Behind the walls
History will judge the atrocities committed in Palestine and Israel
I posted this right after the October 7 Hamas attacks, trying to reflect on the broader meaning behind the horror. I have edited it here a bit for clarity.
I am so tired of seeing all these posts that exude the kind of arrogant certainty that only come from people who have never done a goddam thing in the real world, have only sharpened their pens in the game of words. In academia, we throw around so many fierce terms like abolition, reparations, decolonization as some kind of abstraction. But we are offended when someone tries to actually seize the land, to decolonize.
As for the current horrifying battles in Gaza and Israel, it’s not our responsibility to lecture those who have been under decades of occupation how to resist. We may be horrified. And who wouldn’t be? We may wish the resistance had been done differently. And who wouldn’t? Our responsibility now is not to be armchair advisers. Really the most important thing is to sit with the reality, to take in what has happened.
You don’t love Hamas? Brilliant. Such insight. The reality is that this movement exists and it did not come from nowhere. It is a response to 75 years of occupation and oppression. Please remember this: Sometimes Native American people attacked settlements, wiping everyone out. That was terrible. White newspapers screamed about the beasts, the savages, who did this, just as Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant declared, “We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.” Ultimately, though, our sympathies rest with the indigenous people. And look at the Haitian revolution, an uprising in which whites were killed indiscriminately. Terrible. If I had been there, I would have been cut down. Probably not fair. But it happened and in the end we support the Haitian revolution.
It is terrifying to imagine being at a concert, feeling good, and suddenly experiencing gunfire and an attack. It seemed safe, this rave outside of the fence a concentration camp. But it occurs to me that we the privileged, especially white people, live our lives behind these fences. The fences, for instance, of borders that keep out those whose economies have been looted and who are moving north, following their resources. And when anything breaks down, through uprisings or even power failures, large groups of young people who have been redlined into poverty move out, in what is called “organized looting.”
James Baldwin reminds us that white people live in terror, burdened by the constant struggle to stay on top. We live behind a fence that protects our privilege, fearing those who might come for reparations, who might decolonize. We putter in the garden and watch our shows. But it is an uneasy peace, an unjust peace.
God knows, I don’t want to be invaded. But it is still my responsibility and my choice: should we strengthen the walls, or take them down. Shall we dwell in the dreamland of privilege or work for a just, equitable world?
