لارا

Every time Palestinians express their dissatisfaction at ceremonial wins that produce no tangible change, there is always a group of well-meaning "allies" who get extremely angry that we are not content with the crumbs this world has to offer us. It happens whenever an op-ed about Palestine written by a POC comes out in the NYTimes, or when an Arab author wins a prize from PEN, or when a liberal Israeli comes to a college campus to tell us about our own oppression. It happens when books (written by people who have benefitted from our subjugation) hit # 1, and, indeed, when an "Israeli-Palestinian" documentary wins an Oscar. I'm not interested in debating the merit of the film, how well it was shot, its critical acclaim: many of you are missing the point. We do not need, and many of us do not want, our oppressors to validate our stories. In the same way we do not need a liberal Zionist like Yuval to get on stage and speak over us, we do not need a Haaretz or NYTimes journalist to break an "investigation" about the lived experiences of Palestinians that they have been yelling about for decades. This is a form of theater, a spectacle, and a lot of us are growing tired of it. And yet, if we verbalize this, we are told that we are being "unreasonable," "unfair," "inflammatory," "unforgiving," "too harsh." We are asked "Did you even read/watch/visit __?!" (an insulting question to begin with; we do not need to view these things to understand the premise of it is problematic) and if we say yes, the follow-up is almost always a variation of "This is just pushing people away from the Pro-Palestine cause" and, of course, "Who do you think this is helping?" But what some of you fail to understand is this is not about how other people feel, this is about our dignity and our refusal to keep accepting the bare minimum. Many of you have become way too comfortable telling Palestinians how we should feel about our own oppressors. What makes people comfortable enough to send us these patronizing messages. Do you not hear yourselves? Do you not read back your replies and think: perhaps this is a time for me to sit, observe, and listen, instead of speaking over the very people I claim to support? Liberal Zionism has become so pervasive in arts and culture, and it becomes clearer every day that the solidarity our allies show is, for the most part, conditional. We are tired. We do not want awards or shoutouts from the same establishments that manufacture consent to kill us. We just want liberation. Please stop telling us to be content with what we've got and to just "let people be happy." We are not spectacles for your enjoyment. We've tried to appeal to the elite for decades and it hasn't gotten us very far. As always, this will make me the "never satisfied," "always angry" Palestinian. So be it.