Born: Unknown, Australia
Died: NA
Country most active: Australia
Also known as: NA
The following is excerpted from Fire Dragon Feminism: Asian Migrant Women’s Tales of Migration, Coloniality and Racial Capitalism by Quah Ee Ling (2025), republished with permission from the author.
Israa Merhi is a poet who has performed her poetry at Bankstown Poetry Slam and published one of her poems, Generational Ingredients in Story Factory’s Platform One journal (Merhi 2023). A second-generation descendant of Lebanese Muslim immigrant family living in Australia, she has written widely on mental health, the search for love and romance and Islam. She has also started focusing her writing and activism on political and humanitarian issues such as the occupation of Palestine. She is a fierce advocate for land to be returned to Indigenous peoples here in Australia and around the world. An aspiring psychology undergraduate student, she hopes to become a clinical psychologist using decolonial and non-oppressive therapeutic approaches. Not only is she a core member of a Palestine Collective organizing activism works alongside academic faculty, she is also the founder of Pro-Palestine student club mobilizing students to demand racial justice and a stop to colonialization of Palestine. She has organized protest rallies, campaign booths, poetry recitations and open letters and is unwavering in her social justice advocacy.