Sunday, October 29: All Gone Too Soon
Gaza is still on fire and Matthew Perry drowned at his Hollywood home yesterday, but only one of these news items seems to be on hearts and minds across the country.
After many Palestinian journalists seemed to sign off, perhaps for the final time, yesterday during the connectivity blackout, internet service has been restored to parts of Gaza and many are back to reporting semi-regularly. The internet connection will be fully restored eventually, but we can’t ever forget or overlook the downright evil strategies employed by the apartheid Israeli regime. Separating Gaza from the rest of the world by physical blockade for years and then destroying all remaining connection to the outside world, killing untold numbers of trapped civilians (8,000+ at this point) and making it more difficult to reach all those in desperate need of help.
Now it seems the collective global consciousness is prepared to move on, to think about what the next week might bring. Elon Musk weighed in after weeks of silently cosigning the ethnic cleansing, allegedly offering his Starlink satellite services to international relief organizations in the region. But the apartheid state of Israel quickly replied, with communications minister Shlomo Karhi responding that “Israel will use all means at its disposal to fight this.” With Starlink or without, the Palestinian people will continue to exist and demand freedom from occupation and apartheid, that much is certain.
Tens of thousands of people across the country and hundreds of thousands around the world protested in solidarity with Palestine yesterday, demonstrating that we’re incredibly uncomfortable witnessing a genocide of our people or any people. Despite the lack of basic empathy exemplified and articulated by countless western leaders, people of every oppressed background have rallied behind the Palestinian cause.
But still there are many people who are more interested in returning to the mundane everyday slaughter of Palestinians, the one that doesn’t dominate headlines or even register as news. Plenty of people who simply want Palestinians to surrender their weapons and die already, or maybe they can rely on someone in the west, anyone really, to free Palestine with our articles, or our infographics or our good vibes. That’s never gonna happen. If you can’t support armed resistance against a genocidal occupation, you can at least acknowledge that the desperation and discipline of the Palestinian resistance has come against an endlessly violent Israeli campaign of apartheid and occupation.
I think part of the reason the concept of martyrdom automatically registers as bad to most Americans is because they can't imagine ever being in a position where they would die for what they believe in or because of circumstances they can't change. There’s particularly an American aversion to it because much of their worldview is predicated on cowardice: what cause could possibly be worthy of our precious lives?
I remember when the Israeli military murdered Shireen Abu Akleh and denied doing it and then attacked her funeral procession and almost had her coffin dropped, ruining any opportunity to mourn, and more recently when they destroyed the street in Jenin and the nearby memorial honoring her. The different ways of killing Palestinian bodies and attempts to erase their memories from existence. Such a twisted way of treating humanity.