Reflections on Day 229 of genocide
Hello Friends and Family,
On Thursdays I am fasting and using the money from lunch and the time gained to reflect and write to you, donate to UNRWA (still defunded by the US) and pray with Sabeel’s wave of prayer. Below is this week’s reflection:
Using only your brain, define the word “terrorism”
This was the warm up for the second to last history class of the year. Students brought their individual definitions and came to a consensus as a group. Across the class, definitions of “terrorism” generally followed the same pattern:
some [person/group] inflicting [violence/destruction/harm] against another [population/nation/group]
Next, students read through four real situations with the names of countries and populations fictionalized and decided if each situation met their definition of terrorism. At the end of the activity it was revealed that 2 of the 4 situations were actions that Israel has taken against Palestinians. One was an example of Israeli soldiers in Gaza in 2001 and the other was the actions of Israel in the siege of Sabra and Shatila in Jordan, 1982. Students agreed across the board that the actions of Israelis constituted “terrorism.” This modified Zinn education lesson was designed to challenge the prevailing racist definitions of “terrorism” that have become hegemonic in the United States. It was encouraging for me to see that my students are not as brainwashed by the so-called “war on terror” as many in our government are.
However, as the genocide in Gaza stretches into its 229th day, I am concerned that my teaching (both in the classroom and through this newsletter), on the situation in Palestine falls into the trap of the perfect victim. Early in my Curriculum and Instruction in History/Social Science course, we had a conversation about teaching anti-colonial struggles. As someone raised in a pacifist tradition, with the privilege of growing up in the eye of the storm that is the center of American Empire, I can get skittish taking about violent anti-imperial struggle. I have no qualms teaching about indigenous resistance to the Genocide in California anti-imperial struggles in India, China and the Pacific. It is easier for me to talk/reflect on/celebrate/teach about anti-colonial struggles in the past. Perhaps because it lets me off the hook in the present.
“Do you condemn Hamas?”
The question is so often asked that it became a meme. But the subtext of the question is real. It’s a litmus test to check your imperial alliances and then immediately discredit you, fire you from you job, add you to a national “security” watchlist if the answer was anything but no. The real question is: “Do you condemn armed resistance to imperial power?”
As has been covered elsewhere, mainstream media in the United States basically serves as a bullhorn for the IOF (Israeli Offensive Forces) propaganda machine. What they don’t tell you, is that Israel is loosing the war, and has been for months. They cannot achieve their military objectives nor hold territory they claim to have cleared. There are journalists like Jon Elmer for EI and others making Qassam Brigade (Military wing of Hamas) and other resistance fighter reports available to an American audience, but by and large the information that makes its way to the majority of this newsletters audience falls into Orientalist tropes.1 Either Palestinians are the ever suffering minority group, worthy of our pity and charity or they are barbarous and genocidal monsters. Both stereotypes obscure reality and uphold empire.
When you see a young man wearing a gopro run up to an Israeli tank and stick a bomb into the weak spot of a 10 million dollar tank its impossible not to feel deep fear and deep admiration. It also makes it crystal clear what is happening on the ground in Palestine. An occupying force with nukes backed by the largest military in the world is loosing a war against a guerilla indigenous force. The clear objective of the IOF is to destroy Gaza and the people in it. Soldiers chant “tear down Rafah” and members of Israel’s security cabinet state: “[T]here are no half measures. Rafah, Deir al-Balah, Nuseirat — total annihilation. ‘You shall blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven’ — there’s no place under heaven.” (ICJ 5/16/24, Pg 22) Who are we, those whose taxes, investments, and military enable that genocidal intent to be come reality, to condemn resistance to genocide.
Though the question of condemnation is so ludicrous it should be a joke, its consequences are unfortunately very real. This week, I have learned of teacher colleagues from both coasts who have experienced direct repression from their administrations for taking the smallest step to awknolege Palestinian humanity. In one instance, a teacher is being asked to justify why they have a 4 inch by 4 inch picture of Dr. Refaat Alareer, a world renound Palestinian poet murdered in an Israeli airstrike, up in their classroom.
If I must die,
you must live
to tell my story
to sell my things
to buy a piece of cloth
and some strings,
(make it white with a long tail)
so that a child, somewhere in Gaza
while looking heaven in the eye
awaiting his dad who left in a blaze–
and bid no one farewell
not even to his flesh
not even to himself–
sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above
and thinks for a moment an angel is there
bringing back love
If I must die
let it bring hope
let it be a tale
- Dr. Refaat Alareer 5 weeks before being killed in an Israeli Airstrike
Why then is such a small image, a memorial to a martyr, in the corner of a history classroom so disruptive? Perhaps it is because of the orientalist Gaze, the racist lie that Palestinians must roll over and be perfect victims or else are barbarous fighters. Or perhaps the imperial core feels threatened. Their proxy, their last standing colonial fetish, in the middle east is loosing a war to indigenous resistance. Perhaps they believe the sign featured by a protester blocking the 101 freeway on my desktop wallpaper, that a “Victory for Palestine is a victory for indigenous people around the world.”
