These offerings and musings are currently taking place on the ancestral, traditional, and stolen lands of the Seminole, Miccosukee, and Tequesta First Nations. These lands known as Miami.
These are stolen lands built by stolen people
A Radical Black Feminist Humanist Plea
“Unless one lives and loves in the trenches, it is difficult to remember that the war against dehumanization is ceaseless.” -Audre Lorde
Part I. Introduction
COVID-19 and climate change continue to echo the teachings of history that our fates as Earthlings on this floating rock are inextricably linked. What happens in Wuhan, China will impact every citizen. Western empires’ decisions that allowed them to become “first-world economies” and the consumer habits of the citizens in those countries have material effects on the flora, fauna, and all people across the globe. We are global citizens; therefore, we cannot look away from the facts of the horrors and atrocities we are collectively witnessing. Therefore, regarding The Middle East, we cannot continue excusing our inaction by perpetuating the idea that we do not know enough to speak up. Being human is a group project. As such, we must participate–we must care, and we must talk about Israel and Palestine.
In this essay, my goals as a feminist public scholar are the following:
To meaningfully apply my scholarship and my writing in service to my activism, which includes helping people who would be described as being on the political Left in the United States to read more carefully through this moment and to think more critically and capaciously about justice issues. My intent is for us to address the severe fractures and ideological fissures that can make us lose sight of one another’s humanities, which in turn can result in threatening our already tenuous coalitions.
To remind us all that anti-racism and feminism require that we be transnational and that we must have a critique of settler colonialism, oppression, and domination both at home and abroad.
To remind us all that Black feminism teaches us that systems of oppression and domination are interlocking. A world that co-signs without impunity the killing of Arabs, Palestinians, Jewish, and Christian people in this region is not a world that can be trusted to truly keep Jewish people across the diaspora or any other people who are not white Anglo, Saxon, and Protestant safe, secure, and alive!
To emphasize that if we genuinely want liberation for the Palestinian people and want to help prolong their lives and secure their survival, then that requires that we stay in critical dialogue with one another. A more peaceful, just, and equitable world requires that individuals, groups, societies, and nation-states become more adept at conflict resolution, dialogue, and collective problem-solving. Peace in this region of the world will require us in the United States as The State of Israel's biggest financial backer to become better at holding multiple truths and narratives while expanding our moral compass to all those impacted by this protracted struggle.
Finally, to invite us all to resist the impulse to fall into extremism in our politics. We should have values and ethics that are non-negotiable, including that all human beings, by virtue of being alive, are worthy and valuable. In the words of the prison abolitionist and Geographer Dr. Ruth Wilson Gilmore, “where life is precious, life is precious.” I want to caution us to refuse to become like our oppressors. We owe it to ourselves and the people who are our co-strugglers to resist the master’s tools, ideologies, and logic. We owe it to ourselves and others to embrace a radical Black feminist, humanist perspective, which promises and delivers liberation for all.
Intellectual Guideposts:
Disclosures and what will be informing my sociopolitical choices, framing, and language:
I stand for the liberation of the Palestinian people and believe in their right to self-determination. I have for over a decade. I arrived at this through Black feminist thinkers such as Angela Y. Davis and through being in a community with Jewish Leftists. I want, and I am calling for, a cease-fire that is attached to political strategies that will broker peace talks and move toward a solution that codifies the equality of both Palestine and Israel. And the return of the Israeli hostages, as well as the release of Palestinian prisoners, especially the children. If our goal is to prolong Palestinian life and end this ethnic cleansing and mass displacement, a humanitarian cease-fire is not enough.
As a practitioner of social justice, for as long as I have been sociopolitically aware, I have been unapologetic in my support of Jewish people, and I have been doing the necessary work as a non-Jewish person to be vigilant of anti-semitism within myself, those around me, and the world at large. And I am putting in that same work as it concerns anti-Arab hate and Islamophobia. I do make the distinction between The Israeli State and the citizens of Israel and The Israeli State with the Jewish identity, which you will note in this essay. It is possible to critique the Israeli state without trafficking and colluding in anti-Semitism. In fact, it is necessary.
I am also against all (theocratic) ethno-nationalist projects, no matter the actor’s race, ethnicity, religion, or land mass. This includes Hindu nationalism found in India being weaponized against their Muslim population, Burma’s mistreatment of Rohingya people, The Dominican Republic’s tactics against the Haitian people both within their borders and in Haiti, and the enduring ethnic conflicts in Congo and elsewhere.
I also make the distinction between Palestinians and Hamas. I do condemn the actions of Hamas fighters that have contributed to an extreme escalation of the premature death of Palestinian civilians. All 2.3 million Gazans are not part of the Hamas armed militia group and should not be treated as such. The actions on October 7th, 2023, have put Palestinians at risk of prolonged international state-sanctioned violence by Israel, which is co-signed by its allies. At the time of this writing, over 15,500 Palestinians have died. I also condemn the collective punishment and bombings that the State of Israel is inflicting against Palestinian civilians that are further dispossessing and displacing the Palestinian people. No government should have the right to purposely endanger its citizens or the citizens of its perceived enemy and turn citizens into political pawns and urban squares into military playgrounds. That kind of strategy is dangerous, and civilians, more so than soldiers on either side, lose in these high-stakes political bets.
The Palestinian people have tried everything. The actions of Hamas have a context and should be talked about and understood within that context. The state of Israel has killed peaceful protestors in Palestine and has criminalized boycott divestment movements around the globe. Contextualizing does not excuse or justify their actions, but it does explain why this resistance group exists and provides insight into why Hamas took the actions they did on October 7th, 2023. Terrorism and terrorist acts are not like dandelions; they are not organically and naturally found in an ecosystem. Terrorism is created and stoked from an ecosystem where peace has not been made possible or cultivated. Occupation, statelessness, militarism, racism, and anti-Arab sentiments engender violence.
People who are domain experts in Israel and Palestine have described the actions that Israel is taking against the Gazans as ethnic cleansing and war crimes. In this essay, I will also refer to Israel as an apartheid state as it has been deemed so by Amnesty International.
Part II. Online Performances and The Politics of The Digitized Self
As someone who thinks deeply about language and the cultural strategies needed to raise consciousness and make meaningful societal interventions, how and where one makes statements matters. These are dystopian times that are starting to resemble McCarthyism. One can go on the platform X, formerly Twitter, and make a pro-Israel post, but there is a high likelihood that said post might appear alongside misinformation and disinformation about the current war, and it would be sandwiched in between other posts that are hate speech against Jewish people. Since Elon Musk bought Twitter, the site no longer has a security team, no one is moderating, and it has been allowing anti-Semitism to run rampant. As much as I love and believe in online activism, public statements, and social justice manifestos, there are limits to what is possible on these sites owned and ruled by people who do not share a love for democracy or social justice.
For me, this moment in the Middle East is not an infographic moment, IG carousel moment, or text-based response constrained by the arbitrary word limit set by the technocrat who owns whichever social media platform you are on. Nor did I want to go on TikTok and make a commentary video to satisfy the rapacious digital need that now feels obligatory to feed that demands we all say something quickly and publicly as proof we are safe people. But humans as a species are not safe.
We are a species that commits genocide against each other, drops nuclear bombs on each other, enslaves each other, thingify and marginalizes each other, and creates open-air prisons for each other, all based on superficial differences rooted in eugenics. It doesn’t matter how much you read the right books, go to therapy, or meditate; there is nothing any human can do that will forever neutralize or remove the threat that lives inside of us all that makes us capable of committing heinous acts against each other or makes us remain silent and rationalize the heinous acts we see others committing. Humans are not safe, not to ourselves, each other, animals, or the planet, and that is a truth we must acknowledge and fight against this impulse and seek not to feed this impulse.
Part III. Civic Spiritual Practice
The white fathers told us: I think therefore I am. The Black mother within each of us – the poet – whispers in our dreams; I feel, therefore, I can be free. -Audre Lorde
Black feminism, as I have come to define my engagement with it, is my civic spiritual practice. Black feminism informs how I do citizenship and show up in the public square as a global citizen with a transnational, anti-racist, and decolonial lens.
Feminism teaches us that the personal is political, and building upon this idea, Black feminism has taught me that the spiritual is also political. And spiritual is not a title only designated to that which is only found in religion. My engagement with social justice, anti-racism, gender liberation, abolition, and transformative justice is rooted in a deep-abiding sociopolitical love for justice and all globally oppressed people. My Black feminist practice undergirds that love, which is spiritual to me. Theory can be healing and life-affirming to the Black psyche and body what better news is there than to engage with a theory that confirms what your soul already knows, which is that there is nothing wrong with being Black. The issue is white supremacy, settler colonialism, and neocolonialism, which are pathological nihilistic projects that seek to subjugate all who fall out of the narrow confines of what whiteness considers to be human and a proper rational subject. This sociopolitical love was first ignited in me when I was introduced to the Palestinian Jew Jesus as a little girl in my Baptist Church.
As a recovering theist who does not attend church anymore and who has given up religion for something much more non-binary, like spirituality, there are four tenets that I have identified as central to Black feminism being my civic spiritual practice:
Reclaiming theory of the flesh - There is genius, wisdom, and advanced technologies and modes of knowing found at the margins among Black women and Black gender-expansive people informed by our lived experiences.
Refusal and fugitivity - It is divine, holy, and spiritually necessary for one to steal themselves back from anti-Blackness, the afterlife of slavery, and ongoing colonialism. We must refuse our own psychic and physical deaths by any means.
The spiritual is political, and the political is spiritual - It takes far more than pure brute strength, intelligence, or money to survive anti-Blackness. Theory can be healing. Working towards one’s individual and collective liberation can be life-affirming and sustaining. Survival is the goal. Only when our healing is grounded in a sociopolitical context and, conversely, when we stop engaging our politics coldly and clinically does it have the potential not just to change us but also transform us and our relationships so that we transform the world around us.
Honoring differences - As Lordeians, we must never forget that Audre Lorde urges us not to make new hierarchies out of our differences. To make, grow, and cultivate our solidarities, we must respect our differences while abolishing and transcending the mythical borders erected when we believe more in our differences than the radical potential for comradeship between and among us. We must resist the urge to hierarchize and further concretize supremacist culture and modes of being.
(I write more about my theory in my dissertation)
Part IV. It’s Complicated
Whenever Palestine and Israel are mentioned among the political Left (centrist, Liberals, Progressives, Leftists, Democratic Socialists), the immediate rhetorical response that follows is, “It’s too complicated.” This response keeps people in their bubbles of misinformation silos of supremacist thinking and keeps them parroting imperialist talking points that do not properly historicize the situation. These talking points are also often filled with inaccuracies that do not properly contextualize Israel and its ongoing role in the occupation and dispossession of the Palestinian people. Saying it is “too complicated” is also an interesting strain of anti-intellectualism that I observe as happening among the political Left. Undoubtedly, we who vote with the Democratic Party are known as the party with a high concentration of college-educated people and intellectuals, both informal and formal. However, when we mention Israel and Palestine, many people resign themselves to not knowing enough, implying, therefore, they cannot take an ideological stance. I think this is an implicit form of anti-intellectualism disguising itself as erudite. It’s a form of high-level, covert resistance to exposing yourself to an idea that may threaten to undo your worldview or being afraid to defend your ideas, a rhetorical device the Right employs often. Meanwhile, Arab Americans and Palestinian Americans are part of our coalitions and our communities. We are ignoring them by refusing even intellectually to engage in this crisis from a point of view that does not privilege the dominant narrative.
In this critical moment that feels this dire, when all of the infrastructure in Gaza is collapsing, we can no longer get away with being Progressive on all things except Palestine.
Did our ability to Google or read books suddenly escape us? In the same way, you were not expected to be a scholar of race or Black Studies to get curious about why the police keep killing unarmed Black people during the start of #BLM or the summer of 2020. As people living in the United States who are not Israeli and who are not Palestinian, we must be a little curious about why there has yet to be a solution to peace as it concerns Palestine and Israel. But there have always been periodic bombings and airstrikes. Surely, we do not think Israel’s tactic of “mowing the grass” and indiscriminately bombing Gaza is a long-term sustainable solution that will bring forth long-term safety for Israeli citizens.
So, let’s begin with a list of things that are not complicated:
Dehumanizing and discriminating against people based on the color of their skin, ethnicity, and religion.
Living in an apartheid state.
Being the government that imposes an apartheid state.
Occupying a group of people and making them refugees within their homelands.
Being the only “democracy” in the Middle East yet refusing to embrace pluralism and moving increasingly towards right-wing politics and embracing religious conservatism while rejecting Liberalism and using any means necessary to establish and maintain a theocratic ethno-state.
Weaponizing social justice language, ideology, and aspects of one’s oppressed identity and status to construct rhetorical verbal, moral, and intellectual booby traps w which makes it impossible for others outside of your oppressed group to be critical of your actions for fear of being labeled a bigot, punished, or worse.
The very conception of the nation-state and its borders is an inherently violent construction rooted in a settler colonialistic impulse, exclusion, and othering. Borders are violent. Borders are unnatural. Borders are disruptive. Nation-states will engage in any level of depraved acts of violence to secure their borders and maintain sovereignty. To be clear, all nation-states act and move in this way.
What is complicated? (not an exhaustive list):
The historical ancestral trauma that Jewish people, who are only 0.2% of the population, carry in their DNA from the Holocaust and the visceral somatic fear that Jewish people live with that tells them at any moment, the world will turn on them again try to eradicate them, and they will be without allies or home to run to keep safe from a second Holocaust.
Perhaps because of this deeply ingrained trauma, many Jewish people are unwilling to distinguish any legitimate critique of Israel and filter all critiques of Israel as being inherently anti-Semitic. The Israeli State believes it should be allowed to engage in settler colonial practices of ethnic cleansing, dispossession, and settler violence to build up its nation-state like all other countries in the imperial core had the chance and were successful in doing.
The historical trauma that the Palestinian people have from the Nakba that happened in 1948 led to over 15,000 killed and 750,000 Palestinians being displaced from Palestine, what is now known as Israel. And the fear that the Western world will forget them and support the Israeli state’s ethnic cleansing of them because, for the past 75 years, we have normalized their statelessness and their living conditions in Gaza and The West Bank.
After many failed attempts at peace talks, scores of civilian casualties, and deep reasonable mistrust and disdain on both sides, now more than ever, we are very far away from a two-state or one-state solution or any talks of peace.
Some Organizers and activists who are unequivocal in their support of Palestinian liberation have used this moment to collude with white supremacy and anti-Semitism. In the early hours of the attacks in Israel, some of the comments among a small group on the Left were ugly and even downright despicable. Being ghoulish is not going to help Palestine, nor is it going to allow us to engage in principled struggle with our Jewish co-strugglers.
China, Russia, and other countries may benefit from this war and use it to their advantage. Still, we must find a way to discuss these countries and the credible threats they present without engaging in jingoism, Orientalism, and Sinophobia.
Human beings need hope and a horizon of possibility to make life worth living. Without hope, humans fall into despair and will engage and join extremist groups and perhaps engage in extremist behavior that some may call terrorism and others will call armed resistance. Palestinians are committed to their survival and land, and that impulse cannot be extinguished; if it could, it would have been extinguished long ago.
Part V. Teaching To Transgress
Everyone based on the axis of power and domination that their nation-sate is situated in has either an inner colonizer, supremacist, or settler that needs to be managed no matter their race, ethnicity, gender, religious background, sexual orientation, oppression, or marginalized identity. We have all been socialized to see and understand the world through fear, anxiety, and scarcity. White supremacy and ableism have informed us who is worthy of love, care, witnessing, rights, liberation, protection, and prolonged life. White supremacy is rooted in sectarianism. White supremacy is obsessed with sorting the world in an “us versus them” binaristic understanding. Social justice, anti-colonialism, and anti-racism are the antidote.
Social justice requires that we dissolve the borders within our consciousness, hearts, behaviors, language, policy, and imagination so that we can dissolve them in the material world and our world-making endeavors.
I won't give you any answers, but I will offer some questions to encourage people of conscience to engage. I am a Black feminist making a radical humanist plea to my coalition to do the hard work of sitting with the complexities of this moment and to resist flattening the issues and the people engaging in this issue from their worldview. This essay is an offering to those who are struggling to understand why so many people whom you may know, respect, like, or even love are pro-Palestine, and that is causing you lots of intellectual and even physical discomfort and activating in you an ancestral somatic trauma response.
Our choices are not binary, and compassion and empathy are not finite resources - From an international perspective, overwhelmingly, Jewish pain and suffering have been at the center. When people have attempted to bring the full breadth and scope of Palestinian pain and suffering into this moment, some Jewish people and their allies have viewed this as a threat or a sign they do not matter. There must be space in our hearts and minds for Palestinian context, suffering, pain, and the war crimes being committed against them. There is enough empathy, compassion, and care to offer to both sides. Reject the false binary and pressure campaign that says you must choose between these two groups. That is a false choice.
Hard on the governments but soft on the people - Israelis and Palestinians have BOTH been made vulnerable by the actions of their governments. We can have a scathing critique of their governments and see the people ruled by these governments as victims for different reasons. I did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016, but I had to live under his presidency and all that came with it. I live in Florida and did not vote for Desantis, but I must live under his decisions as governor. We must distinguish between what governments do and who pays the fatal price. It is also important to note that Palestine has not had an election since 2006, and Hamas is not a government in the ways we understand the Israeli State to be.
Ukrainian liberation vs. Palestinian liberation - If Ukraine has the right to fight against being occupied and colonized by Russia and has the right to do so by any means necessary, why is the political math different in the Middle East? If Ukrainians have the right to self-determination, why do Palestinians not have the same right? What is it in your politics that justifies one and not the other? What is the cause of this disconnect? What role do race, racism, geography, and religion play in your political calculus?
Racism and settler colonialism - For those of you who reckoned the summer of 2020 and came to consciousness or deepened your anti-racist efforts due to the public lynching of George Floyd: Many of you read books, attended workshops, and joined groups to challenge your belief and understanding of race, racism, and how it functions in The United States. How does your anti-racist practice inform your critique of settler colonialism? Or does it? Is it possible to critique white supremacy and attempt to undermine and destroy it while also supporting the occupation of Palestinians?
Black Lives Matter and global solidarity - If you are not Black and believe wholeheartedly that Black Lives Matter, and you believe Black people are human and are full members of the human species, is it also possible to dehumanize Palestinians by tacitly supporting the collective punishment of the Palestinian people while affirming the full humanity of Black people? Black and Palestinian people have a long history of solidarity with each other because each group sees their shared suffering and status in each other. How can one stand in solidarity with Black people at home and not link those solidarity efforts to the Palestinian and Arab world and not see Palestinians as worthy and deserving subjects of solidarity and life? Does your anti-racism compel you to have an internationalist perspective on race, racism, oppression, and domination? How does anti-racism affect how you see yourself as a global citizen in The West?
All solidarity ain't good solidarity - The Religious Right is 100% pro-Isreal, and I would caution my Jewish kin to be very skeptical of this solidarity. The Evangelical Right, which is rooted in white supremacy and Christian nationalism, is also profoundly anti-semitic. They are obsessed with their doomsday fantasy of the end times. And while they valiantly support Israel as a nation-state and as a colonial project, they still 100% believe that Jewish people are going to “hell” and traffic in anti-Jewish conspiracies. Because white national Christian evangelicals are only loyal to the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant subject, yes, they will occasionally practice multiculturalism and fake interfaith solidarity as long as it will advance their apocalyptic wet dreams. White nationalist Christian Evangelicals have a history of supporting ethnic minorities’ desire to have an ethno-state because their ultimate white supremacist dream is to have a white ethno-state that is Jewish-free and Black people-free. We should never be uncritical of our ideas and actions, primarily when they produce and attract solidarity with fascist white supremacists.
Everyone who is anti-Black is not necessarily anti-Semitic, but everyone who is anti-semitic is always already anti-Black - Put another way, the people who want to kill you also will kill me! Every Black person who critiques Israel is not anti-Semitic or is calling for the end of Jewish people. I want to affirm that in the chorus of pro-Palestinian support, there is probably some anti-Semitism mixed in. Black people, especially those of us who are descended from enslaved people whose ancestors fought in revolutions against their enslavers and won, who planned slave rebellions, and Black people who survived The Jim Crow apartheid South, are capable of being critical without not engaging in anti-Semitism. And Black people who are not descendants of enslaved peoples but whose countries recently abolished apartheid and recently engaged in revolutionary struggles, you must consider for a moment that these Black people bring a level of subject matter expertise to this conversation and can see some issues that perhaps you struggle to see. Black people who have a decolonial, anti-racist, and social justice liberation mindset are not coming to the subject of Israel and Palestine lightly and, therefore, cannot be easily dismissed or erased by anti-semitic claims; we actually must go deeper in our conversations and critique of each other because some Black people are Jewish and they also want a cease-fire and want a free Palestine. Because the United States is a settler colonial nation-state built on racism, Black people and Jewish people have a long history of solidarity. We have a history of having hard conversations and being in political solidarity. I don’t think that muscle and skill are as dormant as we would like to think. Anti-Blackness and anti-Indigeinity are the fulcrum on which all other forms of racism and Othering rest in the United States. It isn’t strategic for Black people with social justice politics to be anti-Semitic. We must stop talking past each other and make our way back to talking to each other. There is precedence among us for this kind of coalition work.
How does your feminism inform your reading of power dynamics? If you are someone who espouses a feminist politic, does the feminism you practice have a critique of power?
For more context, let us consider the following:
Israel is the settler colony occupying Palestine.
Israel is regarded as a nation-state by all major nations, and Palestine is not.
Israel has an army and nuclear weapons. Palestine does not have a military or nuclear weapons.
The entire Western world supports the Israeli State.
Israel has rendered Palestinians stateless and has pushed them into the Gaza Strip, one of the most densely populated places in the world. In The West Bank, they are subjected to checkpoints and do not have freedom of movement. Israel has also created a two-tier system of living where Palestinians are separate but not equal to Israeli citizens, a practice known as apartheid.
Israel controlled Palestine’s electricity, water, and internet before October 7th.
The Israeli State also has a long history of racism against Ethiopian Jews and Iraqi Jews.
Does your feminism have a critique for this asymmetry of power?
As a Black feminist, Black feminism teaches me about the interlocking nature of systems of oppression and domination. The most popular name for this theory is intersectionality. Therefore, as a Black feminist using a social justice lens and intersectionality as a heuristic analytic tool to read through this context, I do not see how it is possible to create a world free of anti-Semitism while actively oppressing and dominating a group by using racism, militarism, and Othering as tools. How can Israeli citizens truly enjoy uninterrupted safety, security, and life in Israel with Gaza being on the other side while engaging in human rights violations, stripping Palestinians of hope, and relegating Palestinians to an open-air prison where they have been condemned perpetually to for the sole crime of being born Palestinian in Palestine? Occupation breeds contempt and hatred of the occupier and puts soldiers and all civilians at fatal risk. If the Middle East is unsafe for Palestinians, then that means it is always already unsafe for Jewish people in Israel.
Is your feminist politic anti-war, or is your feminist politic pro-war?
My Black feminism informs my transnational solidarity with primarily women, children, men, and gender-expansive people across the globe, and it forces me to take seriously what it means to be a woman and feminist in a Western country. And to consider deeply all the atrocities and human rights violations that are being done in my name and are said to be deemed necessary by the nation-state in which I reside in order for me to have a false sense of safety? What does your feminism have to say about the slaughtering of children, whole families being wiped out, and the lack of clean water, food, and medical supplies? There is an entire generation of amputees and disabled people who will now need a more accessible and disability-friendly world. How will they get that in a war zone? Or an occupied territory? What does your feminism have to say about disability justice in an apartheid state that is under siege?
9. The social media problem / the democratization of knowledge problem - Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman coined the term “manufacturing consent.” Which is defined as "effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function, by reliance on market forces, internalized assumptions, and self-censorship, and without overt coercion" by means of the propaganda model of communication.
Put differently, mainstream media, an institution obsessed with the idea and performance of objectivity, a concept that only serves those who are part of the dominant culture and dominant power structures, is, in fact, not objective or unbiased and does overtly coerce us not to contend for power or think outside of the parameters they choose to present to the public. I would never call it fake news, but it is news made by and for those with zero interest in averting their gaze from the center of power or transforming the world’s conditions toward social justice. The democratization of knowledge happening primarily on TikTok and Instagram makes it so that the single story that privileges the Israeli State is no longer the only story. There are now many points of entry into this discourse. Hearing from Gazans and seeing the devastation firsthand of parents holding the lifeless bodies of their children has a chilling effect and a radicalizing effect, too. These scenes of war that we all must be careful not to turn these scenes into spectacles that desensitize us if this war goes on for months and years, but engaging several narratives and points of view from people living in Israel and Palestine is shifting the narrative. For the first time, regular everyday people in The West are now asking themselves, but what about the Palestinians? And it is that question of humans taking the time to consider a group they have never been encouraged to consider that is sparking a global mass of interfaith, multiracial, multiethnic people to organize protests calling for a cease-fire. Now that mainstream media is not the only source of many people’s news, people are coming in contact with more nuanced views. Social media and the democratization of knowledge make it harder to stick to one pervasive narrative. So, for those who are rigid and refuse to consider another way to engage this conflict? What next? For those who value Palestinian life less than that of Israeli citizens, what is your plan to navigate this new compassionate intellectual terrain? And for those of us who are pro-Palestine and do not struggle to hold the humanity of Palestinian civilians and Israeli citizens, how will we skillfully, strategically, and in some cases lovingly engage our comrades who are stuck in a single story of The Middle East? How can we help them expand their empathy, compassion, and political thinking? How will we navigate this moment without cannibalizing and canceling each other? How will we practice holding simultaneity in our body, discourse, and coalitions?
10. People of The Global Majority and Palestinian solidarity
Shirley Chisolm
Toni Morrison
Audre Lorde
Angela Y. Davis
bell hooks
June Jordan
Ntozake Shange
The following countries and cities have had Pro-Palestine marches and protests (not an exhaustive list)
Mexico City
Chile
Tunisia
Turkey
Dublin, Ireland
Amsterdam
New York
Seoul, South Korea
Malaysia
Morocco
LA
Cairo, Egypt
Nigeria
Switzerland
Lebanon
Philippines
India
Greece
Pakistan
Germany
Spain
Chicago
Brussels
Geopolitically, people who are part of the Global Majority and countries across The Global South are overwhelmingly pro-Palestine. For those in the West who find this perplexing, I truly urge you to tap into your curiosity and ask yourself to consider all that could be informing this geopolitical breakdown.
11. What about politically Progressive Jews? - Since October 7th, my for you page (FYP), which is one’s tailormade algorithmic feed on TikTok, has been filled with politically Progressive Jewish people across the diaspora who are boldly proclaiming that Palestinians must be liberated. They are in radical solidarity with this project. I have seen Hasidic Jewish people, Rabbis, secular Jewish people, atheist Jewish people, Black Jewish people, biracial Jewish people, transgender, non-binary, queer Jewish people, Jewish people who are members of the silent generation, Gen X, Gen Z, and of course millennials all valiantly proclaiming the full humanity of Palestinians and critiquing the Israeli state and using their platform to educate their fellow Jewish kin on why they have defected from the single narrative of Israel. And their comment sections have been a hellscape. I have seen Jewish people calling politically Progressive Jews “pick-me Jews” and wishing death upon them. And the constant refrain from Jewish people who are not politically progressive on this issue keeps accusing politically Progressive Jews of being “self-hating Jews.”
Internalized oppression is a real thing, and when it is not resolved or managed, it does cause the person to betray themselves and their group. With that said, I refuse to believe Naomi Klein, Judith Butler, Sara Schulman, Norman Finkelstein, Gabor Mate, and all politically Progressive and Leftist Jewish intellectuals whom I respect and read and who refuse the emaciated and dishonest premise that being a survivor of genocide means the state of Israel has the right to do what it wants in Palestine and to Palestinians is not an impulse that comes from self-hatred. That is an impulse that comes from a deep abiding love and understanding that we should not become those who tried to eradicate us in hopes of prolonging and preserving Jewish life.
12. Jewish consciousness-raising and education worked! - The work that the Jewish diaspora has done in educating us non-Jewish people on the atrocities of the Holocaust and the insidious ways anti-Semitism is shaped and propagated within society has been exceptional and a success. As a child learning about the Holocaust, I remember my kid brain being unable to understand why the adults in charge, aka the world, watched while Hitler carried out his genocidal project that was inspired by The United States mistreatment and dehumanization of Black people through chattel slavery and Jim Crow.
When I heard the phrase “never again,” I took that to mean never again should humans and nation-states allow genocides to happen. But since the Holocaust, there have been many other genocides against all sorts of people for various and similar reasons.
It is knowing about the Holocaust that makes many people unable to co-sign the collective punishment and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by the Israeli State. It was you, our Jewish kin, comrades, and friends, who gave many people literacy and understanding of what to look for as pretexts before a genocide. The Geneva Conventions were created to remedy the cowardice of the international community's idly watching. At the same time, the Holocaust took place, and all of these nation-states refused to take in Jewish people. You gave the world the language and the education and expanded our humanity and understanding of Jewish pain and suffering. You helped us non-Jewish people to get better at naming and making anti-Semitism foundational to our social justice praxis. A great deal of our analysis and solidarity with Palestinians is borne from this educational labor.
13. “We can do hard things” word to Glennon Doyle - In what ways do our political discourse and ideological infighting mirror intellectually and verbally the extreme acts of violence taking place in the Middle East right now? How are we enacting and re-enacting this war in our language and praxis? And how do these kinds of cruel and acrimonious politics and actions affect the lives of Palestinians? We are not going to coerce and shame people into more liberatory politics. In the same way, Israel cannot bomb its way into peace. We must organize people into better politics. Organizing requires staying connected and conversing with people; actual organizing only happens in relationships. And it requires that we not flatten people but engage in relationship-building strategies. Now is not the time for us to make enemies among ourselves, especially those of us who are not Palestinian. If we want to prolong Palestinian life and use our collective power to get our nation-states to pressure Israel into peace talks and strategies, we must engage within our coalition with the same peace talk strategies!
14. Silence = violence - All-or-nothing thinking is rigid and binaristic. If one is not careful, it will start to collude with extremism and authoritarianism and very quickly can begin to look and feel like a cult. Abolition and transformative justice cautions us to remain sensitive, curious, and aware of how the logic of the police state and prison system gets absorbed into our relating with one another. Online activism is a powerful tool for both the Right and the Left, and we see people getting red or blue-pilled through effective online activism. I think the comment “silence = violence” made sense in the 2010s during that iteration of the internet when being on it incessantly and on social media was no longer a thing only nerds proudly engaged in. Suddenly, all the kids were sitting together at the digital cafeteria table on the social media platforms.
This is the time of #TrayvonMartin #OccupyWallStreet #BLM #metoo #GirlsLikeUs, to name a few. That was a different internet with different terrains and governance rules, and we also were different people who had not yet lived through a global pandemic. But as we get deeper into this second decade with app-based social media, that phrase no longer makes sense and borders on the absurd because of the ways it is so readily overused and applied.
Silence sometimes = I am anxious, depressed, and crying every day. I am still clocking into work and managing my life while actively consuming first-hand accounts of everyday citizens and journalists out of Gaza. And remaining politically engaged in ways that do not right now need to include the online version of myself. In a content economy rooted in performing and branding a digitized version of the self, we should make a habit of asking ourselves why I am choosing to telegraph this right now. Am I virtue signaling? Who does this serve? Etc?
Silence sometimes = silence. Not weaponized manipulative silence. Not a silence that is trying to co-sign an ethnic cleansing tacitly. Not a silence that is secretly applauding Israeli suffering. We live in a world where people become millionaires and billionaires, creating apps that capture our attention and keep us addicted to our phones. We are surrounded by noise and notifications. U.S. culture is not a culture that has grief literacy. It is a culture that numbs and distracts, and sometimes, to engage in intentionally focused silence in which we truly observe and exist with the hard, complicated individual and collective grief that is permeating the culture is to stave off being on auto-pilot and becoming desensitized.
Silence sometimes = I have been on social media long enough and know that when these geopolitical moments happen, it is not wise to process my feelings, inarticulate thoughts, or undercooked, lukewarm “hot takes” on the World Wide Web. I am in solidarity, and I am grieving deeply; it is also not about me. I need to be human with actual people and stay connected and informed about what is happening but not process it publicly. There is wisdom in letting time pass while you gather offline with your community and people.
Silence sometimes = I am radically bearing witness to and forcing myself not to look away from Gaza. I am calling the Arab and Palestinian people I know and holding space for them. I am calling and touching base with the politically Progressive Jewish people I know and holding space for them. I am reaching out to people who are directly impacted.
Silence sometimes = I am too busy taking action offline! I am going to protests, donating money, amplifying credible sources online/offline, and bringing the critical social justice talking points that I am gathering from social media, articles I am reading, and podcasts I am consuming to the job that I work, which is rooted in my social justice politics. This job is part of my activism and gives me access to many people and entry points to organize and sow seeds of consciousness-raising.
Silence sometimes = WTF - “I am not sure what happened, but overnight, I no longer agree with people I always agree with online. I am pro-Isaeral, and I don’t see the harm in this stance, but the corner of the internet I reside in is very divided. I don’t want to be attacked or jeopardize my bag, so I will be quiet and post as usual. I am not trying to co-sign genocide, and I don’t want to co-sign violence, either. I am genuinely confused. What do people know that I don’t?”
Silence sometimes = I do not have delusions of grandeur. I am not an activist or an organizer who has been organizing for/with Palestinians before October 7, 2023. I am not a head of state or an elected official; I am not a journalist; I am not an academic or a white-collar professional with domain expertise in the Middle East. I do not run a business that is impacted directly by this crisis, I am not a brand that is directly impacted, and I do not do communications, PR, or strategy for a brand or organization that is based on the nature of their business and their clientele they are obligated to issue a timely statement.Put differently, in the early days of a geopolitical crisis, we must give room to experts; it’s not the time to hear from generalists. We all do not need to wade in, and it’s wise to take a beat and asses and gather your thoughts. And say something when you actually can. The issue is dire. It is not our online commentary that will help bring about a solution to Israel and Palestine.
Silence sometimes = my activism, my social justice practice, and my radical support of Palestinian liberation don’t get affirmed, validated, and credentialed on social media.
Silence sometimes = I know the role I play in the movement(s) for social change. Some people’s role during these moments is to agitate online, educate, and use their grief as a political tool so they process their thoughts in real-time online. That is not everyone’s ministry. Being a practitioner of social justice and social change agents requires knowing your gifts, strengths, and where/when you are most effective and needed. Palestinian liberation will require a bevy of interventions, strategies, and skills. It is going to be required for the long haul!
15. Divest from the concept of super citizens, and now is not the time to be entangled in your parasocial relationships. Weeks ago, someone whose content I like was tagging Beyonce, Rihanna, and other celebrities on IG and trying to get them to say something about the crises. People have been asking where Drake and DJ Khalid are on the matter. People have been upset and obsessively watching which celebs signed which letter. Once again, this is a holdover from the last decade that feels retrograde today.
I want to encourage us all to divest from what celebrities say on these geopolitical issues. If your favorite celebrity agrees with you, who cares, and if your favorite celebrity doesn’t, who cares if they are silent? Perhaps that is a good thing! What celebrities think and feel on this matter will not prolong the lives of Palestinians. The obsession with celebrities during these moments is still an act of centering. More importantly, we all complain that lobbyists and big money play too much of an outsized role in our politics and elections. Let's use that analysis toward celebrities. I do not want to concretize the idea of there being super citizens who can influence world leaders to do things because that can get very scary and nefarious rather quickly. Being rich and famous does not engender a politic. Being rich and famous does not make one smarter than those without influence and money. Many celebrities are critically under-read and grossly misinformed about the world, living in an artificial bubble that encourages their lack of knowledge. Plus, many celebrities take meticulous measures to appear apolitical. We should let them be.
Drake and DJ Khalid are a perfect example of two celebrities whose brands are notoriously apolitical. DJ Khalid, his entire career, has profited from Black culture and uses the n-word liberally, but was eerily quiet during the summer of 2020, which we can agree the stakes were not this socially high for him, and he said nothing then.
As one of the most famous Palestinian Americans, I doubt he will say something now. Honestly, based on what is happening to Bella and Gigi Hadid and their family and how Israel is attacking them, it is not unwise for him to remain silent. We might not like it, but he is operating within a context.
Let’s take the famous biracial Jewish Canadian Drake, who recently signed the open letter calling for a cease-fire. I want us all to consider two critical things: his longtime collaborator and the architect of his sound, his producer, whose stage name is “40,” Noah James Shebib, is Palestinian. I assumed Drake would have a worldview and politic that would more likely than not honor his relationship with 40 and his upbringing in Toronto. Secondly, Drake signed the cease-fire letter, and he is also, as of late, making a personality and profiting off of hating and publicly berating Black women. He is a good example that you can be politically right on one issue while being morally bankrupt and not understand how other systems of oppression work. One can be a purveyor of violence while calling for peace and the end of violence. Humans are truly baffling! I do not advocate for purity in our politics or coalitions, but we must be grounded in sound frameworks and ideologies to strive for consistency in our politics.
Our over-investment in celebrity culture is what gave us Trump! Secondly, I must bring up TikTok again, a site where traditional celebrities flounder and fail epically at mastering. TikTok has ushered in the rapid decline of celebrity culture as we know it. TikTok has devalued the concept of celebrity status. Instagram valorized it, and TikTok is now undermining it. We live in a new reality where regular everyday people are far more interesting and better at entertaining than celebrities.
Their stock as a group is going down. We will always be curious about them, but I predict not in the same way in the future. Forcing celebrities into conversations that are out of their depth and range is why we have so many bad hottakes flooding social media. Celebrities have the right to their opinions no matter what they are and should be able to share them, but whether their views align with our worldview or not, why do we care so much? They are not elected officials, organizers, or heads of state. What are your politics? What do your values call for you to do at this moment? We must fight for a world in which celebrities do not become super citizens who have the power to sway political discourse and decisions. It is okay for us to keep them in the realm of entertainment. The art and entertainment we consume are not required to be radical or revolutionary in order for us to justify finding joy and value in it. Very few celebrities are adept at using their celebrity in a social justice way, and even then, I caution us not to be so overly invested in that either. I do not want us to be overly invested in anyone: politicians, influencers, and whomever we follow online because that only leads to heartbreak, quickly becoming idol worship. This is why we must join grassroots groups, participate in mutual aid, and find a group to throw down with politically. Liberation comes from social movements, not from a singular "special" figure.
Somatically engaging a collective “we” in real life and getting clear about our North Stars will make celebs less central in our minds. There are lots of Palestine reading and teach-in groups. Join one, read, and study! Decenter celebrity culture. Celebrity culture was not created to do all we want it to do politically. Prolonging the lives of Palestinians while also attending to the visceral fear and concerns of the Jewish diaspora and contending with all of the propaganda about this conflict is too important of a political project to put in the hands of celebrities. Respectfully, now is not the time.
16. “Everyone who disagrees with me does not want to kill me or my allies.”- I do not believe that everyone who is pro-Israel is calling for the genocide of the Palestinian people. In the same way, I do not believe that people who want Palestinians to be liberated are calling for the end of Jewish people. There are so many things in between advocating for peace and social justice and calling for the genocide of a group. At this moment, I am doing my best not to flatten people and label them as monsters. In the West, we have been socialized not to have a global lens and to only care about our allies abroad to an extent. We have been trained to be pro-war and to believe in militarism, and we have been socialized to fear Arabs and Muslims. It makes sense why so many people are critically ill-informed about what life is truly like for Palestinians in Gaza.
Being uninformed or stuck in a particular worldview does not mean one is malicious and murderous. Only through engaging each other in good faith can we determine if one has genocidal desires.
I want a free Palestine. I also want the citizens of Israel to experience actual safety that does not require them to occupy and erect an apartheid state. I support and call for diplomatic efforts that will bring about this end. What is happening in the Middle East is already having impacts on us here in the imperial core. Our fragile coalitions are being tested, and I am urging us all to not allow them to be destroyed. I am calling for those of us, especially those who are not Palestinian or Jewish, to get strategic and be willing to engage in good-faith arguments and principled debates with those willing to engage with us. Now is not the time to unfriend, mute, block, and dispose of people. We must organize each other and seek the entry point of political possibility. We must be willing to show people how we arrived at being pro-Palestine and why it is politically vital we are in solidarity with them, especially now. Now is not the time to be lording our politics over people and being insufferable. We must call out tacit and overt anti-Semitism that is found among Left coalitions. Now is the time to get clear, clean up our language, and be willing to stay in the argument or conversation with each other. Our collective pressure is working. Now is the time that we must ask ourselves before taking any action: does this action I am about to take help to prolong Palestinian life, or does it hinder this project?
We cannot afford to destroy further our anti-racist coalitions; our fragile democracy cannot and will not weather it. There is no futurity in white supremacy and settler colonialism for any group! But there are many worldmaking possibilities in decolonial and anti-racist futures.
#FreePalestine
#FreeHaiti
#FreeHawaii
Statehood for Puerto Rico, AND the District of Columbia!
More importantly, may we all get free from our lack of imagination and fear of the perceived Other, and may we never forget, as Angela Davis teaches us, that “freedom is a constant struggle.”
Credit: random pic taken in Brooklyn, December 2023
About Me:
Lutze (loot-see) is an emerging interdisciplinary public Black feminist scholar and doctoral candidate who studies Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Social Justice at The University of British Colombia, and their focus area is Critical + Creative Social Justice Studies. Her creative intellectual work is an embodiment of her Black feminist politics and practice. Lutze is currently writing her dissertation about her Black feminist practice and how it shapes her work as The Social Justice Doula, and she is exploring in her writing the concept of Black feminism being her civic spiritual practice. Lutze’s critical, creative intellectual work is also rooted in her past work as a former youth social worker and gender justice organizer. As The Social Justice Doula, her work takes on various shapes as an anti-racist consultant/coach, writer, public speaker, and content creator. Lutze is also a Digital Black Feminist who loves the internet! She is chronically online and thinks about the internet, technology, and its impacts on social justice. The internet is an important site for Lutze’s Black feminist work. She is both a superuser and ethnographer of social media. Although she does not code, she thinks about codes, patterns, algorithms, how messages get oxygen and get amplified online, how people create, curate, and perform digitized versions of themselves, and how people telegraph that online version. Lutze theorizes about social media’s impacts on our sociopolitical discourse, interiority, and online/offline thinking and modes of being.
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