings, leaving countless people without a roof above their head. (It is estimated that 2,100 Palestinians were killed in this war, 500 of which were children, and leaving 11,000 others injured).
Confronted with this grotesque reality, there is a threat every second that you might "cease to exist and become a news items" as Abu Saif fears for himself, "you swap your existence for TV airtime, radio coverage", only to be doomed for oblivion, to be buried within the margins of history and never to be remembered again. Yet time and time again, Abu Saif writes against this ugly weight of history that will consume us all, documenting the names of civilians murdered by Israeli bombardments, families killed in single strikes mostly consisting of small children, ages known and unknown, , giving voice to the voiceless people of Gaza, whose dreams and ambitions were erased by a drone operator standing behind his screen.
2) You will be awed by the capacity that Gazans have for life. Being faced with the grotesque reality of these camps, enforced by Israel, it is easy to succumb to despair and misery. Yet Gazans never despair, starting each day with a thirst for life, rising anew from the ashes of war like a phoenix, building their houses from the rubble: "We are surrounded by death but the only thing Gazans can think about, in their never-ending, daily calculations, is life. Surrounded by death and destruction, we demonstrate the genius we have for living." Such inspiring words in our age of humanitarian crises, moral and ethical impotence.
3) As an eyewitness to the 2014 war on Gaza, Abu Saif documents every day of the war without indulging too much in subjectivity and moral judgments, recounting his daily comings and goings, the ever-looming threat of a drone strike, the hopes and fears of his family, the perspective of his 3 little children as they experience war, one of whom, Mostafa, has already witnessed 2 wars during his 11-year old life.
This gives space for the reader to make-up his own judgement on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, making inferences and not just simply trying to influence the opinion of the reader, as if Abu Saif is saying to his audience: "Here, witness what is being done to the people of Gaza, and be your own judge."
It is a crucial read for anyone who is interested in familiarizing her/himself with the conflict, and with the violation of humanitarian laws that Israel commits on daily basis.
January 20, 2021
Incredible, heartbreaking, and infuriating first-hand account of Gazans trying to survive while finding hope, comfort, and routine during a 51-day war in 2014 in which Israeli drones, jets, tanks, and warships mercilessly, senselessly bomb and terrorize an entire city. In the end, 2.145 Palestinians (including 578 children) were killed, thousands more maimed, over 17,000 homes demolished, resulting in tens of thousands of displaced people. The Israelis targeted houses, hospitals, schools, cemeteries, statues, tractors, farms, orchards, animals, taxis, and modern architecture.
The resilience of Gazans shines through in these daily journal entries. Saif’s family is endearing and the ways they cope with the constant hell is remarkable. He writes of daily family life in an intimate way which clearly shows his love for family and community, and fully displays his fear that they will be next. It’s incredible how Gazans are forced to become used to such atrocities, often simply going about their daily business in the midst of being slaughtered.
Indeed, this is unlike any war book I’ve ever heard of. This is a one-sided battle done mostly by drones piloted by soldiers in a different country. It is not a battle of two forces, each side on equal footing. This is not a battlefield, it is a country invading people’s home with the sole intent of ending their lives. Gaza is an open-air prison. The weapons possessed by the families of Gaza are hope, fear, and an incredible will to survive.
There were a number of “truces” in this war, lasting from one day to five days. While these truces lend much-needed relief for Gazans—a chance to breathe and buy a coffee and fresh fruit (if available)—to me, an outsider, these truces reek of evil. For, if Israel is capable of not killing people for a couple days, they are capable of not killing people, period. In the words of Chomsky, these truces are sadism masked as compassion. But they are so intent on terrorizing these people that they cannot stop and indeed have not, years later. They wish and probably think that all of this has caused Gazans to lose their collective dignity. If this book is any indication, it is clear that this has not happened. Palestinians may be humiliated and demoralized but they will not give up their dignity.
A bleak, bitter but so important book. I really wonder and hope that little Jaffa, Saif’s then 19-month-old daughter, is alive and well today. His love for her shines through these pages.
The resilience of Gazans shines through in these daily journal entries. Saif’s family is endearing and the ways they cope with the constant hell is remarkable. He writes of daily family life in an intimate way which clearly shows his love for family and community, and fully displays his fear that they will be next. It’s incredible how Gazans are forced to become used to such atrocities, often simply going about their daily business in the midst of being slaughtered.
Indeed, this is unlike any war book I’ve ever heard of. This is a one-sided battle done mostly by drones piloted by soldiers in a different country. It is not a battle of two forces, each side on equal footing. This is not a battlefield, it is a country invading people’s home with the sole intent of ending their lives. Gaza is an open-air prison. The weapons possessed by the families of Gaza are hope, fear, and an incredible will to survive.
There were a number of “truces” in this war, lasting from one day to five days. While these truces lend much-needed relief for Gazans—a chance to breathe and buy a coffee and fresh fruit (if available)—to me, an outsider, these truces reek of evil. For, if Israel is capable of not killing people for a couple days, they are capable of not killing people, period. In the words of Chomsky, these truces are sadism masked as compassion. But they are so intent on terrorizing these people that they cannot stop and indeed have not, years later. They wish and probably think that all of this has caused Gazans to lose their collective dignity. If this book is any indication, it is clear that this has not happened. Palestinians may be humiliated and demoralized but they will not give up their dignity.
A bleak, bitter but so important book. I really wonder and hope that little Jaffa, Saif’s then 19-month-old daughter, is alive and well today. His love for her shines through these pages.
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