"It needs to be repeated that this is the first genocide that has happened on our phones. It needs to be repeated that we are capable of watching something for two years without seeing it. It needs to be repeated that even when we have dimly registered the scale of destruction in Gaza, we have not been able to stop it with protests or with boycotts or with letters to the government. We will continue to protest and to boycott and to send letters to the government. It needs to be repeated that an entire population is on the brink of starvation and we know this but can't get the food past the blockade. It needs to be repeated that our country is deeply implicated in the destruction of Gaza and this weighs on everyone's psyche, especially because it is so often denied, especially because history is repeating itself."...undesignated author
Just this morning, in speaking with my friend about Palestine, the topic of insufficient words came up. She said, "How is it possible to not hear the ripple of screams? They are heard throughout the world." I am not minimizing our relationship with this endless Palestinian struggle: we are constantly, repeatedly, making our best attempt to end this gut-wrenching suffering, this constant barrage of humiliation that has been perpetrated against the Palestinian people. But we are here in our protected - for now - part of the world, many of us because of the skin we were born in. Our determination to use our privilege for the change of world policy is rooted in solidarity. Our repetition, however creative and determined, has grown insufficient.
"We need new words. The scale of it, the cheek of it...brazen, scandalous, outrageous, immoral... the words scatter to the ground and smash. They fall pathetically short.
"There is a violent disregard for Palestinian life that is ideologically underpinned; but always changing, always "improving" its methods, gathering technological and geopolitical impetus while the victim remains locked in the cruel experiment and has no right of reply."
....Max Porter, 11/20/24 - "Edward Said & The Question of Palestine," Palestine Festival of Literature
Much as we demand the right for Palestine to live, its people to breathe free, its children to be joyful in learning and in play, I believe we are among a minority who have deliberately NOT turned away from the enormity of this destruction and tragic loss. We have allowed ourselves to have our own hearts burst with the murderous acts of the IDF and the deaf ears and hollow hearts of our government's policies. (Honestly, it should be becoming clearer to all that the two are inseparable). We have not turned away.
Max Porter describes the devastation of Palestine as "psychopathic violence, not merely a savagely disproportionate response". We hear it in the crassly racial insults of settler occupiers and their defenders, the IOF. How many more will commit the act of "un-aliving" the defenseless before turning their hatred on themselves?
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"We will spend the night under this tree on the corner by the gate if we have to. We can never be made to leave this land. It is our home." - Jerusalem tour guide
"The task for the Palestinian people is to assure its presence on the land. There is no other acceptable alternative." - Edward Said
For us, everything we do, speak, write and see brings us to Palestine and its people.
As words fail us, evermore does our solidarity endure.
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