A message of hope

Dear friends,

I hope this email finds you well. After almost fourteen months of near-constant horror with Israel’s genocidal aggression against Gaza and its attacks across Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen, we realized that it’s been a while since we sent a newsletter carrying any sort of message of hope. As we warn others not to fall into defeatism and do our best to keep going, knowing that our work is important, I know it’s also incredibly necessary to share good news with each other.

I received an email a few weeks ago from one of our lovely donors and supporters, commenting on how difficult it is to be hopeful these days. Around the same time, a close friend asked me what I do to stay optimistic when the world seems particularly dark. To both of them, I offered a response that I’m sure many of us can relate to: community. Both participating in it, and witnessing it.

Being in Palestine, perhaps it may be easier to find a community converging around solidarity with Gaza and, in return, create a sense of hopefulness. After all, even a walk in Bethlehem’s old city brings constant reminders of the genocide and siege, whether on the radio playing in the flea market or shopkeepers’ television sets broadcasting the latest updates. Our best local Chinese restaurant keeps the news on constantly. No one isn’t thinking about the people of Gaza. But this reality of constant awareness — while it certainly might make one feel less alone — isn’t necessarily a remedy for hopelessness.

To feel hope, we must see ourselves and others around us, take real action in solidarity with the people and the struggle for liberation. Acts of generosity, courage, love for ourselves and others, and refusal to be cowed into submission by the most violent forces are inspiring and stir the heart.

Sometimes, it’s the little acts. While repairing my partner’s phone at a local store a few months ago in Bethlehem, a couple of young boys rushed in suddenly, breathlessly (as little children do), asking the store owner for a charger. Not recognizing them as locals, he asked where they were from. Beit Lahiya, they said. Northern Gaza. The man from Bethlehem gave them the charger and refused to take their money.

More recently, and on a much larger scale, the universities within the Bethlehem Governorate and other local entities organized an event in solidarity with the students, faculty, and staff of universities in Gaza just last week. It was titled “United Against Scholasticide” and was not just a public protest to take over the streets of our beautiful city; between sponsorships and participants’ ticket costs, the event helped to raise thirty thousand scholarships for Palestinians from Gaza. The very next day, students at Hebron University in the southern West Bank also marched in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, demanding an end to the US-Israeli genocide.

These events are important in and of themselves — it is important to show each other, and most of all, people in Gaza, that no one will forget about them for a moment. But they are made all the more so when read in context: people taking part in these marches and fundraisers are making personal sacrifices of time and money and also knowingly potentially putting themselves in harm’s way, living under Israeli colonial occupation. Palestinians are committing to life, to each other, to solidarity and action, and rejecting death and destruction despite the potential punishment they may face for taking part in political organizing. They are naming the current violent reality and working to make something better for everyone else.

None of this is theoretical. Further north of the city Bethlehem, in al-Makhrour, we also find hope in the steadfastness of families who refuse to cede their lands and history to the zionist settler movement. Families like the Qaisiya family are not just fighting for themselves; they are fighting for the future, for the children who will come after them, and those who are resisting elsewhere to remain on their land in other parts of Palestine and even around the world.

Of course, there is so much hope in the perpetual action folks are also taking around the world. Whether it is organizing protests, educating, donating to Palestinians GoFundMe campaigns, refusing and refuting zionist propaganda, finding creative ways to advance policies that will change the material situation in Palestine, disrupting the construction of the weapons of genocide, or blocking their arrival at different ports around the world. There is no shortage of organizers or their actions that allow you to feel the depth of solidarity, even thousands of miles away.

Over the last year, as we have turned to more writing, trying to translate the struggle for decolonization and some of its fundamentals through text and interviews alike, I have also found hope in that. It is freeing to describe the world around you, to translate the horrors we have both heard about from our elders and have experienced firsthand into a resource someone can use anywhere else in the world to better understand the reality of zionism and settler-colonialism. It also stirs optimism to see the value that others place in these resources and to understand that we all help each other — both by sharing our knowledge and by reminding each other of our agency and value.

Finally, there is no shortage of hope in the support we receive from our friends and partners in the struggle — folks like you, friend. It is your kind emails, your $5-a-month donations, and your silent perusal of our weekly newsletters that both encourage and allow us to keep going. I know that where we are heading is better than where we’ve been and are now, and it takes both commitment and optimism to reach that future. Thank you for going there with us.

With love and solidarity,

Lara