Image by Maisara Baroud
Christmas tree. Wine night. A beach bathed in light. Rubble. A new niece. A baby of ash. Tap tap tap. The new Ocean's film. Hostages handed back. Smiles. The Bahamas. Friends arm in arm. A mother bent over a carpet that used to be her son. Men, boys, scrabbling at a home, what used to be a home and is now a tomb. White gas falling from the sky. Someone I met, briefly, finally hard launching her new guy.
Swipe.
Phone down and it's all worlds away.
I sit, sweating in the sun, and across the world families fall apart. Are torn apart. With precision and weapons someone else's father, brother, friend, has built.
And we can all just put our phones down. But they can never pick up their loved ones.
It feels different this time, like a flame has caught and no one can put it out. But it felt like that before. I knelt amongst crowds and we chanted names of the murdered and cities burned and politicians talked and talked, and did nothing else. George Floyd was meant to just be a man. He became a martyr then a movement then a moment. We all moved on.
We can't admit that of course, but isn't it true? Didn't we accept it and stop filling the streets? Now we're back, in our thousands and our millions and, still, all the politicians do is talk. Nothing more. They don't even vote. They abstain, in their hundreds, because that is something you can do and then go home to your family. That is something they can do and still sleep at night.
The rest of us, equally unelected at the minute, but also not sitting anywhere claiming the right to condemn thousands to tombs, are no better. We watch on our phones while we are at dinner with friends, sitting in lectures at University, in the airport waiting for a flight. Lives we can lead without fear of falling bombs or shooting guns. And we watch.
The guilt doesn't stop us from living our lives, our protected, privileged lives. So we assuage it by posting to our stories and talking to our colleagues and taking to the streets. All of which have an impact, does something. Tells Palestine she's not alone, that we hear her and we care. Yet-- at the same time--does it do anything? Is there a right way to acknowledge a genocide that's state sanctioned and funded?
I--even the I doesn't seem to matter here, shouldn't matter. I am inconsequential at the moment. But I'm also free and sitting in the sun. I also have a voice and a pen and a platform, small as it may be.
I, and my generation, have grown up consuming war. It has been streamed, projected, Oscar nominated. And we have become desensitivised to it. I cannot comprehend the numbers of lives lost, that stretch across the globe, given to countries and government's, and taken from families and friends. Always in the name of protection.
The villain is always complicated, complex. Not like in our films where the bad guy looms large and if you cut off the head, the minions fall. Never showing the truth that bad guys are propped up by institutions that are scaffolded by laws that are protected by centuries of history, written by the victor. Defended by a corpse in colours.
Except now the victor is on twitter, doing a press conference, being visited by state officials whose constituents are calling for their removal even as they step onto stolen land.
We cannot let them win this time.
Hope holds us with tentative hands, and we must squeeze it tight.
I cannot pass moral judgement on everyone and how they consume the genocide. Not when I hold no higher status or ethical standing. But we should dare to hold each other to account beyond our accounts. Humanity is a community, community separated from the animal world not just by tools and rules, but a healed bone, set by loving hands. We don't leave people behind.
Palestine will not be left behind. Palestine will be free.
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