Choosing love for the people of Palestine
I have no poetry for what’s going on in Palestine. I barely even have words. Sheikh Jarrah gets closer to becoming another piece of land stolen from underneath Palestinian feet and families lose their homes and lives in Gaza. I don’t want to make that imagery beautiful or the injustice of it up for interpretation.
Instead, for the past few days I’ve been caught up in a question: what can I do? Isn’t it easy for me, sat comfortably at my desk in this cold, Western country, to proclaim this an injustice and then carry on with my day? There’s a feeling of impotence when faced with the state-funded machine of apartheid, that for any letter written to my MP or volunteering application lounging on my computer, any essay I tap away at in the evening, I’m only one person against the world.
So what can I do? It’s such a large question I don’t know where to start, so I’ve chosen to start with the one thing I know: myself. My blood affords me a little of the pain that Palestinians in Palestine go through every day, but feeling a uniquely Palestinian pain does not require a uniquely Palestinian heritage. What we are seeing is a human monstrosity, something we’ve all come face to face with in one form or another, so I must remember that the grief and anger and injustice I feel are also human, born from a shared human experience. The dimensions of those emotions will be different, but the fact that they exist means I can extend them in solidarity; it reminds me that I am not separate from the problem. My first step, then, is to understand the human connection between Palestinians in Palestine and myself and, more than that, to embrace it. It might be similar to Bell Hooks’ concept of love as a choice.
So now I see the human connection more clearly. And from there, I see that I’m not really just one person. For physical proof, I only need to look to Palestine and see the mass of people at Al-Aqsa mosque, the right of return marches in 2018–2019, the swelling of each intifada, the body of protest. None of us are ever one person, we are a friendship, a family, a community, even an enmity. It can be so easy to lose sight of the fact that we are built from our relationships to others and the world around us, that we create ourselves when we act on those relationships. I have chosen love for the the Palestinian people, and so I have chosen to build myself from that relationship. I’m not alone in doing so — the Palestinians protesting in Al-Quds have chosen love for their people, those of us who live away from them have chosen love for Palestine — and therefore I’m not alone in my anger and grief.
So what do I do? I’ll be honest, I’ve attended protests very sporadically in the past, but I think now I’ve written myself into a corner. I’ll attend more protests, reminding myself in a very direct way that I am not alone, and showing the world that Palestine is not alone. I’ll write that letter to my MP, hoping that he can also choose love and wield that love in parliament, knowing that even if he doesn’t it matters that he sees people care. I’ll support BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) vocally, loudly, and at every opportunity. And I suppose I’ll keep on writing.
Lastly, I should remind myself that this cannot start and stop at Palestine. If I can choose love for Palestine, then I can choose it for black people who are mercilessly targeted by the state, for trans people who are denied access to life-saving healthcare, for working class and poor people who are left to fend for themselves as money pools in the hands of the rich, for homeless people, for disabled people, for people in general. I must choose love.
