Beware of Despair. It Is An Instrument of Abuse.

Resisting is insisting on remaining ourselves no matter what.

(If you receive this by email please click on the title to access the latest version. I often continue to edit and correct typos after publishing the first version)

Earlier this evening I listened to an Electronic Intifada livestream honouring Dr. Refaat Alareer, who was murdered by Israel four days ago, alongside members of his family. His murder was not random. He was targeted. Dr Alareer was an educator, poet, writer, a mentor, and an inspiration to anyone who knew him. He had an enormous impact on all of his students.

His poem, If I Must Die, has already been translated into many languages. The poem’s symbol of a white kite, is becoming an icon in demonstrations around the world. I cried when I read the poem for the first time this morning. Israel may have killed Dr Alareer, but by so doing, it has immortalised his spirit and his legacy.

During the podcast, one of Dr Alareer’s former students mentioned that one day in class they asked him why Israel was killing Palestinians, and what they have done wrong. In response, Dr Alareer taught them about the oppression of African Americans in the US, about the history of native Americans, and about colonialism.

Israel has tried to make the Palestinians feel that their abuse is personal. Colonisers and abusers have always tried to convince their victims that they deserve to be abused because of who they are, or because of something they did. Many victims unfortunately end up believing it. But Dr Alareer understood that evil is universal. He knew that the specific identities of perpetrators and their victims do not cause the abusive dynamic. Abuse has no religion, race, or ethnicity, or even a historical reason.

Dr Alareer knew that Palestinians did nothing wrong. Israel may have a toxic ‘specialness complex’, but the truth is that everything Israel is doing to the Palestinian has been done before. Israel is not a ‘special case’, and it does not deserve to be treated like one. Dr Alareer knew that what we are facing is a recurring human problem.

Trauma Teaches Us About Abuse In Any Context

I grew up in an abusive family. In my profession we call parents like mine ‘annihilators’. Annihilators are not just content to beat you up, or use you. They want to destroy your soul, the very core of what makes you human. I always knew my mother hated something in me. There was a strange way that she used to look at me, as if she was trying to figure something out. When she assaulted me from all directions, bringing hard blows down on every part of me, it felt like she was trying to kill that thing she hated, or feared, and could not understand. I could feel it. I could see it in her eyes.

It is essential (and possible) to recover from the impact of trauma. We owe it to ourselves to return to healthy development, and not become permanent casualties of the trauma inflicted on us. (Trauma is always inflicted). But every experience teaches us something, and trauma in particular, is an incredible teacher. Trauma may feel personal, because the abuser focuses on us, and makes it about us. But if you survive trauma, and recover from it, you begin to realise that the abuse was never about you. You just happened to be there, available to the abuser, and no one stepped in to protect you. This is the story of all victims throughout history, whether they are an abused child, or a people facing a coloniser.

One of the lessons that trauma teaches us is that there is a section of humanity that is afraid of what makes us human. Annihilators want to extinguish something that they are afraid of, that they see in their victims. If it was just a matter of theft of land or property, then killing or expulsion would suffice. But abusive systems often include torture. Israel tortures Palestinians as a matter of routine. It has done so for decades. The increasing number of Palestinians who are now dying in Israeli custody, die as a result of horrific torture. Torture is never about extracting information out of people. It is an attempt to break, or extinguish people’s humanity, their spirit.

The more I learned about the Palestinian people, the more I realised there is something in them that those European Zionists who colonised Palestine did not have. We were even taught at school in Israel that some of the original Zionists who came to Palestine in the late 19th Century and early 20the Century tried to imitate the Palestinians. They could see the connection the Palestinians had with the land, the seasons, the vegetation, the history of the land. They did not just live in that land, they were a part of it. They belonged in it, and it belonged in them.

The Zionists were threatened by this, and they still are. They foolishly, and arrogantly thought they could cultivate that connection to the land in their exclusively Jewish state. In a TEDx talk Dr Alareer tells a story from Canada about the colonisers dividing the land that they claimed belonged to them. An indigenous elder asked them, ‘If this is your land, tell me your stories’. The answer was silence. They had no stories to tell. Israel’s oppressive, aggressive, urban deserts are built on the ruins of something that was real, natural, and organic, and that did not belong to them.

The Israeli state is soulless. It is devoid of spirit. It is why I left. As I said in another essay, I did not leave Israel because I feared for my body, but because I feared for my soul.

Beware of Despair

Abusers and evildoers seek to infect their victims, and everyone who sympathises with them with despair. Despair is feeling completely powerless, and hopeless in the face of evil. It is the feeling that there is nothing you can do to change your reality, or your destiny, that you can never win against the almighty abuser. Despair and depression are closely related.

The most important thing we can do in the face of evil is to refuse to be infected with despair. In the face of extraordinary evil backed by extraordinary power, it is normal to feel scared, worried, angry, helpless, hopeless. After all, what can we, the ‘little people’, do when all the power in the world is in the hands of evildoers, deceivers, torturers? But evildoers win not when many people are dead. They win when they succeed in infecting anyone who could resist them with the belief that life is just a pointless slog to the grave. They win when we begin to believe their lies, and deception, and accept their version of reality. Abusers love it when their victims and anyone who sympathises with them are depressed.

Dr Alareer did not preach hatred, or revenge to his students. He helped his students expand their human spirit, he helped and encouraged them to grow to their potential. He was a robust human being who taught his students to love humanity, and he did not give in to despair. He was full of life all the way to the end. His students described him as always rising back from the ashes, like the Phoenix. Whenever he was affected by Israel’s attacks, and his unfathomable personal losses and the losses of those around him, he would recover, and his spirit would be restored.

Refaat Alareer was the most dangerous kind of resistance fighter. He was a poet and a Professor of literature. He was targeted because he offered inspiration to his students and everyone around him, and because he insisted on staying fully human.

Annihilators hate and fear that spark of spirit in their victims. They cannot understand it. Israel hates seeing it in the Palestinian people.

My parents failed. They did not extinguish me. It is up to all of us to make sure Israel fails too.