Refusing Genocide w/ Rasha Abdulhadi (10/16/23)
Death Panel podcast host Beatrice Adler-Bolton speaks with Rasha Abdulhadi about how to stand in solidarity with Palestinians in this moment, the importance of refusing the idea that the genocide of Palestinians is inevitable, and how the language we use to resist the colonial project can sometimes fail to meet the scale of our demands.
Rasha Abdulhadi 0:01
"Ceasefire" implies that there's a war. There is no war. This is the escalation of a genocidal project that has been ongoing for more than 75 years. The genocide of the Palestinian people is both ongoing and not inevitable. We must refuse it. We can refuse it.
[Intro music]
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 0:47
Welcome to the Death Panel. Patrons, thank you so much for supporting the show. We couldn't do any of this without you. And just a quick note, this is not a regular patron episode. This episode is out in the patron feed today with an extended teaser in the main feed. And this is also unlocked. The reason why is because we want to get this episode out as soon as possible. And this was the next available episode slot. And also, we want to make sure that it's not locked behind a paywall, in solidarity with Palestine and towards our deep and lasting commitment at Death Panel to seeing Palestinian liberation in our lifetimes. So if you're listening to this and you're not a patron, that's why, and if you'd like to get access to all of our other Monday bonus episodes that's at patreon.com/deathpanelpod. And in lieu of my usual plug at the beginning, I'm just going to paraphrase our guest today instead and say, if you'd like to help us out a little bit more, no matter where in the world you are, throw sand on the gears of genocide in any way possible and use any means available to you. So with that, we have a really wonderful guest joining me today to talk about last week's escalation of the ongoing colonial violence against Palestine. Rasha Abdulhadi is a queer Palestinian Southerner who is a cultural organizer, editor and poet. I've greatly appreciated their poetry and learned a lot from it. And I've asked them on today to help us respond to the events of the last week with particular focus on the way that language is part of the site of struggle here. So Rasha, welcome to the Death Panel, it's so nice to finally meet you.
Rasha Abdulhadi 2:20
Thank you so much for having me, I have been listening throughout the still ongoing pandemic. And I'm so grateful for the principled commitment and consistency that you all offer both in addressing pandemic conditions, conditions of extractive abandonment, liberation struggles across all fronts, and in particular, your principled clarity on Palestine.
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 2:47
I appreciate that so much. And I'm excited to also share some of your poetry with folks today. So I hope you won't be too shy to read some of it. So, now that I've peer pressured you and said it on the record --
Rasha Abdulhadi 3:00
We can start with one right now, if you want.
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 3:02
Sure, if you want to start us with one, and then I'll set up some context. I think that would be really nice.
Rasha Abdulhadi 3:07
Yeah. So I want to share this poem in particular, not just to share my work. My poetry is not super important unless anything in it offers clarity and fortitude for people who are struggling for liberation for Palestine, and everywhere. And so in sharing this, I also really want to call on poets and writers, and speculative fiction writers and editors and publishers to join me in countering this really vicious punishment of language in order to give cover for and justify total annihilatory violence against Palestinians.
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 3:48
Mm.
Rasha Abdulhadi 3:50
Believe the Graves.
Across my father's death there is a curtain
past which I can't write, my own words
can't carry and I must rely on others’
I believe in the graves of those I've buried.
They are the doors I've walked through
into greater bravery, into fury.
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 4:16
Thank you so much for that Rasha. So just, you know, to start us off with some context for our discussion today. So you know, folks are all on the same page listening. Today is Monday, October 16 2023. And for the last 10 days, Israel has killed and injured almost as many Palestinians in Gaza as they did in 2014 when they carpet bombed for over 50 days. So some important context is, as I mentioned, this is the latest escalation of Israel's ongoing colonial violence against the people of Palestine. And for the last week, you know, we've seen some of the worst genocidal violence from Israel yet, which is saying something. There have been days of bombing, repugnant lies and dehumanizing declarations have been pervasive this week. There's no food, no water, no power, no gas, no way out and nowhere to go. Israel ordered a so called "evacuation" this weekend. And as we'll discuss later on, it's not an evacuation when it's a death march, as Rasha has said. We have seen roads and infrastructure destroyed, roadblocks, [roads] everywhere have been closed. Bombs have been dropped on people evacuating, on the evacuation routes. Doctors are treating people using regular soap to clean, you know, massive chemical burns, and medical infrastructure itself is already in a dire state, as we talked about in the episode with Danya Qato that we re-released last week. That is a fantastic listen, I highly recommend to folks, but it's kind of impossible to overstate the violence and cruelty that we've seen on display this week, both in actions, but also in words. And also I know this is not necessarily a topic that everyone agrees on. So that's why we're sort of starting with some of this important context here. I want to echo the brilliant Danya Qato, again, who opened our conversation on the show last year by also naming what we mean by "settler colonialism." So in the episode we just re-released last week called "Public Health and Palestine," at the top of that Danya provides a very crucial framework that I want to also emphasize today for folks who may not have heard it. Also, you should definitely go and listen to that episode as well. So the idea of using, specifically, the word settler colonialism to talk about Palestine is really important, because it reflects and highlights the extensive history and documentation of the violence committed against Palestinians and Palestinian society by the Zionist movement and the state that it established. So Zionism, as an ideology and a political movement, has subjected Palestine and Palestinian people to structural violence, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a Jewish state. And this is the essence of settler colonialism, right? It's marked by land expropriation and theft. It's the establishment of an ethnostate, it erases the native indigenous population, which in this case, is Palestinians. The key shift also, in using the word settler colonialism, specifically, is also to address an idea, which is not new, but it's always worth repeating, which is that this goes beyond apartheid. As Danya talked about, you know, "apartheid" talks about community separation, segregation, and while apartheid is a significant tool in the Israeli occupation it's also just one element of the architecture. And the larger political project at play is settler colonialism. Which is why it's so important to just name it outright at the top, you know, this is evident through all sorts of various sorts of tools of fragmentation, of state control, things that force the only possible existence of life to exist in these very uncertain, unsafe and violent conditions. So Rasha, you know, as we've been talking about, and planning in this conversation, a framework that you've been bringing up a lot lately is the idea of what you've called "slippery words," and kind of how some of this rhetoric is playing into this, whether it's the kind of very simple and easy to understand, like both sides-ism that is common, or it's more complex, and a sort of more nuanced thing. So I'm really excited that we're gonna get a chance to talk about this today. And I really appreciate you taking the time to also walk listeners through this right now. So for folks who are not familiar with your work, do you think you could talk briefly about the context that you're coming from, Rasha, as a poet and an organizer? And also, do you mind taking a second to talk about what you're going to do and not do today? Because we talked about that a little bit at the top. And I think that's also a great thing for us to take a second to mention before we get into it.
Rasha Abdulhadi 8:55
Absolutely. So without going into a lot of detail. For more than 23 years, I have been organizing across movements and geographies -- in the midwest, the south and the east of this settler colonial nation we are currently in -- on movements for environmental justice, racial and economic justice. And most often, I have worked building physical and digital infrastructures and supporting on communications within and across organizations and movements for liberation and justice. I do a lot of work in cultural organizing, often within my own communities, within advocacy, or sites of struggle, both through the arts and through countering the racialized criminalization of multiple communities through war on terror rhetorics, hate crimes, etc. So I give that as background because I spent a long time doing that work before I ever published a single word of poetry or any thing else. However, I was writing that whole time. And a lot of the work that I focus on as a writer and in the book that I am trying to finish is countering these thought-terminating notions about Palestine, all of these sites of capture or distraction or misdirection of energy -- even the energy that is intended to offer care and solidarity towards Palestinians. And that's often especially where I focus. I do not spend a lot of time arguing with people who wish for the death of Palestinians. There's not much value in that for me. However, I think there is a real opportunity to refine how we not only demand justice, externally, whatever justice means, right?
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 10:58
Mhm.
Rasha Abdulhadi 10:59
I prefer the word "liberation," often. I think that it has more elaborative, multiple possibilities. And I want to be clear that today, I am not here to do a Palestine 101. There are many powerful, brilliant Palestinians who have expended their entire life's breath doing work to explain the reality of Palestine, history, the culture, the truth about Palestinians, what they have experienced, what they have endured, and what they have struggled against in the many ways that Palestinians have struggled and continued, in the words of Palestinian poet Rafeef Ziadah, to "teach life" to the world. So I'm not going to do a Palestine 101. Folks can go read all the amazing Palestinians, I hope you go find all of them. Please, for listeners of this podcast, go back and listen to the first 20 or 30 minutes of the episode with Danya. I listened to it two days ago, and I was just astonished all over again. I'm not going to do any better [ Beatrice chuckles ] setting of the table of what is happening and has happened and is experienced by Palestinians than the first 20 or 30 minutes of that episode. So go listen to that. Pause this, go listen to that. If you need that. And then come back here. I'm not going to do Palestine 101. The other thing I'm not going to do today is a series of debunking of what are baseless lies about Palestinians, and are effectively projections of settler colonial guilt and the desire to create the Palestinians as sin eaters for the atrocities of the settler colonial apartheid, and the eliminatory violence that settlers are so clearly desperate to confess that they have done in great detail. So I'm not interested in doing that. We can talk about what the propaganda dynamic is, what is that functionally doing, but I'm not going to debunk the specific lies themselves. I'm very interested in really digging into all of the received language that, particularly English speakers, in this settler colonial nation, and in other English speaking settler colonial nations, have inherited. All of this received language that folks have inherited and repeat, because they heard someone else repeat it, who probably themselves doesn't even know what it means, in referring to Palestine. And so I'm very excited to get into that. I think that, for me will be maybe the most interesting, the most generative, and I hope will invite people to be a little more curious and a little more careful about how we use -- how we are encouraged by many powerful state actors, corporate actors, death making machines to repeat, rather than understand. So let's break down some of that.
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 14:09
Yeah, I really appreciate the way that you put that Rasha. It actually reminds me of something that [Ruth Wilson] Gilmore said when I talked to her when she said like reading groups aren't about recitation, right? Like we're not reading theory to recite these ideas. It's not merely that we're like sitting around here saying, "you know what the right language to use is" out of some pedantic deep desire to be correct. What we're talking about here is actually fundamentally different. It's that part of what's going on is that language also structures all politics, right? This is something we talk about on the show all the time with regard to all sorts of things whether that's madness, mental health policy, COVID. So maybe one of the things that I'd love for us to sort of start on here is do you mind getting into what you mean by slippery language. And the power that it has, under our circumstances, that some of these kinds of points that I think we should sort of start entering in are both the idea that right now the thing that needs to be called for is a quote, unquote, "ceasefire" and also the idea that -- and this was one even that I used, and you pointed out, and so I'd love for us to take as much time as we need to go through it, which is the call to end the occupation of Gaza, for example. So I think if we could start with talking about, specifically actually, the point of ceasefire and sort of your thinking there. Because I think it's a really good way towards sort of entering what are the stakes here? And also, like, why is it important to really be thinking precisely about language, especially in this moment?
Rasha Abdulhadi 14:09
Yeah, thank you for this invitation. So I'm gonna set this up with a couple of things first. One thing that I also don't want to do today is undermine the tremendous, relentless, round the clock, soul scraping organizing being done by Palestinians everywhere, on every continent -- I look forward to the Palestinians in Antarctica sending me a message, because I believe -- but so I want to be really clear that nothing that I am offering today is to discipline Palestinians. And nothing that I say today should be used against Palestinians. And if I find out you did it, I will come for you. [ Both laugh ] So, no one. Not a single person on the face of this planet should correct a Palestinian about the genocide of Palestinians. Not a single person. So I offer that to everyone, as a point of settled knowledge.
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 16:44
Mhm.
Rasha Abdulhadi 16:44
You don't have to be confused about that. If a Palestinian says something you feel uncomfortable with, you don't need to do anything about it, except sit with your being uncomfortable, and try to pay attention to that, and work on it. There are people who are working very hard to apply pressure on elected officials. And I do not at all want to undermine that work. I also want to be clear that it's Palestinians who are leading that. And that in addition to calling for ceasefire, there are very clearly in much larger, bold words saying "stop the genocide." So yes, there should absolutely be a ceasing of the bombing of Gaza. It is a totalizing violence that is impossible to convey in a single word. I was talking with other folks about this, just yesterday, some poets, including Joy Priest, and some others, who pointed out that this is ecocide.
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 16:49
Mm.
Rasha Abdulhadi 17:41
All of life. All of existence. Plants, animals, the entire ecosystem is being carpet bombed, is being annihilated in Gaza. And it is also, as Fady Joudah has said -- who's a Palestinian poet and doctor -- the destruction of houses is a destruction of memory, is a destruction of spatial relationships. And not just the objects but the archives, the photos, the documents, and even just the habitable places that make up a place. Like, what a place is. So that level of totalizing violence absolutely must stop. And anything that anyone can do to stop that I will not criticize him for it. So I want to be clear, before I even go into discussion of language, that my critique of the use of the word ceasefire is not and should never be used to discipline or disrupt the critical, urgent efforts of everyone using every tool available, every piece of language available, tailored to whatever audience they're trying to convince, to put a stop, to reduce even by any amount of time, the attempt to exterminate Palestinian people in Gaza and throughout Palestine. There's actually a lot that's going on in the West Bank that we're not even getting full reporting on, the small amount of reports that I see from people there in terms of protests and.. pogroms
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 19:20
Yeah.
Rasha Abdulhadi 19:20
Murders of protesters in the West Bank as well. Is really not being reported on. And also is eliminationist violence.
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 19:20
I mean, entire, two -- two entire towns have been depopulated. And that's just what has been reported on.
Rasha Abdulhadi 19:37
Yeah. There's a sense in which the Nakba -- which means catastrophe in Arabic -- the Nakba, which began in 1948, but truly began before then, but was really escalated to the kind of totalizing violence we're experiencing now, in 1948, with the establishment of the settler colonial apartheid project, formally, in Palestine. There's a sense in which that Nakba has been ongoing. And other Palestinians have been very clear about this. I don't think there's any Palestinian that would say otherwise. There is no point at which there hasn't been ongoing eliminationist violence to wipe, not just Palestinians, but -- from the face of the earth -- but all of Palestinian culture, all of Palestinian spatial relationships, architecture, geography, down to archaeological and historical sites. But also to erase, capture and imprison, even archives, documents, memories. And it's all of that to say it's been ongoing. And I think that any Palestinian will also tell you right now, how horrifying it is to watch what is clearly the project of exterminationist, total violence, that settler colonists have been loud and consistent and open in calling for. I do want to come back to the ceasefire question, though. "Ceasefire" implies that there's a war. There's not a war. All of this framing of it as a war between two proper nouns? There is no war. This is the escalation of a genocidal project that has been ongoing for more than 75 years. And to call for a ceasefire when only the occupier, when only the settler colonial project, even has an officially recognized government? They are the only ones who have a military. There's no ceasefire between a people being genocided and the people perpetrating the genocide. This is another attempt to like create some sort of false parity or false equivalency, as if a people faced with being wiped off the face of the earth should just allow it to happen.
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 22:07
Mhm.
Rasha Abdulhadi 22:08
Yeah, so those are my thoughts about ceasefire. And I want to come back to again, that doesn't mean you should criticize people who are organizing for an end to the genocide for using that term. If that's the term that moves [ long sigh ] politicians [ Beatrice laughs ] I have not a lot of faith, I'll be frank, about those appeals, we can be real and we could talk about that more later, when we talk about calls to action. I'm glad that some people are doing it. We should throw everything we can into the gears of the death machine.
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 22:37
Mhm.
Rasha Abdulhadi 22:37
Anything you can throw to slow this down. Any refusal you can make where you are, is important. And I would never discipline, judge or correct anyone for it. But I want us to be clear that -- what I fear is that the achievement of something that gets called "a ceasefire" would then be used as an excuse to remove any reporting about the certain to continue genocide of Palestinians. And when we talk about this, either the continuing -- a little quieter apartheid, just a little slightly less astonishing and spectacular annihilation. Just, you know, a quieter annihilation.
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 23:23
"Mild" genocide, if you will.
Rasha Abdulhadi 23:25
Right. Yeah, I think maybe that'll resonate with your listeners and connect to, I think, some excellent analysis that you all have had about the ways in which language gives cover for deathmaking at apocalyptic scales.
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 23:43
Well, and this is why I wanted to bring this in from the beginning. I really appreciate you laying out very specifically, and emphasizing also, this is not about policing language. As I said, we're not here to be like "we know the right words, we're here with the right words, come listen to us." That's absolutely not what we're saying. One thing I think that is really important about this framing that you're interrogating, is that I do think a lot of people who are calling for a ceasefire in solidarity with Palestinians, who are seeking the language to express their fullest and most utmost solidarity, right now, as it stands, the cultural and social and linguistic norms around supporting Palestine are not proportionate to the norms for, you know, rhetorically and linguistically, backing Israel. And this is something that has been true for a long time. And so part of what this is is not a critique, but like a call to push as -- push further and think further -- as you said, you know, is a ceasefire going to bring the peace that you want? Right, like is the ceasefire going to give land back? No. Right? So when we mean "land back," we need to say "land back," right?
Rasha Abdulhadi 25:00
Yeah.
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 25:00
And this was the kind of point that I so appreciated when we were, you know, emailing and planning this and I said, you know, like, we need to call to end the occupation and you're like, yeah, but does ending the occupation actually accomplish that? Or how are we actually maybe potentially reinforcing some of these colonial dynamics here? And I was like, oh, fucking shit, man. Yeah, like when I mean "land back," I need to just say "land back," right. And it's such an important moment, because one of the things that we're working against here, especially if you're coming from, you know, an English speaking, imperialist country, like the US, UK or Canada, for example, who's shipping these massive amounts of, you know, emotional, media and military support towards the complete elimination of Palestinian life and culture from this planet? The norms to be in solidarity with Palestine are something that have been also eliminated, repressed and intentionally subjugated, as part of the Zionist project, right, like, part of what we're dealing with isn't "misinformation," right?
Rasha Abdulhadi 25:06
Yes.
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 25:09
Like, we're dealing with a structure of propaganda, of meaning making, using language. And part of what I hope that we can sort of do today for folks is, you know, we're not talking about correct language here, we're talking about, like, how do we find the language that we want, that we mean? And why is it important to also, as you're saying, think really deeply about what it is actually that we're talking about. And saying, when we repeat things that -- when something like this happens, oftentimes, there's a rush to, you know, kind of come in with the first takes. And the first takes in response to any escalation of violence against Palestine are a lot, right. And there's a lot of energy that goes into just like resisting and arguing over those takes, but fundamentally, like, what we're talking about today is, Rasha, as you've said, throwing all -- anything -- into the gears of genocide, even if that is just, as you have written, like scraping out the sand from underneath your fingernails and throwing that.
Rasha Abdulhadi 27:15
Yalla, let's go! [ Beatrice laughs ] Yeah. To come back to your -- so you mentioned the phrase that you had initially sent me a question about, to end the occupation. And you also mentioned the word like, you know, "the peace that we want," and "peace" is like another loaded --
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 27:32
It's a loaded -- yeah.
Rasha Abdulhadi 27:33
A -- unfold a endless TARDIS of what's inside of that, you know. Bigger on the inside, kind of word. And to just be clear and brief, a lot of what is talked about in "peace" related to Palestine is just a firm insistence that Palestinians die more quietly and further out of view.
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 27:58
Mm. Mhm.
Rasha Abdulhadi 27:58
So I resist any peace that is that kind of killing peace. That is the peace of the mass grave. And I want to invite us to think -- you know, when we hear some of these phrases like "end the occupation" versus things that I would encourage people to express, if they feel that resonate with them, is to call for Palestinian liberation. To call for an end to colonization of Palestine. So if we mean, "land back," I think you're right, we absolutely should say that. If we mean the end of the settler colonial project, which is a an apartheid occupation, a totalizing military eliminationist project within Palestine, and of Palestinians and Palestinian life, and history and memory, then we should say that. And so I'm glad to maybe get into this because I actually wrote about some of this in 2021 when I saw a lot of folks either creating or struggling to create, quote, solidarity statements with Palestine, as it was being carpet bombed for 11 days. As families in Sheikh Jarrah, including Mohammed el-Kurd and Muna el-Kurd and their family were resisting the violent dispossession of them and their families. And there were, you know, uprisings and protests in every facet of Palestinian society. Not just in geographical Palestine, but around the world. So people were putting together solidarity statements in response to that and you know, that's a beautiful thing. And I found myself really noticing a lot about the kind of received language that I've mentioned. The, you know -- what people thought it would look like to offer solidarity, care, affirmation, for Palestinian aliveness. For the possibility of Palestinians not being annihilated. So I can go over a few of those terms. And you know, we can go back and forth if you have questions about some of them. But I think I would also encourage folks to just consider as you are encountering discourse, the discourses on the internet, about Palestine, you know, if you had to guess when you're looking at some of these statements, what would you guess is that like slippery term? Like, look at some of those words and ask yourself, do you really know what that means? Do you really know what it would mean to end the occupation? What exactly is it that you think the occupation is? And what would it mean for it to end? And what would that look like? And if you don't feel like you know, what that answer is, that's one of those slippery terms that you should be careful about repeating.
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 27:59
Mm.
Rasha Abdulhadi 27:59
You know, are you saying it just because you heard someone else repeat it? And, you know, maybe they seemed like they were cool and about justice, and maybe they know what they're talking about. But if they're not Palestinian -- and this is where I would really draw the distinction -- words that are used by Palestinians, even if Palestinians agree or disagree with each other about what liberation could be, or might look like, what it would take to achieve decolonization and freedom. Palestinians have a clarity about what they mean when they use some of these terms. So you may hear Palestinians use some of the same terms that I'm going to talk about. But I'm going to tell you that if you ask them what they meant by that term, they could tell you. And I would really just caution that most other folks, even folks, in my experience, who might understand themselves as working for Palestinian liberation, freedom, decolonization, whatever, maybe even in close relationship with Palestinians, maybe who have even traveled to geographical Palestine in a way that many Palestinians are not able to do, that many of those folks may not actually be able to describe to you what that really means. Or if you scratch the surface of those terms, you'll find that it's just repackaged settler colonialism. That's my main thesis. And we can go through some of the specific terms. So, you know, I really want people to take away from this both an awareness of how many layers of erasure are built in to talking about Palestine and Palestinians, as well as be really cautious about all of these dead ends that are built into almost every discussion. And I mean, literally, dead, deadening, deathmaking, genocidal, annihilatory distractions that are built into every discussion about Palestine by non-Palestinians, sometimes with malicious intent, as we have clearly seen in the news, with just open, consistent, vicious, the most vile and explicit calls for the extermination of Palestinian people by settler colonists in the apartheid colonial regime. So some might be malicious when they use these terms. And so I would just caution us to really not take the bait on some of these dead end distractions. So I can start with this end the occupation and I won't go into the full detail, but the occupied territories are a formal term for lands that were designated by the settler colonial state for Palestinians. But then later, as a result of the continued settler colonial genocidal expansion, were re-occupied, were occupied for the first time by an expanding settler apartheid, colonial, ethno supremacist, military surveillance, exterminationist project. Feel free to use any of those words when you want to talk about what's happening in Palestine. So there's a version of things where someone could say "end the occupation" and maybe the occupation of certain parts of, let's say, the West Bank or Gaza. That's what people mean oftentimes, when they say the occupied territories, if you've heard that phrase, that's -- they're not referring to all of Palestine, they're referring to specific parts of either Gaza or the West Bank or both that have been increasingly encroached upon by the settler colonial project, including, you know, quote, "illegal settlements." I know we're going to talk about the law later, so leave it till then. But there could be a version of "end the occupation" where settler colonialism continues in the rest of Palestine. Or, you know, and there's certainly some liberal settlers who would like, you know, a little less visible apartheid. A little quieter genocide. "Milder" genocide, as you might say. They might want that. That might be what they understand when they hear end the occupation. They are like, oh, you know, it's really just so sad. This violence we've been required to commit against Palestinians. How terrible. We should definitely not look at it. So I think that that's one of the things that I hear when I hear people use that term. Unless they're really specific about what they mean by it. If you talk to a Palestinian and a Palestinian says "end the occupation," they mean get the settler colonial project out of the entirety of geographical Palestine, like, just end this failed, ethno supremacist, apartheid, abattoir --
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 27:59
Mhm.
Rasha Abdulhadi 35:27
-- just this like slaughterhouse of the imagination, as well as the physical existence of Palestinians. So again, I think that context and who's saying it really matters. So I'll pause there for a moment. But I'm also glad to talk about some of the other terms, we can look back at some of the writing that I did before, and I can pull some of those out.
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 35:44
Absolutely. Do you mind if I ask about one more point related to this, that I feel like -- it's come up in specific discussion with health care workers who have used a call to end the occupation to mean something along the lines of like, get rid of the blockades and just let the goddamn humanitarian aid in so that everyone can get medical supplies and you know, Médecins Sans Frontières can get their personnel out or in, or whatever the fuck, you know, and it's part of this kind of -- what they're speaking to is almost like they're frustrated and trying to call for some of the kind of "rules of engagement" to apply again, to like allow the kind of things that are supposed to be exceptionalized under quote, unquote, states of "modern warfare." And this gets into, I guess, some of our calls for -- some of our discussion later, rather, around legalistic language and legal frameworks in international law and how that becomes a whole big part of this. So we can also save this for later. But also, you know, maybe for folks who are really talking about like, when they're trying to say, you know, end the occupation they're trying to say, you know, "let the hospitals get shipments in and out." I wonder if you could speak to those folks for a second and sort of maybe even speak to like, how folks coming from the health care worker perspective can maybe step up their solidarity and take a lesson here.
Rasha Abdulhadi 37:25
So I notice, I absolutely notice, this dynamic that you're talking about. And this, I think, is attempting to redirect energy, and any care or any horror at the brutality of genocide against Palestinians, towards treating a genocide as if it's a "humanitarian crisis." Or as if it's a natural disaster that just needs a mobilization of resources, rather than an unmaking of a settler colonial world. So I think, you know, some of the key phrases that I notice around this humanitarian crisis framing, or this notion of like the evacuation of Gaza while, as you mentioned at the top of the show, bombing campaigns are continuing. There have been bombings of evacuation routes. And when we're talking about "evacuation," we're talking about the most apocalyptic vision you have ever seen in any piece of fiction, imagination or historical image. Just a complete leveling. So there are not necessarily roads. If there are cars they may not be working. The roads may not be drivable. We're talking about people who are barely alive or barely surviving, in some cases, needing to be hospitalized, trying to get to spaces where there could be any sort of care or resource, whatever limited things that Gazans have amazingly scraped together to keep each other alive for as long as they can. When I saw the call for an evacuation, that's when I realized it was a death march they were calling. You cannot evacuate bombed, brutalized, murdered, disabled, bleeding, trauma cases, in every sense of that word, critical, physical, emergency care, as well as -- some of the posts we're seeing out of Gaza are, you know, poets, reporters, human rights workers that we know who are Palestinians, who some of us may have been following for years and interacted with and maybe in real life, maybe just online, and the -- how overwhelmed they are, even in comparison to their experiences of carpet bombing in 2021 and 2014 --
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 39:50
Mhm.
Rasha Abdulhadi 39:50
-- These other annihilatory expressions of settler colonial death making. I would really invite anyone in the medical community, anyone who considers themselves a health care worker, anyone who cares about the pandemic or thinks of themselves as quote, "COVID conscious" to really consider the impossibility of the situation for Palestinians in Gaza. There's no evacuation through total war. While that total war is ongoing. There's, and -- it's not a "relocation." Now, certainly the settler colonial project would love to relocate every Palestinian, if they could magically use a Star Trek transporter and remove Palestinians anywhere other than geographical Palestine, they would absolutely love to do that. I do not question their desire to, quote, "relocate" every Palestinian, if they could snap their fingers and do it right now they would. And they've been clear about saying that, on television, repeatedly!
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 40:51
Mhm. For years.
Rasha Abdulhadi 40:52
Yes!
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 40:53
They've been clear for decades. They've been clear for decades.
Rasha Abdulhadi 40:55
Before the beginning of the settler colonial apartheid state, they were clear that the project of the establishment of the settler colonial apartheid ethnostate would require the annihilation of Palestinians. So I would call on healthcare workers to really resist this attempt by a settler colonial apartheid military state that is carrying out, right now, still, an ongoing, total genocide campaign against Palestinians, with every -- at every level of its society. From arming individual settlers to dropping every bomb they have on the Gaza. This is not a "humanitarian crisis." It is not a "natural disaster." We should not naturalize it. Samer Abdelnour, who is based in the UK, posted a call for lawyers to pay attention to the number of settlers who are passport holding citizens of other nations, including settler colonial nations -- Oh, by the way, and you listed a bunch of the settler colonial nations earlier. Let's not forget Australia, they don't get off easy.
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 42:06
Oh, true. Great point.
Rasha Abdulhadi 42:07
People cannot let them get away with their complete and vocal support. And I want to give a shout out to Palestinians in Australia who have been organizing like hell. They've been fighting so -- Palestinians everywhere. Maybe I'll offer more love at the end. But for people who've listened this far, I will never stop believing in the stubbornness of Palestinians to teach life. And I am reaffirmed and renewed in my commitment every day by witnessing other Palestinians and the extraordinary lengths -- like doctors, like doctors in Gaza, medics, rescue workers in Gaza who are digging people out with our hands. Who are refusing evacuation quote, "evacuation" orders for the death march in which they are likely to be bombed. Or to, you know, theoretical, quote "refugee camps" in the Sinai Peninsula, which is a lie. That's -- and if it happened would be just a terrible farcical replay of the Nakba. But I'm so affirmed by the way that Palestinians reject this inevitability and have been rejecting this inevitability for more than 75 years in the face of explicit, daily, hourly expressions and force brought to bear on their lives with an intention to annihilate them. And that is what I hope we all pay attention to. If people are feeling despair, or confusion, I would say really look to Palestinians right now. But yeah, so I would say this is not natural. The people who are responsible for this eliminatory violence have names. They are in positions of government. They are funded by other governments who are in settler colonial apartheid solidarity with each other. They have been very clear about their commitments to each other and organizing, and I hope that we will be clear in our commitments to each other across geographies and movements in opposing it, including health care workers who I love that they are so moved to respond and to offer care. But what does it mean to only want your intervention to be after the bombs have fallen? After the bombs have been dropped by a murderous settler colonial apartheid state? I would invite folks to consider whether they can intervene sooner than that.
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 44:55
Absolutely. I really appreciate the way you put that Rasha, I mean, I guess this is the benefit of asking a poet to speak on such things [ laughs ]. But I mean, one of the things that I would love -- I know I said, let's talk about those legal framings -- but I would love for us just also to touch on, is the kind of -- in your critique of sort of stopping at calling for a ceasefire, maybe we'll put it there.
Rasha Abdulhadi 45:31
Right.
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 45:33
I think that's the right way to phrase it?
Rasha Abdulhadi 45:35
Yeah.
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 45:37
You've talked about also how this moves the visibility with regard to the news cycle, moving it "far from the news," as you put it so well in a recent tweet. And I think this is really important and another point that actually is kind of irrelevant to folks who have been thinking about COVID, and will feel very familiar, I think, because part of what your critique is here is also that right now it's impossible to look away. And the idea of the kind of "pause," not only -- I don't want to put words in your mouth, but -- so this is my assertion here -- sort of it casts Israel in this benevolent light, like, oh, they, "they did a ceasefire, good on them," or something? Which like, they should be stopping at the bare minimum, right? And the other thing that it does also is it kind of slows things down and creates a kind of "gentler" genocide, as you've been talking about. And I think one of the things too, that I really just want to echo with regard to, you know, sort of how you're speaking to how healthcare workers and folks in the medical profession can really step up right now, I think that there's a similar sort of point to be made for folks in the media here, which is that, you know, as I was saying to you, when we were planning, you know, we [Death Panel] had planned this kind of year of like, commit to making sure to incorporate this into the ongoing narrative of the show. And considering last week, we have been shifting our timetable and moving that. And, you know, one of the things that also, I think is really important to name is that often, you know, we pay a lot of attention to Palestine, in a media discourse, only in these moments, right? And that's fundamentally also not enough. And we need to push further. And I think be looking to, you know, be in solidarity with Palestinians and work towards Palestinian liberation full time, not just as a thing that comes in reactive moments, whether that's sort of like, you know, a big carpet bombing incident, or, you know, a conflict that starts really big, and then turns into a kind of war of legal semantics and is negotiated into some, you know, addendum to the historical record, and people walk away and forget about it until the next time it's in the news. And that's -- that's not something that is a natural process, right? This is the result of choices and decisions about what coverage is going to be featured and what the priorities are in terms of the narratives that we talk about going forward and in our sort of media landscape, and obviously, it's not necessarily something that folks necessarily have a lot of control over, you know, sometimes, especially for freelance writers who write about Palestine. Oftentimes -- I've heard from a lot of people also in the space around COVID, where you're pitching stuff, and people are just like, "Nope, no, thank you, pass. Thanks, pass. Do you have anything else? Pass." And so obviously, it's not something that everyone has total control over right? But even so, there is a tendency to look away outside of these moments of sort of sensationalized, broad, impossible to ignore, obvious, concentrated genocidal violence.
Rasha Abdulhadi 49:12
There are two brief things I'll offer and I won't go on very long about it in answering this. One is that I would invite everyone to really attend to the moments when Palestine is more in the news, when Palestinians are being talked about more. And recognize that even in those moments, in which Palestinians are being reframed as violent, murderable, in need of eliminatory discipline for not just lying down and dying like the settler colonial occupation would like them to. Quietly. With no resistance. Recognize that a lot of those moments in which Palestinians are more prominent in the news usually occur after moments, or during moments, of Palestinian resistance. Of heightened Palestinian liberation struggle. And the issue with the reporting, and why that may not always be apparent to people watching the news in English speaking, either settler colonial nations or the imperialist nations that launched those settler colonies, in the English speaking countries, is that the reporting often starts the timeline with these allegations of victimhood on the part of the settler colonial apartheid, supremacist, military, ethnostate that is prosecuting, and has been prosecuting, more than 75 years of total eliminatory violence against every aspect of Palestinian life. And what I would ask you to attend to is, in those moments where there is coverage of Palestine, pay more attention to what Palestinians are doing and saying, both on the news and elsewhere. And I think that may really guide folks. And then the second thing I'll say, and this is an invitation that I have made elsewhere. And I -- it's so beautiful to see it. And so I would say both to Palestinians and all who are maybe feeling despair, or overwhelmed in this moment really attend to both protests and actions were people on every front of struggle across multiple geographies are connecting what is happening to them in their communities to what is happening in Palestine. And in some ways, it may be that the patterns of settler colonial violence are the same. But I would really encourage folks to think beyond that. I was talking with Black organizers, writers, poets that I know about this mistake that I think is made about solidarity actions with Palestine, and this assumption that it's sort of like, you know, virtue signaling? Or moral posturing or -- or, as I just described, that it's sort of a metaphorical understanding of parallels of situations of colonial violence. But in actuality -- and the people who are doing these connections between struggles realize this, it's intentional -- there are material, specific, proper noun connections between these sites of struggle. So the Appalachian pipeline project [Appalachians Against Pipelines] just posted earlier today a really amazing update on their continued blockage of the building of a pipeline. And they were very specific in connecting -- the urgency of their blockading of that pipeline is not just some, you know, loose notion about the environment. But some very specific companies that are connected to mining white phosphorus, that is then dropped by the settler colonial apartheid military ethnostate to horrifically murder Palestinians. There are companies in the occupation that produce the military technologies that train the police officers in a deadly exchange -- and people can look up the Deadly Exchange website for the amazing work done by other Palestinians that I won't go into detail on now. But there are specific companies there are specific individuals. And I'll name that even for you and I to set up for this call --
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 53:41
Mm. Mhm.
Rasha Abdulhadi 53:42
-- requires the use of technologies that either were created and based in the settler colonial apartheid military state currently pursuing a genocide against all Palestinians, like Riverside FM, the platform that a lot of podcasts use --
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 53:58
Yep.
Rasha Abdulhadi 53:58
-- that has relocated its headquarters to the political capital of the settler colonial apartheid state that is built on the graveyards of multiple Palestinian villages, and Jaffa. There's no place -- there's no civilian life that isn't built on a Palestinian graveyard in the settler colonial project in Palestine. Sometimes occupying actual Palestinian houses. And those Palestinians are still alive. And their descendants are still alive.
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 54:27
Mhm.
Rasha Abdulhadi 54:28
And then Zoom, which we are using now, is a platform that has unilaterally deplatformed and canceled online events hosted by Palestinians, including Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi, who has been targeted for her organizing and activism for many years. Even when the university itself was ready to go forward with an event. The technology platform cancelled it!
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 54:58
Mhm.
Rasha Abdulhadi 54:58
What does it mean to pay for a technology product that then is going to cancel the work that you do. So this is where I really invite us, across every front of struggle, to pay attention to these moments of friction where our lives encounter the products and violent reproductions that are exported by, trained by, reproduced by a violent settler colonial apartheid in Palestine. To say that Palestine is central, and essential, to all liberation struggles is not a metaphor. It is not a more -- it's not some "nice thing to say," if you want to signal that you believe in justice. It is a material fact. We are not going to get free of the police state in this settler colonial nation unless Palestinians are free. So I would encourage everyone -- and this includes people who may listen to this, or other podcasts, or watch news, accurate or propagandized and fear mongering, and feel fear. True, deep, real, historically based fear about eliminatory violence against their own communities. I want to say this -- I'm going to speak really directly to anyone, and I really mean anyone, across any community who fears rising fascism and eliminatory violence against your identity. Whether that's religious, ethnic, gender, geography, racialized. I really want to invite you, if those are the things you fear, to make cause with the Palestinian people. Because what they do to us they will do to everyone. They have been practicing it already. We have seen the results. So even if Palestine isn't in the news, I -- and even if people are not actively engaged in, say, ending a blockade or responding to, you know, medical aid, I think the deeper liberation struggle, that I attend to at least, is how Palestine is everywhere. And it touches every struggle. And I'm not the only one who said this. There are Black organizers who have traveled to Palestine and worked with Palestinians across multiple geographies, people who are dear to my heart, who I've worked with, who get this, we see it clearly. It's consistent. I hope that we take very seriously how the brutal, totalizing violence enacted against Palestinians is violence against all of us. And to really pay attention to where that violence shows up in our lives. And refuse to participate in it wherever we can. To name it wherever we notice it. And to build a world that does not depend it.
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 57:51
I really appreciate so much the way that you put that, Rasha. And one of the things that I want us to get to next, which we've been, I guess sort of teasing over and over in this conversation is to talk about how sometimes, in the sort of, quote, unquote, many "discourses" -- which, I don't even like using the word discourse to describe the dominant conversations about how to talk about Palestine, because I think that it kind of belittles the intentionality of the the propaganda that we're up against --
Rasha Abdulhadi 58:30
Yeah.
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 58:30
-- so I don't want to give the impression that it's somehow incidental, you know, or frivolous. Which I feel like sometimes "discourse" can imply. But I mean, really seriously, around some of these points of discussion that you see, they're kind of like boundaries and borders for what the quote unquote, "acceptable," dominant conversation to have in these moments is, kind of centers around, often, discussion of international law, "war crimes," these kinds of like semantic and legal frameworks, where -- in essence, you know, it's kind of like refereeing genocide, right? It's kind of like calling --
Rasha Abdulhadi 58:30
Yeah.
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 58:33
-- calling "okay bombings" versus "not okay bombings," versus unequivocally saying "fucking bombings are not okay," right? So part of what we're sort of trying to peel back here is how some of the slippery language, including kind of these things that we think of -- like to speak back to the kind of point about humanitarianism, and aid and things like that -- we also are up against these international legal frameworks. And some of these kinds of frameworks, to spend time speaking about that and sort of directly address that, I think can also reinforce this point that you made that's really important. So one of the points that you have been making a lot recently in the last week, especially on Twitter, is to question and delegitimize the idea of essentially offering Palestinians like, a "choice," right, the choice between -- the "false choice between slow genocide and spectacular annihilation," as you put it. And so I think that's part of what's also going on when you see people sort of refereeing genocide. And using these things like, what is going on right now is "war crimes," right? And, obviously, because we're coming from an abolitionist perspective here, but also because we're questioning the role of law in reproducing and justifying colonial violence, I want us to spend some time talking about how that language and how those kinds of ideas as they just exist out in the world, but also, as they're sort of structurally and socially reflected in our political economy, how that ultimately sort of helps people evade responsibility for taking a more unequivocal stance here opposing eliminationist genocide of Palestine and Palestinian people.
Rasha Abdulhadi 1:01:02
So, I would offer a question back to people who allow themselves to be captured by the notion that there is a legalistic solution to stopping a genocide. Who makes the laws? Who made international law? When the same nations that made the laws are the ones that are perpetrating, that are carrying out, decades long -- sometimes centuries long, in the case of the settler colonial nation -- eliminatory violence against multiple indigenous populations, indigenous nations, indigenous peoples, I think we should question what does the law mean. And not just interpretations of the law. But like, what is it good for in any material sense? So, like, okay, these are war crimes. And?
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:02:06
Mhm.
Rasha Abdulhadi 1:02:07
What would you do if they are war crimes? Like, who will act? Who will stop a genocide from happening? What are the actions that will stop a genocide? What are the actions that we are all willing to take, whether we are the UN Special Rapporteur to Palestine, or Genocide Joe Biden, or everyone who is sitting at home, or having to go to work, and try to make sense of a life in which this kind of -- we're just looking into the abyss of violence. Deeper than the deepest point of the ocean level of violence. And trying to make sense of, how do we live through this? How do we keep each other alive through this? How do we keep as many Palestinians alive as possible? So like, okay, it's war crimes. Sure. Can you do anything with that? That's my only question. Okay, so it's a violation of the Geneva Conventions? What will you do about that?
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:03:11
Right.
Rasha Abdulhadi 1:03:12
Oh, it's a, you know, a "violation of their own laws within the settler colony." Which, most of the time it's not, because there are, right, that's where the apartheid part comes in. The explicit legal regime that governs the settler colonial project does not give rights to any Palestinians. So you know, law is about power. Law is created by the powerful, and it is enforced by the powerful. And though there have been some times in history, and maybe even in the present, where there are people who deeply care, who fiercely believe, and are doing what they can to throw everything into the gears of a death machine to stop it, using the tools of the law. I honor that, like I said at the beginning, anything you've got to hand, throw it.
Rasha Abdulhadi 1:04:08
Mhm.
Rasha Abdulhadi 1:04:09
If it is a crumb or a Chrysler, [ Beatrice laughs ] like, throw that shit in. But what I don't have patience for is -- you know, here I'll speak really to your audience. Disabled folks have definitely experienced those things where you experience a violation of your rights, either at work or at school, or in trying to get health care to stay alive or benefits. And you know, well meaning people might say, "well, that's against the law, you should sue!" Right? Do I have to explain how ridiculous and meaningless a response that is? Will you get the lawyers? Will you pay for it? In the meantime, how do I stay alive? Right? The same response applies in Palestine. And the other thing I want to offer, too is -- so I said law is created by the powerful, law is enforced by the powerful. With police, with militaries, with surveillance. With international settler colonial solidarity. That's what creates global law. So the law serves power. And violence, the violence of states, is about power and domination of the people. And often, as you all have described, that violence, and the limits of the law, are really about defining who doesn't get to access rights, and who is really put in a place of extractive abandonment. We can think about slow genocides that happen in the US too. And sometimes they aren't slow. I really want to honor Black activists and scholars and historians who are calling out the US government's bombing of the MOVE houses in Philly and the, you know, some notion that the United States is constrained by different laws as a settler colonial nation than the one that is occupying Palestine. The other thing I want to bring up is the abolitionists have made clear that law, even at the interpersonal level, all the way up to the level of states, is never a constraint on behavior. Just because something is against the law doesn't mean people magically can never do it.
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:06:26
Mhm.
Rasha Abdulhadi 1:06:26
Right. And that the police or the UN or the International Criminal Court, right, the Hague, "history," whatever that means, historians -- they don't arrive until after the harm has happened, if at all. So the law is also not a great tool in terms of intervention, right, we go back to this question of "humanitarian crisis." At what point do you want your intervention to happen? Do you want it to happen after the genocide? Does that make you feel good about what you can offer? And I'm being a little confrontational here, because I would like people to really consider the friction that they might be able to apply to slow these gears down before the genocide happens. I've said this elsewhere, but I really want to repeat it. The genocide of the Palestinian people is both ongoing and not inevitable. We must refuse it. We can refuse it. Every one of us that might despair or feel uncomfortable, particularly if folks are not Palestinian, in their daily lives to either, as the scholar Umayyah Cable has said, consent to "compulsory Zionism."
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:07:41
Mm.
Rasha Abdulhadi 1:07:41
In the same way that we might consent -- we might be expected to conform to -- compulsory heterosexuality, compulsory ableism, compulsory able-bodiedness. To really attend to those points of friction in their life, right now, today, this afternoon. In whoever they're talking with, in whatever services or goods they engage with, in whatever groups they are a part of in their lives, whether that's schools or universities or places of worship within any faith tradition. If people are artists, cultural producers, scholars really don't back down from that point of friction with what has become the compulsory requirement that we consent to genocide. Of multiple peoples. I want to be clear that even though I'm focusing on Palestine right now, eliminatory violence continues every day, in almost every geography. And I do not mean to exceptionalize Palestine or Palestinians, even though in this moment there is a spectacular annihilation happening. That, I think many of us are experiencing, really challenges our understandings of the amount of violence that can be implemented and inflicted on people. But it is not something that has never happened before --
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:09:06
Mhm.
Rasha Abdulhadi 1:09:06
-- in the history of horrors of colonial violence, and Imperial violence, and even genocidal violence. So yeah, I would come back to encouraging folks, whatever profession they are in, whatever framework or structure that they engage with, to really ask a very simple question: What can you do to resist a genocide today? What can you do to refuse the genocide of the Palestinian people today? And I also want to point out that many people here in this settler colony, who do work of abolition, of resisting criminalization -- particularly of survivors of interpersonal violence, of gendered violence, of racially structured, anti-Black, anti-indigenous -- oh, my heart -- anti-Palestinian violence like we see with the brutal murder of the six year old, Wadea, by the landlord of the house that he and his mother were living in. And the total erasure of that structure of relationship, I really want to appreciate, I think it's Leah Goodridge who -- I should go back and look at make sure I'm quoting the right person -- but I really want to offer appreciation for the framing around: yes, it is anti-Palestinian violence, yes, it is anti-Muslim violence. Yes, it is racialized violence, aided, abetted elicited, compelled by the propaganda and the military policies of this nation, and the settler colonial nations that are in solidarity with each other. And it is also a material, structural violence of someone else owning your place of residence and safety and being able to access it at any time and do to you anything they are capable of doing. And I think that is, at a very interpersonal level, the reproduction of the kind of violence we see in Palestine. And the survivors who resist that kind of violence, as we've seen time and again with people who resist interpersonal violence from partners, family members, are often -- from, you know, racist attacks in public -- are often criminalized and prosecuted much more harshly than their attackers. Because the law permits and excuses and overlooks the violence of the powerful, including the ones who create and enforce the law.
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:11:58
One thing that, Rasha, you and I talked about at the beginning and before we were recording was, like, ultimately when we start to think about looking for connections like, as you were saying earlier, Rasha, about rhetoric and the COVID pandemic, and what is going on right now, the ongoingness of both of these events that are being sort of hidden in plain sight, and how language, you know, helps to construct that vulnerability. And that idea -- naturalize the idea that, you know, it's already been decided that Palestine will be eliminated. Which is absolutely the kind of core truth that we need to be resisting.
Rasha Abdulhadi 1:12:40
Yeah! I think that comparison is so apt. The idea of "deaths pulled from the future," related to exonerating what is institutionalized abandonment at every level, in this settler colonial nation, and in many others globally, to allow for the ongoing mass death and disabling of the pandemic. And to continue the squeeze of it, through the rollback of all the policies that might have protected, or supported people to continue surviving, is absolutely connected and relevant to talking about not assuming or allowing people to speak of the end of Palestinians as if it was just a natural fact. Or if it was a requirement. Whereas if it was the weather, and just a storm that we had to endure -- by the way, natural disasters will also be sold to us as something that is naturalized when in fact, we know that there are consequences to catastrophic climate change and climate crisis that we must act on. And yet those, too, will be naturalized, even "natural," quote, unquote, disasters should not be naturalized. There are still people and policies and governments and corporations who are responsible for it. But to come back to this question of naturalizing -- the attempts to naturalize the end of the Palestinian people and then to make this very hands-wringing, philosophizing, personal storytelling pontification about how sad it is, and who we can mourn, and what direction the compass of mourning points or, you know, oh we can "side with the child rather than the gun," when it's all a feels-bad industrial military complex --
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:14:35
Mhm.
Rasha Abdulhadi 1:14:35
-- that has attempted to distract us from the real questions of settler colonialism and the urgency of stopping a genocide immediately. Right now. As soon as possible. In every way we can. At every level that we can resist it. And I have really noticed how this emotional appeal that there is all this pent up grief, confusion, anger that everyone is feeling watching this. I don't know how any human could not feel it, including all the settlers who are implementing it. Let me go back to my point at the beginning, I see these sort of feels bad musings, mumblings, even, as an attempt to have catharsis for the experience of witnessing and not acting with every way in your power to stop a genocide. And the thing about -- the thing about framing, as Naomi Klein attempted to do, the moral consideration as something between choosing between a child and a gun is really another one of these dead end invitations. We're being invited down a cul de sac that will terminate not only our thoughts, but Palestinian lives. And I would invite us to not go down that cul-de-sac because what that invitation is leading us away from is the discussion of the violence happening right now. Between any Palestinian, of any age, gender, or other identity, political affiliation or not, and a billions of dollars bombing campaign. I'm much less interested in interpersonal violence than I am in the violence of states! That is a genocidal campaign -- to talk about anything other than stopping a genocide is a distraction from the topic. And I would really encourage us to remember Toni Morrison's words about the function of racism, the very serious function of it, is to distract us, and to give us little projects, little busy work to nibble on, to be heat sinks for our energy, our anger, our intellectual effort, our emotional effort, our interpersonal conversations, arguing about, you know, "who is more mournable?" Stop the genocide and then we can talk about it.
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:17:10
Yeah.
Rasha Abdulhadi 1:17:11
And I would really -- I think the other thing that I'm struck by is that all of the people that I see participating, right, in this feels bad, hand wringing, distraction game, to get us to talk about anything but settler colonialism -- ending settler colonialism that has only the aim of the annihilation of the Palestinian people -- is that all the people who are doing this, of course, are not Palestinians. Not only are they not Palestinians, but it seems that you know, the Judith Butlers and the Naomi Kleins and the network news clowns like Fareed Zakaria are so accustomed to being celebrated with the rewards of being a public figure who people listen to that they have not even paused for one moment to consider whether they are qualified at all to talk about Palestine, much less condemn, endorse, or analyze anything. And the truth is, they don't know. And the thing that keeps coming back to my mind that is actually quite refreshing to me in how hilarious it is, because it's such a clear moment of a demonstration of not being qualified to talk about Palestine, where Fareed Zakaria is interviewing --
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:18:25
Oh, god.
Rasha Abdulhadi 1:18:25
[ laughs ] -- is interviewing [Mustafa] Barghouti and he doesn't even know who he's talking to. He thinks he's talk -- Fareed Zakaria thinks he's talking to an official from the Palestinian Authority, which is the subcontractor for apartheid enforcement that was set up as a part of the Oslo Accords. Again, go look at people who have done Palestine 101 history, I'm just giving you keywords. But, so, Fareed Zakaria thinks he's talking to someone who's a quasi government, subcontractor, appendage to the settler occupation enforcement. And he discovers, because Barghouti corrects him, that he's talking to somebody who is part of a completely different political formation within Palestine. [ Beatrice laughs ] And it's such a gorgeous, refreshing, just like, on live television you can't fake it, demonstration of how incurious the sort of celebrated typing class or talking head class is about the complexity and diversity within Palestinian society, both within geographical Palestine, in the refugee camps in Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan, and in the global diaspora on every continent of this earth. And the attempt to flatten Palestinians down to one or two proper nouns is hilarious. And would maybe be more hilarious if it were not so racist and exhausting -- a prerequisite for Palestinians interviewed in any public forum. And I just want to appreciate you for, really, you know, I would expect nothing less, given all the work that I've followed over the course of the last three years with the Death Panel as a podcast. So, you know, we shouldn't have to thank people. But it's so rare that it is just really astonishing to be able to have a conversation in which one does not have to minimize the vibrant, liberatory complexity of Palestinian thought, and resistance, and culture, and struggle for liberation over time. And so I really encourage people -- in fact, I want to give a really specific documentary, and I can send you all links to it because there's a film archive that has made it available online in a way that it hasn't been in the past.
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:20:59
Great, we can link to that in the episode description, too.
Rasha Abdulhadi 1:21:03
Women in Struggle is an amazing documentary from the mid 2000s. I think it's 2004, 2005, that it was released, depending on what you count as the official date. It's a documentary of women, Palestinian women in Palestinian liberation struggles, and talking to them about their life experiences, including that predate the Nakba. And continue. So, Rasmieh Odeh, Leila Khaled is talked about -- is, you know, interviewed in that space -- as well as a number of other women that most people haven't heard of, even if they've heard of a few Palestinian women in history. So I'd really encourage folks to look at that if they want to attend to some notion of Palestinian liberation. The depth, complexity, and history of ongoing Palestinian liberation struggle. And one thing that I really want to offer to the listeners to this podcast, to people in English speaking nations everywhere is a preview. I want to really draw your attention to how they're going to try to hide the genocide of the Palestinian people, and how they're going to try to sell it to you. So some of this is going to be pretty common. And I think some of your listeners will probably recognize this first tactic that's most common on the ultra-racist right, which is going to be, you know, they're already literally talking about the destruction of Palestinian people as a response to, you know, a 9/11 2.0. With a recast of characters and bad guys, and who the the heroes are that will be prosecuting this devastating totalizing violence in response.
Text to Speech Audio Introducing Clip 1:22:58
Joe Biden, the 13th of October 2023:
[Audio Clip] Joe Biden Speaking October 13th 2023 1:23:03
These guys make -- they make Al Qaeda look pure. They're pure -- they're pure evil. Like I said from the beginning, the United States, make no mistake about it, stands with Israel.
Rasha Abdulhadi 1:23:16
And so that'll include, you know, lots of Islamophobia, War on Terror prosecutions in the United States and abroad, criminalization of protests, criminalization of dissent, surveillance, and the drumming up of the kind of racist, and racializing, Islamophobic, anti-Muslim, anti-Palestinian violence that we know, based on experience, doesn't end based on whether you share any of those identities. Anyone who can be racialized as potentially outside of the settler colonial project is at risk of being made a target by that sort of right wing framing, of how they will try to sell the genocide. And it's very -- there are other people who have pointed out this analysis that it's very convenient for politics here in this settler colonial nation to be able to set up a new boogeyman and to be able to hold some cloths and drapings in front of Palestinians, so you don't really look at the Palestinians themselves. And what you see is just this incredibly manufactured, costume morality play that attempts to reboot the clash of civilizations narratives that were pursued during the war on terror -- this still ongoing war on terror -- frameworks of criminalization and violence. So that's what the right is going to do. I think that'll be obvious to most people. I think many people here will resist that. Most people are not willing -- many people or at least more people, maybe, I'm hoping, at least for this audience, will not be ready to align themselves with the overt racism and white supremacy that comes with that kind of rhetoric. What I think is going to be a lot more tempting for folks is what we see with Pete Davidson's one minute and 46 second opening speech to last Saturday night's SNL. And I really want to give Danya, actually, credit, she'd called it in advance. She's like, this week's Saturday Night Live episode is going to be a masterclass in propaganda. And she was right. So I really -- this is the one that I really want to inoculate people against. Because I think this is going to get into that feels bad industrial complex, where everyone feels awful about what's happening -- it does feel awful to know that a genocide is happening. And it feels awful to be uncertain what you can do to stop it or to feel helpless and powerless in the face of massive state violence, whether it's here or anywhere. And so what that monologue is doing, and what a lot of these feels bad think pieces are doing is offering people an opportunity to frame the genocide of the Palestinian people as a humanitarian crisis and a foregone conclusion. And something that we should feel compassion for, you know, this is very much the both sides-ism propaganda. And people will be, you know, encouraged to adopt Palestinian babies. And if -- those people should be haunted if that becomes an outcome of commodifying this genocide, of the white supremacist theft of children murdered by white supremacist violence globally. We've seen it happen in Afghanistan, there's ongoing case right now. But so the encouragement is going to be to really lean into feelings rather than to attending to action. And the other trick that happens in that Pete Davidson monologue is that, and Danya points this out in our conversation on Twitter, is the insidiousness of invoking his personal narrative and tragedy, right when he was a child, losing his father who worked as a rescue worker. Right. That's not something that I think any of us would -- many of us who are looking at the rescue workers in Gaza, who are refusing to evacuate in order to save lives, can look at what happened to Pete Davidson's father and feel the immensity of sadness, personal loss. But that's what we're being invited to feel. And in being invited to feel that we're being invited to think of what Naomi Klein is encouraging us to think of, this like, feeling bad for children experiencing violence. Versus attending to the very intentional, very thoroughly, bureaucratically, corporately, militarily implemented violence, totalizing violences of states, in order to maintain power, and to annihilate people who stand in the way of power. So to invoke this idea of the child, as a victim of 9/11, and to really -- another writer commented that this is an attempt to really drum up nostalgia among people in this US settler colony, among US settlers, to have nostalgia for the aftermath of 9/11. And really lean into an affective, you know, disaster response or emergency response. I would say, resist the humanitarian crisis framing. And the feels bad industrial complex nostalgia, which is in the continuity with that right wing Islamophobic, anti-Muslim, anti-Palestinian racism, this idea that it's a foregone conclusion, that the people of Palestine will be annihilated, and that it becomes, you know, a humanitarian disaster that then becomes, you know, the United States will participate in administrating the crisis or administrating the aftermath of the mass grave.
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:29:19
It'll grow wealth. It'll build credit ratings of nations. Stronger and better. GDP.
Rasha Abdulhadi 1:29:25
Well, I was gonna say specifically, the market shares of Northrop Grumman and all of the other military contractors and the people who build the death machines. And then I think the other thing that I want to note -- and this, fellow listeners, is for all of the left wing podcasts out there. So, left podcasts, if you are people of the left making a podcast, this is for you especially. But also maybe for some other outlets that are framing this. There is an invitation being made to go down another one of these dead end distractions away from stopping the genocide. And that invitation is to exceptionalize particular figures, or particular groups, and give them proper nouns, and cast them as characters in a morality play. In the same way as, in this settler colony, the 45th occupant of the White House was really -- a lot of energy was really centralized around hating that person. And finding that person odious or corrupt or, you know, coarse, slimy. There's a lot of affective bonds -- again, here, we get to the like, feels bad.
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:29:32
Mhm.
Rasha Abdulhadi 1:29:33
But that -- and then to, you know, attempt to exceptionalize particular politicians, for example, within the settler colonial apartheid state. And there certainly are some of them that -- I'm not saying that they should be exonerated or exempt from prosecution or any other accountability. They definitely should, any at all accountability, should be brought to bear to everyone who has participated in the implementation of the genocide of Palestinian people. Absolutely. Whatever that means in this broken world of understanding what accountability is possible. But we will be offered, we have already been offered, those particular targets. And I think that invitation would direct us back to, example, all of the excitement about the protests within the settler colonial project, you know, about judicial reform or, quote, unquote, "democracy." There's no democracy in an apartheid state. You know, rid yourself of this fiction and become free, like, just abandon attempts to argue with people about a democratic genocidal state. This is -- these terms become meaningless once we begin applying them in this way. But the temptation is to, you know, think about a "softer" apartheid with like, you know, a little more rights or, like, you know, again, like I said before, a little farther away from the public view of settlers. And this is a morally bankrupt notion that is an attempt to recuperate and perpetuate the settler colonial project by villainizing particular players, whether it's groups among Palestinians, who become the boogeyman. Even though all Palestinians are unified in the struggle for liberation. Whatever the complexity within Palestinian society, that complexity, also, there's a complete unity around the struggle for Palestinian liberation and decolonization. And I would invite folks to actually go back to the Unity Intifada statement that was released in 2021, which is "The Manifesto of Dignity and Hope," which is an amazing document. And maybe actually, I might ask to read it here at the end, rather than even reading something of my own. But we will be invited to villainize and just pour all of our feeling and anger and hopelessness or despair or rage at these particular figures and try to say, oh, if we just carve off this one part of Palestinian society, or if we carve off this one part of the settler colonial society, then, you know, we can have a more sustainable apartheid. And that's just a vicious flaw. And I think this gets back at what you mentioned earlier, wanting to talk about this like, truly vile attempt to frame it as if Palestinians have some kind of meaningful choice between acceptance of a slow -- a slightly slower, although there's not even any indication the settler colony is going to slow by a fraction, by like, not even a single bullet, will they slow down. It does not seem that that is where the energy is, within their own society. They've been pretty clear about that. To have this choice between -- this -- this vile attempt to frame a fiction of some choice that Palestinians might have between some sort of, you know, slower genocide that is more palatable for the allegedly justice loving, democracy loving, quote unquote "civilians" who enact with their every daily choice, the ongoing genocide of Palestinian people, regardless of whether they're doing, as many have done who were in protest streets just a few weeks ago, the hundreds of thousands who were allegedly protesting for democracy and judicial reform, have taken up their reservist outfits and are returning to brutal, violent military service to actively participate in the genocide of Palestinian people. And, you know, as we talk about what actions might be possible. One, I really hope we resist, both here and abroad, this tendency to create morality plays around particular individual characters and to look at them instead of to look at the structures, right. So that, oh, we just eliminate these particular odious players. And we just reset the chessboard of settler colonialism and reboot it and start again, until it reaches this unsustainable part where, you know, we have to fire some of the particularly odious characters, and we just start again. If I do nothing else, I really want to invite us to not take that bait, to not accept that invitation down that death making cul de sac. And, you know, if we want to think about affirmations for action, about throwing sand into the gears, like, you know, people absolutely should conscientiously object to this. That word, that term, even feels too small for what people should do to refuse to be the ones pulling triggers, to refuse to be the ones piloting planes, to refuse to be the ones piloting aircraft destroyers, aircraft carriers. To refuse to be the ones assembling bombs. To refuse to be the people who type up the spreadsheets for the companies that assemble bombs. To refuse to work in the ad company that creates the promo campaigns, either distributed to the public or solely to lobby politicians here in this settler colony to fund the people and the corporations who create bombs. I hope we refuse. I wish that kind of freedom for all of us. So that as few as possible of us have to live with the aftermath of this level of violence.
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:37:28
Well, and I really appreciate Rasha all the time that you've taken today to just talk through in such detail, you know, the importance of really paying attention to slippery language and the role we all need to take on in terms of embodying refusal here, towards the liberation of Palestine. And I guess I just wanted to see if you have any final thoughts, anything you want to wrap out on before we end the episode, because, you know, we've been going for a while, and this has been absolutely fantastic. But I want to make sure that if there's anything you didn't get a chance to talk about, we took a moment to just end on that.
Rasha Abdulhadi 1:38:09
Yeah, thank you for really allowing the time and the space. I really hope, I really intend, that all of my offerings of clarity or critical analysis, support anyone listening to have a resolve. Whether you're Palestinian or not. To really feel a kind of firmness that comes with that clarity. It may not be a clarity that feels good. But it is a clarity that can give us courage, can allow us to connect with the things we most deeply mean. And to take whatever risks we can in our daily lives, to throw sand, rocks, buildings, cars, anything at hand into the gears of the death machine to stop the genocide of the Palestinian people. And I hope that we will refuse, with every act that is within our power, with every breath that we have, with every thing that is within our reach, whether that is conversations with people in our lives, not just online, but really people that we interact with in our lives. To say Palestine, instead of all these hyphenated or slash terms that obscure the reality. Say Palestine. To engage in BDS activities. It is way past time on the clock of the world to engage in boycott, divestment, and sanctions strategies, that feels like a minimum, but still very important to confront those frictions that urge us towards compulsory participation in genocide at work, at school, and other community spaces that we're in. To attend street actions, to -- if that feels like the thing that is accessible and possible. Please wear masks if you do so, for all kinds of reasons. To protect yourself and others. And be ready to practice safety strategies together. And I hope that we invent new ways. We need them. We need everything we have done before. And many things we have never done. And things that we have not yet imagined. And I hope that we will do them. And I hope that that invitation, that it all matters. And that it is better to have done it than to have done nothing. So whatever you have to hand, I hope you throw it into the death machine and fight for the liberation of the Palestinian people. As a part of fighting for liberation for all of us.
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:40:37
I think that's a beautiful place to leave it. Rasha, deeply and sincerely, thank you so much for everything. This has been a really wonderful conversation. I've really appreciated getting a chance to meet and to talk today at length.
Rasha Abdulhadi 1:40:50
Thank you so much. And thank you for all the effort that it takes to do this kind of rapid response work.
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:40:56
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