Still Lives

A Memoir of Gaza

By: Marilyn Garson

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Paperback | 7 October 2025 | Edition Number 3

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308 Pages

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21.01 x 14.81 x 1.65

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Marilyn Garson was an experienced aid professional who created jobs at the edge of war. In 2011, she was asked to join an aid project in the Gaza Strip. Friends warned her that nothing worked behind the Israeli blockade. Unable to resist that challenge, Marilyn became the economic director of a large NGO programme, leading an ambitious young Palestinian team.

Gaza's business owners, technology graduates, and job-seekers (facing the highest rate of unemployment on earth) overturned Marilyn's understanding of aid and justice. Then she volunteered to join the United Nations emergency team that would remain inside Gaza through the 2014 war.

Marilyn witnessed first-hand the impact of Israel's urban assault and massive civilian displacement. The UN was prepared to shelter 35,000 displaced Gazans, but 293,000 arrived. Locked in beneath the bombs, they had nowhere safer to go, and nothing but the United Nations flag and international law to protect them.

Neither Marilyn's team nor Gaza itself was the same after fifty days of bombardment.

This book is an account of her four years in Gaza, during which her identity as a Jewish supporter of Palestinian rights was strengthened and deepened.

Industry Reviews

In this memoir, Marilyn Garson narrates her experience of living and working in Gaza, reminding readers that this is what must be centred: stories of Palestinians and their lives. These are some of the stories which those of us, particularly but not only Jewish people, in so-called Australia need to engage with, learn from, and remember.

Jordana Silverstein, Senior Research Fellow Melbourne Law School, social and cultural historian, author of books on immigration and on the Holocaust, and member of the Loud Jew Collective (Melbourne).

Marilyn Garson has written a moving intimate portrait of her life in Gaza where she worked for a number of years leading a team of Palestinians with the UNRWA. Her narrative of daily life under blockade and siege and then under Israeli bombs dispels the tired stereotypes. There were seven universities in Gaza, and the young women in their hijabs gravitated to science and computers. This unique account provides an important record of the impact of the brutal Israeli occupation.

Vivienne Porzsolt, founding member of Jews against the Occupation '48 (Sydney)

It is a unique experience to read Marilyn Garson's book about her experiences in Gaza in 2011-2014 while hearing daily and hourly reports of Israel's destruction of the population and environment of Gaza in 2025. It gives the lie to the idea that it all started in 2023. As an anti-Zionist Jew I felt our stand in support of Palestine strengthened immensely by this important book.

Janey Stone, author (with Donny Gluckstein) of The Radical Jewish Tradition (Interventions 2024).

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