Ramzy Baroud is an American-Palestinian journalist and writer. He is the author of several books on the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
His father came from the village of Bayt Daras, just south of Jaffa. In 1948, when his father was 9 years old, the Baroud family was driven out and finished up as refugees in the Gaza Strip His father became an autodidact with a particular passion for Russian literature.
Baroud was born and raised in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, where from the age of 6, he attended an UNWRA Elementary School for Boys. The school was separated from Bureiji refugee camp by an Israeli military encampment, whose soldiers frequently handcuffed and detained students for displaying pictures of the Palestinian flag. One of his UNWRA schoolmates, Raed Muanis, was shot dead by Israeli soldiers when they sighted him running with one such small flag. As a high-school student he joined other youths in throwing stones as IDF soldiers shot their way when the First Intifada broke out. In was experience that enabled him to become fully aware of his identity.
He grew up resenting that his Palestinian identity was denied. His Israeli-issued travel document described him as having an "undefined" nationality.
He has recounted much of his family's history, within the wider historical context of the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem since 1948, in his memoir, My Father was a Freedom Fighter which has been highly praised by Richard Falk and by Gilad Atzmon who called it a "heartbreaking" "masterpiece" which narrates "a tragic journey of a rural self-sufficient population that is driven into total dispossession, humiliation and absolute poverty."
In 1999, dissatisfied with the failure of mainstream outlets, including Palestinian news sources, to cover the day by day realities of Palestinian lives, in September he began a personal blog The Palestinian Chronicle, which became a newspaper of which he remains chief editor. He has served as managing editor of Middle East Eye, editor-in-chief of the Brunei Times and as a deputy managing editor of Aljazeera online and once headed Al Jazeera's English's Research and Studies department. He has also taught mass communication at the Malaysia Campus of Australia's Curtin University of Technology. In 2015 he received a PhD in Palestinian Studies at the University of Exeter with a doctorate on a "People's History of Palestine", under the direction of Ilan Pappé.
Baroud subscribes to the One-state solution and actively supports the One Democratic State Campaign.
Baroud is the author of five books. some prefaced with, or containing afterwords by Kathleen Christison and Bill Christison, Jennifer Loewenstein, Khalida Jarrar and Richard Falk.
Of this book, Noam Chomsky wrote: "In the finest tradition of people's history, these sensitive, painful and evocative pieces provide a human face to the painful saga of Palestinian torment and the remarkable courage and resilience of the victims".