I’ve Been Trying To Put Into Words For A While Something That I Just Really Really Can’t Stop Thinking

I’ve been trying to put into words for a while something that I just really really can’t stop thinking about, and that’s the Falasteeni elders in Gaza.

It’s just. How many times now have they been displaced? How many times now have they been forced to leave their homes and move elsewhere knowing that wherever they ended up would not be safe? It happened first in ’48 (maybe even prior to that, depending), then again in ’67, and it’s happening to them now in Gaza with all these false evacuation orders that just lead people to areas that get bombed anyway. They have spent their entire lives enduring Nakba after Nakba. They are proof that the Nakba is ongoing, that it never ended.

How many of their homes have been destroyed? How many loved ones have they lost over the past 75+ years to Zionist violence? How many times have they been forced to rebuild their lives from the ground up again?

Maybe it’s childish to say it, but it’s just not fair. It’s not fair that their entire lives have been stolen over and over and over again. It’s not fair that someone who is born in California can go to Falasteen, pick up a gun when they turn 18, and have more rights to the land, greater claim to “citizenship” than the Falasteeni elders who are denied their right to return. It’s not fair that their children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, have only ever known what is it to live in a permanent state of displacement too. It’s not fair that there are elder Palestinians older than the “state” of Israel who remember what it was to live on their own land and who long for their childhood homes and who will never be able to see parts of the beautiful country they were born in again.

I don’t know what I’m trying to say, really. I think we need to just remember them in everything we do. I think we need to constantly be thinking of our Falasteeni elders, whether they’re in Gaza or the West Bank or the Israeli territories or anywhere else in the world. We need to think of them wherever they are, and we need to let the anger and the sadness and the grief we feel for them move us to action because they deserve to see a liberated Falasteen in THEIR lifetimes. They deserve to see their dream of returning to their homes become a reality. They deserve justice, and freedom of movement, and safety, and stability. They deserve to get back what was taken from them when they were children themselves.

We think of them, we show our gratitude to them, and we fight like hell for them until Falasteen is free.