Why I Was Loud About Palestine
In 2023 many people dropped into my DMs to ask me why I was so loud about Palestine and the genocide in Gaza when it was happening on the other side of the world and had "nothing" to do with me. They told me there were dozens of causes I could be spending my time talking about and insinuated that I had chosen this one because I was hopping on some sort of "liberal bandwagon fad." Less than three years later, and the reasons for my outspokenness are louder and clearer than ever on our own American streets as armed national guard troops continue to patrol my own D.C. neighborhoods, as ICE kidnaps and murders people, citizens and non-citizens alike in Minneapolis, and Black journalists are arrested for covering the resulting protests.
I was loud about Paletsine for three reasons:
1) I visited Jerusalem/Occupied Palestine in 2022, at the time completely oblivious about the true history of the nakba and the apartheid as many Americans are. On the surface, things looked polite and functioning in spite of the dozens of armed IDF soldiers patrolling (eerily familiar to DC today) but I could feel the moral fracture that showed up as chronic tension in the air and as anxiety in my body that I did not understand. After meeting a Palestinian street artist in Jordan, I was compelled to dive deep into the history through books by Palestinian and humanitarian authors and slowly, everything I felt began to make sense.
2) Genocide is not a single issue. It is every single issue in the world. If our government (whether democrat or republican) is willing to support genocide, that should tell you everything you need to know about its priorities and its willingness to overlook the subjugation and murder of entire groups of people to further its own agenda. This should be terrifying for all of us non-billionaires who are citizens of said government. We have already seen escalations in the systemic oppression of people of color, immigrants, gay, lesbian, and trans people, women, and disabled people among others by the same government that refuses to acknowledge a genocide that benefits it (through military proxy and oil reserves specifically).
3) Unlike other genocides and atrocities occurring in places like Sudan, Iraq, or Myanmar, BILLIONS of our tax dollars that could go towards better healthcare or affordable housing directly support the IDF. "The U.S.-funded Israeli military has dropped the equivalent of nearly seven Hiroshima atomic bombs on Gaza, accelerating climate collapse for the whole world."(https://www.notmytaxdollars.org/) Additionally, U.S. police and ICE have trained with the Israeli military since the early 2000's where they've learned to mimic the paramilitary tactics, use of lethal force, military technology, mass surveillance, and racial profiling tools that Israel has used against Palestinians for decades. (https://deadlyexchange.org/) These are the same tactics that we are now seeing being deployed against American protesters and citizens including Renee Nicole Good, Alex Pretti, and Keith Porter, as well as the many immigrants who have been executed directly on the street or indirectly in modern day concentration camps including Luis Gustavo Núñez Cáceres, Geraldo Lunas Campos, Víctor Manuel Díaz, Luis Beltrán Yáñez–Cruz, Parady La, Heber Sánchez Domínguez, and Silverio Villegas Gonza'lez. The fact these people were not U.S. citizens should not make a difference. Jews in Nazi Germany were technically illegal and stripped of their citizenship. Slavery was once legal. Legality has nothing to do with morality or ethics. And so, sadly, we are seeing how our collective lack of condemning the genocide in Palestine has contributed to our own subjugation by an authoritarian administration.
After talking and posting non-stop about Palestine for over a year, hoping to raise an awareness that felt far more important and "yogic" then my wellness tips, and finding that people were largely uninterested in what I had to say, I finally stopped using social media regularly. And it was, without a doubt, the right decision. Making a post every day allowed me to feel like I was doing enough while also being paralyzed by the onslaught of information, and doom scrolling when I could have been doing more. Instead, I began to read more books, I went to more protests, I spent less time buying from big corporations and more time thrifting the things I needed. Isn't it interesting that the same companies that support and fund ICE are primarily the very same that support the destruction in Gaza? It is not too late, and we have much more power to disrupt these systems of oppression through the way we spend our attention and our money then we are led to believe. So, I hope you'll join me in taking some imperfect action today and every day after. A resistance lifestyle can be joyful. It is an adjustment that can be uncomfortable sure, but consuming less, sharing with friends and neighbors more, feeling solidarity with people who look, talk, and live differently from you and your family, and feeling connected to the environment because we are stewards for the planet through our daily choices -- these are all wonderful, nourishing results to be experienced. All liberation is interconnected.
