Resisting the urge to look away from Palestine
Reflections on an American-funded atrocity
[Painting by
]Next week we’ll return to the regular programming of more theoretical essays, but this will open a bit of space for occasional reflection pieces.
You don’t need me for news on Palestine, but maybe some of my own mental grappling on this topic might be useful on a more personal, emotional level.
As I follow the news of Israel’s invasion into Rafah, I’m finding myself more and more at a loss of words. It feels like everything has already been said and analyzed and most of the world has condemned Israel’s onslaught on Gaza, and still the news comes back worse than the day before.
It feels like something stupid like Nikki Haley signing the U.S-made warheads might just be the thing that makes me lose it. I don’t want that.
So, instead of just wincing at the latest horrors, I want to take a step back to reflect a bit on my own journey in learning about this all-important topic, why I find it increasingly challenging to engage with the day-to-day news on an emotional, psychological level, and why I think it’s important to resist the urge look away from Palestine in this moment.
Learning about Palestine
I think one of my first real engagements with the topic of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was at a talk organized by the Students for Justice in Palestine during my undergrad years. They had a Palestinian scholar visit to speak on the history.
Some of my friends from that group later found themselves on the Canary Mission, a blacklist website with ties to an Israeli intelligence agency, designed to target American student activists (especially anyone associated with the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement) and to make it difficult for them to get jobs and have careers.
Around 2014 or so, I came across the incredible award-winning film 5 Broken Cameras (2011), which gives a firsthand, on-the-ground account of the day-to-day for Palestinians living in the West Bank.
You see the encroachments of the Israeli settlers in the West Bank—ongoing construction of high-rises and demolition of the surrounding Palestinian villages, where armored bulldozers would be used to collapse Palestinians’ homes and tear out olive trees by the roots; trees the Palestinians used to live off the land; operations protected and enforced by an occupying military presence in form of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), using force—frequently deadly force—against peaceful protestors from the village; protestors who would even organize with the help of Israeli activists sympathetic with their cause.
The title of the film is a reference to the series of cameras the local videographer goes through in capturing the events shown in the documentary, a series of five cameras broken by things like a smoke grenade launched by the IDF against the protestors.
And as horrific as the situation is in the West Bank, that’s not even the part of Palestine known as an open air prison, Gaza, where the military invasion is currently happening; though to this day we're also constantly getting more news of violent attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank by Israeli settlers, shooting into houses, burning infrastructure, personally intimidating villagers in various ways—the kinds of vigilante violence that’s allowed when a group of people are denied statehood, and thus the basic rights that come with statehood. For that reason, it’s even illegal for Palestinians to collect rainwater.
Around the time I discovered 5 Broken Cameras, I also started reading books by and watching videos of
.Some of Finkelstein’s responses to audience questions will never leave my memory:
“You don’t even listen. You come in here with canned questions.”
Or
I learned about how Finkelstein had been denied tenure at DePaul University as result of a smear campaign by Alan Dershowitz, following Finkelstein’s exposure of fraud in Dershowitz’ book The Case for Israel when the two appeared together for a debate on Democracy Now! in 2003.
And the same year I came across 5 Broken Cameras and Finkelstein’s books and talks, Steven Salaita, a newly hired professor at the University of Illinois, had his opportunity terminated by the university because of tweets he made about Palestinian children being killed in Israeli bombardment.
In grad school, I took a class on the History of the Middle East, where I learned more about the things like the British Balfour Declaration (1917), a key part of the origins of the state of Israel. The Balfour Declaration not only supported the Zionist vision for a Jewish state but also was wrapped up in antisemitic desires on the part of Arthur Balfour, who wished to stop the immigration to Britain of Jews who were escaping murderous antisemitism in other parts of the world.
Given all these insights I’d gained into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, keeping up with the day-to-day news on the topic has been important to me. Democracy Now!’s “War and Peace Report” would regularly bring back news of young Palestinians being routinely killed in peaceful protest by the IDF. Democracy Now! is also where I learned in 2021 that Ireland had become the first country in the European Union to condemn Israel’s ‘de facto annexation’ of Palestine. I would applaud this coming from any country, especially one like Ireland which, in many ways, shares a similar history to that of Palestine, but, having my own Irish ancestry, I felt sort of proud of Ireland on a more personal level. And I’m proud of their recent decision, together with Spain and Netherlands, to recognize Palestine as a state.
However, as an American, pride on this topic is impossible—our tax dollars are transformed into much of the worst war machines the military-industrial-complex can offer, and then handed over to Israel, which uses them to kill stateless Palestinians, a people whose land and livelihood is continuously threatened, undermined, and stolen by Israel.
How far will they go?
Having been following the news on and learning about the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for years now, when Oct. 7 happened, I was horrified by the news, shocked and saddened for the victims and their families and communities—I will always condemn terrorism of all kinds—and I was immediately worried for the Palestinians; worried about the extent of the retaliation that would come from Israel. And yet, it’s been far beyond what I imagined. To this day, we have no indication of from Israel, by its actions or its rhetoric, what that extent will be.
I find myself shocked at how far Israel is willing to go, even as global popular opinion (including within the U.S.) has changed so dramatically in favor of wanting a ceasefire. Now we have civilians cornered and in tents being mercilessly bombed after virtually the entire world has demanded it stop (besides, of course, the Biden administration which continues to enable the whole thing).
Israel and its representatives and supporters maintain an air of righteousness and innocence, lest they admit any fault—as if only then they would be found guilty. It doesn’t work like that. We know it’s genocide, and history will know Israel as one of the most reprehensible states of the modern era.
My heart breaks daily at this news, but I don’t think that I should stop engaging with it.
Images are powerful
Consider the story of Emmett Till, which played an important role in the civil rights movement. We know about Till’s story because his mother allowed for his body to be photographed, insisting on a public funeral and an open casket, to have the kind of impact that his story eventually had.
Images also played an important role in the Vietnam anti-war movement. For example, the photo of a napalmed Vietnamese girl, “The Terror of War” (better known as “Napalm Girl”), and LIFE magazine’s publication of the “Faces of the American Dead in Vietnam: One Week’s Toll, June 1969.”
And the countless videos of the deaths of black men at the hands of cops were part of the origins of the Black Lives Matter movement.
What helps me continue to engage with the news out of Gaza, despite its emotional toll, is knowing that so many others in the world—presumably growing numbers of people—are seeing the same things; there is a sense of humanity, community and hope in our collective objection and opposition to such atrocities. This opposition is best represented by the student protests, a movement that spread across the country and around the world in a flash.
The rapid and widespread growth of the movement, I should add, flies in the face of anyone entertaining silly explanations like that the movement is a result of “paid protestors,” funded by some billionaire or another. As if we needed an explanation for why people would object to mass killings.
Besides, anyone who has ever attended an activist organizing meeting knows that the idea of pre-planning a nation-wide movement is basically a pipe dream; if such massive movements are anything but spontaneous, they are grassroots, social; not the kind of thing some billionaire conspiracy money can achieve. Anyone who thinks otherwise is not serious, IMO.