Tuesday Mezze: 'Uncommitted' Votes are Acts of Love + Girl Scout Bracelets + IVF Twins Killed in Rafah + Akawi [Palestinian] Cheese + Hands off Rafah + Palestinian Kid's Clothing on UK Beach
Mezze - المزة - a wide selection of small dishes served as appetizers, including such delicacies as hummus, cheese, eggplant, brains, stuffed grape leaves, calamari, and much more
There is a line I've never forgotten from playwright Edward Albee's play The Zoo Story: "Sometimes it's necessary to go a long distance out of the way in order to come back a short distance correctly.”
I occasionally feel that way about my columns and today, slightly discombobulated, I hope I’ve come back correctly.
Today's column, originally meant for Sunday, then for yesterday - was meant to be pegged exclusively to the uplifting story of the 100,000 'uncommitted' voters in Michigan who fully rejected America’s cooperation and support of Israel’s war against the Palestinian people.
That writing effort became totally stalled, practically mid-paragraph, when I read that The New York Times had published a lengthy article: "Since the war started [on Oct.7, 2023], more than 30,000 people have been killed during Israel’s bombardment and invasion. Here are some of their stories."
Even reading that headline took my breath away.
One Gazan out of every 73 has now been reported killed ... although, according to The New York Times "experts say it is likely an undercount."
So hard to read: Reading it took my breath away.
Was it, I wondered, as transformational a moment for the New York Times politically as it had to be for so many of its subscribers and readers; as transformational, perhaps, as was the special Life Magazine issue of May 1969 when it published: Faces of the American Dead in Vietnam: One Week’s Toll.
This week in the Times I read stories about Arabs I should know, about Palestinians who look like me, look like cousins, share a language with me, many sharing my faith, many who eat with their fingers as I often do.
Many who look, some people say, as Jesus did, dark, olive skinned, hairy, not too tall.
"They served cappuccinos, repaired cars and acted onstage," the Times reported. "They raised children and took care of older parents. They treated wounds, made pizza and put too much sugar in their tea. They loved living in Gaza or sought to leave it behind.”
The Times addressed them almost as though they believed Palestinians to be fully human.
"Hamas ruled Gaza and ran a covert military organization,” they wrote, “the identity of its fighters unclear, even to other Gazans. Some residents supported it, some opposed it, everyone had to live with it. After decades of conflict, hatred of Israel was common, and many Gazans, including some of those below, cheered the fighters who attacked Israel."
The 30,000 included Nada Abdulhadi, 10, "a top student who liked to draw nature scenes, rollerblade and jump on her trampoline. During the war, she played teacher to her siblings and cousins to distract them. She was killed in a strike that destroyed her family’s home. Her sister, Leen, 8, died four days later, trapped in the rubble."
They included Roshdi al-Sarraj, 31 who "founded a media production company and worked as a filmmaker and photographer. He served as a camera assistant on Ai Weiwei’s 2017 documentary “Human Flow” and liked to show Gaza in a positive light, especially with drone footage shot near the sea. He was on a pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia with his wife and baby daughter when the war broke out, and returned home to document the conflict, posting a video that called the Oct. 7 attackers "'Palestinian freedom fighters.'"
They included people like you and me and our children, people who are perhaps just one circumstance away from tragedy and death.
One circumstance, one election, away from chaos, death, and genocide in which our leaders become complicit.
Someday, perhaps, tides will muddy the pernicious path that President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan have cravenly and irresponsibly chosen to follow; paths of complicity with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's ethnic cleansing and genocide targeting the Palestinian people.
I'm not holding my breath - Mediterranean tides are modest, and slow to rise.
While the degree of destruction, demonization, and death visited upon Gaza is malevolent and without parallel in this century it is not unknown to people of color and minorities, who have been systematically victimized for centuries.
That such victimization continues to this day is easily witnessed by comparing America's embrace of white and Christian Ukrainian refugees to its continued victimization of Palestinian victims of ethnic cleansing and forced starvation.
That such victimization continues to this day is easily witnessed by comparing America's eager platforming and hosting of journalists supportive of Israel’s hasbara and aggressions with the ongoing marginalization of Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim voices - regardless of their point-of-view - in America’s MSM.
Last Tuesday that tide turned a bit in Michigan. There, during the Democratic primary, more than 100,000 Michigan residents (13% 0f Democratic voters) - not just Arabs, not just Muslims - cast ballots of “uncommitted.”
Voters opposed to an unjust war, voters opposed to wars of vengeance and genocide. voters who believe that all people are created equal.
I am so proud.
I stand with them today recognizing that their votes were acts of Love.
“Because love is an act of courage, not of fear, love is a commitment to others," Paulo Freire wrote in Pedagogy of the Oppressed. "No matter where the oppressed are found, the act of love is commitment to their cause--the cause of liberation.”
In New Hampshire's Democratic primary I voted "Ceasefire." Even if Joe Biden had been on the ticket I would not have voted for him.
I don't believe my vote means anything to Joe Biden or Bibi Netanyahu, but I know with certainty it means something to the people of Gaza, to Palestinians living in the occupied territories, to Palestinians uprooted, dispossessed, and displaced by Al-Nakba - means something to know that there are some Americans willing to stand in solidarity against injustice (see link below to march in Cambridge MA)
Today, I close with this excerpt from Identity Card, written by Mahmoud Darwish in 1964.
"Write down!
I am an Arab
I have a name without a title
Patient in a country
Where people are enraged
My roots
Were entrenched before the birth of time
And before the opening of the eras
Before the pines, and the olive trees
And before the grass grew."
You can read it in its entirety here: Identity Card
Troop Splits With Girl Scouts After Legal Threats Over Gaza Bracelet Fundraiser
Every year, Nawal Abuhamdeh posts on social media that her Girl Scout troop is accepting cookie orders. But this year, she announced that her 10-year-old daughter and fellow troop members in St. Louis were instead selling handmade Palestinian-themed bracelets to raise money for Gazan children suffering the ravages of war.
https://wapo.st/3VmuP5x
After 10 years of Trying, a Palestinian Woman Had [IVF] Twins. An Israeli Strike Killed Them Both
RAFAH, Gaza Strip - It took 10 years and three rounds of in vitro fertilization for Rania Abu Anza to become pregnant, and only seconds for her to lose her five-month-old twins, a boy and a girl.
https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-children-twins-killed-gaza-25282b273b92aec7fc75c3212f8d8e3f
Akawi Palestinian Cheese from Akka / Acre
Even if you don't have Instagram you should be able to at least listen to the audio clip.
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‘Hands Off Rafah’: Thousands March in Cambridge as Israel Plans to Invade Rafah
“Thousands of people marched on Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge Saturday to protest Israel’s actions in Rafah, a southern city in Gaza full of refugees that Israel is looking to occupy... Pro-Palestine protestors joined in what organizers described as a worldwide day of protest, shouting out “Hands Off Rafah” at Cambridge City Hall. Participants marched down Massachusetts Avenue to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A second rally was held outside of MIT’s Rogers Building, The Boston Globe reported..."
https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2024/03/03/hands-off-rafah-thousands-march-in-cambridge-as-israel-plans-to-invade-rafah/
Pro-Palestine activists fill Bournemouth Beach with [12,000 items] children clothing
“Pro-Palestine activists in Bournemouth Beach have placed 12,000 items of children's clothing along the beach in an attempt to show how many children have been killed by "Israel" in its genocidal war on Gaza. "Israel" has killed thousands of children in Gaza and has left at least 17,000 of them unaccompanied or without a guardian, according to UNICEF earlier this week.”
NOTE: This video is one month old. If made today the line would be much longer.
Write down I am an Arab.
Salamaat,
Robert Azzi