F*** Activists

I have other posts I want to get online, but this one has been on my mind since the film festival last night on the subject of activism.

First of all, the granola sitting next to me.  I realize that you think you are in touch with the earth and that your sandals leave less of an impact on the planet and blah blah blah. I also know you are a journalist and not technically here as an activist, but this is Nablus, besides being culturally unusual around here, sandals are down right stupid in Nablus. I use mine around the flat of course, but I would never walk down the street here in sandals, even Cody from Duel Survival would wear shoes here. There streets are littered with broken glass and are just completely unsanitary and unsafe to wear shoes, not to mention wholly unpractical- Nablus eats shoes like Palestinians eat limes. Buy some damn shoes and close your feet up on the streets here. Everyone, including yourself will be appreciative.

As we were all milling about outside waiting for the doors to the film festival to open I over heard one young woman telling her "horror" story about getting through security. She was pissing and moaning about how she was held for an hour while they copied her passport, and strongly questioned her. How are you so flabbergasted about this?You told them that you were coming to an occupied country! Just what the f*** (sorry mom) did you expect to happen? for them to roll out the red carpet and release doves on your arrival? It's just another case of western superiority complex and shows a complete disregard for the Palestinian people. West Bank Arabs cannot leave and see their ancestral homes and homeland in Israel Proper, and they are stopped for hours at a time moving between cities in their own occupied territories even. Until last year it took our students at An-Najah three hours just to get through a checkpoint and were the subjects of far worse treatment then an american activists. Palestinians can be held indefinitely without trial in Israel Proper, but you are standing here bitching about how you had a challenging time coming into the country. These people have no grasp on reality.

Worst of all is that these people seem to think they are helping and are actually the hipsters of the protest movement, constantly jockeying for a place as the most "protesty human-loving humanitarian protestor" like there is a goddamn medal for it. They fly halfway around the world because they have some kind of entitlement (in this case the money to do so and a sense of entitlement to come speak of Palestinian's behalf. At the end of the movie a rather prestigious panel of community leaders from both the armed and unarmed resistance, the director of the film's NGO and the university's UNESCO chair were all sharing their thoughts and fielding questions. Leave it to some dumb Americans to spend the whole time talking about "israel is such a bully" in low voices instead actually listening to what is said. Considering so many activists for Palestine also carry some planetary global environmental concerns, it is absolutely idiotic that these girls would fly halfway around the world to "experience" Palestine and would just talk all the way through the presentation and even a large portion of the movie. Apparently foreigners can fight the occupation by TALKING ABOUT FACEBOOK for twenty minutes straight. It's actually kind of disgusting.

These people come to Palestine because they also feel they need to understand the plight of the people here. But instead of cultural immersion and getting to know a range of people they spend their whole time in Ramallah, an international city. Here they can get in a few hours of protesting during their day and then get drunk at night with other internationals and stroke their egos about how helpful they are to the Cause of Palestinians. They don't leave the city of Ramallah to get into the villages, where even though I detest protestors they would be welcomed and loved with such amazing hospitality. They are nothing different than confused young people trying to find their place in the world and experimenting with how to express themselves, like the 15 year old girl who dabbles in lesbianism. Instead of coming here to show solidarity for a two week protestcation, there are so many ways of actually being productive and helping Palestine. Encouraging a legislator to come here, holding a rally in their country of origin, or (gasp!) performing a significant act of civil disobedience at Washington DC like a sit-in or a hunger strike could do so much and show solidarity. Stay home and donate the money that it would have cost you to fly around the world to a respectable NGO like Project Hope, or Families of the Bereaved. You'll help the Planet and Palestine, because if you come here for a week or twenty years, it is not possible for a foreigner to truly understand the plight of these people. At any time we can leave, we have rights as internationals and we are not systematically targeted for abuse by settlers and the IDF, but the same cannot be said of Palestinians. We will never never know the implications of knowing that our parents and children, as well as ourselves will be born into an occupied country and the emotional and psychological devastation that goes with that. We can't and we almost shouldn't try under some pretenses, lest we leave assuming we have a thorough understanding and are actually just as ignorant as someone who has never seen Palestine.

If you want to help Palestine, find volunteer work with a respectable NGO. Learn a skill, a trade, fight the brain drain that actually has an enormous negative impact on Palestine. Bring your education here and share it with the Palestinians. Even with a Master's Degree you can find many teaching positions here at the university level. Do research and provide valuable information because as one person at work says "no one needs to show Palestinians how to throw stones, they can do that well enough themselves." We must build the infrastructure of Palestine almost even before demanding statehood because without it, the world will just be introduced to a newly minted failed state without the means to help it's own people. For Palestine to succeed attention must diverted from security, to the rest of the peace process, the natural resource allocation, cultural divides, and political discord. Hell come here and teach them about Robert's Rules of Order so that everyone can interact with western politics when necessary, and foster in young people a concept of  government that functions smoothly.

 So activists, go home and take your dirty dreadlocks and urban outfitter clothes with you, Palestine needs a better friend than you if the people are going to succeed. Go fight injustice in your own country because an injustice anywhere is an injustice everywhere. Just as the holocaust could not have happened without the advent of colonial racism, the occupation and apathy of the world governments to take action against the Israeli occupation all have their own skeletons in their closets. Where is your love for the Native Americans, who are forced to still suffer humiliation and hold a place as second class citizens in our own country? It is not until we force countries to be accountable for their own sins that any of these countries will truly critique the actions of Israel with determination, but instead it is far easier for us to hide our own social suffering from view by pointing the finger at Israel. It's like the parent who secretly smokes cigarettes and then berates his child when he catches him doing the same. The problem is just as much us, if not more so, than Israel's. We are the enablers because we refuse to be held accountable for our own past. Only when we fully acknowledge the evil we have perpetrated and try to set that right, will we be able to stand before the world on a platform of moral superiority and dictate that evil must not be carried out against the less fortunate. Anything else is just posturing for the sake of posturing, Israel is not a Pariah, it is just a very astute student of the actions of so much of the developed world. Activism will not change that, the chants of developed world college students won't enact change. For every hour of protests in Palestine, we should do another two hours in our own country and follow that with a six hours of productive work to fight the sources and ideology of occupation. Get an education and share it with those who need it most in the areas that they need most. Teach the Palestinians to fish, don't just give them a Long John Silver's in Ramallah.