The Privilege of Teaching

Being a teacher is really quite a privilege. To start, you have an entire hour or hour and a half to talk to a captive audience. They have to listen to you, and they can only disagree if you let them. Really, education could easily be called indoctrination, for sometimes it actually feels like brainwashing. And I think that it can be brainwashing. Students are trained to take their teachers' words as gold, and I think we have a responsibility to retrain them to not just ingest but to challenge. To challenge everything.

I always say that I don't understand why Israel won't give me a visa if I say I live in Palestine. I mean, I am NOT DOING ANYTHING WRONG! I'm teaching writing for god's sake! I gave a lecture this week that woke me up to the reality that for Israel, I am doing something very dangerous. I am inciting my captive audience.

My students are learning about collective memory--that lived experience that is shared by many and articulated by individuals of that collective. Collective memory informs the historical record, and the historical record constitutes the accepted version of the past and the present. Well, as we know from Palestine and Israel, the historical record is a Zionist history, much of which is based on myths and all of which is used to facilitate a colonialist project. Collective memory is a powerful tool...but only if articulated, accessed, and embraced.

Let's think about 1948 in Palestine. Israel's "Independence" is celebrated extensively and globally. On this 60th anniversary, let us really think about Israeli independence. The small but determined army of Jews defended themselves against the overwhelming Arab armies. "Never again," they shouted--a clear reference to the Holocaust and exile. End of story. Israeli collective memory of 1948 paints a triumphant, nationalist picture of success against great odds. And the national imaginary and historical record are wholly based on this experience, but the less referenced historical record shows Ben Gurion, the Zionist leader at the time, knowing that they were neither outnumbered nor overpowered, and certainly not threatened existentially. Yet he and his power dogs claimed otherwise, and Jews fought on this basis. So it is their collective memory which has in turn written history.

Where is the story of the Nakba? Few hear that story of Palestinians in 1948, though this is beginning. Where is their collective memory? It has certainly not shaped the historical record in any significant way to date. What does that mean? What I told my students, and what Said articulates, is that the Palestinian failure to consolidate their collective memory of the Nabka and shape it into a coherent narrative that is accepted as historical record is absolutely detrimental to the cause of Palestine.

Israel is ethnically cleansing Palestinians. It is a 60 plus year campaign, one that morphs but whose goal is steadfast. The Zionist Project will succeed, and there will be no Palestinians.

The future of the Palestinian people depends on their ability to harness collective memory and demand a new narrative that includes them and their experiences. For as long as the world knows only the Zionist history, Israel's "security measures"--read occupation and ethnic cleansing--are wholly justified. NO! There is a history of occupation and oppression here and I must believe the world would not condone Israeli state terror and ethnic cleansing and apartheid if the world really understood. But how can it? The Palestinians are silent; they are silenced. It is terribly easy to cleanse the silent / silenced from the land. And so I say: assert the collective memory and claim it as part of a history that the world must learn. Gather it and insert it into the historical record, because it is valid. But do it now, before it's too late.

Boycotting Occupation

When I'm in the States, Europe, or anywhere else around the world, I proudly boycott Israel--a state which maintains a 40+ year brutal occupation of another people and which practices Apartheid. I boycott both Israeli products and those that are non Israeli but which support Israel. I believe in using my individual buying "power" to make a political statement, which could be, if enough others joined me, a forceful tool, hopefully akin to the South African model just as the state of Israel is akin to the South African state.

Two nights ago a friend came over for dinner. And I was so incredibly embarrassed as he went through the sparse products in my house. Handsoap--Israeli. Fresh mushrooms--Israeli. Milk--Israeli. Okay, I admit there are alternatives. A bar of Palestinian soap, but I love liquid handsoap. Canned mushrooms or no mushrooms, but I love fresh mushrooms. Arabic milk, but I heard it's not safe to drink. I wonder who told the woman who told me that the Arabic milk brand isn't safe? I never questioned that.

I don't get to have other things I love like breakfast burritos and tofu, so I am sure I can give up these products on the basis of moral responsibility. The point is this, it has always been easy for me to boycott Israel from afar. But here, under occupation, Israel is like a cancer and it's everywhere. Boycotting Israel doesn't mean choosing The Tea Leaf and Coffee Bean over Starbucks. That was a simple choice. There was a choice.

Boycotting Israel means not buying things that I see as essentials. Boycotting Israel means rethinking what is essential, and so I'm considering this question, and I think that life is essential, and so long as Israel disregards and robs that life (9 year old killed Friday), how can I invest in this Apartheid economy? So, I guess that means no more mushrooms or liquid handsoap for now, but when I put it in perspective, the sacrifice doesn't seem all that great.

I guess, in perspective also, is the weakness of my actions. So could you please send the same message to Israel and spread the word that Palestine has asked you to challenge occupation by boycotting Israel? Let's join the oppressed and since our governments won't do shit for them, let us use our precious individual choice to collectively fight injustice.