Saturday morning in Minneapolis was hard to take because we love our country. For the community that fights untruths and indifference to seek justice for Palestine, ICE brutality and MAGA community support for it is unsettlingly familiar.

This familiarity comes from decades of witnessing oppression in Israel-Palestine, the images and sound bites of which reverberate in America as echoing shocks in recent years, climaxing—for the moment–on January 24.  

“We wake with

no words, just woe

 & wound. Our own country shoot

ing us in the back is not just brutal

ity; it’s jarring betrayal; not enforcement,

 but execution. A message: Love your people & you

 will die. Yet our greatest threat isn’t the outsiders

 among us, but those among us who never look

 within. Fear not those without papers, but those

 without conscience. Know that to care intensively,

 united, is to carry both pain-dark horror for today

 & a profound, daring hope for tomorrow. We can feel

 we have nothing to give, & still belove this world wait

ing, trembling to change. If we cannot find words, may

 we find the will; if we ever lose hope, may we never lose our

 humanity. The only undying thing is mercy, the courage to open

 ourselves like doors, hug our neighbor,

 & save one more bright, impossible life.

~Amanda Gorman, For Alex Jeffrey Pretti (2026)

Meanwhile, the everyday prose of social and political life that was our custom—friendly or heated debates over the meaning of events and the appropriate policy response—have evolved since January 6, 2021, into often righteous anger over disagreement on basic facts.  

One theory of how this happened is that for too long there’s been a lack of integrity in the morality Americans believe we bring to the world. We proclaim in favor of freedom and equality–universal rights. Our actions often belie our words. Nowhere is the dual standard more manifest than on Israel-Palestine.

Why it matters

Both U.S. political parties, but especially the Democrats—who for decades claim to stand with integrity for such universal values as justice and equality—reveal a moral core hollowed by this dual standard. How much more difficult it is then to face down the lies of January 6 and after, when their MAGA purveyors throw them back, alleging hypocrisy.

In addition, the Democratic party is needlessly weakened—an own goal—by internal division between progressives who believe that everyone is equal and “progressives except on Palestine” (PEP) who make exception for Zionism, which privileges Israeli Jewish lives and narratives over all others.

Belief in the universality of equal rights is not radical, but PEP and our society more broadly treat it as such regarding Palestinians. If you doubt this, try insisting publicly on Palestinian rights and freedom at work or school or places of worship the way you might for Ukraine or against antisemitism. Results may vary—“why this bias?” … ”that’s too political” … “do you support Hamas?” or “that’s not appropriate for this campus”—but are generally not welcoming.

Nevertheless, a united progressive movement, whether that’s the Democratic party or something else, is not possible until progressives truly unite and act with integrity around our core moral values.

Separation Wall with image by Lushsux; honors Palestinian Iyad Hallaq, killed by Israeli police

 in Jerusalem the week Minneapolis police killed George Floyd.

America and Israel-Palestine

After Israel’s 1967 war victory, America became Israel’s primary strategic patron, succeeding Britain and France. Ties became so close that Israel could rely on the US readily vetoing and hollowing UNSC resolutions critical of occupation, settlement building, and military aggression, and US condemnation or counterefforts on UNGA actions favorable to Palestine or that described Zionism as racism. Meanwhile, Americans celebrated Israeli leaders such as Prime Minister Golda Meir—the most admired woman in America in 1974, according to Gallup—who declared in 1969, “there was no such thing as Palestinians.”

Inside Israel, the political seeds of thought that justified the 1948 Nakba (Catastrophe)—driving 750,000 Palestinians from their homes—bloomed with the military occupation in 1967. The Jewish population dominated by Labor Zionism during initial immigration and the founding of the state turned steadily rightward after the 1967 war. Israel began building settlements even before the September 1967 Arab summit’s “three No’s.” By 1977, with settlement building under way for a decade—beginning in Syria’s Golan in July 1967—but growing in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem too, the right-wing Likud replaced Labor as the dominant force in Israeli politics.

Over the decades, America directly linked both our strategic and moral outlook and our policy thinking for the region to inherently racist Israeli policies, which were implemented both inside Israel and in the occupied territories. “Racist” because only racism—whether latent and subtle or overt, cruel, and brutal—could underpin the open-ended subjugation by one people of another.

Thus, the same ‘the moral underpins the political’ dynamics that drove American slaveholding to result in Southern secession and the Civil War, have also led Israel’s occupation to result in what genocide scholars (and South Africa’s 2023 case at the ICJ) allege is genocide in Gaza. Problematically—shamefully, for the conscientious—whether Israel’s behavior is genocide or some other immoral epithet, the crisis is ongoing with worsening conditions now in the West Bank, while America continues to support Israel—financially, militarily, politically, strategically.  

In an earlier moment like the one that moved Amanda Gorman, our former National Youth Poet Laureate, Mahmoud Darwish—the Palestinian national poet—wrote of Gaza. And note (as reflected in the date), that what’s happening to Gaza has happened for decades.

“Gaza has no throat. Its pores are the

ones that speak in sweat, blood, and

 fires. Hence the enemy hates it to

 death and fears it to criminality, and

 tries to sink it into the sea, the

desert, or blood. And hence its

 relatives and friends love it with a

 coyness that amounts to jealousy

 and fear at times, because Gaza is

the brutal lesson and the shining

 example for enemies and friends

 alike.

~Mahmoud Darwish, excerpt from Silence for Gaza (1973)

Today’s moment reflects our history at home and abroad, and it calls for integrity, both to purify our message and to unite us around it. For unity can bring what Gore foresaw as “profound, daring hope for tomorrow.”

At its heart, the Christmas story is about the arrival of a new era.

In the Christian narrative, Jesus was born in Nazareth in Palestine to herald a new kingdom on earth in which love and justice would prevail. It would bring true peace in which all are participants.

Christmas is a time to celebrate these possibilities…but on Palestine we’re still waiting.

We’re waiting for new ideas of living together to replace the old, in which one people claimed supremacy and sought to replace another people. For the new to arrive the old must pass.

Zionism is “the old.” There are two ways to think about replacing it. One is confronting it and exposing what it’s become. The other—our primary role given that we live in society imbued even subconsciously with values that privilege Israeli Jewish lives—is to challenge and educate ourselves.

Several years ago, resolved by the murder of George Floyd to “do something,” I took the Episcopal Church’s Sacred Ground course on racism in America, racism that subconsciously imbued our society, privileging the lives of Whites above others. The course was an awakening, but its primary lesson was that our most important action is not to “do something” outwardly, such as social action, but to invite change inwardly, transforming ourselves.  

Soon after October 7—when it was already clear that Israel’s response would exceed its typical (racist-framed) “mowing the grass” military operations but before “genocide” was the widely understood description of its actions in Gaza—I attended a public, interfaith discussion of Antisemitism and Islamophobia at a nearby synagogue.

Like many, I was puzzling over the relationship of Zionism and Judaism and saw that critics of Israeli actions sought to distinguish the two. A supremacist, land-claiming ideology that elevated the state as an end and envisioned clearing indigenous people as a means is vastly different from a religion that reveres God and God’s teachings, and that recognizes the value of human life is so great that each person is a universe in itself.

Yet when I framed my question to the rabbi, on the panel to discuss Antisemitism—asking whether she recognized that critics of Israel distinguish Zionism from Judaism to prevent antisemitism–she rebuked my question as an affront to her Judaism, in effect insisting that Zionism could not be questioned.  

Her defensiveness didn’t prove my point, though the distinction between faith and political ideology is manifestly obvious. But it highlighted something more broadly important about the Palestine-Israel struggle centering on the narrative: what is the meaning of what is happening—why and what are the moral lessons? –and most importantly, who can narrate.

The struggle inside Israel-Palestine—and in the region immediately beyond that’s within reach of Israel’s U.S.-provided combat weaponry–is mostly decided by force and by facts on the ground: military dominance, ethnic cleansing, and settlement expansion. But it’s the moral struggle over the narrative and who controls it—a debate that takes place mostly outside Palestine-Israel–that will decide the content and character of the new era.

And our first responsibility in this advent time is self-transformation.

This picture is from Puerto Rico in early December and was taken in Luis Munoz Rivera park. LMR was a poet and struggler for Puerto Rican autonomy from Spain.

My Mother Once Said

I will recognize you by your voice,

by your prayers

for me and for the martyrs.

I will not lose my way in the darkness,

for the fires of their hatred

have lit up the sky.

Oh, mother,

You lied, mother,

You lied for me and to yourself,

And for a homeland you loved.

But no one loved us,

Oh, mother,

No one loved us,

Except God.

~Nour Khalil AbuShammala, June 2024

Nour is the daughter of Khalil, one of three central figures in No Way But Forward by Brian Barber, a story of 3 Palestinian men and their families in Gaza over a 45-year period. (https://bkbarber.com/books/)  

•  As Iqraa 21 highlighted, through its focus on Brian’s book, education is central to Palestinian identity. Nour’s writing—essays and poetry—reflect this.

Education is both a central part of the Palestinian dream and a cherished and hard-earned resource of the Palestinian people. The wealth of Palestinian human capital—derived from education–is the foundation of Palestine’s eventual liberation.

• As Nour said (The Electronic Intifada (TEI), 21 February 2024), “I studied law for four years and trained for two years…A week before this genocide started, I passed the bar exam. I was hoping to pursue a master’s degree in international humanitarian law before the occupation destroyed my life, dreams and hopes…Despite all our blood, wounds, pain, all I want is my homeland and my home.”

Nour’s young life reflects her love for education; she has been able to make her voice heard in the West largely because of it. She earned a law degree from Al Azhar University in Gaza university in 2021 and has worked for the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in Gaza, which monitors and documents the practices of Israeli military forces in Gaza and the West Bank, according to its website. In addition, Nour has published poems and essays in a variety of Western media, e.g. Nour in LA Times.

As Nour says (TEI), “Stop this war before you kill our hope. Stop it and return us to our homes, because we deserve a decent life. Or, return us to our homes and kill us there, as I don’t want to die in a tent.”

Both poems in this Iqraa message appeared in No Way But Forward, and were made available to Brian by Nour’s proud father, Khalil.

The Land Fights, Too

The earth yields its fruits,

Defying siege and hunger,

Defying the occupation.

Tomatoes sprout,

Peppers and eggplants,

Despite cut-off water,

Despite forbidden shells.

Mint and basil’s fragrance wafts,

The scent of homeland

In The land of peace.

Despite the tents’ heat,

Children’s displacement,

The loss of dreams,

The earth yields its fruits,

Feeding its children,

North and south,

Refusing starvation.

The earth brings forth vegetables,

And fruits,

Watered by martyrs’ blood.

It fights with its soil,

Holding warriors’ remnants,

Steadfast in death,

Defying forces,

Defying weapons.

Our people plant,

And eat from our land’s soil.

The earth fights side by side,

With its sea, with its brave resisters.

It grows patience,

Quelling children’s hunger,

Silencing mothers’ tears,

Easing men’s burdens.

Only in Gaza,

The earth fights with its people.

~Nour Khalil AbuShammala, July 2024

They will recognize us by our voice.