Combatting Hoplessness with Action

This past week I had the honor of being interviewed by the talented and generous writer Lama Obeid. Lama asked me thoughtful questions, questions that made me think and reflect, questions I am still pondering today. My gratitude to Lama for sharing with me her time, her kindness, and her insightful questions that created the space for this conversation. I appreciate her so much. (You can listen to the complete interview on her Substack site).

One theme that surfaced repeatedly was related to thinking about how people are responding, questioning, communicating, and acting when it comes to Palestine–what I and other people are doing (or not doing), in response to the accelerated genocide. And of course, being based in the United States, my answers generally included my personal reflections upon the influence of our dominant culture and institutional structures.

Today I’ve been thinking a lot about the people I meet in my local community, the ones I encounter, talk to, and sometimes work alongside. I wonder why some are moved to act, others to ignore, and yet others let despair immobilize them completely. As we see what is being done to Palestinians by the country we live in, as we recognize how our comfort comes at the expense of someone else’s suffering, and as we contemplate the gargantuan size of the systems that oppress us– the corruption in our governments, the vast inequities in power– as we see the people in Palestine being starved, terrorized, and killed while we also feel the pain of not yet having been able to stop this, I understand why some may feel helpless. I understand having moments where hopelessness may overwhelm us, I truly do. Hopelessness, grief, despair. I feel these things too.

But I strongly believe we cannot let that be the place where we stay. We have a duty and a responsibility to not let these feelings, no matter how powerful they may feel, prevent us from doing what is necessary, required, and needed. I often think of Rasha Abdulhadi’s words:

"For those of us not currently being bombed, for those of us whose taxes & daily purchases pay for genocide: Despair is far too expensive a luxury. We have already bankrolled too much horror. Let us save time, save our spirits, and act now to get in the way."

I have thought for a long time about trying to write something about barriers to action, barriers that cause people to retreat and look away, to ignore or hide. I would like to write something that could help break down those barriers, and offer an attempt to help more people find their pathways into action. I am still thinking about this now. But I have more thoughts in my jumbled heart and mind than I know how to effectively communicate at this time.

I regularly write and send email updates to an ever-growing list of people with whom I’ve been trying to raise more support--people from within my own life who may live anywhere, but also primarily people from my local community. In the most recent update, which I shared late last night, I wrote about the families who I am most committed to trying to support. I wrote about how they are struggling. How they are exhausted beyond words, fatigued, malnourished, and losing more loved ones to violence every day. 

The truth is, all Palestinians in Gaza are struggling. They have already been forced to endure so much, and they don’t really have more in reserve to draw from in terms of strength or capacity. They are continuing to lose weight, and their bodies are very very weak. I wrote about how there has been an increase in the daily massacres of Palestinians trying to find food at the American GHF centers, as Palestinians are attacked by quadcopters, missiles, tanks, and gunfire while they try to obtain flour or a small box of food.

 

Every family I spoke with this week has recently risked their lives in pursuit of the so-called “aid,” not because they don’t know the risks, but because they do not feel they have a choice. Several families lost loved ones and family members who were martyred after being shot by the American mercenaries while they waited for food. One family has a relative who went in search of aid and never returned, a scenario which is also becoming very common. Several of the primary contacts for the families themselves had very close calls when they attempted to get food and faced a barrage of bullets and gunfire.

I feel it needs to be clearly stated that American soldiers and American mercenaries are the people killing hungry starving Palestinians– hungry starving men women and children–as they try to find food to keep themselves and their families alive. This is happening every single day. And our country is responsible for it. Which means those of us who are living in this country must do more to end this, while also doing all we can to help those who are trying to survive stay alive.

For the families I am closest to, this week was marked by many consolation services and funerals for killed friends and relatives. And this while the families continue to be starved and forced to experience extreme hunger, as they struggle to afford anything to eat. On average right now, each family needs to receive at least $150 in donations per day at minimum, and that is not an amount we have been able to reach as of yet.

I recently updated my Linktr.ee, and in addition to the links to various fundraising campaigns you can find on the right side of this site, there are also fundraisers listed and linked from the link tree, including the links for the eight families who are featured in the local “Eight Families in Gaza: Amplifying Their Voices” presentations. Likewise, all of the other campaigns I link to belong to people I know personally, people I speak with often, people I am trying to support how I can.

I have recently been quoting the words from a Palestinian man in Gaza named Samer, sharing (with his permission) an excerpt of something he posted online:

“So please, please, please, especially in these days — don’t abandon us. We are facing the worst genocide, the harshest famine, and the vilest enemy on the face of the earth and in all of history. We will keep reminding, speaking, and crying out — for you, about you, and with you — until no one is left alone to face starvation. Until no child goes hungry. Until no father collapses. Until no mother is let down. To anyone reading these words: Whatever you can do — do it now. It may not save the whole world, but it could save a family. And right now, saving a family means saving an entire world.”

If you are feeling hopeless, I hope you will channel that emotion into action, actions that will make a positive impact. Actions that will help keep people alive. It is the least we can do to support the people to whom we owe everything.

Solidarity with the Palestinian Students & Educators

The academic year for the university where I work is drawing to a close, and I have been thinking about the students in Gaza. And I have been reflecting on where things were a year ago at this time, and how much worse they have become since then. 

Every day I speak with students and educators in Gaza who are doing their best to survive the genocide, the unrelenting violence, and the famine, all while still holding on to their dreams. And I wonder what it will finally take to end this. 

I have asked before and I ask again now, what would happen if university and college presidents came out publicly, as leaders of their institutions, against the genocide? What if they made statements in solidarity with their Palestinian peers and colleagues? Would that have an effect? 

Sometimes we say words are just words without actions to back them up, that words on their own are not enough to change anything if they don't have something behind them. And yet, people can be so afraid of words that they try to suppress them, so there must be some power there. 

And who gets to speak, who gets to be heard, and what power is associated with someone's words is often dependent on their position, and the positions of power they hold. I can't help but think the weight of the words of a university president speaking out against the genocide of the Palestinian people would make an impact, would make the news, would inspire others, and would attract students who want to go to a university whose leadership is unafraid to speak out and do what is right. 

Maybe you are reading this and you think you are "just" an ordinary person. And maybe you are reading this and you are not a university president, as is likely the case since I am not a wealthy donor, nor am I a Board of Trustees member, so it is very unlikely any university president would be interested in what I am writing here. But I will write it anyway, and I will add that none of us are ordinary, and everyone has some power, whatever that might look like, however that might be. The thing is to recognize what yours is and find a way to use your voice, in every space and every room, to keep trying to find new ways to do new things until we can finally stop this. 

While my heart is with Palestine and with all Palestinians, especially with those I have grown closest to in Gaza, I also have the deepest love for and solidarity with the educators, school staff members, students, librarians, archivists, teachers, writers, and translators in Gaza, those who are my peers and who deserve so much more than what they have received from their professional colleagues. And there is so much more we could and should be doing. I will keep trying, and I hope you will too.

"Eight Families in Gaza - Amplifying Their Voices" May 31, 2025

 SATURDAY, MAY 31, 2025 / 2-3pm (presentation) / 3-3:30pm (Q &A) / Bellingham Central Library Downstairs Lecture Room (This program is not sponsored by the Bellingham Public Library, and is offered in affiliation with the Whatcom Coalition for Justice in Palestine).

"Eight Families in Gaza: Amplifying Their Voices," May 30 at WWU

 

Friday, 5/30/2025 at WWU in Miller Hall 138 at 4pm / Event Description:

Developed in collaboration with members of the featured families, “Eight Families in Gaza: Amplifying Their Voices,” offers attendees a chance to learn about the lives, loves, and challenges of eight specific families in Gaza as they try to survive the ongoing genocide. 

WWU alum and classified staff member Clarissa Mansfield will also speak about the relationship between disability justice and Palestinian liberation, as well as the responsibility of students and educators in the U.S. to oppose the scholasticide being inflicted upon our Palestinian peers and colleagues. After the presentation there will be time for a Q&A.

Last week on the 77th anniversary of the Nakba, Israel began an intensification of its violent assault on the people of Gaza with attacks from land, air, and sea, with support and weaponry supplied by the U.S. government, sending more shells, drone missiles, bombs, and fire to kill Palestinians in hospitals, school shelters, tents, markets, and streets. 

Since then, this intensification has only worsened every passing day and night, becoming more murderous, terrifying, and brutal. Israel has continued to target hospitals, including one that could offer treatment to cancer patients. 

Israeli forces also continue to terrorize Palestinians in Gaza by dropping threatening leaflets from the sky, issuing so-called "evacuation orders" which force Palestinians to flee amidst the bombs with no safe place to go.

The women, men, children, who are not killed but are left trapped beneath the rubble, or who are rescued but left hurt and wounded, burned and besieged, starved and sickened, can not be given adequate treatment for burns or pain relief for their suffering, cannot rest or breathe or heal, cannot be granted any comfort or assurance of even one moment of safety because of Israel's constant violent bombardment and genocidal attacks. Israeli forces also continue to destroy any kind of construction or rescue equipment, as they also bomb and destroy whatever small food stores are left, while extending their illegal blockade to prevent food, medicine, water, and fuel from entering into Gaza.

How many times will I say that conditions are worse than they have ever been? How can each day and night, which are the worst possible days and nights, somehow be even worse than the preceding ones? And how many times will I have cause to wonder this? There must be an end, somehow, someway. 

Israel has also launched what they are calling “Gideon’s Chariots,” formalizing their blueprint for permanent occupation, mass displacement, and expansion of genocidal violence. While this has been referred to in some media sources as the Israeli government declaring it is launching a "major ground offensive," there is no "offensive." This is a violent intensification and acceleration of genocidal violence unleashed upon families who are already traumatized, starving, and suffering and who are trying to survive. 

Unleashed upon families. Fathers, mothers, children. Siblings, grandparents, aunts and uncles. Cousins, friends, husbands and wives. People who just want a chance to live their lives. 

Israel is violating international law, acting with impunity, and showing no indications they intend to stop. And Israel and the U.S. are also planning to further weaponize food and food distribution, effectively establishing concentration camps with the help of American mercenaries. This should be receiving more scrutiny and attention, especially from Americans, but so far it has not. And Israel's recent announcement about allowing in a mere nine trucks of so-called "aid" is merely a mocking and disdainful nod towards the increasing number of people throughout the world who have been protesting  these past several days who want Israel to stop starving and killing Palestinians. 

These past five days have been hell-like for Palestinians in Gaza and only continues to worsen. One of my friends sent me a video and voice note recordings of shelling and gunfire from the helicopters hovering above his tent on Sunday. The video and sounds were enough to make my heart skip and my body to shudder, from the safety of my home, a 10 second clip--what must it be to be living through this, and for this to be only one threat, only one source of fear, one cause of anxiety among so many, too many to count?

Everyone I talk to in Gaza is trying, trying so hard to keep going, to be ok. They are doing everything they can to take care of their loved ones, to be strong for each other. But there is a weariness, a fatigue, an exhaustion steeped in trauma, devastation, and starvation, compounded by being immersed in constant loss while also surrounded by an abundance of violent death.

It is too much to bear.

We need to keep doing what we are doing to end the genocide and the occupation, while we also continue to find new ways to stop it. We must keep giving all we can to help those who are trying to survive. I do not know how much longer we can continue like this, how much longer anyone can. But I feel strongly that time is not something we can spare. There is an urgency required of us if we are to adequately meet this moment.

One thing I am hoping more people are beginning to understand, one thing that I am trying to show with the presentations I have been giving, is that this is not something happening separately from us. The Palestinian people in Gaza are connected to us. And the people in the U.S. are connected to them. And this country is also the country that is enabling and supporting this genocide. 

What is happening to Palestine, what our country is doing, is also connected to what is happening here. And it is connected to the trajectory this country has been on for a very long time. And if we cannot somehow stop the normalization of intentionally using mass starvation, torture, and violence as means of asserting control and maintaining power, then there isn't much hope for any of us. And perhaps, there shouldn't be.

So again I request that you please do what you can, today, now, this moment to help. Send whatever support you can send to Palestinians in Gaza. Direct aid from us in terms of the funds we are raising right now is the only thing that is helping. And listen and respond to what Palestinians are saying. Prioritize hearing their voices above the voices of others. And then talk to everyone in your life about this. Push back against the lies, the normalization, the silences. Bring this with you to every moment. Take whatever action you can take. Take up space. Take up room. Take up air time. Do whatever you can do. Nothing we have done so far has been enough. So we must keep trying. 

Two Months of Forced Starvation

 It has been two full months since Israel began its illegal, immoral, genocidal blockade, banning anything but weapons, bombs and death from entering into Gaza. No food, medicine, fuel, clothing, building materials–no anything. Nothing required for anyone or anything to survive in Gaza. 

This is the longest complete and total blockade Israel has ever inflicted upon Gaza, and famine is no longer “looming,” it has arrived. And not because of some kind of uncontrollable “natural” disaster–this is entirely human made and human-supported, created by Israel, and enabled by the U.S. Children are dying from malnutrition, and everyone is sick. The World Food Program has run out of food, and prices for what little food remains in Gaza have skyrocketed. What flour there is left is exorbitantly expensive and rancid. 

In the midst of all of this, Israel has intensified its campaign of mass murder, targeting Palestinians in every place and during every time– while they are trying to sleep in tents or shelters, when they are trying to receive medical treatment for their illness, while they are trying to get water, when they are searching for food, collecting firewood, or sitting with friends and trying to find a moment of joy amidst so much violence. Even children playing with other children in what used to be a street are targeted. It does not matter when or where. It could be bombs, drones, snipers, shelling, or fire. It could be men, women, children, and pets. It could be journalists, doctors and nurses, teachers, or mother and fathers--it does not matter who they are, what they are doing, or where they are. Israel has dropped all pretext of needing to make up their flimsy excuses–they just kill and harm whenever and wherever in Gaza they want to. They target men, women, and children in broad daylight or under the cover of darkness, ensuring no place is safe, and there is no rest for the weary and traumatized. 

What more is there to say to compel the world to act? To get more people in this country to care? To make this a priority? Americans turn out in the streets on the weekends to "resist" the growing fascism of this country, something that unfortunately was not resisted en masse while its roots were clearly growing long before Trump was president. And most often, missing from these laments and demonstrations, is anything about Gaza or Palestine, unless a few of us who are not ‘indivisible’ decide to make our presence visible. 

Labor unions can hold May Day rallies so unions can ask for higher pay for their members, but there is no talk of withholding our labor to end a genocidal assault of forced starvation and mass murder, funded and enabled by this country. What is there left to say? We are running out of time and more Americans need to care. And while I know many do, we still need more. And we need to back up that care with action.

And if you are looking for something you can do, right now, that will help, here are two small things. Much more is needed, but at the very least, please do this: 

• Donate to one of the families linked from the Whatcom Families for Justice in Palestine Linktr.ee. These funds are literally survival funds. Please give generously, as much and as often as you can.
• And contact your representative to demand they act to force Israel to end the blockade.  (I will be honest, I don’t have that much faith in our current political systems, or the people in power who are supposed to represent us. But it is one thing that more people could easily do, and we should be doing everything we can think of and more right now.) 

This is not getting better. It is not getting easier. As I was writing these words, the news broke of the drone attack on the Freedom Flotilla in international waters off the coast of Malta. Efforts to save the lives of Palestinians are being met with more violence and attacks. The U.S. keeps bombing Yemen for daring to defend Palestine. And campus protests are being met with more repression and police brutality. What does this tell you about the current state of the world? And how long can we continue like this?

The Need for New Words

This past Saturday, April 12, the Whatcom Coalition for Palestine hosted another public program featuring “Eight Families in Gaza: Amplifying Their Voices,”  the presentation I created in collaboration with members of the featured families, who generously shared their words, their photos, their writing, and their voices with us. My hope was to bring the families closer to my local community, to raise more support for them, and also to raise more awareness about the dangerous and dire conditions Palestinians in Gaza are being forced to endure and are trying to survive. I also hoped that people would be personally affected, and compelled to take actions to end the genocide.

Every time I give this presentation, I am also deeply affected. I have the deepest respect for these families, and feel that it is both an honor and a privilege to be able to speak and share about them. Words are mainly what I have to offer and to give. So I am using them in writing, in speaking, wherever I can. And I know that words on their own are not enough. But I hope that words will be a pathway to more--more connection, more support, more action, more awareness, more change. We need more of all of these things. 

After the presentation, about half of us stuck around to meet with coalition members, to process and talk and plan, and it was during that part of the event when I received a message from one of my friends in Gaza who had just woken in terror to the sound of nearby bombing, when the only remaining hospital in the north was attacked and destroyed by Israeli Forces, leaving patients with no safety, shelter, or medical care, as sick, wounded, and severely ill people were forced to flee into the dangerous streets. Israeli forces have been systematically and intentionally destroying all healthcare facilities, blocking all access to medical supplies, while also targeting, killing, and capturing healthcare workers, and creating conditions intended to inflict more pain, suffering, and death.

Last week, another friend of mine was trying to secure medical treatment for his parents who are ill because of the harsh living conditions and lack of clean water and food, and the clinic they were going to enter was bombed right before they arrived. Had they been moments earlier, they would not have survived. 

Meanwhile, the health crisis is growing increasingly serious with every passing moment. Israel's systematic attacks on the water infrastructure in order to destroy the water supply, while also using food and starvation as a weapon, continues unabated. Israel, and the United States are committing Crimes Against Humanity, genocide, violating all international laws, and engaging in violent acts of brutality that defy comprehension. And so far, nothing has been able to stop this.

Palestinians in Gaza are exhausted, fatigued, and starving. Everyone I talk to has lost weight, some of them have lost a dangerous amount. Everyone is sick with severe stomach pain and headaches. And the bombing, shelling, and drone targeting increases every night. The only thing helping people survive right now is the support they are receiving from those of us outside of Gaza who are sending them what we can, while we also try as hard as we can to end this.

This past Saturday, I was thinking a lot about words and actions, about how things are shared, about the power and shortcomings of language.  I posted on Twitter that I needed new words. I was sharing Moayed Harazen's post, as he was describing the water crisis, and I wrote:

“Just as starvation is used as a weapon, water & sources of water are also targeted & destroyed. I need different words to convey the seriousness of this. ‘Urgent,’ ‘critical,’ ‘emergency,’ ‘crisis’--these words are not enough. What words will finally compel the world to act?”

I keep thinking about how we do not know what it will be that will finally end this, which means we must keep trying anything and everything we can think of, while also thinking of new things to try. And while we are doing that, we absolutely must give as much support as possible to those who are trying to survive. This is more than critical and urgent--I do not have the words to describe how important this is.

Information About Donating:

You can find a list of links on the right side of this blog site where you can make direct donations to the families' campaigns online. And the eight families I have been trying to introduce to our local community are among them. And you can also find the links to the pages for the eight families on the Whatcom Families for Justice in Palestine linktr.ee. 

If you would prefer to give me your contribution so that I can distribute your donation myself, that also works and I am happy to do that. I have been accepting checks, cash, and payments via Zelle–whatever is easiest. Please feel free to reach out to me via email at clarissjanae@gmail.com and we can make arrangements.