Spore Hosts: Out of Gaza: A Tale of Love, Exile, and Friendship

Beginning in a detention camp for undocumented refugees in Bruges, Belgium, Out of Gaza: A Tale of Love, Exile, and Friendship (Potomac Books, September 2025) follows the intertwined lives of a Katharina Galor, a Jewish Israeli scholar (author) and  Palestinian woman Dima Mansour whose path led through Gaza, Germany, France, Jordan, and beyond. Their friendship is marked by exile, migration, and the devastations of war, unfolding across stark asymmetries of privilege and restriction—between Jewish and Muslim, pious and secular, Israeli and Palestinian. As their friendship unfolds, Galor and Mansour come to intimately understand the lasting impact of ethnic cleansing from the Holocaust and the Nakba, and how these pivotal events have shaped their families, identities, and ties to the region. The book reflects on loss, trauma, and displacement, while opening a space for resilience, moral imagination, and the difficult work of living together across painful divides.