Free yourself.
the violence, the supremacy, and the work
This post is a follow up to “Free Palestine: humanity, nuance, and collective liberation.”
The internet is so loud right now. SO LOUD. We’re watching the news, doom scrolling, waiting for updates, letting IG stories just go and go and go. Because we think we should respond, we’re screaming at each other when we should be screaming at evil itself.
Are we even pausing long enough to think about what we’re saying? From what I’ve seen in the last week, we’re not.
It’s natural to need a place for our minds to settle in understanding, a binary narrative, a side to choose, a party to blame. We are so bad at holding nuance and so low on practicing humility.
And I’m noticing, within my own community, a deeper issue that needs addressed.
So what I want to offer today is not more screaming or verbal violence or baseless accusations. I want to make space for us to take a beat – not from advocacy and not from paying attention – but an intentional pause to look inside ourselves to determine not if, but by how much, we are part of the problem.
The violence.
I’ll start this off by reminding you that I’m not political scientist. I am not an expert in the peace process. I have not spent my entire life studying and writing papers about conflict. What I do have is nearly 10 years’ experience working with Palestinians and Palestinian refugees in several capacities. I have read widely and studied the history and events that led to what we’re seeing today. I have sought to understand and integrate it all into my work, my art, and how I speak about these sensitive topics.
AND still.
I am still learning, I am still listening, I am still asking questions. I am still (daily) having new realizations or new levels of understanding because I come to this conversation with abundant privilege and a history that has been constructed for me to NOT know or say what I’m going to write today. It takes a lot of undoing of -isms that go against the world built with me in mind (mostly.)
The latest conversation surrounding Gaza and Israel has been ignorant at best, and violent at worst.
As I’ve said several times now, social media is not the best place for nuance and compassionate discussion. Social media sucks for this, and we have few other good options. I wrote “Free Palestine.” on Substack because it doesn't have a character limit and I could do my best to clarify all of my points, even though it’s impossible to be fully comprehensive. Hence, the follow ups. No where else can I constructively write and share these particular 4,000+ words. But social media literally and figuratively limits character and we cannot have conversation. We cannot hear tones and we cannot see faces or read body language. We say things we’d never say to someone’s face or in a room with other people. This makes effective communication impossible in this situation. We have takes and sound bites and massive propaganda but that's the best we can do most of the time. The most loud and most aggressive “side” benefits from these limitations by the way the power is skewed. And right now, I see this is the pro-Israel activism.
As I shared previously, I'm intentionally sharing Palestinian narrative simply because it's what people likely have not heard. It is extremely easy to find people in support of Israel right now. Equally simplistic: thinking that if violence started last Saturday, then we can comprehend the situation more easily and come to a "right" conclusion about what's going on and who deserves our support.
Do you remember in May 2020 when all the profile pics changed in support of Black Lives Matter movement, and then a few months later when the movement carried on and the conversation got tired for some, and the required work of dismantling White supremacy became a non-negotiable to continue beyond popular, performative “social justice”? (I’m speaking of the result in White communities, not the campaign’s original intent.)
This feels like that. The virtue theater is heartbreaking.
Standing in solidarity with the oppressed for five minutes amounts to nothing, but I do understand that is the limit of what can be done without having to change yourself. I’m not saying don’t stand up for what you believe in, but when it comes to issues with a long history of racism and colonialism, you must know there will be a cost to understand or undo these horrors.
Are you willing to continue learning and advocating when there’s a ceasefire, hostages are returned, and “the killing stops”? Or are you still willing to turn a blind eye to the Palestinians being killed because not to do so would require an examination of the condition of our own hearts and souls?
The supremacy.
I used to be really confused about Westerners, especially White people, who could so easily write off Palestinian lives as expendable if it meant a “safer” Israel. And while I would never argue that the people of Israel do not deserve freedom and safety, I am asking why only them? As the State of Israel does, why is it is okay to exhibit massive indifference to the human rights of Palestinians?
Is it because of the theological belief Israel is “God’s chosen people for the Promised Land”? Is it the eternal shame about the genocide of Jews in the Holocaust? Is it the conflation of Palestinians with Hamas or radical Islam, or is it the confusion that speaking out against the government of Israel can be misconstrued as anti-Semitism?
Yes, I’ve come to realize it’s all of those things in part. But the bigger lie I think we believe even more?
White supremacy.
Israel was built on Zionism. Modern Zionism arose in the late 1800’s as a Jewish movement constructed by lobbyists and extreme religious national advocates so that Jews would have a homeland. This Zionism made a compelling connection to the ancient religious texts that lent to a renewed Jerusalem, but over time through a combination of pressure, political clout, other empirical world events, and radicalized biases and beliefs, Zionism resulted in the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, a state that presented as the restoration of Zion but required the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians for its existence.
The Balfour Declaration, which resulted in a significant upheaval in the lives of Palestinians, was issued on November 2, 1917. The declaration turned the Zionist aim of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine into a reality when the British Empire pledged to establish “a national home for the Jewish people” there. The pledge became one of the main catalysts for the Nakba – the ethnic cleansing of Palestine beginning in 1948 – and the conflict that ensued with the Zionist State of Israel.
The Nakba (which means “Catastrophe”) refers to when 750,000 to 1,000,000 Palestinians were forcibly and violently removed from Palestine to create the State of Israel between 1947-1949. 75% of the indigenous Palestinian population was deliberately and systematically dispossessed in order to establish a Jewish majority state in Palestine.
No Palestinians were ever compensated for their loss of livelihood, land, and homes, and have not been allowed to return to their homeland in 75 years. Many thought they’d be returning, so they took their house keys with them. Decades later, the keys are mere symbols of the lives they had before new borders were drawn up and gifted to European Jews at their expense.
The Nakba didn’t start in 1948 and it certainly hasn’t finished. The Catastrophe continues. The displacement, terror, and erasure hasn’t ended. Palestinians continue to lose their homes, towns, land, livelihoods, and lives. This is not even to speak yet of the present genocide happening in Gaza.
Currently nearly six million Palestinians are registered with UNRWA as refugees across the Middle East and the diaspora around the world. Many live without citizenship in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. They lack basic human rights and access to education, employment, and healthcare. They have no path to citizenship in any country and are denied the internationally-recognized legal right to return to their country. Today, third and fourth generation Palestinian refugees live in dozens of refugee camps scattered throughout the Middle East. They are still waiting to return home.
And what does this have to do with White supremacy? When you realize Zionism is a tentacle of White supremacy, it all makes more sense.
It explains the sudden outrage and support of the West, rising up to protect the State of Israel against the (non-White) ”invaders.” It explains the monolithic views of Palestinians and the dehumanizing language used to demonize them. It explains the double standard for the support for Ukraine (who absolutely deserves our support) and why Palestinians aren’t allowed to resist peacefully, violently, or anything in between without being labeled terrorists. It explains the military might and the unflagging commitment of support from the United States, the United Kingdom, and other countries founded on the basis of racism and White supremacy. It explains the maintenance of Israel as a “strategic” military ally in the Middle East. It explains how we’re easily able to justify colonization and apartheid if it means it can keep the people of Israel safe. America was literally brought to you by colonization, and we have been lied to for centuries about the Indigenous population. Colonization and the dehumanization of the Native population is exactly the way we know how to create a new nation. It is precisely our experience of what is the moral, just, and most effective and permanent way to build a new country.
The Israel-Palestine “conflict”, viewed through the lens of White supremacy, explains why the most progressive people in U.S. government and Hollywood and culture influencers and Western media are suddenly sided with Israel because they are perceived as the most oppressed or most righteous.
And by most oppressed or most righteous, I mean mostly White.
One of the most problematic things I’ve seen a lot of in the last week online is people who are Palestinian or pro-Palestinian being lumped in with those "celebrating" torture, rape, or beheading children. First, many of these claims have been debunked by the IDF, and Israeli and Western news, and even the President of the United States, has walked them back, unable to verify. What is not unverified is how many Palestinian civilians have been killed by Israeli airstrikes in the last seven days in the violent bombardment and forced expulsion in Gaza. Second, what baffles me is that literally no one I know who is pro-Palestinian is celebrating or personally backing the massacre at the concert or the taking of hostages or the killing of Israeli civilians or justifying anti-Semitism. No one is explicitly or implicitly saying “if that’s what it takes” and praising Hamas’ violence. To claim that there is an unwillingness to condemn these atrocities is an implication that all Palestinians agree with the actions of Hamas. Or as if Hamas is all Palestinians. The international community and the Western media has always asked, as a precondition, that Palestinians stop the violence.
“Placing the question of violence at the forefront almost inevitably serves to obscure the issues that are at the center of struggles for justice. This occurred in South Africa during the anti-apartheid struggle. Interestingly Nelson Mandela—who has been sanctified as the most important peace advocate of our time—was kept on the US terrorist list until 2008. The important issues in the Palestinian struggle for freedom and self-determination are minimized and rendered invisible by those who try to equate Palestinian resistance to Israeli apartheid with terrorism.”
—Angela Davis in “Freedom Is a Constant Struggle”
The expectation for Palestinians to have to work to humanize themselves, and for their allies to have to humanize Palestinians again and again and again is unjust. This seems to be today’s demand. The unconscious part that whispers “they’re monsters, all of them” is wrong. This is textbook White supremacy and Islamophobia. Palestinians should not have to prove that they are not violent savages, or that they’re good Christians or good Muslims, or that they’re just babies who haven’t even had a chance to be evil yet, or that Palestinians deserve to exist, to live, to have basic needs like water and power in their hospitals to save the lives Israel is trying to end.
Our baseline understanding is Palestinians don't matter so the conversation is forced to become proving that they DO.
Palestinian humanity matters. Palestinian lives and stories matter. Palestinian liberation matters. Palestinian history matters. Palestinian safety matters. Palestinian trauma matters. Palestinian peace matters.
This should be the standard for anyone screaming at the Palestinian community and their supporters. Palestinians are not the enemy. The evils of White supremacy and Islamophobia, which justify the military occupation and apartheid in Palestine, are.
White supremacy is the original sin of Israel and America (and all other empires built through colonization.) This sin is why when you look at Israel and you look at Palestine, you're afraid to stand with Palestinians because you just aren’t sure they aren’t inherently bad and violent.
I'm also very concerned about the way 9/11 is being evoked, as if what we've seen this week was an undeserved terror attack on blameless Israel. The two dangerous ideas we intensified and solidified in the West as a result of the 9/11 terror attacks was Islamophobia, and the moral superiority and purity of America. White Christian nationalism and Islamophobia is how massacre and war was justified in Iraq and Afghanistan where hundreds of thousands of people were killed, including civilian, uninvolved populations who became collateral damage for the “War on Terror”. Throughout history, the vilification of oppressed people groups has always been used to justify their ethnic cleansing and brutality against them. Looking through the lens of White supremacy and Islamophobia, and the unwillingness to hold an aggressor accountable, is the only way I’m able to draw a connection to 9/11.
Yesterday on Sunday, October 15, 2023, Wadea al-Fayoume, a six-year-old boy who was Palestinian-American was stabbed to death 26 times and his mother seriously wounded by a 71-year-old man who was their landlord. Police in Illinois allege he singled out the victims because of their Islamic faith and as a response to the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
I personally know Muslim mothers in Canada and the U.S. not sending their children to school this week for fear of their safety, and to collectively mourn and protect themselves in the coming days.
The fear and vitriol I've seen in the last week scares me. The trauma and violence to come scares me. Families and people who are Muslim or Arab should not have to live with this fear and reality. We do not have to live like this.
Are you seeing the patterns, the violent thinking and behavior that allows this to happen? This is a history we have not learned from, and we're seeing it in the form of genocide today.
Is it possible to be anti-racist and support people in Israel? Yes, of course. But to support the State of Israel on the backs of the indigenous population of Palestine by way of apartheid that considers Palestinians less than human, will never be just.
So instead of assuming I’m saying “If you support Israel/Israelis/Jews, then you’re absolutely racist”, hear that I’m actually calling us to conscience. I’m asking us to check our privileges and unconscious biases before screaming “WHERE’S YOUR HUMANITY?!” at one of the most vulnerable and oppressed populations in the entire world who also happens to not be White or majority Christian.
Today we have an opportunity to grow in humility, humanity, and anti-racism. Unhooking from the systems and lies of White supremacy is the work of all White people. We will do this the rest of our lives because we were born into power structures that do not harm us because of our skin color, so we have a lot to unlearn.
We have to borrow perspectives and lenses from people who do not look, think, believe, feel, or live like we do. We have to listen and get up close to people who know what a world made for Whiteness is because we can’t see it. It’s the invisible air we breathe. We have to dismantle racist systems and ideas. These systems and ideas are how we got here.
It’s our responsibility to own our complicity and uproot the rot that allows these injustices in our world.
I am not one to do blaming, shaming, and calling out and leave us with no tangible steps forward. I want to create an invitation for us.
Though I've been a part of this conversation for years, I still often am overwhelmed by the enormity of the situation. Though I am grieved, I am not shocked by the violence and aggressive force and attacks on Palestinians, as I've witnessed it on the ground with my own eyes.
Even if we haven’t seen it up close, the loss of life, freedom, and security of millions of people should move us. We shouldn't just watch and point fingers and skim biased headlines (if it even makes the headlines) and settle back into a comfortable routine of react-fizzle-ignore, our manicured brand of performative peacekeeping. We can’t simply say "we’re heartbroken and we strongly condemn any violence". We shouldn’t look away and carry on.
Even when I become afraid we won't see it, I say: may justice roll down. Again and again and again. As I said in my last post: I still have hope because we are not helpless. I still have hope because we can still wake up to our shared humanity.
Take action.
The most important thing we can do today is this: use our privilege in this very moment. Call or email your representatives and senators in Congress. Tell them to stop arming Israel without accountability, tell them you want to see an immediate ceasefire, and tell them to restore humanitarian aid to Gaza. Be sure to tell your reps that you’re a constituent. From there, you can find scripts to help you talk with your representative offices. (Even if you don’t identify as Christian, you can use the Churches for Middle East Peace action scripts to adapt to your beliefs and thoughts. This is purely a resource and good starting place.)
This is how our democracy can work. Americans can demand our government stop bolstering repressive regimes. Please take this critical step.
Here is action you can take. On the website you can also find out who your reps are:
Call on Members of Congress to support ceasefire, restraint, de-escalation of violence and protection of civilian life in Israel/Palestine. Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP) laments the ongoing violence in Gaza and Israel, which began on Saturday, October 7th. CMEP condemns all acts of violence against civilians. It is critical that members of Congress hear from their constituents who support a de-escalation of violence and for restraint from all parties. It is incumbent that Congress not support measures that will only intensify the violence.
The work.
I’ve called us to examine history. I’ve called us to name White supremacy and Islamophobia and dismantle it. I’ve asked you to take action. As a fellow sojourner, I want to offer tools for these realms: our minds, our bodies, our spirits, and our hearts, as we do this important, ongoing work.
Mind.
First, it is okay to take breaks, even from advocating and growing. You can pause to learn, and you can pause to heal. Your health is all of our health. Your well-being is your greatest asset in fighting for change. So, take care. YOU get to be human.
AND your voice is needed. If you’re in a place where you’re ready for more, reading is the gateway into other people’s minds and lives. You get to go inside someone’s story and see what their world is like through their eyes, to walk a mile in their shoes. I have learned so much from books. Here are a few on peacemaking, anti-racism, and the Palestinian perspective that could be your right next step in checking in with you so you can change yourself to change the world.
Writing the Camp, poetry by Yousif M. Qasmiyeh
Before the Next Bomb Drops: Rising Up from Brooklyn to Palestine, poetry by Remi Kanazi
Blood Brothers, by Elias Chacour
Rifqa, poetry from Mohamed El-Kurd
The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East by Sandy Tolan
The Gaza Kitchen: A Palestinian Culinary Journey, a cookbook by Laila El-Haddad
Breakthrough: Transforming Fear Into Compassion - A New Perspective on the Israel-Palestine Conflict by Rich Forer
The First Advent in Palestine: Reversals, Resistance, and the Ongoing Complexity of Hope by Kelley Nikondeha
Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement by Angela Y. Davis
Living Resistance: An Indigenous Vision for Seeking Wholeness Every Day by Kaitlin B. Curtice
Dear White Peacemakers: Dismantling Racism with Grit and Grace by Osheta Moore
Sorry for Your Troubles, poetry by Padraig O’Tuama
Social Justice for the Sensitive Soul: How to Change the World in Quiet Ways by Dorcas Cheng-Tozun
Terraform: Building a Better World by Propaganda
Body.
This feels terrible in your body because it is so terrible. I am having a hard time regulating too, and am in constant tension between wanting to keep up and be in conversation, and check out long enough to catch my breath and find ways to connect with the people right in front of me, face to face. You are allowed to take breaks from the news and social media to collect yourself and synthesize the information you’ve already input so you can embody peacemaking. In fact, you have to.
Last week I went to dinner with my husband and a friend. We went to Phoenician Kabob, my favorite restaurant in Denver, where the Palestinian owner has become a friend. I’ve learned to anticipate him pulling up a chair to host us at his place. Over falafel and toum and Lebanese wine and tales. We catch up like we're old friends with old stories. We talk about home. We talk about grief.
I went to nourish my body with good food, and I am filled up with connection and presence. Giving my body a break from staring at a screen and writing doesn’t mean the work stops. It just changes shape. This is how we live resistance instead of just talk about it in theory.
Spirit.
This one is hard for me as I am vacillating between rage and heartbreak. I have moments of fierce conviction, and others where I am in such disorientation that I can’t get a word out. When the pendulum is swinging out of control, it is “grounding” that brings me back. Rituals help with this. These are the rituals I’ve taped to my desk that I try to follow every day, especially in these unique times:
Light a candle and have coffee by myself. Ask what I need to feel fully safe and resourced today.
Read something good, true, or beautiful. This is usually poetry for me, but could be anything that opens you up.
Get outside and get sun.
Make something and nourish my creative spirit.
Visit the altar. Leave something behind.
Move and breathe.
Honor my soul and soles. Or, whatever parts hurts on you the most.
Get good sleep and plan on delicious coffee and purpose tomorrow.
Heart.
For this one, I will rely on the words of Mark Hecham – teacher, writer, director, actor, and producer. I came across this post recently, and it is the most hopeful thing I’ve seen in days. It gave my soul space to breathe. It gifted me perspective on the pieces of myself I may be missing that are keeping me trapped in unhelpful thoughts or patterns.
He reminds us that the best thing we can do right now to keep us in the work of building a better world – which is to say, to keep us in our humanity – is to DREAM. We cannot turn back time or undo what’s already happened, but we can imagine a world beyond racism, apartheid, and exile for Palestinians.
Maybe, like me, this is the next right thing for you to do to “free yourself”.
Dream with me,
P.S. I’ve turned off comments to this post, but if you have questions for me or would like to get in touch, subscribers can reply directly to this email. If you’re reading on the Substack website or app, you can reach out to me on Instagram.