Let America Be Your Periphery

Like everyone else concerned with Palestinian life, I’ve been thinking a lot about what can be done to stop the current genocide.  The very notion feels ridiculous given that ruling classes across the world are invested in Palestine’s destruction.  That’s no reason to stop, though; it’s actually a fantastic incentive to keep going.  Long odds are the upshot of any good politics. 

I’m probably not alone in sometimes feeling overwhelmed and pessimistic, but there’s one thing I insist on:  we cannot let the genocide kill our imagination.  It’s tempting to seek some kind of relief in the shadow of celebrity politicians, but we have to think beyond what is sold to us as pragmatism because Palestinians deserve better than cynicism or dissimulation. 

Not everything we do will tangibly affect Palestine’s liberation, but each act should nevertheless be calibrated toward the possibility of Palestine’s liberation.  The distinction is critical:  the great majority of us cannot directly aid on-the-ground resistance, but we can maintain a sensibility that honors the dignity of Palestine’s national movement.  At the very least we have to stop trying to impress the wrong people. 

Palestinians inside Gaza are speaking.  Palestinians who have escaped Gaza are speaking.  Palestinians brutalized in Khalil and Tulkarem are speaking.  Palestinian fugitives and prisoners are speaking.  Palestinian students with no university to attend are speaking.  

Do you hear them invoking the Democratic Party as any kind of solution to the Zionist genocide?  Are they begging us to vote harder?  To have more dialogue?  To improve our careers? 

No.  You hear them emphasizing freedom, self-respect, defiance, martyrdom, strength, and resilience.  They sound nothing like the liberal political class or anyone trying to persuade luminaries of that class to be less genocidal. 

Why, then, would anybody concerned with Palestinian life devote energy to the Democratic Party?  It’s a rotten institution.  It has nothing to do with Palestine’s liberation.  Indeed, the Party bears significant responsibility for the current genocide.  A lot of moral deception or outright evil is required to shrug off this fact. 

I’m not speaking of voting strategy or civic life (topics about which I’ve already said plenty).  I’m concerned that a vibrant history of recalcitrance and creativity among diasporic Palestinians is quickly being lost to U.S. exceptionalism. 

By tethering Palestine to the electoral circus—even temporarily, even obliquely—we concede that a hostile system the ruling class likes to call “democracy” supersedes Palestine’s liberation.  Infiltrating or reforming this “democracy” is damn-near impossible and in the most optimistic scenario it still wouldn’t materially assist Palestine’s liberation.  The idea is so unrealistic, so without precedent, that it doesn’t even qualify as magical thinking.  It’s better described as messianic ignorance.  

The moment we append Palestine to this electoral circus the entire conversation is lost to Israel.  I don’t want to reduce the matter to personal intention; some folks are earnest, others are self-serving.  Rather, I’m pointing out that when we enter a space in which Palestinians are expendable by design then we will either have to disavow fundamental tenets of Palestine’s national movement or we will ourselves be expended.  No amount of pleading will change this reality.  It’s like trying to plant a tropical garden in Alaska.  

We’re a year into unspeakable brutality, so let’s keep it simple:  there is no electoral solution to the problem of Zionist genocide.  If anything useful comes about in the United States, then it will be at cross-purposes with all these silly dreams of American redemption.  

If you want to talk about Democrats as a better alternative to Trump and polish up the other talking points that arrive in four-year increments, then sure, fine, go for it (although this too is a waste of time).  Just don’t use Palestine as a rhetorical device in your capitulation to imperial common wisdom.  Declaring that Palestinians face threats greater than actual genocide or that Palestine must remain secondary to domestic issues (as if it isn’t fully domesticated already) is a slovenly argument that only generates embarrassment and ill-will.  Embrace your liberalism and be off so those of us who refuse to sacrifice Palestine for access to an inhospitable system can be marginalized in peace.  

But remember:  nobody in Gaza is expecting American salvation.  They don’t dream of an audience with the genocidaire.  They dream of life.  They dream of justice.  They dream of freedom.  Each of those dreams is seeded in the gardens of the Eastern Mediterranean.