Dispatches from home
Scattered thoughts on Palestine and the diaspora.
The news from Palestine gets alarming every time I check. This thought was poignant during my weekday social media scroll. Dead Palestinians, mostly children flooded my "recommended" feed. Initially rattled by the images, I became slightly annoyed with how easily accessible they were. Moreso, the careless and clickbait nature of such posts. Real people in tremendous pain and suffering, all to be forgotten once we kept scrolling.
“But the fact of the matter is, Israel declared war on Palestine in 1948 when over 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly expelled from their ancestral lands. In recent times, Israel has exponentially increased their violence and dispossession of the Palestinian people. The present response is simply an act of organized resistance to decades of Israeli aggression. It is an attempt to end Israel’s inhumane persecution of the Palestinian people– a crime against humanity.”
Besides listening to special episodes from my favorite podcasts reporting on the war or the occasional article, I haven't felt like the greatest ally. On TikTok, everyone seems to be hyper-focused on calling out those who haven't spoken out, rather than on the actual politics and context of Israel's apartheid state. I'm sorry, I couldn't care less if your favorite influencer or celebrity hasn't shared a Palestine infographic.
For me, the ordeal is reminiscent of the black square post during the height of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests. The assembly-line infographics have continued, undermining the work of passionate and impactful protest art.
Long live Palestine.
In Port-au-Prince, Haitian nationalism is alive. Long-standing tensions from a colonial past are high with the proposed construction of a new canal. From Niger to Gabon to Ghana to Nigeria, West Africans are again revolting against Western imperialist forces and complicit leaders not doing enough. And in Gaza, Israel completes its genocide.
As America nears its reckoning in the upcoming 2024 election, I have become more comfortable with the end of the world as we know it.