Anti-Racist Insights Into What’s Happening in Palestine/Israel (and in me)
When I first heard that Israel declared war on Gaza in response to Hamas' horrific attack on October 7, I felt (among other things): concern (for lives lost), frustration (for violence being considered a viable option), and detachment (I don't know a lot about what's going on over there; I don't have a stake in this).
Then the body count grew, the neighborhoods crumbled, the safe zones were bombed, and millions of dollars flowed from neighbors' and my tax payments through our government's hands and into the Israeli government's—without condition. It didn't take long for my feelings to change: into outrage (at the wily PR machine that keeps the focus on Palestinian violence instead of Israeli occupation; at the many entrenched U.S. entities supporting Israeli 'defense' while silencing Palestinian voice & experience), grief (at the many lives lost; at my own dissociation with my Jewish cultural identity), and frustration (at how entrenched systems of supremacy are; at how ineffective my actions feel).
It didn't take me long to realize that I actually have a huge stake in this siege happening across the globe. I also realized that I actually do know a lot about what to do. It's anti-racism that's feeding me these insights. It's what I've learned about responding to a racialized world that now has me responding relatively quickly, effectively and in a sustainable way to the situation in Palestine/Israel. So even though I've experienced colleagues and participants being uncomfortable when I've brought these two issues together—what's happening in Palestine/Israel for one, and systemic racialized oppression in our country as another—I am more and more convinced that recognizing the parallels between them strengthens us against oppressive structures of all kinds.
As Audre Lorde said, "There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives."
Here, specifically, are some of the parallels I see:
Those of us socialized by a white dominant culture will tend to react to situations like Palestine/Israel or systemic racism with feelings of guilt, fear, shame and doubt. This isn't part of our temperament or personalities; rather, it's a learned reaction that keeps us feeling bad about ourselves, which prevents us from taking effective action. Recognizing this gives us agency to make more overt choices about the ways our conditioning effects us. More about this here.
The feeling of being impotent—to change institutional and individual racism; to end the apartheid occupation of Palestine—is both accurate, and not. What's true is that protesting entrenched racial bias in courts and laws at a rally doesn't stop my Black neighbor from being denied the opportunity for jury duty, again. And emailing my representatives once a week (or every day) to call for a ceasefire won't stop tomorrow's bombing of a Palestinian refugee camp. What's also true is that these actions change me; they are part of my consciousness, conversations, and relationships. They add to the number of bodies gathering to show solidarity. Change, like growth, is slow. If you're ready to take action, choose from the 20 options in USCPR's Ceasefire Toolkit.
We've learned a lot since the early days of the racial reckoning of 2020/2021. We know to settle into a period of self-reflection before stepping into any action: in order to curb our impulse to solve, allow reactivity to shift into response, and better align our results to our intentions. We've learned to keep the focus on the most marginalized voices: we prioritize reading their fiction, viewing their art, donating to their mutual aid organizations, eating at their restaurants, buying their products, and studying their history. And so much more.
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