the truth is not political - it is just truth. harrowing, ungodly, impossible to stomach, and yet it exists in every crevice. we turn our heads, but with every pivot, the truth stares at us with bleaker eyes. i’ve been unable to write, with good reason. everything feels like an impossible task - and i’ve never felt more defeatist than i do right now. i wish this weren’t true, i wish i could instill an optimism the way resistance fighters could, the way historical abolitionists and feminists do + did, but i am riddled with a dread that has somehow surpassed previous experiences of this unyielding sorrow.
i interviewed three friends of mine and have been working on transcriptions, trying to prep them for a substack post for months. but here is the truth: i have been completely stumped, stricken with grief, fear and complete disillusionment. i have also been very sick twice in 3 months and feel as if my brain has lessened in its abilities. the things that i have to say aren’t that profound - there is a genocide and i cannot seem to figure out my place in the movement right now. frankly, at many moments, i don’t think it is my place to speak at all, but then i remember the teachings of Lilla Watson, an Aboriginal activist and artist (as first seen/quoted by Rachel Packnett for The Cut), who said: “If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” i keep reminding self and especially other Jews that we have a stake in this. we have to believe that military occupation, punitive harm, mass prisons + policing and any sort of supremacy are not the way to a just world. now, the process of actually agreeing with your allies, co-conspirators, friends, isn’t always going to be easy. that is the hardship of true organizing. the intracommunity fighting, the misalignments - this is what keeps me disillusioned, but i am trying to process through it, to figure out a way back to it in a more healed mind.
outside of these leftist circles, to be a diasporist anti-Zionist Jew requires me to challenge my people to see past their own blinded hatred, anger, fear & paranoia. I have no right to challenge anyone else. All I can say and do is within the confines my own communities. There is an obsession with our own victimhood - a pain that I carry with me daily, in the stories I’ve been told directly, in the lessons of survival that have been passed down to me. I am no stranger to the Jewish pain, which is what motivates me to challenge what pain does to a person. It’s vicious and consuming and it turns you inside out. These cycles are relentless and unhelpful. I have stood up against boulders in my family of origin to prevent my own unraveling.
We create boogeymen out of our enemies because someone else tells us to. It’s very easy to. I get told I am a traitor to my people and of course I begin spiraling and thinking: am I really? Am I going against the entirety of Jewish people? And I see so many of my friends, who I deeply admire, protesting at grand central station and in DC, singing songs in Yiddish. Old women who are direct descendants of holocaust survivors condemning Israel’s terror. I feel the pain of my Israeli friends, who are refugee settlers in the same way I am in America. North African & Mizrahi, Ashkenazi Jewish friends who have direct relationship to Israel and the land, whose families are mourning, whose families are scared. I can say, with mental clarity and full belief in Palestinian liberation, that I still feel pain for my friends in Israel, that I know revolution and resistance is a messy bloody thing that is brought upon by government negligence and colonial destruction. I can acknowledge all of this now. I hold fear and anger simultaneously. Right now, there is no justice in endless murdering of people in Gaza, in the destruction of the west bank, in the dehumanization of the Palestinian people. The protests must continue, the demands for a ceasefire must continue, Palestinian recognition and history and culture must be centered and acknowledged, Palestinian freedom must be at the forefront.
what drives me forward is a reminder of my own history - one not brainwashed by global imperialism + capitalism. I believe my ancestors are still guiding me to the truth. I feel it in my bones every day. even in the moments when i am distraught, being bombarded by family members, feeling frustrated at other leftists, i lean into the communities i have - mixed groups of people from different identities and experiences, but are my genuine friends. we vent to each other, we challenge one another, and we trust one another. i show up and i will continue to show up for movements of liberation. it is my duty as a post Soviet queer Jewish person, even many of my people seem to think my way is betrayal. i see beyond this moment and into a world where we can all be free.
here is my December playlist - and i will finish those transcriptions. thank you all for being here and accepting me, my inconsistency and my flaws.
some resources / articles i like for you all: