Palestine, latecomer activism, and writing while afraid

A few days ago, I watched this interview with writer Ta-Nehisi Coates. He shares about his visit to Palestine and Israel, how it changed him from assuming the situation was complicated to realizing it was actually quite simple, how he came back to the U.S. feeling like all his life he had been lied to. 

“I’m a latecomer to this fight, but I’m here now,” he said.  

In some ways, I feel on a similar timeline. I didn’t grow up in an activist family, or in a community that ever talked about oppression. As a kid, the only person I could name doing any kind of global activist work was, embarrassingly, just Angelina Jolie. I didn’t know what an “organizer” was until Obama ran for president. And my understanding of Palestine was almost 100% informed by what I saw on TV.

When the Iraq war started, I remember feeling outraged, but having no access to tools or resources for how to channel that anger into action. I remember when my AP Psychology teacher, out of nowhere, devoted an entire class to lecturing us on why the war was necessary, I spent that hour slouched at my desk, enraged but also scared, not knowing how to speak up. I remember watching the protests on television and deeply wishing I could somehow join them.

My ideas began solidifying while living in South Africa, where friends spoke so obviously about the similarities between apartheid in both places. When I went to my first protest supporting Palestinian liberation in May of 2021, I felt the immense dissonance of being in such a beautiful space I had been told all my life was wrong.  

In a lot of ways, waking up to the full truth of U.S. imperialism feels like every other political awakening I’ve had: it always starts with grief – deep grief – at the loss of a structure and belief system I was told all my life was supposed to protect me. And after the grief, I pivot to frustration for not recognizing all the clear signs earlier. In a lot of ways, Coates expressed how I feel about pretty much every fight against oppressive systems that I’m engaged in now: I’m such a latecomer to this fight, but I’m here now. 

In his interview, Coates also talked about fear, how he’d heard so many other writers and public figures say “fearlessness is a necessary quality” for doing their kind of work.  

“But I’ve never had that in my life, and certainly not in my career,” he said, “It’s not in my nature to do this, to speak on something I haven’t written about. But one has to balance one’s responsibility against the amount of suffering, the amount of death…I have to measure my fear against the misery I saw, I have to measure it against my own ancestors.” 

As an introvert who feels far safer keeping my nose in a book, underlining quotes and researching the fuck of out of things before I write anything, this resonated so deeply. I’ve never until this month written publicly about Palestine, because I certainly have not studied this issue as much as I have studied the other issues I often write about (although, like Coates mentioned, every time I delve deeper into studying this issue, it gets more and more simple). As a writer and public speaker, I have never felt fearless, but actually pretty terrified all the time.

But I try to take a stance because I want to believe it is our responsibility to take a stance when we witness this much suffering. I want to believe that when I still feel like that slouched kid at her desk, outraged but afraid, this time, I will know to measure that fear against my own ancestors, and do something. I try to write and speak in ways that feel deeply uncomfortable, because I want to believe in global political moments that are so important they require us to do things outside our nature. 

Yesterday, I watched Rashida Tlaib tremble and cry as she bravely told Congress:

“Palestinian people are not disposable.” 

In that moment, nothing in her body language looked fearless either; she looked like another person whose nature is not necessarily to do this, but is finding a way to do it anyway. I am so in awe of this, how women of color like her put most everything else aside to find this kind of fearful bravery, because we know our survival depends on it.

Afro-Palestinian writer Samah Fadil recently tweeted about the noticeable difference between interacting with friends of color and white friends these days:

“I am seeing in real time the biggest superpower white people have,” she writes, “Lighting the world on fire, and ignoring it while it burns.” 

In college, when I studied genocide, we studied silence, how very nice people could still allow horrifying things to happen while they watched. I finally get it now. For four weeks, I have witnessed genocide, live, everyday, on my screen, while we all are collectively encouraged to just go on with our day. 

     Bisan, the girl from Instagram I keep rooting for, is breaking down more often now on camera. She’s sending more desperate messages, more videos in the dark. She sends one in Arabic, and the Instagram translation isn’t great, but her last sentence has stayed with me: 

 “If I die, the whole world is the one who pulled the trigger that killed me.”