“Oh Rascal Children of Gaza,” by Palestinian poet, Khaled Juma, 2014
A mother in Gaza washes her children for the last time in their destroyed home from the recent bombardment of Gaza in May.
Taken by Mohammed Zaanoun
"All took leave from life in the manner which most suited them. Some praying, some deliberately drunk, others lustfully intoxicated for the last time. But the mothers stayed up to prepare the food for the journey with tender care, and washed their children and packed
the luggage; and at dawn the barbed wire was full of children's
washing hung out in the wind to dry. Nor did they forget the diapers, toys, the cushions and the hundred other small which mothers remember and which children always need. Would you not do the same? If you and you child were going to be killed tomorrow, would you not give him to eat today?"
- Primo Levi, If This is a Man (1959)
i know the nyt regularly edits and rewrites headlines post-publication but it's kind of wild that the basically one (1) good op-ed i've seen them publish in ages that was getting really widely shared was renamed from "Why Must Palestinians Audition For Your Empathy?" to much more vague and defanged "The Palestine Double Standard." like. come on.
anyways.
(link to the archived page with the original headline)
The task of the Palestinian is to be palatable or to be condemned. The task of the Palestinian, we’ve seen in the past two weeks, is to audition for empathy and compassion. To prove that we deserve it. To earn it.
In the past couple of weeks, I’ve watched Palestinian activists, lawyers, professors get baited and interrupted on air, if not silenced altogether. They are being made to sing for the supper of airtime and fair coverage. They are begging reporters to do the most basic tasks of their job. At the same time, Palestinians fleeing from bombs have been misidentified. Even when under attack, they must be costumed as another people to elicit humanity. Even in death, they cannot rest — Palestinians are being buried in mass graves or in old graves dug up to make room, and still there is not enough space.
If that weren’t enough, Palestinian slaughter is too often presented ahistorically, untethered to reality: It is not attributed to real steel and missiles, to occupation, to policy. To earn compassion for their dead, Palestinians must first prove their innocence. The real problem with condemnation is the quiet, sly tenor of the questions that accompany it: Palestinians are presumed violent — and deserving of violence — until proved otherwise. Their deaths are presumed defensible until proved otherwise. What is the word of a Palestinian against a machinery that investigates itself, that absolves itself of accused crimes? What is it against a government whose representatives have referred to Palestinians as “human animals” and “wild beasts”? When a well-suited man can say brazenly and unflinchingly that there is no such thing as a Palestinian people?
It is, of course, a remarkably effective strategy. A slaughter isn’t a slaughter if those being slaughtered are at fault, if they’ve been quietly and effectively dehumanized — in the media, through policy — for years. If nobody is a civilian, nobody can be a victim.
…
Take it from a writer: There is nothing like the tedium of trying to come up with analogies. There is something humiliating in trying to earn solidarity. I keep seeing infographics desperately trying to appeal to American audiences. Imagine most of the population of Manhattan being told to evacuate in 24 hours. Imagine the president of [ ] going on NBC and saying all [ ] people are [ ].Look! Here’s a strip on the edge of the Mediterranean Sea. That’s Gaza. It is about the same size as Philadelphia. Or multiply the entire population of Las Vegas by three.
This is demoralizing work, to have to speak constantly in the vernacular of tragedies and atrocities, to say: Look, look. Remember?That other suffering that was eventually deemed unacceptable? Let me hold it up to this one. Let me show you proportion. Let me earn your outrage. Absent that, let me earn your memory. Please.
…
Here’s another thing I know as a writer and psychologist: It matters where you start a narrative. In addiction work, you call this playing the tape. Diasporically or not, being Palestinian is the quintessential disrupter: It messes with a curated, modified tape. We exist, and our existence presents an existential affront. As long as we exist, we challenge several falsehoods, not the least of which is that, for some, we never existed at all. That decades ago, a country was born in the delicious, glittering expanse of nothingness — a birthright, something due. Our very existence challenges a formidable, militarized narrative.
But the days of the Palestine exception are numbered. Palestine is increasingly becoming the litmus test for true liberatory practice.
In the meantime, Palestinians continue to be cast paradoxically — both terror and invisible, both people who never existed and people who cannot return.
Imagine being such a pest, such an obstacle. Or: Imagine being so powerful.
also some other notable changes in recent headlines…
employees should be allowed to steal, actually
idk. yesterday was a slow day and at the end of it, I still stared into a cash drawer, one of three, that had more than my rent in it, even if you only count the 20s. I spent a lot of that day trying to calculate in my head how many hours of work equal one pair of pants, let alone how many hours of work equals the fun thing I want to do next month.
I feel a cough coming on, because I work in a drug store, and all of my customers are sick. I always feel a little bit sick, now. I can't afford to eat well enough to keep my body healthy. Cough medicine is worth two hours and 20 minutes of work. Our store probably bought a case of cough medicine for they price we're selling one box. If this cough gets worse, I might have to call out, which will cost me more than the medicine in the long run- but that doesn't give me the money to buy the medicine right now. I stock a case onto the shelf. I don't buy any.
A mom wrangling three crying, sick kids enters my line and sets two types of children's medicine down, says they're both on sale and thank god for that. I ring her up, and she gets very quiet, because she misread the sign, and her total is twice as high as she was expecting. Her youngest screams in the cart, because she's burning up with fever. Her mother very quietly asks, please, she's so sorry, if I could please take the more expensive one off her total.
I agree, I move the box below the counter, and when she's not looking, I slip it into her bag. I pray as hard as I can that if she notices the "mistake" she says nothing, because I so desperately want her to have that medicine. The store has lost profit at the cost of a child's health. I don't bat an eye. This is a terminable offense. If I'm presented with the same situation tonight, I'll do it in a heartbeat.
The myth of evil employees stealing from the company falls apart the second you realize the company would shoot you dead to make a profit. This isn't two equal players, one of whom is stealing from the other. This is someone fighting for survival versus someone fighting to make an extra million. It's not equal.
Employees should be able to steal, actually.
*struggling w/ writing an email* they didn't have to deal with this shit in ancient babylon
ancient babylonian: *struggling to compose a cuneiform tablet* by god i wish i could do this shit with a computer
i don't really know how to relay the horrors that palestinians are describing first-hand, if you can speak arabic and follow people from gaza online there are some phrases i don't think anyone will forget, some things for the arabic-speaking world will scar for life just like muhammed al-durra scarred me as a child. at least five of the people i followed since last week (journalists, photographers, students, artists, tiktokers) are dead now. it's becoming terrifying to follow someone from gaza, because you don't know if they're going to be alive tomorrow. i don't really know how to describe this feeling? what is it to follow some kid on tiktok who's making jokes while planes drop bombs around him and think "i hope he stays alive?"
for those of you who don't speak arabic, there are many many palestinians in gaza posting updates in english:
many of them are also translating other posts from arabic. you can follow them on twitter.
there are also many gazans reporting from gaza and recording vlogs in english for an international audience that you can follow on instagram
(yara eid is the only one who is not physically present in gaza, but her family is and recently lost her best friend, the photojournalist Ibraheem Lafi in the strikes. she has lots of good and informative videos & interviews on the situation)
please note that these are people living through an actual siege and genocide, experiencing hell on earth for the past fifteen days with no relief and risking their lives to even get these occasional messages through. the content they share is not easy to watch and even more difficult to forget.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health released a full report with names, ages and IDs of those who were killed – maybe at least in part as a fuck you to Western media and the US president who suddenly cast doubt on the number of fatalities. Over 7000 people died. Whole families wiped out forever. It's beyond comprehension. May their memory be eternal.
