Someone I know in Gaza, someone I’ve known for a long time, someone who is not part of the families I have been connecting to my local community but who is nonetheless important to me, posted on Twitter explaining how there are many people in Gaza who have survival campaigns, but the number of donors is very very small. He noted how every family in Gaza needs help. And he acknowledged that we may be feeling fatigued by this, and he apologized for any burdens that are on us because of this.
I responded by saying that any feelings of fatigue and exhaustion we may feel are not ours to feel, and that any apologies for this are not his to give. I said that it is the world that owes the families in Gaza everything, and that it is on us to do more. And that I appreciated all that he and others are doing to keep going, to survive.
While he is right about how there are not enough donors, it shouldn’t be this way. When you look at the numbers, there shouldn’t be this discrepancy. There are more than enough people of means in the U.S., let alone throughout the world, to adequately provide for every single family in Gaza. It is not the resources that are limited. It is the number of people who will actually help. (Just as we could disrupt all of our systems and end the genocide with a national strike, an action that though lacking the pageantry and spectacle of people wearing costumes and dancing in the streets, would be more effective than some of the demonstrations likely to attract large numbers of those who believe that all the horrors of the world only began with our current president.)
Yes, the needs of the families in Gaza outstrip the number of people outside of Gaza who have been and are still doing what they can to raise and send funds to the families trying to survive, the families who have been abandoned by this world. There are many of us who are working together, outside and in spite of our corrupt systems, to care for each other and help keep people alive, but our numbers are too few to meet the scope and scale of what is actually needed. And it doesn’t have to be this way.
After over two years of this, I can’t help but feel that it actually requires more effort to look away than it does to see what is in front of our eyes. And blaming the Western media propaganda machine can only carry us so far when Palestinians have been doing everything they can to reach us, to tell us, to get us to understand, despite the risks they face in doing this. And while there are many outside of Gaza, myself included, who have been changed forever, who have committed to unlearning the prejudice and bias and discrimination we have grown up immersed in, of pushing back against this wherever we find it-- for the most part, the efforts of the Palestinian people who continue to give us so much while also doing all they can to survive the genocide, have largely been met by people who speak over them, ignore them, insult them, disbelieve them, or lie about them. Again and again and again. And even among their so-called "supporters and allies," they have faced skepticism, racism, disappointment, betrayal, inconsistency, misunderstanding, and broken promises.
Yesterday, at an event that had the makings of an anti-imperialist rally, (while also unfortunately containing some of the damaging costumed theatrics and other trappings of the pro-establishment ‘indivisible’ nonsense), a woman stopped to ask me about the families featured at my table. I tried to explain how they were all families in Gaza who I am personally connected to, who I’ve been trying to connect to the local and area communities, in an attempt to raise more awareness and support for their survival. I explained how I’ve been doing this partly through presentations created in collaboration with the families. I said the support we had raised in Bellingham and beyond has been helping these families survive.
“Has it?” she demanded incredulously.
“Yes, it has,” I tried to smile.
“But how do you
know?”
“Because I do,” I said, still smiling, “I talk to them every day. And I have seen the impact of what we have been sending.”
“But how do you
know? Have you
been there? How can they even
get the money? How do you
know it is getting to them?”
“Because in many cases, I am the one sending them the money myself. Or I am familiar with the people and the families who are transferring funds. And I talk to the people who are receiving the funds every day. I just sent a transfer to one family two days ago, and another one just this morning. This is not an issue. They are receiving the money and it is helping them buy food and water and warm clothing. It is helping them receive medical treatment."
“Well, I hope that’s true, but I just don’t know,” she said, still skeptical.
“It is true.” I told her, still trying to smile but feeling myself growing increasingly exasperated.
“Well, I hope it is. But I just don’t see how it could be. How does the money
even get to them? I just don’t see how that is even possible.”
I started trying to explain that sometimes it was via international wire transfers, but that there were other methods too, that it could be challenging, and it varied depending on the family and what they had access to, but we managed to find a way. I explained how I had friends here locally who are also helping me with this, and I was about to explain a little more, but she cut me off by saying,
“Well, I just don’t see how that could be!”“I don’t know what to tell you then,” I responded. “I
do see how it can be. Because it
is. And I am directly involved with this. I have been doing this for a long time. There are people all over the world doing this,
without enough support or help, while others would prefer to just ask questions and do nothing.” I think my smile had faded by this point.
“Well I am sorry, this is all new to me, I just don’t understand. I don’t understand how they can even get the money. How can they get it? Are there any banks?
Are there even any banks!?! These are the questions people should be answering!”
Over two years into this intensified genocide. And
these are the questions people should be answering
.
I sighed heavily and loudly at this point. I felt my eyes and feet sinking into the ground beneath me. I felt my chest constrict and as I tried to look around at my surroundings and take a deep breath. I saw a mixture of people and faces, many familiar and many not. And it struck me, harshly, how far we still have to go, as a country, as a world, to move away from this place where the default for the vast majority of people is to center themselves individually as the focal point of all knowledge and the beneficiary of all responsibility. Where genuine curiosity is all too rare, and community care and communal responsibility is an after-thought accompanied by suspicion, if it is even a thought at all. Where listening is replaced by one’s need to assert their opinion, as though their opinion should apply to everyone around them. As though because something is new to
them, it is therefore the responsibility of those of us around them to carry the burden of their ignorance, while we also shoulder the weight of trying to address the injustice they don’t yet understand.
There was once a time when “all of this” was new to me too. But there are ways to learn that center those who we are learning about, and there are ways to learn which make demands upon the very communities we claim to want to understand and support. And sometimes ignorance is used as an excuse to do nothing. And sometimes doing nothing is exactly what enables violence and suffering and injustice to thrive.
I will spare you the rest of our exchange in more detail, while mentioning briefly the part where she questioned the validity of my telling her about how a number of people in this community had helped me raise emergency funds in less than 24 hours the previous day, enabling one of my friends to receive life-saving medical treatment, and how I spoke with my friend when he was in the hospital receiving the antibiotics he needed to fight a serious infection. And in response to all of this she did not ask me about my friend. She did not inquire about how he was doing now, whether he was ok now. She did not ask if he had what he needed to recover. She didn’t express any concern over his well-being or interest in him as a person, or regard for his family. Instead, she said she did not see how this could be true because she had not seen
with her own eyes that there were any hospitals left in Gaza.
So how could he have even gotten the treatment?! This exchange was during the closest thing to an anti-imperialist rally Bellingham has ever had. And it was among people who are supposed allies to those working to challenge systems of oppression in support of collective liberation. Among so-called progressives who claim to care. But when it comes to Americans thinking about people who are not in the United States, there is a certain kind of pervasive nihilism that seeks refuge in a despair rooted in selfishness. And while I am still trying to reach as many people as I can, I will admit, I am losing my stamina for dealing with people like this. I just don’t have it anymore.
I've encountered something similar lately when I have tabled in public places. Sometimes it is like this, taking the form of those who stop to pepper me with questions they don’t actually want the answers to but who want to assert their own views while being resentful of my answers which challenge their own perceptions and beliefs. And sometimes I see it in the faces of the people who take great and obvious pains to make sure it appears they cannot see me as they walk by carrying their lattes, trying not to accidentally glance in my direction, lest I ruin their day by causing them to think for a moment about the genocide. And I also see it when someone casually says something like “Good for you!” with a patronizing smile or even an occasional thumbs up as they pass by me without stopping.
I’ve been thinking a bit about something Steven Salaita said during his remarks,
The Meaning of Honesty in Academe, from the 2025 James Baldwin Memorial Lecture at UMass-Amherst this past April. Towards the end, he mentions how a question people frequently ask him is, “But what can we do?” And then he breaks down what he sees as being possible attributes of the person asking the question, noting that there may be some overlap among these categories, but explaining them as follows:
“1) They’re being disingenuous; 2) they’re seeking validation for a preexisting opinion; 3) they’re overwhelmed or confused by the gravity of the moment; or 4) they’re motivated and want to act on some issue of justice,” adding that he suspects some kind of combination between number three and number four are most common.
He goes on to explain that he thinks the people: “...who care enough to want to do something to improve the world in lasting and meaningful ways know deep-down exactly what needs to be done. They’re looking for ways for that action to be somehow compatible with job security, with personal freedom, or with notions of civic responsibility…” And he talks about how one thing we need to do is give up on the idea of “safety,” in the United States, noting that: “It doesn’t currently exist for opponents of U.S. imperialism (to say nothing of its victims). And it won’t exist until U.S. imperialism is defeated.”
Today I am very tired. I am weary. I am exhausted. But as I said to my friend in Gaza who apologized to us for our weariness, this fatigue is not the fault of the Palestinian people, or of any oppressed people throughout the world. And it is not the same as the exhaustion, weariness, or fatigue of those in Gaza, who have every reason and right to feel this way. My tiredness is of a different nature, one that I both feel and am part of, because since I live here, I am also part of this country. And I am tired because of this country, and because of the people in this country, and also the people in my local community, who are choosing every day to look away rather than take any responsibility. Or any action. Or even any ownership over their own learning. I am exhausted by those who are so concerned about their own comforts, they cannot be bothered to contribute to the survival of those whose lives are in danger because of this country. I am tired from the people I encounter in my daily life who refuse to recognize that what comforts we may have in this country come at someone else’s expense, and that we are not the ones who are "helpless." We are the ones who should be changing this.
For as many wonderful and amazing people there are who I have known and met, who I care about and rely upon and can count on to be here to help support the families they now care about too, there are still so many more people who do not care, who do not want to know, who do not want to even have to think about this, who would actually prefer to just give up and believe that everything is hopeless, because then they can justify doing nothing at all, nothing besides wallowing in their own feelings of how bad things are.
I am not trying to sound cold or negative, despairing or hopeless. I am at my core none of these things. I am just tired today. Sometimes it just hits harder than others. But I am also rooted in my resolve to continue. And I am grateful to those who are in this place with me, whether in Bellingham or elsewhere in this state, country, or around the world. And I am especially grateful to those in Gaza.
And if you have read all the way or skipped to the end of this, please consider making a donation to my friend Mahmoud and his family, who helped inspire my words today. And please also remember and give to the families I have been fundraising for as much support for as you can.
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