Seminal Shore

In our final semester of college, Spring 2022, all of the art students worked on a final thesis to be presented in a senior show before graduation. A class representative was needed from each department, and I volunteered for Illustration. All of the the volunteers worked together to collect art, layout the show, and install everything at the end of the semester. I helped out more than some of the others, so spent a good deal of time in the gallery. On one occasion the Ceramics department representative came to help. There wasn’t much left for her to do (she might have been late for her appointed time) so she just hung around, swept a little, and straightened out her pieces: a matzah plate and pair of candlesticks that were engraved with Hebrew. Talking a lot and awkwardly, to me it seemed she was trying to smooth over her lack of having done anything to help. I’m not certain what prompted her to mention it, perhaps it had something to do with what was written on her work, or simply due to her verbal diarrhea, she brought up that it was the Israeli day of “independence”. At the time I wasn’t familiar with the Nakba, although I was aware of the term. Later I learned it means “catastrophe” in Arabic, marking the beginning of the ethnic cleansing and displacement of the Palestinian people. The Israeli day of “independence” referred to the same event, celebrating the beginning of the genocide. What I am certain of, is that I made a face of disgust after hearing her mention it. Clearly she was a Zionist and it took all of my willpower to not say something in response. Maybe I should have spoken up, but I doubt it would have made an impact.

For many people, October 7th, 2023, was the first time they began to pay attention to Israel and Palestine. For me it was most likely during the summer of 2020, after the murder of George Floyd on May 25th, which just so happens to be my birthday. I was already fairly left-leaning, but that summer radicalized me and was the start of my political awakening. I became a prison abolitionist and started to learn more about how the U.S. enacts violence domestically and internationally. I remember seeing a Palestinian graffiti artist paint a mural of George Floyd on the Israeli separation wall in the West Bank. A beautiful act of solidarity from an oppressed people, recognizing the struggle they share; not just metaphorically due U.S. police often undergoing training in Israel. So even before this most recent escalation I saw what Israel was doing. I saw Israeli settlers steal the homes of Palestinians, mosques being attacked on holy days, and the pallbearers of a murdered Palestinian journalist be beaten by police while still carrying her casket. This did not start October 7th. Oppressed people everywhere are fighting to be free, and their very existence and actions are made to be crimes. There is one unified struggle world wide, and one enemy.

The outpouring of support for Israel from the international community did not surprise me. American money flows into Israel like water, making it a proxy state for the region. Even so I can not fully wrap my head around it. How can those in power stomach being complicit in this genocide? I have seen humans smeared on pavement like insects, cities razed to grey rubble, parents cradling dead children in their arms, IDF soldiers attempting to sexually shame Palestinian women by posing with their underwear, limbs littering the ground like fallen branches, the use of chemical weapons and other war crimes, and infants rotting in bombed hospitals. I have become desensitized by the images of extreme violence and gore in Gaza, I can only imagine the impact it has had on those living through it. The mothers and fathers, the children, the elderly, the doctors, the journalists, the animals, the land itself; they will all suffer past the end of this. It must end, what has happened must be remembered, and there must be consequences.

I take no solace in being on the right side of history and I refuse to treat the Palestinian people as lost. Every moment is one where their suffering can end. I’m not certain the best actions to take by those of us in the western world, but seeing the mounting pressure put on those in power gives me hope. The tides are turning against Israel and Biden’s administration. His speeches and events have been disrupted by protests, and US citizens (including myself) are refusing to vote for someone complicit in genocide in the upcoming election. Just now while I write this post, a member of the Air Force has self-immolated in front of the Israeli embassy in DC, his last words being “free Palestine”. Protests will only become larger and more desperate as time goes on. I don’t know what the future holds but in a moral world Israel cannot continue to exist.

Palestine will be free.