Palestinian writer Ahmed Masoud loses more family in Israeli assault on Gaza
Speaking to Middle East Eye late last week, Masoud, who is based in the UK, said: "My sister-in-law Ibtisam was volunteering with a local organisation to teach kids maths. Her son was in high school too and was going to be at the lesson.'
A friend of the late Palestinian writer Refaat Alareer, Masoud also lost his brother in an Israeli drone strike in January 2024. In total, he has lost 25 relatives, including cousins, during Israel's military campaign in Gaza, which began in October 2023.
Masoud's latest work, Application 39, is a satire that imagines the Olympic Games being held in the besieged Palestinian territory a century after the Nakba ("catastrophe" in English) when around 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly expelled from their homes by Zionist militias to make way for the creation of Israel in 1948.
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