Reading Group Week 9
Hello. Thanks for being here for the reading group.
Readings
This week, let's read the following pieces
- Al-Aqsa Flood, Day 3 (October 9)
- Al-Aqsa Flood, Day 7 (October 13)
- Death 247 in Gaza (October 14)
- In Gaza, We Have Grown Accustomed to War (October 19)
- Israel Bombed My Home Without Warning (October 22)
- The Five Stages of Coping with War in Gaza (October 23)
You can see the original formats of some of the above pieces here:
- Al-Aqsa Flood, Day 3 (YouTube)
- Al-Aqsa Flood, Day 7 (YouTube)
- Death 247 in Gaza (Twitter)
- "In Gaza, we have grown accustomed to war" & "Five stages of coping with war in Gaza" (Electronic Intifada)
Please subscribe - subscribers make it clear to me that this reading group is reaching people, and that hopefully people are buying books from the Workshops 4 Gaza bookshop, which directly raises money for Palestinians in Gaza.
Reflections
Al-Aqsa Flood, Day 3 (October 9)
It's very difficult being a father here. Even expressions of intimacy and love are very difficult, because they could be interpreted in too many different ways. And the kids know. They feel all the lies we tell them, that it's going to be okay, that the bombing is far away. They're not working.
There's a lot to say about this - about the feeling of inability to pass a lie for the sake of someone you lie, because the truth is abjectly staring them right in the face, even if they're not prepared for it.
I was immediately brought back to an earlier piece we read a few weeks ago, My Child Asks, "Can Israel Destroy Our Building If the Power Is Out?":
I wanted to say: "Yes, little Linah, Israel can still destroy the beautiful al-Jawharah building, or any of our buildings, even in the darkness. Each of our homes is full of tales and stories that must be told. Our homes annoy the Israeli war machine, mock it, haunt it, even in the darkness. It can't abide their existence. And, with American tax dollars and international immunity, Israel presumably will go on destroying our buildings until there is nothing left."
But I can't tell Linah any of this. So I lie: "No, sweetie. They can't see us in the dark."
I remember reading this at the time and thinking about how difficult it would be to grapple with trying to protect someone I love from the reality that they will eventually have to face, vs wanting to be honest and share the present moment with them, as fleeting and as precious as it is.
That piece was just a few years before this one that we're reading this week. Refaat's kids were one or two more wars old now. Old enough that it was no longer even an option to try to protect someone you love, try to protect them from the brutal and gruesome reality.
Al-Aqsa Flood, Day 7 (October 13)
... if you start the story from B, you blame the Warsaw Ghetto rebels, you blame the Native Americans, you blame the slaves that rebelled against the slave owners, and you blame the Palestinians.
I'm reminded of susan abulhawa's foreword, and when she said that Refaat studied English to understand the language of the oppressor and to speak the language of the people he hoped to reach.
Refaat hoped, in vain apparently as he was speaking with Chris Cuomo, that he could trade a kind of cultural currency with western journalists to get a message through based on shared knowledge of American and western history. The message that the story doesn't start at B. That the story starts with the forced dispossession and murder of Palestinians; that the story starts with the Nakba, the catastrophe, more than seventy years ago, and continuing to this day.
What we were seeing in October 2023 was not the start of history or the origin of anything we've been experiencing for the past 16 months, as some people will insist. Even as I write it, I feel like it's absurd and like obviously I shouldn't need to say that, but when you're gaslit relentlessly, you start to second-guess even your most basic senses.
Share your reflections
I want to hear what you're thinking about. If you want to post in response to the threads that I'm sharing here, I'd love to hear from you. If you'd like to chat with me/the rest of us in the Signal group chat, I'd be grateful to see you there. I'm still thinking about "Death 247 in Gaza" and I think I'll have something to share in the group chat this week, but I wasn't prepared to discuss it right now.
Otherwise, let's chat on Saturday at 12pm ET, during the weekly video chat.
Other things
In the world
It appears as though Columbia administrators actively assisted DHS and ICE to begin the process of abducting and potentially deporting Mahmoud Khalil. This is not altogether surprising, but it is a new low for the university and for academia in the United States.
Israel's siege on Gaza continues, creating the conditions for a famine, and Israel has opened fire on refugee tents in Gaza yet again, killing 40 in the past two weeks, and totaling 150 during the so-called "ceasefire" that Israel has now ended, bombing refugee tents and schools. As I write this, the estimates are changing, but more than 120 people are confirmed murdered in the past few hours, and 200+ wounded.
If you can donate to Palestinians to help them get food, shelter, and clothes, please donate to the Sameer Project.
On Twitter/X
I've been posting less on Twitter, and last week I didn't link to my reflections on Twitter. The Intercept recently published a revelation that Dataminr is collaborating with Twitter/X and the LAPD (and potentially other law enforcement) to help surveil activists for Gaza.
I don't want to stop posting on Twitter while there are Palestinians and activists on there, but I want to be cognizant of encouraging people to post about Palestinians and Gaza on Twitter, given Elon Musk's ownership and the relationship between him (and Silicon Valley) with the Trump administration.
All this is to say that I'm considering not posting reflections on Twitter anymore and encouraging people to communicate on the Signal group chat.
(I should caution that a Signal group chat isn't a panacea and there might be bad people lurking, but being on Twitter is a bit like delivering oneself to fascist vultures to pick apart at you.)
If you have feelings about presence on twitter, please feel free to get in contact. There are various ways to reach me.
Buy the book (and the next)
If you haven't bought If I Must Die: Poetry and Prose yet... we're pretty close to finishing it. You may want to get ahead of things by purchasing the next book: Perfect Victims and the Politics of Appeal by Mohammed El-Kurd.
Support the reading group
You can also support the reading group if you have a few dollars to spare per month. Don't worry if you can't.
Planning and discussion
If you want to get a glance of what might be on the horizon, you can also take a look at the Format and Roadmap page where I outline the format... and the roadmap, including some of the books that caught my attention on the Workshops 4 Gaza fundraiser site.
I'm also making more definitive plans for what to read after Perfect Victims, and thinking about ways to potentially make the reading group more accessible. If you'd like to chat about that, please reach out.