Sonic Warfare in the Space of Palestine

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Introduction

This article is an exploration of the essence of conflict—not merely as a struggle over land and geography, but as a deeper battle for the right to be heard, to narrate, and to exist through sound.

The soundscape in Palestine/Israel after October 7th is complex and multi-layered, bringing together sounds of death and life, oppression and resistance, despair and hope. It is a true battlefield where a war no less fierce than the one on the ground is waged. But this landscape is also a space of hope, because every voice raised despite repression, every song sung despite pain, every testimony told despite danger, represents a small victory for life over death.

“Michel Foucault understood that power is exercised not only through what is said but through what is not said, what is silenced, what is rendered unspeakable. Palestinians are constantly pushed to the margins of permissible speech while Israeli authority monopolizes the center of discourse”

The Silence Poetry Needs

A dead bird on the rubble of a family home in the city of Khan Yunis. Photo: Belal Khaled, AA

"To write poetry that is not political, I must listen to the sound of birds. But to hear the birds, the warplane must fall silent" – Marwan Makhoul (Palestinian poet).

I live in Nazareth, in the north of historic Palestine. I am one of the Palestinians who remained after the Nakba of 1948—one of the lucky ones. Birds still live here. But I can barely hear them anymore.

The soundscape of my city is dominated by manufactured noise: the constant buzzing of warplanes on their way to bomb Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria; the roar of helicopters; the hum of drones monitoring our lives from above; the relentless churn of the media machine. A soundscape re-engineered to create an environment of perpetual terror.

In this afflicted geography, silence has become a kind of luxury. The question of what sound is begins from the moment of silence that poetry needs to emerge. But when the war machine dominates sonic space, when does, if at all, that silence arrive?

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A drone on the lookout point on the Mount of Olives close to Jerusalem's Old City, July 12, 2022. (Nati Shohat/Flash90)

The Soundscape of Dual Genocide. The Window as Sonic Portal

One day I sat before my window watching genocide on my phone. The sounds of screaming from beneath the rubble in Gaza—I forced myself not to scroll away. "Imagine," whispers conscience, "they're living what you can't even bear to watch."

Then another sound through the window: gunfire in the neighbourhood. An ambulance siren. Another crime in the Palestinian interior, where criminal gangs operate with police complicity. A slow genocide, without cameras, close enough to hear from my window. These sounds exist simultaneously in my sonic space. The sounds of extermination in the interior fade before the "greater" genocide, as if Palestinians in the interior count their dead in silence. Both are real. Both enter through my ears.

During the 12-day war with Iran, air raid sirens pierced the silence of night, preceding the sound of rockets, followed by the Iron Dome interceptors. A complete symphony of terror that became the soundtrack of our lives.

My 10 year old niece heard an air raid siren for the first time in her life. Fear entered her heart. A month after the escalation ended, she still asks me: "Will the war ever come back?" She didn't see the war, but a single sound reshaped her sense of safety. As for the children of Gaza, they live in a terrifying sonic space: no sirens warn them, no ambulances come, no order. Nothing but the thunderous silence torn by the sound of continuous bombardment, then cries for help. For my young niece, the rupture was temporary, a single sonic moment intruding on an otherwise recognizable childhood. In Gaza, there is no such punctuation, no warning, no rhythm outside the war. Childhood cannot recognize itself.

These are not just psychological effects that fade with time. Sound here writes itself into memory, and becomes part of the architecture of consciousness. My niece’s question—"Will the war ever come back?"—shows how a single sonic moment can colonize the future, turning every silence into anticipation of its return.

The Zanana: When Sound Never Leaves

But what happens when a sound doesn't just terrorize in a moment—when it never leaves? When it becomes so constant that it stops being an event and becomes an environment, a presence, almost a companion?

The poet Malek Al-Shanbari from Gaza knows this intimately: "Nothing returns to normal here. Everything changes except this buzzing that refuses to disappear, never leaving my sky. It hovers above me like a tireless fate, dangling from the air like a memory made of metal..."

In this poem, the "zanana"—the drone—transforms from passing noise into something deeper. Al-Shanbari writes that the zanana accompanied him from childhood, "when I was learning long division, during high school exams, on my first engineering drawing sheet. It witnessed my wedding, heard Ayloul speak her first word, and saw Zain take his first steps on the tent's sand", documenting how the drone has colonized time itself.

This constant presence transforms the zanana from a temporary phenomenon into an organic part of Palestinian consciousness, into "sonic time" that knows no interruption. Every milestone, every intimate moment, every memory is formed "beneath it"—literally under surveillance, but also trapped under its shadow in the architecture of remembering.

The poet presents the zanana not as a passing event but as a forced existential presence, "a tireless fate." And then comes the most revealing confession: "I hate it, I hate its sound, its shadow, its existence, and I hate that all my memories pass beneath it. I hate it, and I love my hatred for it."

This statement—"loving the hatred"—reveals the impossibility of separating the self from the sound that oppresses it. The drone has become so integral to consciousness that even the hatred of it has become a form of attachment. This is the psychological warfare of constant sound. It doesn't just threaten. It colonizes the interior landscape, becoming part of the texture of thought itself.

Al-Shanbari's poem belongs to what we might call "literature of occupied sound"—writing that documents how sound transforms from a medium of war into a biography of survival. The zanana is not merely a military machine but a device for producing continuous fear and perpetuating colonial presence in the senses themselves.

Israeli drones in Gaza. Photo: Getty Images

Sound as Weapon

Paul Virilio understood that modern warfare operates at the level of perception, creating environments of perpetual alertness. In his work Sonic Warfare, the musician, artist, and writer Steve Goodman (aka Kode9), extends this: sound penetrates walls and bodies, causing not just auditory harm but existential terror. The occupation manifests in its most abstract form—a sound without a visible body, yet dominating consciousness. You cannot close your ears the way you close your eyes. Sound is inescapable. It vibrates through your body whether you consent or not. This makes it an effective weapon for continuous psychological occupation. The lived testimonies from Gaza reveal how this works in flesh and consciousness.

Gazan writer Neama Hassan writes: "The sound of the drones was very close. It entered between one thought and another in my head, penetrating its closed safety. The continuous bombardment made something in my heart jump from its place like a sharp pang of pain."

Sound here disrupts thinking itself. It creates a breach in what she calls "closed safety"—the most intimate regions of selfhood. The penetration is also physiological: "something in the heart jumps" is a reaction that keeps the body in constant alertness, leading to exhaustion and extended trauma.

Gazan poet Amal Asi from Gaza writes: "I can't sleep... The loud sound of the zanana gnaws at my head, mind, and heart... It's preparing to target a new objective... Who is it? A son or a father? How old is he? What are his dreams?... Who is the next martyr while we remain on the edge of waiting?"

The sonic presence of the drone creates a continuous scenario of preemptive mourning. A power that determines who lives and who dies, announced only through sound. Gaszan writer Najia Mahmoud from Gaza writes: "The residents of Khan Younis, displaced in Rafah, hear the sound of their homes and dreams being demolished daily."

The displaced person cannot see their destroyed home. Sound becomes an evidence of destruction and confirms that this home no longer exists. But the profound addition—"and their dreams"—transforms sound into testimony to the destruction of the future itself.

Najia Mahmoud offers another testimony: "The missile falls with a terrible roar—the sound of death that passed over us to choose others... And before it explodes, our hearts drop from their place, and we run to each other immediately, the earth shaking beneath us like an earthquake. We learn our own reassurance phrases: 'Whoever hears the sound of the rocket survives.'" This phrase encapsulates a perverse logic: sound becomes the harbinger of death, but hearing it is proof of survival. If you hear the sound, you are not the target. If you hear nothing, you may already be dead.

What does it mean to calibrate survival by decibels? To measure your continued existence by your ability to detect the frequency of incoming death?

The Politics of Being Unheard

If loud sound is the direct tool of repression, then imposed silence—political, media, international—is its counterpart. Silence is not a simple absence of sound but an active state, produced and managed to achieve political goals.

I know this silence intimately. I am a musician, and I learned early that there is an invisible sonic wall governing what Palestinians can say. You can raise your voice, but only to a certain extent, to an invisible red line that everyone knows is there.

My previous song's refrain says: "Maybe I'm sad because for a moment I felt safe, in the arms of occupation"—a reference to the illusory relative safety we experience compared to conditions for Arabs in many Arab countries. It was meant as irony, as critique. But this safety evaporates the moment you touch Israeli taboos. Freedom of expression is confiscated, and you find yourself in the circle of targeting. "Sonic freedom" under unequal power relations is always conditional, always fragile, always revocable.

The policy of prosecutions has created deterrence for anyone who thinks of contradicting the official narrative. When your voice is constantly silenced, you gradually become invisible. This imposed silence is a tool of exclusion: your voice is unwelcome, your audible existence is rejected, your narrative is dangerous.

Drone footage in northern Gaza, filmed for CNN.

International Deafness

The official global silence—or the hesitant and conditional response to genocide in Gaza—is the natural extension of this repressive logic. When the international community remains silent, it creates an environment that allows the war machine to continue without deterrent.

Michel Foucault understood that power is exercised not only through what is said but through what is not said, what is silenced, what is rendered unspeakable. Palestinians are constantly pushed to the margins of permissible speech while Israeli authority monopolizes the center of discourse.

Resistance lies in breaking this imposed silence—in insisting on speech, on raising the voice from within the zone of "the unacceptable." But Palestinians have refused to be silenced. Against the machinery of imposed quiet and the cacophony of terror, we have insisted on sound—not just as expression, but as survival itself.

Ahmed Muin: Sonic Recycling

Ahmed Muin Abu Amsha, a music teacher in Gaza, stands in the rubble with his guitar. Above him, the zanana buzzes. He tunes his voice to it, with a sustained humming. He uses the drone's frequency as a drone note, a constant pitch, and over it he improvises Palestinian melodies, singing revolutionary songs. Then he gathers children. They sing with him, their voices rising above the zanana's hum. The drone doesn't stop. But neither do they.

This is what I call sonic recycling: taking the sound of death and making it merely accompaniment to life. The act inverts the power relationship—the drone, meant to terrorize, becomes a background element in a scene of defiance. The children's singing reclaims control over their sonic space. They transform the sound of terror into a song of life they create themselves.

It is resistance not by silencing the oppressor's sound (which is impossible) but by drowning it out, absorbing it, repurposing it. Making it irrelevant through the sheer insistence of Palestinian voices.

Palestinians hold out pots and pans at a community kitchen in Gaza City on Saturday, July 26, 2025. Abdel Kareem Hana/AP

Kitchen Sounds as Instruments of Protest Against Forced Starvation

In solidarity demonstrations inside the Green Line, we couldn't always wave flags or chant slogans that might expose us to prosecution. So we invented a new form: beating pots in protest against the starvation of Gaza's people. This simple act is purely sonic, requiring no words that could be prosecuted. It is collective—sounds overlap to form a unified chorus. And it uses everyday tools meant for nourishment, transforming them into tools of struggle against imposed starvation. The sound itself is chaotic, arrhythmic, insistent. Metal against metal. The clang of domestic life weaponized into protest.

Najia Mahmoud says: "I hide bread from my children. I give them half a loaf for each meal so they can live. But the sound of their crying... death is kinder than hearing it."

The sound of hungry children crying is the sound of absolute suffering. For the mother, it is harsher than death itself. But in this context, this very sound becomes a form of resistance. It is the sound that exposes the siege, that refutes the official narrative, that testifies to the crime. It is a sound that cannot be completely silenced because it springs from basic biological need.

This is resistance through weakness itself. The cry escapes all attempts at silencing simply because the body will not cooperate with its own erasure.

Sacred Sounds: Bells and Adhan

Against sounds of terror and control, sounds of hope and the sacred emerge. I wrote a song during the war, when I heard the dawn call to prayer wake me:

I rejoice at the sound of the bell
may our bell never be muted
Ding ding ding forever
Ding ding ding every Sunday
I love the sound of the Adhan(call to prayer)
it fills the sky and fills my heart with faith
Announcing we are here
The earth and sky are ours
Allahu Akbar, this sound
Reminds me that after death
There is life, and here we are.

These sounds—bells and adhan—claim the sky back. The occupation wants to make the sky a space of terror, where only military sounds belong. But every Sunday morning, the bell rings. Five times a day, the call to prayer sounds. They say: We are still here. This is still our sky.

"Ding ding ding forever" is a promise. A refusal of temporariness. Colonial sound is sudden, shocking, designed to rupture. Sacred sound is regular, rhythmic, designed to endure. The song rebuilds the relationship between humans and the sky after terror transformed it into a space for death. When it says, "Allahu Akbar”, “we are here”, “the earth and sky are ours," it attempts to capture a form of sonic sovereignty.

The sacred sound "reminds me that after death / there is life, and here we are". The sacred sound doesn't merely affirm life in the present; it extends to become a promise of continuity. Sound—whether call to prayer, bell, or song—is the thread that connects generations, preserves memory, affirms that we are still here. What makes sound uniquely suited to resistance in this context?

Sound crosses borders where bodies cannot. It penetrates walls. It cannot be confiscated at checkpoints. It requires no materials beyond the body itself—a voice, hands to clap, a pot to bang. When you make sound, you assert presence. Sound is also communal. When Ahmed Muin's students sing together, when we bang pots in unison, when the adhan sounds across the city, it creates collective presence. It builds solidarity in real time. And perhaps most importantly, sound is ephemeral but memorable. It cannot be destroyed the way buildings are destroyed. Even when the singer is killed, the song remains in memory. Even when the city is leveled, the sound of the adhan echoes in the mind.

Destroyed buildings in North Gaza, as seen from Israel, March 2, 2025. Photo by Amir Cohen/Reuters

Listening as Ethical Act

I sit by my window now, writing this. I hear warplanes overhead, on their way somewhere. I hear traffic in the street. I hear, faintly, a bird. Writing this essay has changed my listening. I am more attuned now to what I hear and what I don't hear. To which sounds dominate and which struggle to be heard. To the sounds that are amplified and the sounds that are muted.

I listen for the sounds that insist on life despite everything. The call to prayer at dawn. Children playing in the street during a break in the bombing. A song emerging from rubble. Living in an environment where sound is designed to oppress, terrorize, and kill redefines what "listening" means. It is no longer a passive sense but an ethical and political choice. To listen to the screams coming from beneath the rubble, to the prayer in the mosque, to the banging on the pot, to the hungry child's cry—is to inhabit the war, the hunger, the loss, in the echo of your own attention. To listen is to refuse the comfort of political deafness.

In a world saturated with media noise, this is not abstract philosophy. It is a concrete demand. Listen; to Gazans, to the Palestinians, to the testimonies, to your heart. Not as background noise. Not as content to scroll past. But as urgency.

The zanana's buzz, the siren's wail, the child's cry, Ahmed Muin's song, the mother's testimony, the bells and the adhan—all of these sounds form an archive that will outlive the war. This sonic archive needs listeners. It needs people who will receive these sounds and carry them forward. Listen to speak up.

Listen, for we are still here, singing.

Final note: This essay is written from my positionality as a Palestinian living inside. I witness this sonic war daily and participate in it as a musician and writer. It is an attempt to document a pivotal moment when sound ceases to be merely a medium and becomes the subject of struggle itself. It is also a call to everyone who reads these words: open your ears, truly listen, and remember that behind every sound, a life waits to be heard.

Editor's note:

Snakeskin - October Sun (Ruptured/Beacon Sound)

AFCN

Sonic Warfare in the Space of Palestine

Written by:

Edited by:

Share article:

Introduction

The Silence Poetry Needs

The Soundscape of Dual Genocide. The Window as Sonic Portal

The Zanana: When Sound Never Leaves

Sound as Weapon

The Politics of Being Unheard

International Deafness

Ahmed Muin: Sonic Recycling

Kitchen Sounds as Instruments of Protest Against Forced Starvation

Sacred Sounds: Bells and Adhan

Listening as Ethical Act

About the Author

Jowan Safadi

Share this Article

THE ATTIC

Sonic Warfare in the Space of Palestine

Written by:

Edited by:

Share article:

Introduction

The Silence Poetry Needs

The Attic Newsletter

Follow @theatticmag on Twitter

The Soundscape of Dual Genocide. The Window as Sonic Portal

Follow @theatticmag on Twitter

The Zanana: When Sound Never Leaves

Sound as Weapon

The Politics of Being Unheard

International Deafness

Ahmed Muin: Sonic Recycling

Kitchen Sounds as Instruments of Protest Against Forced Starvation

Sacred Sounds: Bells and Adhan

Listening as Ethical Act

About the Author

Jowan Safadi

Share this Article

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