In 1977, Audre Lorde wrote a series of questions entitled, “The Audre Lorde questionnaire to oneself”, adapted from The Cancer Journals. In it, she poses a few questions to herself reflecting on transformation, finding language, challenging inner thoughts, politics and words to be bravely spoken. A particular question has always stuck with me: What’s the worst that could happen to me if I tell this truth?
It’s a massive question with concrete realities that usually immediately summon loss; a loss of a job, social networks, positions at organizations, alienation, etc. And initially, these may feel like a huge loss as usual daily practices are broken and shifted. It is not a comfortable change, nor is it meant to be. Yet, telling the truth comes with an awakening like we are witnessing now. It allows growth and bravery inside a personal politic shifting the collective to stand on something outside of a self serving capitalist principle. And I believe Audre Lorde introduced these questions to not only allow space for answers but to pose new questions to ourselves and each other.
What else could happen?
I pose this question (to myself and you) and think about the consequences of political resistance, particularly for Palestinians. When I hear resistance I feel empowered, I feel a natural pull towards the defense of resources, people, and dignity. When I hear resistance, I hear the only response that is humanly possible. When I hear resistance, I hear the sounds of liberated Palestinians enjoying their land again. When I hear resistance, I remember that living in The American Empire does not grant me an opinion on how that resistance unfolds against a heavily militarized state power. How would I know what it’s like to return to my home after being violently removed to see the bodies of my neighbors, fathers, children, family pets strewn across the streets, decomposing for days? Do you know what it’s like to be 7 years old on your way to school and be targeted by military grade tanks? Are you able to articulate what it’s like to not be able to identify the body of someone you love because the state, without your consent, has removed their organs to give to the soldier that killed your loved one? Have you ever had to prove your humanity by displaying your murdered 3 month old baby for cameras? Because to witness from a place of comfort, a place that is financially and diplomatically funding this horrific genocide means without a single doubt to morally stand with Palestinian resistance. Although we’ve been given access through our phones to witness the brutality of ethnic cleansing, it does not give us permission to judge or oversee how Palestinians fight for survival. We stand with their process to freedom because 1) we believe that freedom is inherent to survival and human dignity 2) understand the legal right to resist occupation, the stripping of resources, the current resettlement process, and ethnic cleansing under international law.
With this truth telling Audre writes, we are able to remove ourselves from the hyper american notion that we determine what resistance looks like to fit our limited imperialistic moral compass. We also understand that this realization is informed by history. Algerian Revolutionary Ahmed Ben Bella became the first Algerian president after gaining independence from the French in 1963. He remarked on these limitations by stating “The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.”
Do you fully believe in a Free Palestine?
From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. What does this statement mean to you? Do you understand this as full liberation and land back to the people? Palestine is the Indigenous Arab land that extends from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. It is not, as zionist propaganda has falsely communicated, an anti-semitic sentiment rooted in the erasure of Jewish people. When we say Palestine will be free, it’s a liberatory declaration to free the land of occupation and apartheid rule from Israel and full sovereignty from neighboring border nations. This naturally extends to the eventual return to their native land.
Do you understand a Free Palestine will not be achieved without resistance?
International Resistance Movements from Algeria to Haiti to the BDS movement, helps us to clarify that history and the present is informing different forms of critical resistance on the ground.
Since the early 2000s, Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions(BDS) has responded to the over 75 year occupation by creating a “Palestinian led movement for freedom, justice, and equality. It upholds the simple principle that Palestinians are entitled to the same rights as the rest of humanity” The movement mobilizes around boycotting and divesting from industries, institutions, and businesses that directly work with the Apartheid State of Israel and profit from the illegal occupation. This also involves putting pressure on governmental bodies such as the UN to denounce the legitimacy of Israel as illegal and through sanctioning them by refusing to trade goods, ban travel, and continue business as usual. On a local level this would include demanding local schools and universities divest from Hewlett Packard(HP) who have supplied surveillance technology, servers that issue government IDs meant to delegitimize Palestinians by neighborhood and location, and supplies the Israeli Occupation Forces(IOF) with computer equipment to create what we are currently seeing with an Artificial Intelligence grid to insidiously target civilians. The Apartheid State has of course worked to criminalize The BDS movement calling it “illegal to attempt to sanction”. Most certainly because it has been effective with several victories recently with the closure of two Elbit System weapons manufacturing sites in the UK and security company Allied Universal discontinuing business early this year. BDS worked as a successful tool during South Africas Apartheid and is seemingly still effective decades later as the genocide of Palestinians reaches its 60th day. And while the temporary bogus ceasefire came and went, we see with eyes wide open, the critical need for resistance to settler-colonial violence. Netanyahu and his government have unleashed monstrous devastation on the people of Palestine, a devastation that is difficult to place into words. According to the Healthy Ministry in Gaza, Nearly 16,000 people have been brutally killed, some suffocated by the rubble of their homes, hospitals, and places of worship.
The images have been unbearable as the majority of people targeted are women and children under the age of 5 who are experiencing painful and torturous deaths. Nowhere is safe. Israeli leaders and officials have made it abundantly clear through bold interviews with Western media and leaked conversations that their true intentions are to destroy the “children of darkness” and “to thin the population of Gaza to a minimum”
It is no secret that the Apartheid state has systematically created a reign of utter terror with unlivable conditions to violently force Palestinian civilians further south in Gaza and eventually outside its borders. Clearly, we are witnessing a complete ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip (and West Bank) to advance their settler-colonial project.
As we continue to reflect on Audre Lorde’s questionnaire to self, we interrogate more questions and arrive at the answers of truth.
Who gets to define the morality behind survival tactics when you have a loaded gun in your face? Is it you, living in the Imperialist comforts of your home? Is it the nation built on a legacy of genocide, slavery, and settler-colonialism? Is it a terrorist state occupying and slaughtering people for over 75 years?
I am reminded that occupation created these conditions for resistance to exist.
I am reminded that settler-colonialism and apartheid has created these conditions for resistance to exist.
I am reminded that US Imperialism has created these conditions for resistance to exist.
I am reminded that Zionism, a white supremacist ideology and project, has created these conditions for resistance to exist.
I am reminded that the Imperialist global powers are overwhelmingly funding and profiting off these conditions for resistance to exist.
I am reminded that it is ILLEGAL for these conditions to exist and LEGAL for the resistance to exist.
I am reminded that while these conditions exist, Free Palestine will stand with the resistance.
