courage in the time of genocide
& how we might continue to bear the unbearable.
I woke up scared today. Between the ongoing communications blackout in Gaza and the harrowing gravity of passing the 100-day mark of this genocide with no end in sight—I feel myself succumbing to fear. Fear of what’s happening to our people in Gaza and what is to come. Fear of what’s happening to me on a personal level — what short and long term effects will this trauma have? I can feel myself changing—my needs, my relationships, my ability to connect with the world around me. All of it scares me.
How debilitating fear is. It keeps us stagnant, operating from a low vibration. Stuck in the colonizer’s imagination.
Gaza is a place and people of remarkably radical love. Many of us have known this for a long, long time. Many are just discovering it by witnessing the awe-inspiring compassion, dignity, and steadfastness of Palestinians as they endure genocide.
Palestine models a way of life that could be. Instead of the colonizer’s imagination, we could be living in a Palestinian imagination—a liberated, loving, and just world. A world where truth not only matters, but guides. A world that worships reciprocity over dominance, collectivism over supremacy.
The choice that we are all faced with boils down to this — we either allow fear to be our ruling force and uphold the colonizer’s imagination. Or, we put love in charge and prepare the soil so that Palestinian imagination may take root.
I have been wondering what is the catalyst that converts fear-based living to love-based living. I think it is courage. Courage to not look away from Gaza in the height of its pain. Courage to dream beyond our cruel and seemingly endless circumstances. Courage to continue practicing hope when the world is violently shoving us towards hopelessness. But it’s more than exercising courage for “the cause” as some intangible, monolith. It includes exercising courage personally and intimately— courage to not look away from our own pain and the pain we inflict on others. Courage to dream about what fulfillment looks like in our lives. Courage to be hopeful for our little and big dreams. Courage to move through the discomfort of shedding the parts of ourselves that hinder. Courage to step onto an uncertain, uncharted path, driven by nothing more than a radiant vision for the world we want to inhabit.
Last summer, I wrote the first chapter of my book, a memoir about my time in Gaza. I named the chapter Are you ready to be brave? based on a powerful interaction I had in Gaza last year. I understand now, more than ever, why I intuitively felt that story was the foundation of my writing on Palestine. Loving Palestine, committing to its long-haul struggle for liberation, requires bravery. Bravery in staring down the world’s shadows just as much as the shadows that lurk within ourselves.
The oppressor relies on our despair, our exhaustion, and ultimately our fear to maintain power. So, as we pass 100 days of genocide, I repeat the question from Gaza to myself, and to the world—
Are you ready to be brave?
I too am not the same person, having witnessed the medieval brutality in plain sight The meaning of life has changed from petty pursuits to finding the courage to stand straight, look right in the eye of evil and tell it for it is. The so-called civil gentry masquerading as guardians of human values must be shown a mirror for their own salvation and deliverance. Which ever way one looks at it, the ground is clearly shifting under the empire of oppressors. Neither the current hollow values nor the systems that feed those values align with human dignity. Therefore, a collapse is inevitable. That we have hunger, homelessness, and people rationing their prescription medicines while there are trillions of dollars available for wars is a proof that democracy is dead and decomposing. We must stay strong and we must not let the voices of reason be silenced.
I am not the same person I was three months ago. Being brave and having courage took on a whole new meaning. I discovered a store of power I didn't know I had from witnessing Palestinians in Gaza - the radical love you mentioned – and learning to follow their example of resistance. Thank you for writing this. You captured everything in front of us so perfectly. Together we'll laugh in the faces of our enemies and sing our songs with joy and conviction and dance our dances with defiance and mourn the inhumanity we experience and see, and always, always fight for life.