Three ways to write about a genocide
Newsletter #5
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I am scrolling through Instagram when I see a video of a grandmother holding a young child’s hand, walking through a street filled with rubble. The child holds a white cloth acting as a flag of surrender. They walk nervously together, followed by a group of others trying to cross the street.
The grandmother is shot by someone off-camera, and falls forward, dead. The child lets go of her hand and begins running, and the group of people behind them follow suit. They are running for their lives because they are Palestinian and because they are not Israeli. I do not finish watching the video, I put my phone down and stare into space.
I was not going to write about Palestine because I did not know what to say. My voice feels useless unless it is at the march, the organising meeting, or the demo. My voice as a writer, specifically, feels pointless, because there are no words to describe a genocide and no narrative to be woven. Genocide is the end of meaning - it is a great silence.
Perhaps there is a way in.
Let me go over the facts. The ongoing genocide inflicted on Palestinians by the Israeli state, that is aided and encouraged by the UK and US governments, is the systemic destruction of a people, their history, and their relationship with the land in the interest of, among other things, capital. It is no secret that there are large oil and natural gas reserves under Gaza and the West Bank. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, western interests seeking alternative energy supplies turned their eyes to Palestine, including a plan to extract gas off the coast of Gaza. A $1.4b project was launched to extract the gas in collaboration with the Palestinian Authority, Egypt, Israel and Hamas, scheduled to launch in March 2024.
Since the ground invasion of Gaza by the Israeli military in October 2023, Netanyahu’s government has handed out 12 licenses to 6 energy companies for natural gas exploration off the Palestinian coast. Israel seeks to portray a “business as usual” image to the world as it slaughters tens of thousands of Palestinians and takes ownership of Palestine’s natural resources. One of the energy companies granted a license is British Petroleum, or BP, which has historically close ties to the UK government. In December, the UK abstained from a UN vote calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. This month, the UK government is forcing through a bill to prevent public bodies, such as local councils, from boycotting Israel. I will let you draw the connections for yourself.
The grandmother is shot by someone off-camera, and falls forward, dead. The child runs, still holding his white flag of surrender. She will never speak or sing to her grandchild again. He will never hear her voice again.
Let me try again. In John Berger’s 2003 essay “Stones” on his time in Palestine, he writes about the checkpoints the occupying Israeli army erects to limit Palestinian movement, a form of mass humiliation. He writes:
The true aim of the stranglehold is to destroy the indigenous population’s sense of temporal and spatial continuity so that they either leave or become indentured servants. And it’s here that the dead help the living to resist. It’s here that men and women make their decision to become martyrs. The stranglehold inspires the terrorism it purports to be fighting.
Berger talks about the land of Palestine - the dust, the trees, the sea, the stones. He talks about the people who have called this land their home for generations, whose relatives fled during the 1948 Nakba yet remained on Palestinian land. He writes about olive trees hundreds, if not thousands of years old destroyed by Israeli settlers in acts of vindictiveness. This is what Berger means when he writes of destroying temporal and spatial continuity - a Palestinian’s access to the olive trees their family has nurtured for generations is cut off by a settler wall being built. The trees are cut down to make space for settler housing. The Palestinian watches settlers move their families into homes built where their grandparents and great grandparents farmed olives.
The Palestinian is expected to accept this, to do anything else is to be labeled a terrorist and to be shot by the IDF. This includes the Palestinian pastime - largely practiced by children - of throwing stones at the Israeli military, one of the wealthiest and well-armed militaries in the world. Faris Odeh, a 15 year old boy, was shot in the neck by the IDF for throwing stones at an Israeli tank in 2000. Faris would be 39 years old today had he not been executed for stone-throwing.
What we have seen since October, and continue to see, is the Israeli state’s terror of Palestinian resistance expanding to include any form of Palestinian existence at all. To exist in Palestine as a Palestinian is grounds for execution as you may, one day, dare to resist Israeli occupation. Every Palestinian is now seen as a threat to Israeli sovereignty, and this is enough to justify their extermination. The Israeli state, fueled by its own terror, can only comprehend safety if it is built on the blood of Palestinians. It will never find the safety it seeks, only more death.
Like all colonial projects, its own fear will be its downfall.
The grandmother is shot by someone off-camera, and falls forward, dead. The child lets go of her hands and runs. The grandmother will never see a free Palestine, she has lived and died under Israeli occupation.
Let me try a final time. I am reading Rifqa, a poetry anthology by Palestinian poet and organiser Mohammed El-Kurd. The anthology is named after his grandmother, Rifqa El-Kurd, who lived in Palestine until her death at 103. Forced from her home in Haifa during the Nakba, she eventually settled in Jerusalem. When she was 89, settlers claimed that her family home was on land given to them by God, and their home was split in two - the settlers living behind a hastily-constructed drywall. El-Kurd writes that “My Grandmother taught me everything I know about dignity.” She was older than the state of Israel.
In El-Kurd’s poem This Is Why We Dance, he writes:
This is why we dance:
My father told me “Anger is a luxury we cannot afford.”
Be composed, calm, still - laugh when they ask you,
smile when they talk, answer them,
educate them.This is why we dance:
If I speak, I’m dangerous.
You open your mouth,
raise your eyebrows.
You point your fingers.
This is why we dance:
We have wounded feet but the rhythm remains,
no matter the adjectives on my shoulders.This is why we dance:
Because screaming isn’t free.
Please tell me:
Why is anger - even anger - a luxury
to me?
El-Kurd writes of the silencing Palestinians experience under Israeli occupation. This silencing reduces the range of Palestinian responses to their own oppression - to speak, scream, or show anger is to be labeled the aggressor and worthy of execution. Self-expression is a luxury they do not have; the only Palestinian the Israeli state can allow is a dead Palestinian because dead Palestinians cannot speak.
This is the great silence of a genocide. The Palestinians are not permitted to speak, lest they name what Israel is doing to them. Their land and homes are taken from them, so their ancestors cannot speak to them. Palestinian journalists are targeted en masse and internet connections disrupted so they cannot tell the rest of the world to speak. Palestinian flags are banned and pro-Palestine slogans are classified as hate speech, so we cannot speak for the Palestinians.
The grandmother is shot by someone off-camera, and falls forward, dead. I must speak about her, but I do not know how to - the silence of genocide takes my words from me. She is shot and falls again and again, against all arguments and facts, the grandmother is shot and she dies. Yet I must try - we all must try - to find ways to speak about the unspeakable, as this is what the those who wage genocide fear the most.
The grandmother is shot by someone off-camera, and falls forward, dead.
I must speak about her.
You can follow my Instagram here and you can email me at robinccraig@gmail.com if you like.
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