Thursday 🇵🇸 Reflections

Reflections on Day 272 of genocide

This week I watched the film “The Night Won’t End: Biden’s War on Gaza” an astounding documentary put together by Al Jazeera’s fault lines team. The film investigates the killings of civilians by the Israeli occupation forces through the story of three families. One of the families profiled tells the story of Hind Rajab.

In February, I have a vivid memory of the DemocracyNow! report on her death. They played the recording of Hind’s older cousin Layan’s call to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society:

LAYAN HAMADEH: [translated] Hello?

RED CRESCENT DISPATCHER: [translated] Hello, dear?

LAYAN HAMADEH: [translated] They are shooting at us.

RED CRESCENT DISPATCHER: [translated] Hello?

LAYAN HAMADEH: [translated] They are shooting at us. The tank is next to me.

RED CRESCENT DISPATCHER: [translated] Are you hiding?

LAYAN HAMADEH: [translated] Yes, in the car. We’re next to the tank.

RED CRESCENT DISPATCHER: [translated] Are you inside the car?

LAYAN HAMADEH: [translated] [screaming]

RED CRESCENT DISPATCHER: [translated] Hello? Hello?

Layan was killed with the rest of her family by fire Israeli tank. Hind was the only survivor. She calls back:

HIND RAJAB: [translated] Come take me. You will come and take me?

RED CRESCENT DISPATCHER: [translated] Do you want me to come and take you?

HIND RAJAB: [translated] I’m so scared. Please come. Please call someone to come and take me.

RED CRESCENT DISPATCHER: [translated] OK, dear, I will come and take you.

(DemocracyNow!)

The Palestinian Red Crescent sent two emergency workers, Yusuf Zeino and Ahmed al-Madhoun on a route pre-communicated and approved with the occupation forces.

We had to wait almost three hours until the green light was given. So they sent a map with the route. Which identified exactly what route the ambulance should take. Once we received the green light the ambulance was dispatched. (Al Jazeera)

As they were driving, the dispatchers on the phone with Hind heard an explosion and lost contact with Zeino and al-Madhoun. On the phone, Hind confirmed that an explosion had taken place. Both Zeino and al-Madhoun were murdered in their ambulance by an Israeli tank. (Al Jazeera)

Two weeks later, after occupation forces withdrew, Hind’s mother and surviving family found Hind and the rest of her families bodies in the car. Forensic analysis by Al Jazeera’s Fault Lines reconstructs in painful detail the scene. It is likely that the occupation forces could have seen from their tank who was in the car. They deliberately chose to shoot hundreds of rounds of heavy machine gun fire into a car with children.

The United States government continues to deny that Israel has committed war crimes and refuses to investigate instead the policy seems to be to let Israel (the same state that banned Al Jazeera and violently represses any speech that doesn’t align with its right wing) investigate itself. In June issued sanctions against ICC who had requested arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials for their war crimes.

I remember my shocked silence listening to Hind and Layan’s last words on the way to Washington High School. I wept this week while bearing witness to the film: The Night Won’t End. This week, reports came out that Hind’s father was just killed in an Israeli attack. The Night truly Won’t End.

Another major news story this week was the first Presidential debate between sitting genocider-in-chief Joe Biden and genocider-aspirationalist Donald Trump. While much of the discourse has surrounded Biden’s poor performance and apparent lack of brainpower, one exchange in particular caught my eyes and ears:

BIDEN: We are the biggest producer of support for Israel of anyone in the world. Hamas cannot be aloud to continue. We continue to send our experts and our intelligence people as to how they can get Hamas…

TRUMP: As far as Israel and Hamas, Israel’s the one that wants to go. He said the only one that wants to keep going is Hamas. Actually Israel is the one. And you should let them go and let them finish the job. He doesn’t want to do it. He’s become like a Palestinian, but they don’t like him because he’s a very bad Palestinian. He’s a weak one.

(Al Jaeera. Jun 27, 2024)

A number of things happen in this very short exchange. First, Biden goes out of his way to affirm his support for the Genocide in Palestine and confirms what we have known for a long time, that the United States is bent on providing the weapons, intelligence and International cover for their genocidal campaign on what their defense minister calls “human animals.” Trump then attacks Biden with what he believes will appeal to his right wing coalition using the word “Palestinian” as a slur/insult.

In stark contrast to the Israeli occupation, the various factions of armed Palestinian Resistance in the Gaza strip have not targeted Israeli medics. Even those tending to soldiers carrying out the genocide (See Jon Elmer’s war coverage on the Electronic Intifada Podcast). Hamas has also changed its political strategy since 2017 to accept a two state solution and clarified that it’s struggle is “against Zionism rather than Judaism or the Jewish people” and a “national liberation rather than a religious conflict.” (MAKAN.org.uk) Hezbollah in the North and the various Yemen fighter factions enforcing a blockade in the Red Sea have both also stated that their actions are in retaliation to the genocide and will stop when Israel ends is genocidal assault. When Trump and Biden make vague charged references to “Hamas” or “Palestinians” they follow the long orientalist tradition of painting those from the middle east as backwards, villain terrorists with no politics or claim to their land. Neither Trump nor Biden can accept a reality where from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean sea all residents can be free with equal rights and opportunities. Both Trump (with his fanatic right wing christian bas) and Biden (a long proud non-jewish zionist) deeply believe in Jewish supremacy from the river to the sea.

Barring sudden death or a dramatic restructuring of the Democratic party, these two men are foaming at the mouth to support a genocide from the (barely) most powerful office in the world. As November approaches, I expect loads of liberal hand wringing about the moral duty of voting, but what are we to to when that avenue of political expression only allows for options that will produce countless more stories like that of Hind?

For those of us who take residence in the core of the empire, and share faith & citizenship with some of the most rabid Pro-Israel and white nationalist fanatics in the world, we need to recognize our own culpability. My four years at Westmont taught me that the distance from well meaning christian to rabid facist evangelical are much closer than we might like to think. We have work to do to unmake and dismantle the ecologies of hate that fester within our own religious tradition. This can involve providing alternative christian spaces for people to unlearn their christian nationalist fervor, and training the next generation of activists who will take on these communities from the inside.

We also need clear eyes to see the present and the courage to think beyond the political structures that got us here in the first place. In a recent webinar entitled “A Political Education Primer: Christian Zionism, BDS, and the Pursuit of a Christ-Centered Response,” Daniel Bannoura, a Palestinian Christian and lecturer at Bethlehem Bible College responded to a question about Biden and Voting:

As a self professed zionist [Biden] is not our savior… he’s not going to change his position. We should not focus on Biden right now. If we want to focus on Biden it should be to make sure that he doesn’t win the elections…

[If he wins] we are telling him he can do this and can win four more years in the white house… if we [push him out of the white house] we signal to the political system that you cannot be a Zionist and win elections. You cannot support Israel and win elections.

So Biden is not the focus. The focus is to get Biden out and focus on politicians who would actually do the work for Palestine in the US.

(FOSNA May 15, 24)

I appreciated Bannoura’s frank response. Politicians are not saviors. They are individuals with political priorities that work within a particular system, and for christians, a Christ-centered response is not limited to the constrained politics of voting.

In April, Columbia students occupied Hamilton Hall and renamed it Hind’s hall. The symbolic move demonstrated what a possible future could look like. One where the marginalized were brought to the center rather than forgotten and the past could actually teach us what it means to be free.

Some are taking up the call and making this future a reality. Recently the Presbyterian Church of the USA, United Methodists and countless others who have made commitments to cut ties with Israeli Apartheid and practices living in Apartheid Free communities. I invite those who are reading this newsletter to divest from a holiday that celebrates a freedom rooted in the oppressive American Empire and invest in solidarity with the oppressed. So that all may be free from every river to every shining sea.

What I’m Reading/Listening to/Watching This Week: