Mobilizing against this war: who's 'Left'?

in ann arbor at a protest organized by arab women
July 22, 2006

I keep waking up at 5 a.m. wondering what new nightmare the Israelis will have in store for us, and now I read that the U.S is sending, pronto, precision-guided bombs to Israel. We are at war now with four countries in the Middle East. We are funding and running war campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq and we are paying for wars in Palestine and Lebanon. As the Bush administration fights valiantly to save the lives of Stem cells, he is sanctioning the murder of innocent Lebanese civilians. He is also speculating rather intelligently that Syria must be behind this.

WE ARE THE IDIOTS IF WE KEEP HIM in office for another year and a half. I kept thinking how much worse can this situation become and it is getting worse! Our economy is horrible especially in Michigan. Houses are foreclosing and families are moving elsewhere because they cannot survive.

At a protest yesterday in Troy, we were told by one passing car, a very typical comment to “foreign-looking” protestors, “Go back to where you come from.”

I was born in this country, right here in Michigan in Detroit. The depth of entitlement and arrogance in this country is incredible. I am not really astounded but sort of puzzled at the way in which people disrespect one another especially when it comes to conflicting political views.

Why am I making this personal? It is personal. My family came from Iraq and the United States has used the rescue pretense to decimate a people and a culture so that not only are more than a million Iraqis dead because of sanctions and a protracted war, but ancient sites, monuments, and historic artifacts have been destroyed or pillaged. Lives will never be recovered and Iraq will never be the same. Palestine can never be the same. And now Lebanon cannot be.

At a protest last Sunday in Ann Arbor at the Federal building, Palestinians, Libyans, Iraqis, Iranians and other Americans came out to oppose the rally that some supporters of Israelis were holding. They would not stomach our presence or our chants, so they sent their children to drown us out with Hebrew song. At one point, a hostile and very poorly mannered man, I have to say, told us, “Why don’t you remove the bombs from your waist?” and I answered him by saying “Why don’t you give me back the $5 million you take from me every day?”

“Oh just shut up” was what he said directly to me in a and sarcastic voice. I told him to shut up. This was not a mature exchange to be sure. We were not at our finest, he nor I.

But the issue here is that I will not shut up. Palestinians, Iraqis, Lebanese WILL NOT SHUT up. Israel and the Unites States want to silence Arabs. The State of Israel and the United States of America are using its military prowess to shut Arabs down. But it won’t happen. No matter how many bombs they drop, we have eyes, and ears, and cousins who run blogs and write poetry and we won’t shut up. We will keep speaking about all these injustices until they are shut down, until they stop using weapons instead of words to end conflict. We are not the violent ones. We are not dropping bombs on innocent civilians!

We are here in solidarity with our brothers and sisters all over the third world where people of color are being slaughtered and the rest of world watches in silence.

Arab American writers, bloggers, journalists, activists, all are speaking eloquently and poignantly to the disaster that is taking place in Lebanon. The destruction of Lebanon, beautiful, vibrant, Lebanon has happened in ten days. It can now be compared to Iraq. We know that Israel and the United States, the so-called “super powers,” have this kind of power, yet we are overwhelmed and shocked at the injustices and callousness with which Israelis have invaded and attacked relentlessly and ruthlessly. Why are we shocked? Have they not been doing this to Palestinians for decades? Have we not seen the same in Iraq? Yes, I am angry at Bush and his rogue thugs. Israeli militants and Zionist extremists are also on my shit list, but who am I really angry with?

THE LEFT in the U.S.! Why have we been sitting on our butts? We have. I know we are doing what we can and most have stayed active, but really, really, we should have been on the street for the last three years. For that matter, we should have been hitting the street and DC all the time every day. We should have organized a crippling and effective boycott of Israeli products and Israeli academics. I am not talking what some of us do as our personal politics. I am talking about collective action and mobilization.

We are all complicit. When will the Left wake up? We don’t need to move to Canada. Why should we leave? We need to fight and change this imperialist state. This kind of crisis rhetoric needs to translate into direct action and mobilization and creative interventions.

If we care about real justice and social equality, then we need to stand up and stand with those who are less visible and whose character is being maligned in the U.S. media in particular. The campaign to destroy Lebanese is the current campaign, but the destruction of Palestine is the real campaign and Iraqis, Lebanese, Iranians, Syrians are all targeted. Those in power know military aggression as the only solution to any and every point of tension. Those of us who do not have governmental power but who are activists, academics, artists, filmmakers, journalists, attorneys, students, from any and every walk of life, we need to speak out. I am not going to write to my congressman because they are complicit in the work of empire and they let us get here. We need to engage in grassroots activism and speak out openly and honestly in writing and in public, making demands of our own and backing it with economic pressure and boycotts and garnering world attention and pressure.

To the left: Wake the hell up! We need a movement that rocks this administration. We cannot wait until we see dead Lebanese children on the Internet and then we are outraged. Dead Palestinians and dead Iraqis, we have been seeing for decades. When are we going to stop this insanity?

I just visited Palestine in early June and I felt like I was in a Kafka novel. Racial profiling and clear, clear racism was embedded in every aspect of Israeli life. Israeli citizens, men and women, walk around with guns to go grocery shopping like it is normal. Women, Israeli citizens not soldiers, shop with their kid and carry giant guns not little pistols. This is not in a war zone. This is the daily life they have chosen so they can protect themselves from Palestinians whose lives they have shattered and continue to shatter. But it is Palestinians who need protection.

This Israeli campaign against Lebanon is the most recent egregious and illegal act on the part of the Israeli military. U.S policy makers and those with political power and military decision-making continue to align themselves with world leaders who are ruthless killers. Those friendships usually end badly as we saw with Saddam Hussein. We had to be responsible for the death of over a million Iraqis to eliminate a tyrant and his family? He is still alive and being treated well in jail; the average Iraqi suffers because of him and instead of him. The Bush administration convinced the American people, who are asleep and lost, that there was a connection between Al-Qaida and Hussein. It was a joke in the intellectual and activist community, but there is nothing funny about our complicity with the worst bloodshed we've seen in a long time. If we cared about humanity, we'd be in the Sudan. I am not advocating for U.S. military intervention anywhere, but the hypocrisy of U.S military rhetoric is more than this Iraqi- American can stomach!

Arab people like other people in the Global South are not treated like humans. A numbers of close friends have gotten emails from supposed friends saying the "Arabs" deserve this; they are animals. Israel is doing what it needs to do to protect itself. The sectarian politics do not just apply to the Middle East. We, Americans, are sectarian and segregationist by policy and by our politics.

I dedicate this march to my students in Dearborn and to all those who are in jeopardy in Lebanon. My friend and colleague, Mary Assel, her grandchildren and daughter-in-law arrived safely in Michigan. We are still waiting to hear about other friends and colleagues, Moulouk Berry and her son Roy and her mom and other relatives who are trapped in the South. Tarek Joseph’s family, Nada Elia’s mother. Mimi Ismail and her mom and sister. Sister Jarmal and all the Lebanese girls and Chaldean nuns in her orphanage in Northern Lebanon. Rashid beydoun’s family in BintjBail and Lara Hamza’s family in Tibneen. Hayan & Waad Charara’s father and his wife and their six year old son, hayan’s little brother who are now in Beirut. Maymanah Farhat's grandmother and aunts who were in the South.

TO the Palestinian-American poet Lisa Majaj who now lives in Cyprus and who was evacuated out of Beirut in 1982 and who now witnesses the same kind of evacuation

To RASHA SALTI WHO IS REPORTING FROM BEIRUT

Fairouz, Fairouz, you cry for Beirut,

To Beirut - peace to Beirut with all my heart.

So how did it come to taste of smoke and fire?