Raphael Cohen: The translator who chose to stand on the line of fire
In the spring of 2003, beneath the smoke-filled skies of Rafah in the occupied Gaza Strip, a man clutched a satellite phone and shouted into the void “Tell Israel to stop firing! No, he wasn’t in the line of fire! He was wearing a fluorescent vest!”
That man was Raphael Cohen. Unarmed. British. A translator and activist. Standing just meters from 21-year-old British peace volunteer Tom Hurndall when a bullet from an Israeli sniper struck Tom’s head, leaving him in a months-long coma. Hurndall had been trying to shield Palestinian children from gunfire.
Raph, as we call him at Al Manassa, later told me, “It could've been me. Tom was only a few meters away when he was hit. In March and April 2003, many Palestinians died. So did three international activists. Back then, we naively thought their blood might nudge the conscience of the world.”
Raphael had come to Gaza not to fight, but to bear witness. To speak to a blind world, hoping it might see.
At the time, he was a member of the International Solidarity Movement/ISM, a Palestinian-led initiative for nonviolent resistance to the Israeli occupation. Foreign volunteers accompanied Palestinian farmers through military checkpoints, documented human rights violations, and placed their own bodies between bulldozers and homes.
“I joined ISM and traveled to the West Bank and later Gaza,” Raphael explained. “I was there in solidarity with Palestinians, to witness and communicate what was happening to the world. It wasn’t about me or my identity. It was always about Palestine—just as it is today.”
But the man who stood against ignorance and violence, and who has been smeared as a “Zionist” and a “spy,” has a story that began long before Rafah, and far from Palestine.
Poise in the face of prejudice
Raphael Isaac Cohen was born in Brighton, south of London, in 1965, to a Swiss mother and a Jewish-Palestinian father from Haifa. His father had been a lawyer who defended Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Palestine before the creation of Israel. In the long shadow of the 1948 Nakba, he left—first to India, then Switzerland, and eventually settled in Britain in the late 1950s.
“My mother spoke Swiss German, and my father who was born under Ottoman rule in Haifa, drifted between verses from the Torah in Hebrew, the Quran in Arabic, and passages of French literature.”
That’s how Raph came to understand his father: a Jew who did not wish to be part of Israel, and who saw Haifa not as a city inside it, but as part of what it had been and ought to be; one country for all its people Jews, Christians, and Muslims. A single Palestinian state.
Cohen grew up seeing language not as a barrier but a bridge. He learned to view the world the same way.
That’s when I realized that neutrality in the face of injustice is betrayal
“I used to visit Israel for religious and family reasons,” he said. “I saw myself as a non-Zionist Jew. I understood there were two peoples but in a strange way, I belonged to both.”
That fragile equilibrium shattered during the first Gulf War.
“Between 1990 and 1991, I was in Chicago, joining protests across the US against the war in Iraq. That’s when I realized that neutrality in the face of injustice is betrayal.”
Cohen studied Oriental languages at Oxford, mastering classical Hebrew and modern Arabic. He then received a prestigious fellowship at the University of Chicago, where he studied under renowned translator Farouk Abdel Wahab and Ukrainian-American scholar Jaroslav Stetkevych. From them, he learned that Arabic texts are not linguistic puzzles but living, breathing worlds. Arabic led him in, not as a code to be cracked, but as a place to dwell.
After five years in academia, Cohen realized that its cold ivory towers weren’t his home.
From Cairo cafés to frontlines
He first came to Cairo in 1987 to study Arabic, and returned in the early 1990s to work as a translator and editor at Al-Ahram Weekly, under the late editor Hosni Guindy. Those were the twilight years of post-Oslo peace illusions, when hope flickered faintly, fleetingly. Raphael published his first translations of Egyptian poets like Amal Dunqul and Ahmed Taha, echoing their defiant cry: “Do not reconcile!”
But in Egypt, the name “Cohen” carried weight—and suspicion.
When critic Abla Al-Ruwaini, the widow of Amal Dunqul, heard that someone named Cohen was translating her late husband’s work into English, she questioned him at length. Only after confirming that he was neither Israeli nor Zionist did she grant him permission, with one written condition: the translations must not be published in Israel or any pro-Israeli outlet.
That episode summed up Raphael’s relationship with Egypt: stereotyping on one side, grace held on the other.
In 1994, while working at Al-Ahram, he received news that his father had fallen ill—and soon passed away. Raphael returned to London. He was not detained or deported, despite what Egypt’s Al-Ahrar newspaper would later claim in a sensationalist misleading article. The story was picked up uncritically by Al-Hayat, which ran a 1997 piece insinuating without evidence that Raphael was a “Zionist translator planted in Egypt’s cultural circles.”
Raphael sued Al-Hayat in the High Court in London, and won.
By the late 1990s, with a newborn and a need for stability, Cohen stepped away from the uncertain rhythms of freelance translation. He took on steadier work as a programmer and legal assistant in criminal defense. Yet, Palestine remained with him, steady and insistent, like a heartbeat beneath it all.
Grief, resilience, and Gaza
In October 2002, Raphael traveled to the West Bank for the olive harvest. He spent four weeks filming a documentary about Palestinian farmers and the checkpoints they endured. The footage was later screened at the American University in Cairo.
“Before I went, I sat on a park bench in London and thought: I’m going to face a state, an army. I realized I might die. I cried. I haven’t cried since—except during the current genocide in Gaza.”
Then came March 2003. Rachel Corrie was crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer in Rafah.
“After Rachel was killed, friends from Rafah, activists with ISM called and asked me to come back. I went, and I stayed for three weeks. When I left, I was interrogated. Two months later, I tried to return, but the Israelis wouldn’t let me in.”
He came back to Cairo heavy with grief but rooted in resolve.
That summer, he resumed activism in London: training ISM volunteers, joining anti-arms sales to Israel campaigns like Smash EDO (which later paved the way for Palestine Action), and demanding justice for Tom Hurndall, the young man murdered before his eyes.
His activism extended to his home.
“Because I spoke Arabic, my mother and I hosted Osama Qashoo, Omar Al-Titi (brother of Al-Aqsa Brigades fighter Jihad Al-Titi), and Mohammed Qishta in our home in Norbury,” Raphael said. That modest London maisonette became a sanctuary for Palestinians fleeing Israeli violence.
Osama Qashoo, then a refugee, later became a filmmaker and activist who founded the Palestine House and Gaza Cola initiative to raise funds for Gaza relief.
In Raphael’s kitchen in the evenings, over cups of tea, a quiet cell of solidarity formed—deeper than any slogan.
In 2006, Raphael tried to return to Palestine.
“I was detained for four days at Tel Aviv airport. They offered me entry in exchange for intelligence on ISM-London. Of course I refused. They put me on a plane to London. A month later, I moved to Cairo.”
Cairo became home. He worked with Elias Publishing; Egypt’s oldest dictionary press, before devoting himself fully to literary translation.
Defiant voices in two languages
Raphael has translated seminal works by Arab writers: Ahlam Mosteghanemi’s “Bridges of Constantine,” George Yaraq’s “Guard of the Dead,” Ahmad Morsi’s poetry, Mona Prince’s “So You May See,” Mahmoud Muhareb’s “The Jewish Agency and Syria during the Arab Revolt in Palestine,” and many more.
On the cover of his translation of the late Saad Zahran’s memoir, “The Ordy: Memoir of a prisoner,” his name appears as “Raphael Isaac.”
“My full name is Raphael Isaac Moshe Cohen. When the publisher chose to use ‘Raphael Isaac,’ I reached out to inquire—but I didn’t really push. It was a sensitive time in Egypt,” he said. “I found it less controversial, anyway, since I even was no longer Jewish.”
No easy binaries
In 2008, the Jewish Chronicle falsely claimed that Raphael had “harbored suicide bombers” days before a deadly Tel Aviv bombing in April 2003. But the UK High Court ruled that the supposed meeting was merely a memorial attended five days before the bombing, and Raphael had encountered them by chance. The paper admitted the claim was false, issued a public apology, and paid £30,000 in damages and full legal fees.
Raphael donated part of the money to Palestinian aid organizations—transforming, as always, cruelty into solidarity.
Over the years, Raph has translated countless Al Manassa articles. When we launched our English Edition this year, he was among the founding team.
“Every avenue of real resistance has been shut down in Egypt. So maybe this storm is a distraction from what’s actually happening”
Just days ago, the AUC announced his appointment to the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature jury. What followed was a smear campaign from tabloid outlets accusing him of Zionism and espionage.
The irony is grotesque: a man who risked his life in Gaza and the West Bank is now being painted as an enemy of Palestine.
“Why now?” he asks. “It feels like every avenue of real resistance has been shut down in Egypt. So maybe this little storm is a distraction from what’s actually happening.”
When we spoke on the phone, his voice was weary, but as always, unyielding. He asked me not to write anything. “What matters now is Gaza. Gaza is the cause. We should be talking about Gaza day and night—not about me.”
His whole life has been a refusal of easy binaries: Jew or Arab, East or West, translator or activist. He carries all those identities within him—and refuses to be reduced to any one.
Now in his 60s, I once asked Raph while we were watching the news, “If the Rafah crossing opened tomorrow, would anyone actually go to Gaza?”
He answered in his usual quiet voice: “I would go.”
“But you’re in your sixties!” I teased. “Isn’t it time you admitted you’re an old man?”
“I’d go,” he said, “even if it were the last thing I ever do.”