NOTE: I am not the person you should be reading/learning from about what’s going on in Palestine. AND i have big feelings and big thoughts and I wanted to write them down to work through them. AND i don’t have an editor for this sweet little newsletter, so you know…keep that in mind.
in everyday conversations about settler colonialism, I think we often think there are two parties: settlers and those whose land has been settled/the colonized person. I am positive i’m not the first person to say this is too simplistic. refugees challenge this. and in my case, enslaved people brought from other countries and their descendants challenge this. I often feel so unsettled by this reality: i am not a settler nor am i indigenous to this land. in a perfect world, i would not exist. or, the me that would exist is a person wholly unimaginable to me, a person who can only trace their family history as far as two plantations in the carolinas.
but as a descendant of black people illegally brought here by settlers, i and my struggles will always on the side of those whose land is occupied, those who had their homes and lands and histories wiped out. all of them too, not just the non-violent ones. oppression is violent, and to resist it, violence is very often necessary. every day on turtle island and in palestine, indigenous people are relegated to small, under-resourced spaces, given subpar educational opportunities, medical care, short life expectancy, over-represented in prison populations. this is violent, even if life goes on all around it. especially so. it is violent to have music festivals outside of an apartheid fence, to play concerts in cities where police are killing people to build cop training cities. we are desensitized to it, we can wake up and make our coffee and feed our dependents and complain that the train is $2.90 and go about our buys lives within the violence, but that does not mean we live peacefully. that does not mean peace has ever been achieved. my and your comfort are not indicators of peace.
because this lack of peace harms and kills people every day, not just when the oppressed rise up and it makes the news. i blame the state and its violencce for every person who is faced with the threat of sexual violence—ESPECIALLY the ones not “important” enough to have videos of that violence plastered online. settler colonialism kills people every day—with police and military, by denying education and healthcare, by destroying people’s hope of a future—and will continue to until we destroy the state. every person who dies a violent death in a settler colonialist state dies because of the state, and those who side with it. i mourn their deaths and blame the nations which make violence the only option for change. oppressed people need to be free. it is deep inside all of us to resist. and i must support all peoples who free themselves and their people by any means necessary,
on simchat torah, jews around the world danced with sacred scrolls and shout “hoshiana!”—save us; i do not know what the rabbis who composed these desperate prayers needed saving from, but i can guess. save us from uncertainty, save us from our oppressors, save us from our fears, save us from ourselves.
When i carried and danced with four different torahs on sunday, one a holocaust survivor, i prayed that we might collectively be saved from this twisted belief that a nation, any nation, will save us. i prayed to be saved from the fear of the other, from a theology of choseness that hasn’t grown or learned from the mistakes of our ancestors. to be saved from a belief that we are better, more worthy of empathy, of support.
it is not the fault of palestinians that their oppressors are jewish. it is their right to resist, by any means necessary. it is their right to take back their lands, to return to their homes. and we, as jews, i think, must beg and plead to be in right relationship to the land we call sacred and all the people who love it and live on it. we cannot save ourselves by mimicking our oppressors. we need to be saved from ourselves.
as long as there is a jewish state i will speak out against it, just as i do with the united states. i will resist the jewish state’s role in our liturgy and jewish education and culture. i will resist being taught that it is necessary, and deserving of support. people deserve support. land deserves support. the state is a fiction and it does not serve us. we are an ancient people who have survived because of our commitment to each other and our traditions. we are more than a state. we can mourn the people lost because of the sins of believing in a state, but we must also demand its death. it is the only way to be saved.
today and everyday, i will uplift palestinian voices and struggles. i will center their hopes and dreams, i will support them. land back, from the river to the sea.
some palestinian voices i’m listening to
sonia sulaiman’s "#readpalestinianspecfic reading list (a favorite: bc resisting oppression is more than anything, hopeful)
palestinian feminist collective
PFC is co-hosting a class with hurban cura on “Olives & History Through a Palestinian Indigenous Framework” on October 25th
palestine will be free. may all nation states end speedily and in our days.