Another morning where the fire doesn’t cease. In Palestine, the world continues to end and elsewhere it keeps going. A week ago, thirteen year-old Amina Ghanem stared into the camera while recounting being run over by an israeli tank that destroyed her house killing her father and her sister in Khan Younis. Her sclerae so bloodshot, you could barely make out her irises. Petechiae, a doctor explains. The extreme pressure on her skull caused the tiny blood vessels to explode, resulting in eyes drenched in their own blood. But in the mutilation of the sclerae, the gaze remains unwavering in its witnessing. There’s a brokenness that has settled in her. It pours itself into our unscathed irises. It asks: “what now? what will you do about this?”
On the other side of the fence, zionists block the trickle of aid while cheering on the starvation of civilians. “We don’t want aid going to the terrorists,” a settler explains to an i-24 channel reporter in her American accent. The same settler who will later go back to a house that isn’t hers, on land that isn’t hers, to wash off the stench of a long day spent cheering for collective punishment using water that isn’t hers and powering the house that isn’t hers, on the land that isn’t hers, with electricity that’s been shut off from people whose starvation she spent her day calling for.
In Jerusalem, settlers and members of government are attending a Victory of Israel Conference: Settlement Brings Security outlining in intricate details how they plan on re-occupying the strip. The impunity the nation-state’s been provided by the Global North has eliminated the need to dress up the genocide with subterfuges along the lines of “self-defense” or “hostages.” The true motive is now paraded in broad daylight: land grab.
In my inbox, a woman is tone-policing another woman with a Muslim-sounding last name raising concerns about the absence of Arabs, specifically Palestinians on the advisory board of an organization that centers on “Israel-Palestine.” I jump on the thread with an email shaped like a fuck you despite the absence of foul language, and I’m joined by a chorus of similar voices, and countered by others critiquing the daring to critique. Cruelty’s main vehicle is arrogance. Respectability politics is where cruelty thrives. We do not owe courtesy to cowards. We do not need to respond to distractions by uselessly appealing to the non-existing empathy of people unwilling to question the foundations of their comfort.
In the past four months, we have been exposed to a never ending stream of crushed skulls, limbs, blood, rotting adult corpses, rotting infant corpses, mass graves, occupation soldiers doing TikTok dances so bad they look like they’re having a seizure (is rhythm “Khamas”?) right before blowing up residential blocks, schools, universities, places of worship, refugee camps, and stuffing their faces with BigMacs. I have seen enough children picking up enough chunks of their parents’ flesh to last me a few lifetimes. What makes the act of witnessing so incredibly hard to bare is the ability to see the richness of a world being burnt to the ground where many don’t even see humans. It’s watching Bisan Owda stand in the middle of what’s left of the Salah Aldeen street and watching the history of a centuries long urban artery to North Africa, obliterated by an army shamelessly parading its psychotic depravity while claiming indigeneity to a land they are plundering into disrepair. More chillingly, it’s knowing that the permissibility of this horror will ripple elsewhere in a not-too distant future.
There is an unknowable grief —as George Abraham described—brewing within us with each soundbite consumed. The silent understanding that what we’re looking at is a function of moved goalposts we’re meant to internalize. Two months ago, we were being gaslit out of believing the occupation army could blow up a hospital. At this point, they’ve bombed pretty much all of them out of service. The grief is also a function of the inescapable knowing that there is no time to pussyfoot around empty political theatrics of empire. It’s internalizing the violence of the mundane that creeps up whenever I put my phone down to answer work emails or make adjustments to files that need to go to print. The violence of saying “I” falling short of saying “we” but knowing better than to say “them.”
Susan Sontag writes “Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers. The question of what to do with the feelings that have been aroused, the knowledge that has been communicated. If one feels that there is nothing 'we' can do —but who is that 'we'?—and nothing 'they' can do either — and who are 'they' — then one starts to get bored, cynical, apathetic.” Freedom is a road paved with resounding NO’s. Every struggle for liberation known to history was sparked and fueled by refusal. It is not too late, yet, to start every day of your life with a resounding NO. It is not too late, yet, and equally imperative to disrupt any and all obstacles to ending this genocide. It is not too late, yet, to heed June Jordan’s call and become a menace to your enemies.
Are you angry yet? Good. Get involved:
Further Reading
Letters From the Apocalypse, George Abraham and Sarah Aziza—The Nation
How Poetry Became a Tool of Resistance for Palestinians, Armani Syed—Time
‘I am not there and I am not here’: a Palestinian American poet on bearing witness to atrocity, Hala Alyan—The Guardian
I Don't Want to Be Civil Anymore, Maryam Masud— Fikra Magazine
Lost and Found Poem, Lena Khalaf Tuffaha—Guernica
What Does It Mean to be Palestinian Now?— Noura Erakat, Ahmed Moor, Noor Hindi, Mohammed El-Kurd, Laila Al-Arian—The Nation
The Work of The Witness, Sarah Aziza—Jewish Currents
A Pediatrician’s Two Weeks Inside a Hospital in Gaza, Isaac Chotiner—The New Yorker
“The violence of saying “I” falling short of saying “we” but knowing better than to say “them.”
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