Good Morning Family, Friends, Colleagues, Sojourners,
Enduring the oppressive heat of summer - to the extent that I know it will pass in either days or weeks - is nothing compared to the deadly and suffocating violence and oppression that the current Trump administration has been inflicting upon the most vulnerable of us.
Vulnerable not just economically but politically. Vulnerable between life and death -
In lands both domestic and international pillagers and barbarians have been loosed upon the Other - upon so many of us - in ways that are racist and inhuman, ways too often irreversible.
Sadly, this is no Midsummer Night’s Dream: this is our collective nightmare and I see no sign it will ease or end - indeed, my fears heighten daily.
What has bought some light and beauty into my life this summer has been the salvific presence of family - especially grandchildren - who have all been loving, curious, active, exhausting - virtually indomitable spirits - they have redeemed the summer for me.
But this love and light has also illumined the previously unwitnessed…
Light shadowing and defining what too many Americans have become and within those shadows I acknowledge the observation, as Syrian poet Adonis once wrote, that “Knowledge is not seeing the visible; knowledge is seeing what lies behind it: the invisible.”
I witness that the invisible is taking on a life of its own and I don’t much like the direction it’s taken.
Today, as I continue to try to discern what lies behind what I am feeling and seeing I am thinking more about the brilliance of Syrian rap artist Siba Al-Khiami, whose work, DOUNANA, I sent to many of you in May.
Since I first posted her poetry her thoughts have stuck with me - Please listen to it again before you read what follows - it’s only 4:02 long!
I’m not writing just about occupied Palestine, Lebanon, and Iran - lands I know well - I write to you asking that you stand in solidarity with the oppressed, the occupied, marginalized, disenfranchised.
It’s who we are meant to be.
It’s a call for Sumud - a call for survival, for everyday resistance against occupation and disenfranchisement to resist genocide ethnic cleansing and apartheid - to stay on our lands and resist the marginalization of identity and culture.
It’s who we are meant to be.
Siba both asks and answers the existential question:
“Who would you be without us? - You would not be without us.”
You, the evil-doers, the oppressors, exist only through the horrors you’ve perpetrated upon us. Without your embrace of an identity as desecrators of beauty, deniers of truth, occupiers of free people...
You are nothing.
You occupy our lands, burn our crops, bulldoze our homes, torture our children, poison our water yet ...
We still stand.
You attempt to erase us yet we still stand.
You are nothing without us.
You believe you have power and an identity derived from the colonialism you have historically inflicted upon the Other: power derived from displacement forced upon us.
The only power and identity you derive are those of parasites feeding on the existence and labor of those they marginalize.
Our geography is global, our interests one.
Genocide. Ethnic Cleansing. Apartheid.
Living in the lands of occupiers - as I and many of my readers do - I witness that grievance and resentments do not protect either the Other or their abusers.
Neither in Damascus nor Berlin.
Neither in Occupied Jerusalem nor New York
I read an observation last week that “Thousands of tons of military equipment, including D9 bulldozers and combat vehicles, arrived in Israel today. The shipment unloaded at the port of Haifa includes, among other equipment, D9 bulldozers used to demolish Palestinian homes and streets, Humvees, JLTV armored vehicles, Oshkosh trucks, and many other types of equipment intended to strengthen the Israeli occupation army’s combat capabilities ...”
Caterpillar, Oshgosh, JLTV...
We are complicit in so many ways - so many collaborators - especially AIPAC-supported politicians (including NH’s own Chris Pappas, Maggie Hassan, and Maggie Goodlander) who appear so willing to be complicit when the vulnerable are uprooted, colonized, criminalized, falsified, slaughtered, demonized ...
They never ask about where bodies are going to be buried.
No one cares what comes after, nor cares about how love and beauty are sustained.
In DOUNANA Siba raps toward a West that believes it has nothing for which to atone, believes it is unanswerable not only about Palestine but about Syria, Iran, Yemen, Iraq, Sudan, Afghanistan ... about the ICC and UNRWA and USAID …
Not only about Palestine but unanswerable for Pine Ridge, Ferguson, Minneapolis-St. Paul...
Only resistance will break the cycle.
Only resistance will force open the crack that lets in the light.
In a world where identity - for either belonging or deportation - is still defined by color and accent, by sectarian and ethnic belonging, we are all complicit -
if we don’t resist against actions committed in the name of our communities - even if we did not participate - we are complicit …
If we don’t speak … if we don’t resist … erasure will continue.
Today we must reject caste-based, privilege-based, definitions of who belongs and recognize that I belong as do you - even if we don’t get along …
That in the end we will thrive or fail as one.
Together, we are being failed not just by self-serving politicians, pundits, privileged elites, racists and haters, but by legacy media, journalists, artists, religious leaders, public intellectuals … many of whom “would not be without us” … many of whom - fearful of losing status or privilege - have failed to rise in opposition.
This is not about atonement - I don’t expect anything from them.
It’s about us.
It’s about recognizing that if our love stands within us we triumph.
“We will keep standing still
And our love stands in us
But who would you be without us
You would not be without us
You will not be without us”
- Dounana
Keep you Keffiyehs close, my loved ones…
Stay strong.
Salamaat,
Robert
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