Toward Peace in Palestine
Out of respect for the communities, families, and lives I am not a part of, I will keep it short.
To note; whenever tragedies of this scale occur, when the intersections involve the subject, the theory, the methodology, the frameworks, the practical matter to which I am privileged to teach, I vascilate on whether to speak on it in any public or published form.
I want to be mindful and respectful to the following:
I identify as an educator and as a PhD student. I do not identify as part of the ethnic or ethnic religious communities that are impacted by the ongoing conflict between the Israeli government and the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas).
Vocationally, I have been called by the deity I choose to serve to engage students through a pedagogy that is in the legacy of Paolo Friere and bell hooks. That is, to teach through the pedagogy of the oppressed, to teach through the lens that is both sound and versed academically and spiritually. To teach through a lens of liberation for all people to live in community with another in a way that allows everyone to be loosed of violence, fear, and hatred.
Every semester, I start, continue, and end the semester by reminding my students in undergrad, that the Youth are not the future; they are happening now.
They are happening now.
Peace building is happening now.
Violence, fear, and hatred have happened for too long in history.
But the Youth — and Peace building — are happening now.
I don’t want to live in world in which I feel I need to shut my classroom door in order to share with young learners, in co-formation with me by the way, that they are safe here.
That here they may share their real, thoughtful interpretations of the theory, the text, the frameworks of justice we engage in. Whether they agree or disagree. They are safe to share here. And we can all discourse on it. As a community of learners in co-formation with one another.
No one is here to police one another, to cancel one another, but instead to co-form. To listen. To transgress hatred with love, curiosity, and wonderings of, “What happened to you that you may respond to the text this way? What happened to you that you may engage the theory in this context?”
I pray learners create and then live in a world where they are not afraid of facing ICE detention for uttering the words, “Free Palestine” as much as I pray my learners create and live in world where if they identify as conservative Republicans, or do not believe in abortion as a personal decision, that they may share or speak on same without fear of retaliation, of extradition, of ostracization. They are not on trial, here. So why do we keep doing this to one another?
I study hard and pray because I desire learners to create a community in which everyone can hold discourse.
I am called to steward learners to remember that there is a difference between ethics and morals, voting for the People to have their rights to access services and make their own decisions protected by the State is different than not believing in something personally for religious or moral reasoning. My pastor has said in the past, “Many ethnic American women in the Church tend to vote liberally and live very conservatively.” I want my learners to figure out ways to hold discourse and space with and to and for one another in a way that protects Rights to access without infringing upon someone’s psychological safety or shifting toward a world of identity politics and fascist bullying.
I pray learners live. And to continually, without ceasing, pray and find ways to work together to create communities to transform spaces and protect Life.
What is becoming of our social legal consciousness?
What do we want our legacy to be that we are creating upon this earth, in our communities, and leaving as the imprint on our Young peoples’ hearts, souls, and beautiful, precocious, incredible minds?
Transformation requires the abolition of something. In order to operationalize this theory of justice, the People must be willing to come together and engage in conversations with one another. Because they will need to come to a mutually agreed upon understanding and plan of how they will abolish the injustice that is marring the People as a whole. If it is hatred, exercised through repeated, heinous acts of violence, which is continuing to behave as a weapon to feed the outgrowth of fear, of unprocessed grief, of intergenerational traumas of oppression, of anguish, of pain —
then the community may need to require themselves to develop a way to abolish said violence.
To mutually support one another and encourage one another, to hold one another accountable in their commitment to abolition.
I urge us to collectively sit with one another, side by side, face to face, and consider the possibility that continuing in the legacy of shame and carceral logic is reactive and ineffective. And exhausting. At some point, have we not burnt out of our treachery?
Do we not want something more, if anything at all, to leave to our children that is not tainted with the blood we display on our own hands?
Stop everything. To buck Westernized psychological urgings to our Youth who survive massive, unspeakable acts of violence everyday, and say:
Go on tomorrow, hold your heads up, business as usual.
In doing so.
Are we not asking for our Youth, our communities, to suppress their hurts, their fears, their traumas, their pain, their grief — to militarize themselves and go on, business as usual? Are we not asking for a collective psychotic break?
Stop.
Hold your children. Take your time.
When these tragedies happen, particularly by our Young People.
We as the adults are partially culpable. We mourn for the carceral logic we have instilled in our children under the guise of Justice. For in this tragedy, there is no justice at all for anyone. Not in Israel. Not in Palestine. Not in Chicago. Not in any ethnic or ethnic religious community that has ever experienced the traumas and the horrors of war.
Ask them what they think of these atrocities that have been happening in our communities here in the West but for too long. And we have, through programs like GILEE, brought it to international governments and communities now too?
Check on your neighbors. Check on your friends. Check in with yourselves. Check in with your children, your parents, your spouses, your daughters, sons, sisters, brothers, wives, and husbands. Check in on your elders. And seek counsel from your faith communities, your tribal councils, your medicine women and shamans.
Do not return to business as usual. Do not politicize this moment. Do not point a finger.
Grieve for the loss of human life, for both the perpetrator and the victims.
This past semester, a brilliant learner of mine wrote in their final summative paper:
We become victims of victims.
No matter what you think of the conflict in Israel and Palestine. Remember one thing. This is symptomatic of a greater ill.
We are all ill. Let the Spirit come to you.
And may we all return to ourselves, to our communities, to our respective values and core tenets of faith in this moment.
Pray for the courage to connect to yourself. Deeper than the politics. Deeper than the religious nationalist agendas. Deeper than resentment. Deeper than pride. Deeper than fear. Deeper than hate.
My pastor has said that pettiness is symptomatic of brokenness. And brokenness. Perhaps in a similar vein, “business as usual” or “the blame game” or politicizing these tragedies is a symptom of brokenness, too.
Of our brokenness as People. How could we not mourn these human losses? And ask ourselves.
What will take to transgress and transform?
First, middle, and last:
Remember we are prisoners of Hope (Tutu). Prisoners of Hope to create communities that unrelentingly, without question, Claim Life.
