Perhaps the most coherent thing I have to write about the ongoing genocide in Palestine is woven into that novel I’m writing that I keep going on about. It has to do with settler colonialism, identity, and colonial states, and the imperative that we attack and dismantle them for the sake of our humanity and a livable planet.
I read this piece a friend recommended in Mondoweiss that clarified some things enough that I went through and did more tinkering with my manuscript. The article made a hard-hitting point about identity: that “Israeli” identity has nothing to do with “Jewish” as an identity. “Israeli” is entirely a construct based on the colonial domination of Palestinians. It goes on to say the same thing about “white” as an identity: those of us who are constructed as “white” in so-called America are what we are only in relation to our position as settlers. It isn’t actually a thing unless you are a white nationalist.
So what am I if I am “white?” I’ve said this before: nothing. My identity is entirely cobbled together out of stolen elements of cultures my ancestors conquered and plundered. So is there any future for “white” people like me? Is there any hope for “Israelis” who have dedicated themselves to the elimination of indigenous Palestinians? That is a central question of my novel. My protagonist, Trish, is an “Apharan,” a word that literally means “vapor,” an identity that is a wholesale invention based on her status as genocidal colonizer of people who have a real relationship to the lands they inhabit. Her quest is to be more than that. She embraces the possibility of nonexistence in her dedication to resistance.
If you’ve been following the development of what I believe is a global uprising, or revolt, against the neoliberal capitalist world order recently, you may have heard the slogan, “respect existence, or expect resistance.” This has been in the mouths of land defenders and pro-Palestinian protesters. It has a particular resonance for those of us on the oppressor side of the scale. Trish begins with the recognition that she already doesn’t “exist” in any positive sense. Her body has been killed, her mind and spirit implanted in a body stolen from someone else. She is a “ghost inhabiting a corpse.” But she also recognizes that this is something that has been done to her, that she has not consented to, and her identity is something imposed on her against her will. She could choose to embrace it and live into it and accept the seemingly comfortable life this would afford her, or she could resist. If she resists, she can’t just liberate herself as an individual. It means smashing the entity that holds her prisoner to the “Apharan” construct, the Apharan colony itself.
When I am out there running for land back, or engaging in direct action against pipeline construction, or building alternative community structures through mutual aid, I am liberating myself as much as I am fighting for the liberation of colonized peoples. I am insisting on the possibility of my own humanity against a global settler colonial system that I was born into and claims me as “white.” And I am resisting so-called leftist identity politics that insist I can never be more than white, that depends on my status as a guilty, passive, deferential, permanent colonizer in order to rearrange capitalist hierarchies.
What it looks like to be more than “white” is an open-ended question that can only be answered in community with others. It will be rooted in my openness to learn a new way of existing on this planet that isn’t based on domination, exploitation, and genocide.
When I watch in horror and rage what is unfolding in Gaza, I feel in my body the echoes of what my ancestors did in so-called Rhode Island in 1675. I wrote about that a year ago. The Great Swamp Massacre was the largest engagement of King Phillip’s War. In a nutshell, a combined force of colonial troops responded to Indigenous resistance to their own extermination with collective punishment, the wholesale massacre of a Narragansett community by bullet, sword, and fire. My ancestors were literally in command of that army. They were the Hitlers and Netanyahus of their day. The next generation followed up the massacre by building slave plantations on stolen Narragansett land. Settler colonialism has a script that has been played out over and over for centuries. It is that script that makes whiteness what it is. I refuse.
The only way to do that is by dismantling the world they created and living into a new way of being. I am not protesting. I am revolting. I am not appealing to colonizers to be nicer colonizers. I am tearing it down. I am not voting for politicians who promise justice but deliver pipelines, cop cities, and genocide. These things are all linked. Does the bombardment of Gaza make you sick? Attack the fossil fuel infrastructure that helps supply Israel with munitions and torches the climate. Does the growth of militarized policing make you afraid? Attack arms manufactures that supply the IDF, which equips and trains cops and sends them to American streets. Are you white and being a ghost inhabited corpse disturb you? Then support land back initiatives that re-indigenize Turtle Island and teach us ancient ways of relationship to land, water, and air.
By “attack,” I mean support disruptive direct action that shuts these entities down and makes it prohibitively expensive for them to do business. Publicly shame officials and CEOs and destroy their careers. Take risks if you can, or provide material support for those who do. Contribute to bail funds, boycott and divest from companies that profit from death and destruction, circumvent our poisonous food systems by growing food and sharing with your neighbors, and unconditionally support oppressed communities in their resistance to their oppressors. Presume the illegitimacy of states and systems and identities constituted by oppression and genocide. Imagine their nonexistence, then live as if they don’t.
I have been amazed at how much direct action resistance has been integral to my own well-being over the past few months. I suffer from chronic pain that ended my athletic career. But I have been nearly pain-free for the past month. I believe there may be a relationship between direct action and my experience of health. When I feel out of alignment with the world, it manifests as inflammation, tension, insomnia, and debilitating pain. When I fight back, I have experienced a mental, spiritual, and physical alignment that releases that tension. One day I can barely stand. The next I am pain free and sleeping soundly. The well-being of my body is intimately connected to the well-being of the world.
Capitalism and settler colonialism are built on the erasure of humanity, that of the oppressed and the oppressor. It has personal and collective manifestations. It makes everyone and everything sick. It literally hurts bodies, minds, spirits, communities, and the biosphere we depend on for life. I am sick and tired of being sick and tired. Resistance is the most powerful medicine we’ve got.