From a Palestinian, to You
By Meera Alul
I’m struggling to come up with the words. I sit and have all these thoughts and feelings, but they won’t translate to words on paper. How am I supposed to accurately explain my experience as a Palestinian so you can finally see me as a fellow human being worthy of your action?
I am Palestinian by blood and American by birth. My family’s displacement from Palestine by Israeli Occupation Forces led to me living in a few places before eventually landing back in the United States. Today, I use my place here in the belly of the beast to protest and disrupt for our collective liberation, from Palestine for all of Turtle Island.
For decades, many of us Palestinians have prioritized your comfort over our lives. We, along with most of the general population, were beat into compliance and told this is how the system is. We need to work hard, barely scraping by, so these puppet masters can enjoy their wealth while we, in our retirement, enjoy the “satisfaction” of knowing we “earned” our “freedom.”
The frustrating part of it all, their scam was working. Then, an attack by a group of Palestinians on October 7th led to a domino effect that proved what a select few have been saying the entire time: those puppet masters don’t care about us, the people. They care about keeping global systems of oppression in place so they can personally enjoy the perks of exploitation.
My family’s history leads to me, a Palestinian woman, sitting here writing to you, whoever and wherever you are, in a desperate attempt to nudge you into action, however that looks to you.
Whether you can protest, hound politicians, speak to friends and family and members of your community, connect with mutual aid groups, the list is endless; the resources are endless, all you have to do is intentionally look. For the first time in history, we have a genocide and ethnic cleansing campaign live streamed for us to see in real time. Yet here we are, over one year into my people being exterminated in front of our very eyes and I am still surrounded by a divided community. A community fighting over semantics.
Like a sick joke.
So offended by the words they’re hearing that they’re forgetting those words represent and describe a reality – my and my people’s reality. This is not fiction. But perhaps out of ignorance or fear or shame or I’m sure a number of layered emotions, the first thing that people have to say before acknowledging our existence is, “Israel has a right to exist and defend itself.”
No.
IsraHell does not have a right to exist – no country has a “right” to exist, let alone an ethnostate. This feels like a good moment to give you a reminder that Nazis literally fought and continue to fight for a White ethnostate. Everyone’s against that, but Israel is encouraged because it’s a Jewish ethnostate? Not even, because in reality it is only Jewish by name to take advantage of post-Holocaust guilt; if you’re Jewish fighting for Palestinians, then you get abused and murdered too. Yes, that has and continues to happen. For Israel, Zionist Jews or no dice.
How are we here? Truly, in 2024, how are we, as a species, so depraved and out of touch with our land and connection that this is our reality?
Countries have come and gone throughout history and will continue to evolve until the end of our time in this life. Are you as a member of this society so scared of seeming antisemitic that you will openly embrace Islamophobia and anti-Arab sentiments? Are you so terrified of being antisemitic that you will literally allow a second holocaust? Only this time, unlike in the 1930s and 40s, we have technology to provide live coverage into the concentration camps.
Actually, it’s not even that you will allow Zionists to commit these crimes, it’s that you have. You have excused it for at minimum one year, and at maximum 76 years. Do you feel shame? It’s okay, shame is not always a bad feeling. Shame reminds us of our humanity, and of our tendency to misjudge and miscalculate. We are human, how we move through our shame and find action is what defines us. That is where you can affect change unlike those who embrace ignorance for comfort.
So again, NO, countries do not have a “right” to exist. Especially when they come to existence through the complete annihilation of a land and its indigenous people. IsraHell also certainly does not have a right to self-defense as an internationally recognized illegal state running a brutal apartheid regime. Palestinians, on the other hand, as a group oppressed under constant surveillance and torture, do have a right to self-defense.
And that is exactly what October 7th was. It was simply a group of Palestinians who finally decided enough was enough and fought back, because the world abandoned us. For decades.
Yes, their act of self-defense was violent. Why is Zionist violence excusable enough to justify a literal genocide while Palestinian violence can never be justified?
I live in Colorado in the United States. I have shelter and nourishment. By most definitions, I am safe. In my context as a Palestinian far removed from immediate danger, I am not willing to resort to violence, and because of that I was placated into compliance for most of my 31 years on this earth. The system will do that to you, sell you a home telling you it’s shelter when in reality it’s a cage keeping you in place.
With the shock of Hamas’s attack waking me up, I noticed how I had been asleep and felt intense shame. Shame for abandoning my people and enjoying day-to-day crumbs of happiness. Shame for trying to understand the box that the system beat me into instead of keeping up the fight to get out. Processing that shame gave way for many emotions. It mobilized me in a way I have never felt before. I’ve found a community of comrades willing to stand up out on the streets and make our voice heard. We’re saying: we’re not free until all of us are free, and a system designed to keep a few rich and fed while most fight for survival is not a system we care to uphold. We deserve better.
However, unlike me and my comrades, the group of Palestinian fighters who make up Hamas are willing to resort to violence for liberation.
Does that make you uncomfortable? Let’s break it down for a moment:
When a child walks away to fetch some food and water for his injured family and IsraHell bombs their makeshift tent behind him, burning his entire family alive in front of his eyes as he hears their screams, is it not plausible that he will fight his oppressors with every fiber of his being?
When young men illegally held as prisoners without charges watch Zionist cowards in armor literally gang rape a fellow Palestinian, is it not plausible that “peaceful negotiations” are off the table for those who witnessed?
When IsraHell gives an evacuation order to “safety,” making Palestinians walk for hours carrying everything they own, only to carpet bomb the entire makeshift camp as soon as civilians lay their heads down to rest. Is it not plausible that they will lose all trust in those who promise safety?
Is it not plausible that peace talks are no longer an option?
Is it not plausible that resistance, even violent resistance, can be justified when people are disregarded, butchered, brutalized, and occupied?
Yes, all of these situations happened and are based on specific well documented incidents that you can easily find in the news. And none of these incidents are new or isolated, my people and I have been experiencing this cycle for decades.
We have peacefully protested, held press conferences, interviews, you name it. And still we were 75 years into the most murderous and sadistic occupation and ethnic cleansing campaign with continued unchecked violent expansions at the expense of our land and blood.
And then October 7th happened.
Do you now see how these resistance fighters become who they are?
You cannot inflict this level of brutality, dehumanization, and degradation on human beings and then be shocked that when peaceful pleas are ignored and worse, vilified, what follows are violent acts of self defense.
For the last year every single day of IsraHell’s sadistic rampage against innocent Palestinians has been justified by referencing October 7th.
We need to use the same standards and apply context to all arguments. By saying “it’s complicated” you excuse your ignorance. Because really, it’s not all that complicated. It’s not confusion you’re feeling, it’s fear, at least in part. Fear that the web of lies you’ve been fed for your entire life, a web that potentially weaves through the fabric of your professional, social, familial, and maybe even romantic relationships, is falling apart.
I cannot blame anyone for their ignorance before they knew. We don’t know what we don’t know, until we know. So once you know, what do you do?
You have to make a choice, and that bears responsibility. Do you cling to ignorance for comfort or fight with us in this revolution for humanity?
For the longest time I tried to play their game, and I realized that I could never find my safe path while I accepted society as it was. The system was built to keep us in line; to punish those of us who dare use our critical thinking skills to question, analyze, and demand better for humanity.
But I believe that we deserve a system that works for us instead of making us work for it, wasting our lives. Rest is a right, and for too long we’ve allowed the ruling class to convince us that we need to work until we earn time to rest. All the while they exploit for their “earned” rest.
The revolution is here. I urge you to fight the fear keeping you in line and to believe that we can do better; we deserve better. Fight with us, however that fight looks to you. Fight for humanity and collective liberation.
I organize with a group of groups dedicated to do the work out on the streets. One of my favorite chants from protests is “in our millions, in our billions, we are all Palestinian.” This chant echoes across borders, with literally millions of people chanting for our liberation.
We have never achieved this level of awareness for the Palestinian cause, and in a true gift from the universe, our struggle has awakened the masses to struggles worldwide. We are all Palestinian.
However, it’s important to remember that progress, especially progress for humanity and against the greedy power-hungry machine, takes time. Our colonizers have been building their empire for far longer than we’ve been fighting to dismantle it. For decades we believed they had our best interests in mind, but it has never been clearer than it is today that their actions directly resulted in our suffering, and they continue to fund and operate the systems in place that are designed to keep us in line, living under an illusion – free to speak but not to speak up.
George Soros wrote, “power prevails, and law legitimizes what prevails.” That is the way of colonialist powers. And when those in power and writing law have failed so miserably, we the people need to rise up and mobilize like never before to demand change.
We deserve more than a system that fails us with empty promises for every aspect of our lives, including housing, healthcare, education, crisis resourcing, while actively prioritizing endless funding for war.
We deserve better than politicians who invest in weapons manufacturers; or billionaires that find loopholes so they can exploit people through corporations; or politicians claiming democracy then attacking anyone who dares elaborate on what democracy actually means.
Democracy is not a two-party system where both parties are funded by the same foreign entity with the same interests, enacting the same laws only packaged differently.
Democracy is not an ethnostate running an apartheid regime where only Zionist Jews have rights and freedom, and the rest of the population lives in a discriminatory racist system of violent oppression.
Words have meaning, actions must follow, and it’s time we hold our politicians accountable for their promises instead of allowing them to hold us in fearful compliancy.
So from a Palestinian begging you to wake up and reject the system’s lies and abuse; from a Palestinian who has already lost 43 members of her family this year alone; from a Palestinian desperate for rest and a chance to mourn instead of fight; from a Palestinian, to you:
Your time is now. Will you fight with us?
-M
black mold 