Nour Alshaer is a student from Gaza who studies pre-medicine at Washington and Lee University in Virginia. She hopes to create cancer treatment infrastructure to give a fighting chance to Palestinians denied entry to Israeli hospitals. With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic she took a year off to be with her family in Rafah, Gaza, where she is currently.

Having lived through four rounds of bombing — and losing family and friends to Israeli airstrikes — she is urging international action against Israeli apartheid and for an end to the blockade of Gaza. On Wednesday she spoke to Jacobin’s David Broder about the situation in Gaza, the murder of her cousin and the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people.