In Support of a Free Palestine
Hello, everyone.
As I type this, the continuous bombardment of Palestinians in their homeland ramps up to a horrifying pitch, supported by the biggest governments of the west spending your tax money, nations who are complicit in their own colonial crimes and have a vested interest in the Palestinian colonial project because they created it and benefit from it.
As I have written on Twitter, so I will restate here: The Unbroken and The Faithless were inspired as much by the Israeli colonial regime as they were by the French, the British, the American, etc. I cannot write the work that I write, these stories about revolution and colonization, and not stand for a free Palestine and their right to human anger and to respond to the atrocities that they’ve borne for over a century.
“How long do they have to be patient on their own soil?” Touraine countered.
Maybe I will lose some of you here. (Maybe I lost some of you before you even opened this newsletter.) Fine, I would normally say. Bye. But this time, if I still have you here, I want to ask—
Why did you come here in the first place? What about my work drew you in? When you read my stories and think on the power dynamics, the romances, what do you see there?
I write quite frankly about the difficult choices the colonized have to make, between revolt and subjugation, violence or death. My stories are fantastical, but in them, I try to look at what solutions we might find to our own problems in the real world. To explore what it might take for the colonizer to take their boot from our neck (because it is our, it is always our).
I will never say that my books mean this or that; I don’t believe fiction works like that, and it’s very reductive. But I do believe that fiction can be an exercise in empathy, if you let it, and an exercise in growth. The things my characters ask each other, the things they ask themselves—these are the same things we should be asking ourselves, too. When I sign a book with “Be the rain” or ask you, “What will you become?” or “Will you give, or will you take?” these aren’t pithy little sayings I thought would sound cool, and they’re more than questions—they’re exhortations, so that when you come to a turning point in your life, you will give them the same kind of thought.
This is one sort of turning point for all of us. So—what will you do? What will you become? How will this moment change you? Will you let it, or will you hide from it? No one is asking for perfect; we’re complicated, struggling beings. We’re selfish and we’re scared more often than not. But you have a chance to put your back against the wheel trying to grind a people out of existence.
“We pray for rain,” Touraine said.
“No.” Jaghotai squeezed Touraine’s arm tightly. “Be the rain.”
If you’re still here with me, the next question is, what can you do?
First, resist the impulse to re-center yourself or make yourself a victim: announcing how overwhelmed you are, or conversely pointing out all you’ve done to further the cause to show that you’re “a good one” and getting disgruntled when your efforts aren’t praised. Avoid “both-sidesing” the genocide. The killings in Israel are in no way comparable to the killings in Palestine, and to insinuate otherwise (“But do you condemn Hamas?!”) is a disingenuous distraction at best and cruel dehumanization at worst.
- Follow Mohammed El-Kurd on Instagram or Twitter. Many Palestinian journalists on the ground are dying under the airstrikes. Follow Mohammed to stay up to date with others to follow.
- If it’s safe for you, go to your local protests. Write to your politicians. In the UK, email your MP. Do your research and make yourself heard. Show the governments that they go against our will. Tell a friend why you support Palestine. Say Palestine.
- There are places to donate: Medical Aid for Palestine, Palestine Children’s Relief Fund. At the moment, as you may have heard, relief trucks are not being let in, so donations are also not reaching people. The situation changes rapidly, though.
- Read up. If you’re new here, start here, Decolonize Palestine 101. For more advanced folks, try the work of Ilan Pappé or other anti-colonial thinkers, like Frantz Fanon. Look up the solidarity the world over between freedom fighters and Palestinians—including Black thinkers like James Baldwin, Angela Davis, and more.
- Jewish Currents, especially this letter from the editor: “We Cannot Cross Until We Carry Each Other”; and another poignant piece at Dissent Magazine: “On Mourning and Statehood”
- Any Palestinian work. Fiction, poetry, films. Hear their words, their stories. Maybe you can start with Minor Detail by Adania Shibli, whose novel was set to win an award that was then cancelled on political grounds by Frankfurt Book Festival.
- Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East by Scott Anderson. Generally, I prioritize on-site voices of the peoples involved, but this is a strong view of how today’s grief was seeded long ago by the colonial powers of western Europe as a convenient way to handle their own antisemitism by betraying their Arab allies. It’ll also give you context for why the western media is, on the whole, so untrustworthy about this subject
Finally, be aware of your assumptions of how Jewish people are involved in this conflict. Though Zionists will say they are the same, don’t fall into the trap of conflating Jewish people and Judaism with Zionism, which is the colonial practice. Many Jewish people are leading the charge alongside Palestinians. Keep an eye out for right-wing fuckers (who actually tend to hate Jews and Arabs and Muslims), and keep them from clambering on the movement only to sabotage it from the inside by being truly antisemitic. Protect each other from the anti-islamic and antisemitic fervor that’s already rising. We’re only as safe as we keep each other.
Stay safe and stay sharp.
Cherae