Thursday 🇵🇸 Reflections

Reflections on Day 251 of genocide

The colonial condom is full of holes and ‘Israel’ is pregnant with a Palestine reborn. When the soldiers leave, the settlers have to leave also, it’s a total failure of colonization. This is not a strategic retreat, it’s strategic defeat. This is not a solution, just dissolution. But it’s all ‘Israel’ can do. They’ve lost control of the north…

It has been nine months of genocide.

In the time it takes for one life to develop, Israel extinguished more than 37,202. If hope is a discipline, I want to pause and share voices I have heard this week that engage in the imaginative discipline of hope. Thinkers who can vision the birth of a new reality.

Earlier in the week, I posted to my Instagram story a claim that turned out to be false. As the occupying forces murdered 274 Palestinians and 3 Israeli captives in an operation to recover 4 other Israeli captives in the Nuseirat refugee camp massacre, a video appeared to show the occupation forces using the US built pier for the Israeli army. I reposted the video claiming that the Israeli occupation army was using the US built humanitarian pier for military purposes. While it appears that my specific claim is false, the Israelis did use civilian vehicles and food trucks to provide cover for its military incursion (a crime under international law).

The image of the IOF landing military helicopters right next to a US built “humanitarian” pier provides viral spectacularity, the banal reality of US involvement in the genocide is less spectacular but far more disturbing. As Jon Elmer of the Electronic Intifada states, its unlikely that the pier was used but “its clear the pier area …was used for the operation.” because the occupation forces have already killed every person, plant and animal to create the “Netzarim corridor.” This road is the primary way that the occupation has conducted the ground war and effectively divides Gazans in the north and south. If the US was sending ground troops they would invade through that corridor. Even if US forces did not participate on the ground in the Nuseirat, they certainly provided intelligence. The US works with the Israelis “round the clock” in “probably the largest intelligence operation ever.” (EI) The US flies as many as 6 MQ-9 Reaper drones at the cost of $3,500 an hour over Gaza 24/7 providing “intelligence.” Intelligence is a euphemism, these $32 million drones manufactured by Southern California-based General Atomics Aeronautical Systems can identify individuals on the ground and the “intelligence” gathered by them was used to murder at least 64 displaced children at point blank range.

We (in the imperial core) provide the intelligence, the weapons, cover in the international system, and the theological justification for the ongoing genocide. We are the oppressor.

So you may be asking yourself, where is the hope? I thought you were talking about hope this week?

I think there is hope in correction. Correcting the record so that the truth can be seen and we can honestly face the current reality. A couple weeks ago at the Christ at the Checkpoint conference, Ugandan Bishop Zac Niringiye spoke on repentance from colonial Christianity. Repentance involves “turning away” from protecting theology and politics of empire and “turning towards” love, justice and dignity.

Looking back may provide an image of this repentance. In the mid 80’s a group of feminist theologians from the United States went on a series of solidarity trips to revolutionary Nicaragua as part of the Amanecida Collective. The book “Revolutionary Forgiveness: Feminist Reflections on Nicaragua” is a record of their conversations and reflections. Upon returning to the United States, they wondered what their role in the revolutionary struggle was from the imperial core, they write:

Liberation theology speaks of something we experienced in Nicaragua and have seen in our country: oppression ravages the oppressor. The victimizer is also victim. Liberation theology teaches forgiveness of the victimizer. The oppressor, as sinner, stands in need of forgiveness by the oppressed. In Nicaragua, we came to understand that one of our responsibilities in the struggle in the United States is to continue a process begun in us—we must work from our positions of solidarity with the oppressed to convert the oppressor.

As victimizers we live in that web of lies we have repeatedly named in this book. As we resist the destructive policies of the United States, convert to solidarity with the oppressed, and give up some of those illusions and lies, we shall become more fully present members of a world community. We stand to gain peace and opportunities for cross-cultural enrichment as we listen, believe, and respond to others’ perspectives. We stand to gain an abundant life—not an over consumptive life—for all. We shall gain hope.

(pg. 123)

Another image of this kind of thick solidarity can be found in the short film Returning to Zarnouqa. The film tells the story of Haidar Eid who was expelled from Zarnouqa in 1948 as Israel seized 78% of historic Palestine. It follows a conversation between Haidar and his comrade Neta Golan, an Israeli anti-Zionist, as she visits occupied Zarnouqa on his behalf and sends him video. Near the end of the film we hear the exchange:

Golan: I don’t know how you manage to, you know, always from the darkest place… to always give me hope and give us hope… that we have to keep going and we have to keep fighting because this injustice will come to an end.

Eid: We will be equal citizens in a secular democratic state very soon Neta… Inshallah (God Willing)

There is hope because there is struggle. From the struggle a new world is being born. As Robin D.G. Kelley describes on The End of Sport Podcast, student encampments are demonstrating what a new world could look like. One where education is liberated, where meals and healthcare are free, and a commitment to a free Palestine sets all of us free.

What I’m Reading/Listening to this week: