Thursday 🇵🇸 Reflections

Reflections on Day 237 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:

On the evening of Tuesday May 28th, I saw a video of a charred and decapitated corpse of a baby. Generally, I stay away from graphic videos like this for my sanity. This video, however I could not avoid. I don’t remember if I saw it on tik tok, instagram, twitter, youtube or some other social space on the internet, but I remember immediately closing the app/tab in shock. How are we supposed to make sense of this? The easiest course of action for me is to dive back into my work.

As a history teacher, I have been trained in the inquiry approach. I try to provide my students with historical documents that paint a divergent picture. It is up to students to use the inquiry question and their critical thinking skills to make sense of the documents. Knowing at least some of my students had likely seen the video, I felt like I could not spend the last day of instruction doing a silly activity about extracting chocolate chips from cookies. I also was worried because (as noted last week) teachers across the country are facing repression for telling the truth about what is happening in Palestine. I approached the situation by modifying existing curriculum that aligned to state standards. I created a document set and graphic organizer. All of the students came to a consensus. The same consensus reached by the International Court of Justice back in January: What is happening in Gaza meets the definition of Genocide under Article II of Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

We are going to take a pause in the middle of this reflection to do some inquiry. What questions do you have about what I just wrote? What questions do you have about what is happening in Gaza. After writing these questions down explore the timeline and primary source documents below. See if you can find answers to your questions. Likely you will end up like me with a lot more questions and a lot of grief and rage.

Israel must immediately halt its military offensive and any other action in Rafah which may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part"

(International Court of Justice, pg 13)

These rockets were fired from Rafah, from the area that the Israelis are operating in. And that’s one thing that these rocket teams do, as a statement to Israel [that they don’t have military control over the areas they claim they do]. (Jon Elmer for EI)

For nearly a decade, Israel has been surveilling senior International Criminal Court officials and Palestinian human rights workers as part of a secret operation to thwart the ICC’s probe into alleged war crimes.

(LocalCall & The Guardian)

White House: We don’t want to see a major ground operation. We haven’t seen that at this point.

CBS: How many more charred corpses does he have to see before the president considers change in policy?

White House: I kind of take a little offense to that question… this is not something we’ve turned a blind eye to… [the Israeli’s are] investigating it, so lets let them investigate it.

(CBS News)

All the things you see about the war right now, its actually happening to me. I’m just showing you the 1% of my life. The 1% where I am trying to have fun.

(Medo Halimy on Tik Tok)

We received a signal about the presence of martyrs and wounded at the Abud Saeed crossroads in Tal Al-Sultan, Rafah. Two Palestinian Red Crescent Society ambulances were dispatched to the scene. One of the ambulances was directly targeted. Later we received a signal from the other ambulance, prompting us to head to the location to support them. To our surprise we found the ambulance on fire. My colleague and I attempted to extinguish the fire, but we were heavily targeted by the shooting of the occupation… we were forced to withdraw from the area. Despite the immense difficulty and danger, we managed to evacuate the martyrs.

(Paramedic Ashraf Abu Labda of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society)

As someone who’s had a lifelong commitment to Israel, as the only American president who has ever gone to Israel at a time of war, as someone who just sent the US forces to directly defend Israel when it was attacked by Iran, I ask you to take a step back, think what will happen if this moment is lost. (Genocide Joe)

I think Biden is trying to be the salesperson for the Israeli government as he tries to peddle another version of its proposals that don’t utter clearly, simply, and comprehensively the words “permanent ceasefire”. (Marwan Bishara for Al Jazeera)

Displaced people- incl. children- reportedly killed & injured sheltering in our school, besieged by IDF tanks. Tents of people sheltering at our school reportedly set on fire by IDF.

(UNRWA Twitter)

On Wednesday, rather than attend the pinning ceremony at my teacher education program, I walked out to attend a rally and march outside of the Department of Public Safety protesting the arrest and banning from campus of a pro-palestine student under false pretenses. At the rally a South African professor recounted his experience protesting apartheid in ‘79. I resonated when he told us that “this is your education.” There is more to learn about the world, about power, even about historical thinking skills from marching down your own campus followed and closely watched by tens of private security guards, public safety officials and county sherifs. I have learned more about “culturally relevant education” or “humanizing education” from the People’s University for Palestine still holding space and Medo Halimy on TikTok than a seminar using dirty socks to juggle (yes that happened).

Like a good student, I wrote an email to the instructors explaining why I was leaving early. Both instructors stated appreciation for my “commitments.” Since the start of this genocide, neither instructor has said the word “Palestine” and at one point equated the word “intifada” (or uprising) with a swastika. Despite my utter lack of respect for these instructors (who are the directors of STEP making 6 figure salaries), the focus is not on their complicity. As was mentioned at the rally, we are up against the entire zionist entity.

What I’m Listening to this Week: