The Gift of Palestine

“Congratulations on your ego death.” This was the response of a friend (who’s husband works for Lockheed Martin) to another friend’s deep depression and distress over the perpetual apartheid, war, and genocide taking place in Palestine. 

Her statement reveals a paradox of our current system's constant attempt to refocus conversations towards personal development rather than the ego death being experienced collectively in the wider world. At the ‘head’ of the consumer and weapons producing world, the caterpillars know to consume everything in their path but have not yet noticed the cocoon wrapping and tightening around their bodies as it prepares to melt and liquify. The new form may be undetermined and still to come, but what will emerge has the potential to be more beautiful than the hungry, destructive, and many legged consumer it once was. 

On November 16, 2023, Abdaljawad Omar wrote in Ebb Magazine that Palestine is giving a gift to the world. Not only is the genocide in Palestine revealing the deep decay of the countries that have run the world by force and threat of nuclear annihilation but that democracy, so prized and pushed as a justification for war globally, was never as we imagined it. As politicians, regardless of party, in Weapons Producing States cannot find the audacity to stand in support of the very laws and courts they established to ‘protect the world’ two things come into focus. The first, most clearly stated by Motaz Azaiza writing from the rubble of Gaza, “The world is not free. The only free people in this world are the people who are fighting for their freedom. Patience is the only weapon we have.” The second is an understanding that the only (remaining) force of the law is in its state of exception. 

Fighting for one’s freedom and liberation is our path. Initiated by the realization: there is suffering in the world. Our next steps lead us to the causes and conditions of that suffering and if we choose to be aware, our journey continues to see that there can be an end to suffering. The end to that suffering is dependent on us, on how we walk the path. This is what binds us not only to the world but to every struggle for liberation ever manifested. We always have the option to adjust our awareness, to adjust our view, to let our habitual action reshape into mindfulness towards ending our own and other’s suffering. This is a rebirth offered again and again to us as we live. Liberation and an end to collective suffering is available.  

Walking our collective path often meant an idealization of the protections of the law. Much like language, the law is simply a tool used to help us craft the world. The law in its current incarnation is contingent on its exception. This exception, perhaps always already the rule, marks those bodies and beings that are permitted to be rendered with rights and those that are expendable without sacrifice. Giorgio Agamben’s extension of Carl Schmitt’s work on the political and social implications of the state of exception characterizes the use of the state of emergency and power of the law as rendering us all homo sacer, those subject to the law without it’s protection, those killed without punishment, a body without status or rights. From Guantanamo, to Black Lives Matter, to Palestine, to police response to nonviolent protest, it is clear to see how any body can lose their perceived rights under the law, whether international, national or local. Isn’t this the very ethic that Weapons Producing States have stained the entire world with? From colonization to military intervention to resource mining, now all sentient beings, all living things on this planet have become homo sacer. 

Another friend receives a call. As a Lebanese American she had no idea how the conversation would unfold, her friend calling is a Jewish man and they hadn’t spoken in over six months. He tells her he’s totally opposed to the genocide taking place in Gaza and is anti-zionist, but then says he could not understand how Americans would even consider not voting for Joe Biden (one of the most ardent proponents of zionism and ‘global military interventions’ since the 1970s). She told him that she did not plan to vote for Biden and knew many other young people who felt the same. She pointed out what should be clear, this is a false choice; there is no choice at all in voting for someone openly funding and fueling genocide if you do not support genocide. He was aghast. “What will happen to our rights under Trump, to women’s rights?” Again, she pointed out what should already be obvious: women have already lost their rights, not only in the overturning of Roe v. Wade but further reinforced by the deeply dysfunctional federal supreme court and many of the legislative and court decisions in most states. The law has already become the exception for every woman’s basic bodily autonomy. Even as the law/courts rushed to issue full “human rights” to embryos, whatever that means, the law and its exception rush to drop bombs on living, walking and starving children in Gaza, eradicating every dream they’ve already formed in their few hours, days, months, or years of life. The state of exception is the rule and we are all without the modicum of protection we once idealized and dreamed sheltered us. 

“When thinkers offer only nightmares, they are consciously or unconsciously invested in the status quo. They offer us the monsters so we remain committed to existing structures, to hinge our political wager on sustaining a reality...” Abdaljawad Omar was speaking about Palestine in particular but he also turns a spotlight on why we are fumbling in the dark with only nightmares. Weapons Producing States and the thinkers they’ve produced in elite academic institutions cannot imagine a world otherwise. They have left us with the remnants of language, the law as solely a justification for killing and camps. This dissolution into our chrysalis need not remain a nightmare, what more is our imaginary for than to dream. We can see the causes and conditions of our suffering collectively. Our melting in the cocoon will carry the memories of the things we love and those dreams we still have yet to render.

We consumed together, only imagining the world as it was, forced hunger, deprived and conscripted to the law. This interdependent living was not obvious to us but is what will remain as we melt and forge a new form. We have been reminded again and again that our freedom and liberation are interwoven and bound together. We cannot walk this path without all other beings; our suffering ends together. We melt in this cocoon as one. This is not an individual ego death but a collective one. 

Our time in this cocoon is precious time that we must use to reimagine but more importantly rebuild the world we are dependent on for our very existence. This precious world of olive trees, rivers, and birds, seas and the flowers we will land on in the future seeking their nectar and color. This is the world we must care for as if our life depends on it, because it does. 

This is the gift of Palestine to the world. Patience, dignity, steadfastness, and joy in the face of terrifying uncertainty. Patience towards liberation: the path is long. Dignity in the face of death: love outlives our bodies. Steadfastness against overwhelming conditions: surviving what seems unsurvivable. Joy in spite of hopelessness: laughter, love and compassion can never be eradicated. The land that brought forth so much held sacred, offers us a way to rebuild ourselves, simply and with love. The world bears witness not only to devastation of what Weapons Producing States have destroyed, but also to how a people survive and thrive, even without a state. 

Palestinians gift us a way to see through the horror. We bear witness to babies laughing sitting on a mother’s lap in spite of being pulled from the rubble the day before. We bear witness to children singing and flying kites even as they are covered in white phosphorus raining from the sky. We bear witness to fathers’ with love so gentle and steadfast that they wait before dawn for even the hope of flour while being turned into targets for Israeli snipers’ fear, hatred, and bullets. We bear witness to people offering each other the last bite rather than taking it themselves while the world intentionally starves them. This witnessing should testify to the end of the world as we thought we knew it. The world’s ego death is now necessary.  

The nation state and their weapons of death are no longer needed. The law and its exception have become a weapon against those seeking asylum, shelter, and reprieve, both people and the ecosystem alike. The hungry caterpillar, once eating everything in its path, is melting into a cocoon of its own making. We bear witness to a world where love thrives in spite of hatred’s insistence on its death. We must not let fear overpower our collective love and compassion for one another. We must realize that our rebirth depends on our mutual liberation. With deep gratitude for the Palestinians who have revealed our collective suffering and shown us that our liberation and love are always interdependent, we must dream the world we want to craft together, again and again. The butterfly is forming but only if we can offer it our patience, our dignity, our steadfastness, and our joy.