Solidarity with the Palestinian Truth

What 'truth' is at the centre of your solidarity?

In the name of Allah, the Lord of Mercy, the Giver of Mercy

Beware! You have almost stepped into a snare trap set by the West. Do you see it? It was there, two steps in front of you. If you had continued to talk about the Palestinian suffering based on the evidence and arguments of Israeli and Western NGOs, you would have walked straight into it.

You would have been paralysed and unable to reach the mythical West you were so fixated on talking to. Instead, you would be stuck in a place where neither Palestinians nor Westerners would hear you. Here, I will show you the mental trap that has been set for the Western allies, and I will give you only one solution for anyone fighting against ethnic cleansing: Look at the ground; they have been here before.

The mistake lies in focusing solely on the physical construction of the snare trap, but even a perfectly constructed snare trap will catch nothing if placed in the wrong place. So, where did they place it for you? They found the spot hidden in the blinkers of a very noble pursuit: truth.

You see, they do not have to worry about engaging with your arguments if you play their game. What game is that? It is the same one they have been playing for centuries: “We tell the truth; you tell the stories.”

Let me pause here.

The rest of this article, and frankly, the rest of my writing, will alienate some readers. I have witnessed a lot of harmful solidarity in my lifetime, and I generally do not criticise it publicly, but there are some things I need to make clear. First, I do my best not to criticise my fellow Arabs in public spaces, and any criticism I make is neither an opening nor an opportunity for non-Arabs to criticise us. There is an Arab saying that predates Islam which many of us grew up hearing, and I will repeat it for you:

أنا وأخوي على ابن عمي وأنا وابن عمي على الغريب 

My brother and I against my cousin; My cousin and I against the outsider

For Muslims, this was told to us by the Prophet with a variation in Sahih al-Bukhari 2444 (corroborated with some minor differences but retaining the same message in Sahih Muslim 2584a, Jami` at-Tirmidhi 2255, and Sahih al-Bukhari 6952):

حَدَّثَنَا مُسَدَّدٌ، حَدَّثَنَا مُعْتَمِرٌ، عَنْ حُمَيْدٍ، عَنْ أَنَسٍ ـ رضى الله عنه ـ قَالَ قَالَ رَسُولُ اللَّهِ صلى الله عليه وسلم ‏"‏ انْصُرْ أَخَاكَ ظَالِمًا أَوْ مَظْلُومًا ‏"‏‏.‏ قَالُوا يَا رَسُولَ اللَّهِ هَذَا نَنْصُرُهُ مَظْلُومًا، فَكَيْفَ نَنْصُرُهُ ظَالِمًا قَالَ ‏"‏ تَأْخُذُ فَوْقَ يَدَيْهِ ‏"‏‏.‏

Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) said, "Help your brother, whether he is an oppressor or he is an oppressed one. People asked, "O Allah's Messenger (ﷺ)! It is all right to help him if he is oppressed, but how should we help him if he is an oppressor?" The Prophet (ﷺ) said, "By preventing him from oppressing others."

In the wisdom of the Prophet, we are told that the community is responsible for one another and that to do justice is to stop the injustice at its source. I cannot stand by and watch my fellow Arabs be unjust, and if I do so, then it is an obligation on me to intervene in a way that is just and fair, just as they should do with me when I err.

And another example of this message is in the Qur’an:

وَٱلَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا۟ بَعْضُهُمْ أَوْلِيَآءُ بَعْضٍ ۚ إِلَّا تَفْعَلُوهُ تَكُن فِتْنَةٌۭ فِى ٱلْأَرْضِ وَفَسَادٌۭ كَبِيرٌۭ

The disbelievers support one another. If you do not do the same, there will be persecution in the land and great corruption.

Surah 8, Al-Anfal, Verse 73

Translated by Abdel Haleem.

So, there is the guidance I follow from the Muslim and Arab context of my own identity, and it has formed my understanding of the responsibilities I owe to my ilk. Again, I reiterate that when I criticise my own, it is a message directed to them and only meant for them to respond to. It is not a platform for the outsider to jump in because you will find that I will not stand with you, regardless of whether I agree with you or not. For too long, White allies have used this opportunity granted by non-White critics to lash out with criticisms that reek of racism. You will not find that chance with me, as I will not loan you my words to attack my people with.

So let me begin by talking to the Muslim and SWANA (Southwest Asian and North African) allies first:

In your criticism of each other and each other’s actions and organising, be extremely cautious as to what company you keep and who is fuelling your vitriol. When your fellow organisers are not present and are unable to defend themselves, do not allow others to pile up on them, even if you cannot agree with them, because if you are silent and refuse to moderate the conversation, you have allowed an injustice. And you will be asked when the other person finds out about the group chat, “Why did you not defend me?”

I do not care whether the non-Arab friends you keep are “politically good.” You owe it to your people to defend them when they cannot defend themselves and to give them a good account, as has been practised by your ancestors. Do you assume the worst of your own? The ones who did not heed this wisdom are the same we condemn today, including those in the Arab Gulf who have eagerly surrendered Palestinians to their oppressors; some go as far as to fund Islamophobia and disseminate media blaming Palestinians for their colonisation.

Why do you feed your people so eagerly to those who would love nothing other than to criticise us and reinforce the same colonial stereotypes about our intelligence, as though we are a people who need the White West to educate us on resistance? Any rational dating advice site will tell you the same advice repackaged as ‘defend me in public, discuss it with me in private.’

Defend your own; it is a great shame on you if you abandon them. If you disagree with them, communicate it with them directly; do not use your White intermediaries.

To everyone, I give the following advice:

Cease the harmful idea that Palestinians must be humanised. The very moment you put ‘Palestinian’ and ‘human’ together in a sentence, you have engaged with the Western discourse, which has framed them as otherwise. Palestinians know they are human, as do we Arabs. I will tell you why it is harmful:

The humanisation rhetoric is a game to prove someone is human ‘enough,’ but the arbitrators of the game are the ones who are not interested in our humanity. So, you end up doing one of two things:

1. You fail to humanise Palestinians because you must fight a precedent of dehumanisation that has been in place for centuries. Whether you fail because you deployed Western talking points about ‘civilians’ or ‘innocence,’ you nevertheless fail, and it therefore only serves to further justify their oppression.

2. You succeed and prove Palestinians are human enough, but you have now made their humanity dependent on the metrics you deployed to prove it. If you argued they were innocent because not all of them fight with weapons, then you dehumanised any Palestinian with a gun.

In both situations, you have made their humanity dependent on whatever you tried to argue. This is a trap, and I tell you, do not engage in this trap. You will get nowhere and only cause more harm in your efforts than you will solve.

To our White allies, whom I value, there is a reminder you need. This is a Palestinian struggle, and in your organising, do not neglect that there are a multitude of Palestinian voices that must be present, because you ought not assume you know best. To those, primarily White leftists, who want to collapse identity and criticise identity politics, I remind you very bluntly:

Our identity means a lot more to us, who, for so long, have been criminalised for having one.

To exercise our identity, to speak our tongues, and to follow our religion is a source of great anxiety for the West, which has oppressed many of us. You need only question why mosques in Australia must record everything for ASIO and ASIS and why there are cameras in every predominately Muslim space. But you also need to question why Palestinian Arabs are discouraged from even speaking their language, including why they cannot use the word Muqawama (resistance), because the idea of Arabs describing the Arab resistance as resistance in Arabic rather than following the linguistic limitations inherent to English has petrified the West.

Therefore, do not attempt to ignore “identity politics,” because for many of us, simply having one is a radical act of resistance, a message that tells the West, “I will not assimilate into Whiteness because there is no place for my identity in Whiteness.” You who complain about “identity politics” only tell me one thing: “I am upset that my White privilege bars me from discussing topics on which my presence, combined with my privilege, marginalises the voices and expertise of non-White people.”

The second point is that this is a struggle in which you are primarily asked to be in solidarity with, not control. We do not ask for White saviours, nor do we wish to appeal to your self-inflicted White burden. We have never asked you to teach us anything, because we know from childbirth what you must read about in academic texts. In your assumptions of our stupidity, we see the same colonial imperialists who wish to ‘educate’ us. Be mindful of how you perpetuate White supremacy, because although we condemn your forefathers and not you, for we absolve you of their colonial sin, we will condemn you if you repeat their mistakes, which they believed justified their encroachment.

We are so hesitant about your presence in our movements because, as it has been historically and in the contemporary, you tell us that you are our allies in our ‘shared oppression,’ and that we must ally with you against the greater oppressors. You tell us that our oppression is shared, though somehow you absolve yourself of any involvement in our persecution. Yet even in this, you exceed the boundaries and oppress us further. We give you an olive branch, and you take the tree. And if you somehow liberate yourselves, you greedily horde the liberation for yourselves.

Now, we can continue with an example of Palestinian truth. I will give you an example from Palestine as to why this is a critical point to be making now.

As we [have been told]: the first world has knowledge, the third world has culture; Native Americans have wisdom, Anglo Americans have science … De-Westernization means, within a capitalist economy, that the rules of the game and the shots are no longer called by Western players and institutions … the definitive rejection of ‘being told’ … what ‘we’ are, what our ranking is in relation to the ideal of humanitas and what we have to do to be recognized as such.

Walter D. Mignolo, “Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought and Decolonial Freedom.”

So, what we must do is decouple ourselves from the Western truth. Easier said than done, so let us deconstruct the Western standard of truth for Palestine together.

The very first step is to discredit Palestinian senses. The Palestinian eyes, tongue, ears, nose, and body cannot be trusted. If a Palestinian says they saw an Israeli settler kill a child in cold blood, the very immediate reaction is to doubt the veracity of the story. Why? Because apartheid weighs heavily against Palestinian witnesses. If an Israeli settler says they felt the Palestinian child strike him in the back with a thrown rock, any action the Israeli takes is then justified. Since when was murder the proportionate response to rock-throwing? Did we not condemn the death penalty?

So here is a case study, a connection not drawn by Israel nor the West.

On March 8, 2016, 50-year-old Fadwa Abu Tir, may she rest in peace, was shot dead near Al-Aqsa by Israeli troops. After she was killed, the soldiers continued to shoot at her body. They then prevented any medical services from attending to her body while the soldiers looted her corpse. Every Palestinian witness said the same thing: She was unarmed and was shot dead for no genuine reason. The Israeli troops then stated that she was holding a knife and attempted to stab them. Fadwa was facing away from them when they shot her in the back multiple times, several metres away from the Israeli soldiers. They then held onto her body for 72 days, refusing to give it to the family to perform the burial rites she was entitled to.

A completely fictitious defence, and yet, despite several Palestinian witnesses, the state called Fadwa Abu Tir a terrorist. Case closed. Fouad Abu Rajab, may he rest in peace, a young Palestinian man nearby, had been beaten up by Israeli troops only two weeks earlier for defending a Palestinian woman the Israeli soldiers were harassing. Like every Palestinian, Fouad Abu Rajab was familiar with how the Israeli state has made the humiliation of Palestinians a daily goal.

Upon hearing the news of Fadwa Abu Tir being killed in cold blood, Fouad Abu Rajab went out with his gun and was determined to avenge Fadwa’s murder by the colonial state, knowing that the state would not punish the perpetrators. His father told Fouad to avoid the city, and his son told him he would be mindful on his way to work. Fouad, instead, shot at two occupation troops before being killed. Before his family was even aware of what he had done, the Israeli troops arrested Fouad’s father and subjected him to eleven days of torture. Then the family was deported.

The father and sons were forcibly moved into the northwest of Jerusalem, the mother and the daughters moved to North Jerusalem, and their family home in Al-Issawyia in East Jerusalem was demolished by the occupation.

After several months, the occupation allowed the family to reunite in Al-Jadirah, North Jerusalem. The state then described the family as illegal residents and justified their displacement as effective anti-terrorism. You will not find this connection between Fadwa Abu Tir and Fouad Abu Rajab in any English-language media sources.

So here we have two truths presented to us, and I will point out the snare trap to you after I summarise.

The Palestinian truth: Fadwa Abu Tir intended to pray Dhuhr at the Al-Aqsa mosque and was subjected to systemic humiliation by Israeli soldiers, as every other Palestinian is. They had jeered at her and attempted to have ‘fun.’ In her form of resistance, she walked past them, trying to ignore them, and they shot her dead for refusing to indulge their egos. She had committed no crime, and the soldiers exercised the colonial powers the apartheid state permitted them to have. The soldiers had performed exactly their role: to terrorise Palestinians and remind them that they have no rights. Fouad, growing up in this systemic dehumanisation, knew that the responsibility of justice would not be met by a state with a 75-year history of injustice. The responsibility, as it always did, fell on the Palestinians to remind the state that no persecution can go unanswered; the world may accept it, but we will not. Fouad and Fadwa both became shaheeds for resisting the oppressive apartheid state.

The Israeli-colonial truth: Fadwa Abu Tir had a knife and was shot multiple times, then her body was shot at after she had died to “confirm.” A few hours later, Fouad, an angry terrorist, wounded two Israeli soldiers in an unrelated incident and was killed.

Now, before you step any closer, let me point out the trap. Notice how in the Palestinian truth there is no mention of Palestinian terrorism? Nor the knife, nor the absence of a systemic persecution of Palestinians. Nor, is there a reduction of Palestinians to one singular emotion, as though they are solely their rage. The moment you try to include those concepts in your justification, you have lost focus on Palestinian truth. Now, you have diluted their truth.

Furthermore, notice that although both resisted using different methods, Israel condemned both as terrorists. Fadwa peacefully, and Fouad with his weapon, yet if both are ‘terrorists’, then only two conclusions can be drawn: there is no such thing as a Palestinian terrorist, or every single Palestinian is a terrorist for the virtue of existing and reminding the Zionist state that there was a people there whom they pillaged and persecuted.

The existence of Palestinians terrifies Israel. There is and has been no form of Palestinian resistance that the Israeli state does not describe as terrorism. Those who have fantasies of protecting their liberty from tyranny yet condemn Palestinians for the same are hypocrites.

I will give you two resources so you may see this with your own eyes. Although I have issues with Google Translate, it will help serve a very crude point. I will give you their names in English and Arabic so you can copy-paste and see the difference. Both, in English, are called terrorists, as Israel calls any Palestinian it has murdered. You will not even see their faces. Yet, in Arabic, you will find a significantly different argument rooted in the truth of the colonised voice:

Fadwa Abu Tir

فدوى ابو طير

Fouad Abu Rajab

فؤاد أبو رجب

So, in your truth-telling, you must separate the colonial myths from the Palestinian reality. Stop separating Palestinians into good and bad, as though there is a device that determines which Palestinians deserve to be ethnically cleansed and which do not. No Palestinian deserves to be ethnically cleansed, and your argument must always centre on this, because if you separate Palestinians based on the terrorist dichotomy created by Israel, you only legitimise their oppression, and you allow Israel to decide which Palestinian is a terrorist and which is not. And as was the case with Fadwa Abu Tir, any Palestinian who dares to exist will be described as a terrorist.

Be mindful of your solidarity; do not cause more harm with it than your opponents do, because it is the words and actions of a friend that hurt far more than any adversary. Be mindful of your tongue, because those who sharpen it on your friends are the ones who we know will be the first to criticise us, both to our faces and behind our backs. We want your support, not your leadership.

Finally, a verse that has been on my mind for the past few days:

وَإِذْ قَالَتْ أُمَّةٌۭ مِّنْهُمْ لِمَ تَعِظُونَ قَوْمًا ۙ ٱللَّهُ مُهْلِكُهُمْ أَوْ مُعَذِّبُهُمْ عَذَابًۭا شَدِيدًۭا ۖ قَالُوا۟ مَعْذِرَةً إِلَىٰ رَبِّكُمْ وَلَعَلَّهُمْ يَتَّقُونَ

How, when some of them asked [their preachers], ‘Why do you bother preaching to people God will destroy, or at least punish severely?’ [the preachers] answered, ‘In order to be free from your Lord’s blame, and so that they may perhaps take heed.’

Surah 7, Al-A’raf, Verse 164

And Allah knows best.