LOVE PALESTINE
“The trouble is that once you see it, you can’t unsee it. And once you’ve seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as political an act as speaking out. There’s no innocence. Either way, you’re accountable.”
Day 139. And the fire does not cease.
As we’ve tried to make sense of senseless violence, we’ve turned to some reliable wisdom-bearers. Their words have helped us. We hope they’ll also serve as guiding lights for you.
Where life is precious, life is precious. — Ruth Wilson Gilmore
Witnessing the precarity of life in Palestine and the lengths to which a besieged people go to take care of each other — even as they endure relentless threat, dire deprivation, and unmetabolized grief demonstrates the preciousness of life. And so, we can be sure that our regular efforts to protect the preciousness of life in an era of planetary crisis is an ongoing practice of the radical politics of love.Love “is nested in a network of other values and relationships, which also need to be attended to" for love to be made real. — Teju Cole
This means we must counter anti-Arabism, xenophobia, and all forms of dehumanization. It means we must insist on de-escalation, demilitarization, and on an end to imperial violence.Without justice there can be no love. — bell hooks
Loving Palestine will require redressing unspeakable wrongs.We must strive every day so that [our] love of living humanity will be transformed into actual deeds, into acts that serve as examples, as a moving force. — Che Guevara
Daily striving is not easy, and it is absolutely necessary.Turning death and destruction to new ways of seeing and being is the best offering we can make to those we have lost. — angel Kyodo williams
Our vision and beings are forever changed by what we've collectively witnessed and been unable to stop.
Perhaps we've been centering a radical politics of love all along. But somehow naming what we must do — what we must keep doing — a sustained exercise in radical, collective, political love makes it a little easier to breathe through the pain we feel powerless to stop.
om·ni·cide (ˈäm-ni-ˌsīd.) plural omnicides: the destruction of all life or all human life (as by nuclear war)
”As our understanding grows, so does the horror.
What we face now is not merely slaughter or genocide, but "omnicide," the obliteration of all humans and all living species.” (source)
It is starting to seem as though there are only a few roles one can inhabit:
You can perpetrate omnicidal violence – killing, obliterating, and extinguishing the light within as you destroy that which you've been commanded or manipulated to hate
You can directly experience omnicidal violence – attempting to survive brutal forces that bring displacement, relentless trauma, dismemberment, and death; exhibiting courage and care in the face of unimaginable and unrelenting horrors
You can ignore, support, or attempt to justify omnicidal violence – deliberately unseeing the suffering of those you've been conditioned to dismiss or fear and engaging in intellectual contortions to shield yourself and others from the heaviness of human complicity
You can bear witness to omnicidal violence – observing and feeling but not expressing or acting on the waking nightmare live-streamed to the screen in your pocket and reported in real time
You can speak out against omnicidal violence and act to bring about its immediate cessation – amplifying the horror, resisting the dehumanization of the victims, organizing actions, educating on the history and on power, and pressing democratic processes and international institutions to live up to both their stated ideals of peace and justice and their (often-broken) promises of responsiveness to the will of the people
You can attempt to ease the suffering of those under attack – donating funds to support the few organizations able to provide immediate aid or to those preparing to help survivors once they can be reached
At earlier stages, there might have been more options, more nuanced takes, more places to train our focus. But now, the remaining living population of Gaza is crammed into tents in Rafah, their so-called safe-zone is being bombarded, and the United States once again blocked a widely supported UN resolution demanding an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Israel’s war on Gaza. At this point, the options have narrowed to the entirely unacceptable, the inaccessible, and the ineffective.
As our hearts break all over again,
we're reaching for a different message:
LOVE PALESTINE.
We're asking ourselves what it might mean to truly love Palestine. To love the land, to love her people, to love her more-than-human inhabitants. With ragged voices, we're wondering out loud and in public about how we might summon and practice a radical politics of love and take steps that make it possible for Palestinians to feel and be protected by our love.
As we do so, we remind each other that love is abundant. It defies and even subverts scarcity. Loving Palestine does not and cannot reduce our capacity to love other people — including Israelis and Jews around the world. Love can only multiply. And it may be the only thing that we should seek to grow without limit.
Art by Kristina Buckley
EcoGather’s Statement on Love, War, & Ecological Justice
(2.22.24)
Ecological justice cannot be found in a world where Palestinians -- or any other peoples -- are denied the basic necessities of life, stripped of agency, restricted from free movement, and violently displaced from their lands. Nor can it be found when some humans wield deadly force in the self-defeating pursuit of security without peace.
As such, EcoGather continues to contribute its voice to the global chorus calling for immediate ceasefire, an end to the siege on Gaza, and the release of both Palestinian prisoners and Israeli hostages. Immediately ending Israel's omnicidal war and providing deep care and nourishment to the victims of its aggression and blockade are the first steps toward ending the occupation and apartheid regime, restoring Palestinians’ right of return, self-determination, and sovereignty, and securing an enduring peace. We reiterate our commitment to a liberated world where all people live in their full dignity, free from subjugation, oppression and apartheid.
We honor the sanctity of life in its myriad forms. We remain open and engaged as we pursue transformative shifts away from privatization of and extraction from land, the weaponization of scarcity, the domination of peoples and places, and the blood-soaked, world-wounding histories of racial and colonial violence.
We regularly re-commit to practicing a politics of radical love as we seek an end to all cycles of violence.
Art by Chi Nwosu
Resources
By now, we expect that our community is well aware of where to look for action alerts and resources, but we're sharing some links again here in case your attention has drifted and you need to reignite your love and come back into active solidarity.
Agroecology & Food Sovereignty in Palestine
Vivien Sansour’s Palestinian Heirloom Seed Library
Science for the People’s Agroecology from Palestine to the Diaspora
