An excerpt from the recently published journal entries of Refaat Alareer, a Palestinian professor and author who was murdered by an IDF bomb in December 2023. His unpublished genocide diaries are now available at The Electronic Intifada here.
Category: Subverting Empire
Love Reckons
An excerpt from an article Kiese Laymon wrote in 2015, reflecting on a conversation he had with his grandma “12 hours after Susie Jackson, Ethel Lance, Clementa Pinckney, Tywanza Sanders, Cynthia Hurd, Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, Depyane Middleton Doctor, Daniel Simmons and Myra Thompson were murdered in a black Charleston church by a cowardly white American thug.”
What I do know is that love reckons with the past and evil reminds us to look to the future. Evil loves tomorrow because peddling in possibility is what abusers do. At my worst, I know that I’ve wanted the people that I’ve hurt to look forward, imagining all that I can be and forgetting the contours of who I have been to them.
Like good Americans, I told Grandma, we will remember to drink ourselves drunk on the antiquated poison of progress. We will long for “shall’s” and “will be’s” and “hopes” for tomorrow. We will heavy-handedly help in our own deception and moral obliteration. We will forget how much easier it is to talk about gun control, mental illness and riots than it is to talk about the moral and material consequences of manufactured white American innocence.
The Origins of Modern Zionism
This is Zachary Foster’s response to a tweet from Emily Schrader that said, “I’m not sure why this needs to be said, but we don’t need non-Jews to be lecturing Jews about what Zionism is or isn’t.” Foster is a Jewish-American historian of Palestine who received his PhD in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton in 2017.
Of course, Christians don’t need to be lecturing Jews about anything. We have our own intramural issues – and Christian Zionism is a big one that heavily influences conservative and liberal followers of Jesus.
Zionism was initially a Christian phenomenon before it was a Jewish phenomenon.
→ Anthony Cooper (Lord Shaftesbury) (1801-1885) published a tract in 1838 claiming that Jewish “restoration” in Palestine would benefit Great Britain’s geopolitical position and would hasten the second coming of Jesus.
→ Charles Henry Churchill (1807-1867) proposed a plan for establishing a Jewish state in Palestine in the 1840s as British Consul in Damascus.
→ James Finn (1806-1872), British Consul in Jerusalem, member of the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews, bought land in the 1850s in the Palestinian village of Artas for the purpose of employing destitute Jews there.
→ James Bicheno’s (1880) “The restoration of the Jews, the crisis of all nations”: purpose to “stir up public attention to the prophecies which relate to the restoration of this singular people in the latter days.”
→ William Hechler an Anglican clergyman in 1884 wrote “The Restoration of the Jews to Palestine” in which he argued that Jewish settlement in Palestine was a precondition for the return of Jesus.
Maybe the more sensible question is, why did Jews hijack the idea of Zionism from non-Jews?
Sources: Ilan Pappe, Lobbying for Zionism; Masalha, The Zionist Bible
Anti-Semitism and Hypocrisy at the Top: a Jewish response
Re-posting this piece by Wes Howard-Brook from February 2019 because it is more relevant than ever. Gotta say that after five-and-a-half years, it has aged quite well.
Three, young, powerful, brash women of color have come down upon the Capitol and left the old while folks there sputtering in their wake. The most well-known—so much so that she already can be recognized by her initials, AOC—Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY)—has blown the doors off Congress by daring to offer her “Green New Deal” vision. The other two are both Muslim women, Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib and Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar. Tlaib and Omar have strongly promoted the international “Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction” campaign to pressure the Israeli government to withdraw from West Bank settlements.
AOC has been allowed to thrive as a social media star, despite being treated with despicable condescension by the “senior” congresspeople and their supporters. After all, even the Democratic Party knows that climate change is real and needs immediate action.
But when it comes to criticizing Israel, Dems collectively freak out in an orgy of blatant hypocrisy that might, but probably wouldn’t, make Trump blush. Most immediate, Rep. Omar was quoted in a tweet stating that “Jewish money,” more specifically, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, influences US policy on Israel. This claim led to instant and widespread condemnation from all sides, for promoting “anti-Jewish tropes.” Rep. Omar was forced to apologize publically.
Continue reading “Anti-Semitism and Hypocrisy at the Top: a Jewish response”I Will Never Back Down
Take a minute and soak this up. Rashida Tlaib is what real leadership looks like.
Responsibility
If you have not read Marina Magloire’s most recent article in The LA Review of Books, you really must. She explores correspondence between June Jordan and Audre Lorde over their disagreements on Israel/Palestine. It is absolute fire. Here’s an excerpt.
Driven by her grief and outrage at the massacres at Sabra and Shatila in September 1982, in which thousands of Palestinians were murdered by militia groups over the course of two days, Jordan wrote an open letter called “On Israel and Lebanon: A Response to Adrienne Rich from One Black Woman,” dated October 10, 1982. Her address to Rich was both personal (she names Rich alone among the signatories of the two letters) but also pedagogical (it is an open letter to be published in WomanNews and thus intended for public consumption). Using the words “genocide” and “holocaust,” Jordan lays out the shocking array of war crimes committed by Israel over five months—phosphorous bombs, the destruction of civilian infrastructure, the massacre at Sabra and Shatila—and criticizes Rich’s failure to take responsibility for these things as the tangible outcomes of the Zionism she claims to espouse. This idea of responsibility runs through Jordan’s response like a live wire, culminating in this astonishing statement:
I claim responsibility for the Israeli crimes against humanity because I am an American and American monies made these atrocities possible. I claim responsibility for Sabra and Shatilah [sic] because, clearly, I have not done enough to halt heinous episodes of holocaust and genocide around the globe. I accept this responsibility and I work for the day when I may help to save any one other life, in fact.
Because Rich does not take responsibility, Jordan models it for her. This is perhaps the most important rhetorical turn in Jordan’s letter, though it goes unacknowledged in subsequent responses from other readers. Jordan recognizes that being part of an ethnonationalist state, whether born or chosen, carries the obligation to critique its violence. The fact that a Black woman born in this nation can make this statement, with far more humility than Rich’s selective, cherry-picked identification with Israeli statehood, is a testament to the transformative possibilities of Jordan’s identity politics.
This Sweet Earth
Today we celebrate the recent release of a new book by Lydia Wylie-Kellermann, the co-founder of RadicalDiscipleship.net! You can order This Sweet Earth right here. We were fortunate enough to have the opportunity to ask her a few questions about it. See below for book tour dates!
RD: We are interested in what led you to write this book. Are there specific experiences or situations that you can go back to that told you that this book needed to be written and that you needed to write it?
LWK: I think more than anything I had this ongoing nagging feeling for a few years that there was this book inside of me. I just needed to make space to see what would pour out.
A big part of why I personally needed this book was because I was shocked by the level of immobilizing anxiety I was experiencing. I was reading scientific studies that kept saying how much worse things are than we thought. I was witnessing predictions for human extinction. The doomsday scrolling was making it hard to breathe. There was so much grief and rage stuck in my body all the time. And I don’t think I’m alone in that. I realized that if I held these feelings by myself that they would turn either towards total despair or I would have to pretend it wasn’t happening just to keep going.
Yet I know that this rage and grief and anxiety are holy. They are how we express how much we love this world. And that if we hold these emotions in community, then there is beautiful, transformational power in it all.
When I was overcome with pain around climate crisis, it was my kids that would grab my hand and pull me over to watch the caterpillar devouring the milkweed. Their ability to slow down and intimately rest in this ecosystem changed my posture.
And as I look out into the future and what I want my kids to know and learn, I find myself leaning on the theological imagination and political analysis of my childhood. My parents and the community around me taught me so much about what it means to be human….what we say yes to with our whole bodies and how we also say no by putting our bodies on the line.
This book in many ways is a love letter to the generations before me and the generations after. I am constantly stumbling over gratitude for the lessons they teach me daily.
Continue reading “This Sweet Earth”I Am Not Leaving
Last week, Bernice Johnson Reagon became a living ancestor. This is the tribute that her daughter Toshi Reagon posted on Facebook on July 17, 2024.
I was here before I came and when I die, I am not leaving… – Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon
Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon, a multi-award-winning force and cultural voice for freedom, transitioned on July 16, 2024. As a scholar, singer, composer, organizer and activist, Dr. Reagon spent over half a century speaking out against racism and systemic inequities in the U.S. and globally. Born in Dougherty County outside of Albany, Georgia on the 4th of October 1942, she was field secretary of SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee) and a founding member of the original SNCC Freedom Singers, formed in 1962. In 1966, she was a founding member of the Atlanta-based Harambee Singers. In 1973, while a graduate student of history at Howard University and vocal director of the D.C. Black Repertory Company, Dr. Reagon founded the internationally renowned African American women’s a cappella ensemble, Sweet Honey In The Rock, leading the group until her retirement in 2003. In 1974, Dr. Reagon began her leadership role at the Smithsonian Institution, which included curating the African Diaspora Program, creating the Program in Black American Culture, and producing and performing on numerous Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. For a decade, beginning in 1993, she served as Distinguished Professor in History at American University (AU) in Washington D.C. Dr. Reagon was named Professor Emerita of History at AU and Curator Emeritus at the Smithsonian. She is the author of numerous publications, compositions and recordings.
Dr. Reagon has received countless awards and honors for her pioneering work as a scholar and artist, including, the Heinz Award for the Arts and Humanities, the Leeway National Award for Women in the Arts, the Presidential Medal for contribution to public understanding of the Humanities, the MacArthur Foundation Genius Award and the Peabody award for the groundbreaking Wade in the Water series (NPR/Smithsonian Folkways).
Born to Reverend Jesse Johnson and Beatrice Wise Johnson, Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon’s family members include her life partner Adisa Douglas, children Toshi Reagon and Kwan Reagon, grandchild, Tashawn Nicole Reagon, numerous family members including siblings, Jordan Warren Johnson, Deloris Johnson Spears, Adetokunbo Tosu Tosasolim, Mamie Johnson Rush, several nieces and nephews, and extended family, J. Bob Alotta, Amy Horowitz, James and Miriam Early and a community of beloved collaborators and fellow artists.
Details regarding a public celebration of life forthcoming.
Genocide: Absent from the Title, Marginalized in the Body
A stunning open letter from Kairos Palestine in response to this letter from the Word Council of Churches last month. This is an invaluable resource for liberal Christians who painfully continue to “both sides” this decades-long oppressive situation. [RD.net bolded portions below for our own emphasis]
Open letter to the Executive Committee of the World Council of Churches
”But based on his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness dwells.” (2 Peter 3:13)
Esteemed Members of the Executive Committee,
We at Kairos Palestine extend our appreciation of your statement issued in Bogota, Colombia by your esteemed Committee (6-11 June) titled: ”THE ESCALATING CRISIS IN GAZA”. We trust that the statement was issued with great concern and with the urgent need to terminate the atrocious crimes in Gaza.
However, as Palestinians, as Christians and as your partners, we would like to bring to your attention the following points pertaining to the content and the calls included in the statement:
1- We believe that the title ”Escalating Crisis in Gaza” is neither accurate, nor adequate. The protracted ”crisis” is a result of 8 months of Israel’s incessant large-scale military aggression which mounts to acts of genocide, prior to which, Gaza has been strangled by a 17year blockade that forced 2.3 million people to become aid-dependent and extremely vulnerable to famine and starvation. Especially with WCC being one of the key partners of the Office of the UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide in the drafting of the Plan of Action for Religious Leaders and Actors to Prevent Incitement to Violence that Could Lead to Atrocity Crimes (’the Fez Process’), it holds an elevated responsibility in identifying a genocide, condemning it with the strongest possible terms and acting to end it immediately. Besides our own accounts and meticulous documentation of the genocide as Palestinians, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) did confirm in its provisional measures that Israel’s is plausibly committing genocide. Not only is the term genocide absent from the title, it is marginalized in the body of the statement instead of being the essence of what the statement is condemning and calls for ending immediately. Investigation after investigation concludes that Israel is committing atrocious crimes under international law, including the most recent report[1] by the UN Commission of Inquiry which concluded that Israel is committing the crime of Extermination against the Palestinian people. It cannot be acceptable that crimes of such scale, committed deliberately over 8 months, be narrowed down to a ”crisis”.
Continue reading “Genocide: Absent from the Title, Marginalized in the Body”Unconscionable and Unconstitutional
An excerpt from the dissenting opinion of Grants Pass v. Johnson (2024), the Supreme Court Ruling that singles out unhoused people for punishment. For the full dissenting opinion, click here and scroll down to page 45.
Radical Discipleship 