Free Palestine

On May 15 there was a gathering in Duluth to commemorate the 77th anniversary of the beginning of the Zionist genocide against indigenous Palestinians. I was honored to address those assembled in the face of the bitter lake wind and developing thunderstorm with these remarks:
It is important that we are together today, Nakba Day. When we have to deal with this terrible situation of the ongoing genocide alone, despair can be overwhelming. We must find a way to resist that, and to do what we can to help.

Between 1947 and 1949, over 400 Palestinian villages were deliberately destroyed, civilians were massacred and around a million men, women, and children were expelled from their homes at gunpoint by the Zionists who would become the Israeli government. Those who attempted to return to their homes to salvage possessions or to their farms to harvest crops were summarily executed.

I recently read Ilan Pappe’s The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, published in 2006. It spells out in detail exactly what happened.  Ilan Pappe is a great historian.  He is an Israeli.

In a recent interview, Ilan Pappe said: “Historically, I’m willing to say with some caution that this is the last phase of Zionism. Historically, such developments in ideological movements, whether they are colonials or empires, it’s usually the final chapter [that is] the ruthless one, the most ambitious one. And then it’s too much and then they fall and collapse. I’m very worried about the short term, I don’t want to be misunderstood. I cannot see any forces stopping the short-term disasters that are awaiting us.

When I see a wider perspective, I think we are at the end of a very bad chapter in humanity, not the beginning of a bad chapter.”  

There are hard times ahead.  Change will not be easy. I want to close with these thoughts from the late great historian Howard Zinn: “To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act …And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”

Free Palestine.
Dorothy Wolden
Lake Nebagamon, Wisconsin