Resources for Orientation during Genocide
A few items that have been supporting me in the psychic freefall
The rush of death coming in over the past month has given me a sense of freefall.
Other words that come are: stunned. Breath taken. Floored, flattened, by the horror and violence manifesting in real-time, both by the dystopian imagery coming out of Gaza and the brazen, shameless lies of our media and government. And there’s also a broader uncomfortable uncertainty, a feeling like I can’t find solid mental ground. It’s a psychic freefall — a fast dissolution of some illusions of stability, and a scary sense that there’s nothing to replace them with.
At the same time, I’ve never been prouder to be a Jew, and I’ve truly never been so inspired by the human spirit. Some familiar with my work might call me a doomer, which is basically accurate (although it doesn’t mean I don’t believe in love and revolution). In particular, I’m cynical about protests — I think the establishment knows they give the public an energetic outlet for the rage that builds up in the face of oppression, and allows them, for a while anyway, for that reason. When it’s ready to be done — when only the true radicals are left in the streets — the state uses its police arm to instigate violence and shut things down.
But somehow these protests feel different. It’s not that I don’t think they will eventually be met with state violence (which is already happening in some parts of the world). It’s the immediacy of the crisis, the impossible onslaught of bloody children in our social media feeds, and the heartbreaking powerlessness people feel. It’s the inherently religious nature of the protests, the invocation of the divine in multiple names and forms. I don’t think that these incredible global protests will stop the genocide. But I think that even if they don’t, they are happening for a reason. We are resourcing ourselves for the continuing fight — against fascism, colonization, war, exploitation and inhumanity. We are, as adrienne maree brown puts it, “hold[ing] each other tight as we continue to pull back the veil.” We will need the divine, and we will need each other, to keep accessing the inextinguishable human spirit in the face of breathtaking brutality.
This is a list of resources that are helping me personally to orient inside of the freefall. It’s by no means a comprehensive list of the “best” resources on the topic of Palestine. It’s mostly items that really expanded (or continue to expand) my viewpoint on the issue in the different ways, helping me find a big-picture narrative which, if not particularly hopeful, feels grounded in reality (and is therefore actually the only hopeful type of narrative). I know a lot of folks are shook right now: by the American state’s rhetorical and military support of a genocide; by the mainstream media’s overt, obvious bias; by the strength of the Israeli lobby and the nearly mafia-like hold they have over our politicians, even progressives like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; and by the countless public figures refusing to call the genocide what it is. How did we get here? How do we reckon with the different, overlapping contexts involved? Who do we trust, where do we look, for direction moving forward?
My research over the past few years into the US Pluto Return has shown me what America is. What the state is doing now is what it has always done. But in the past, the brutality wasn’t so immediately visible. It’s because of social media that us Americans, who unlike most of the rest of the world remain blind to our country’s legacy, are finally facing the dissonance between our mythos and our actions. On our screens we see live-streamed slaughter and then, one scroll over, our President embracing the man who is leading the killing. The war machine is naked now, but remains as functional as ever.
No matter how much one intellectually knows the truth, the moment of revelation is still stunning. Pulling the bandaid off always hurts. But there is medicine in establishing a shared narrative grounded in reality.
These resources aren’t really for people who need basic education about the history of Palestine, or for people who aren’t sure where they stand on genocide. This is for folks who are already radically anti-colonial and who want to bring depth, nuance and context to their knowing. The resources are to help you orient yourself within the psychic freefall, and to continue weaving your own framework of truth, your raft in the ocean of propaganda.
RESOURCES FOR ORIENTATION DURING GENOCIDE
- The Wretched of the Earth, by Frantz Fanon — I imagine that most people who fit the description of “radically anti-colonial” are already familiar with Fanon, but if you are not, start here. Fanon has a fascinating and complex biography, especially given that he died at age 36. He was a Black, Carribean-born, European-educated psychotherapist who worked at a psychiatric hospital in colonized Algeria in the 1950s, and went on to write several books based on his insight into the minds of colonized people. He is most well-known for the first chapter of The Wretched of the Earth, titled “On Violence”, where he directly addresses violence as an inherent aspect of the colonial experience. The whole book goes deeper, using Algeria as an anecdote to break down the psychology of colonization, demonstrating how its irrationality and brutality push the minds of colonized people into impossible corners. Without this foundational understanding, I don’t think one can grasp the nature of Hamas, or many other aspects of the Palestinian experience.
- “Contextualizing Palestine within the Genocidal World of 1492” — a lecture by Linda Quiquivix, given Oct. 15th, 2023. A zoomed-out view of what’s happening now from an anti-colonial, historically informed lens. This was especially helpful for me in the way it explains the origins of Christian Zionism and other, more ancient contexts of the conflict.
- Doppelgänger, Naomi Klein’s latest book. This book is a spiraling account of today’s absurd sociopolitical landscape that lands with a thud in Palestine. Klein was promoting her book when the genocide began, and has been a leading Jewish voice in the resistance. The book is medicine for the confusing hall of mirrors we’re living in — even more necessary now, as reality becomes further fragmented.
- The Lobby USA — a 4-part documentary (with a UK counterpart) produced by Al-Jazeera, which never aired in the US but was leaked to YouTube. The documentary is mainly footage and audio collected by an undercover reporter, who posed as a young, enthusiastic Jew in Washington DC, and over the course of several months, ingratiated himself with Zionist organizations and recorded evidence of the lobby’s manipulative tactics and overt racism. Al-Jazeera is headquartered in Qatar. When the Israel lobby in the US found out this film was scheduled, it used its influence to convince Qatar’s government to stop Al-Jazeera from airing the film. It was leaked and posted to YouTube about a year later. This documentary will help you come to terms with the outsize influence of Zionism on the US government, and how consciously manipulative the lobby’s approach really is.
- I learned about The Lobby on an episode of TrueAnon podcast, and there are a few other episodes of theirs I also recommend. The hosts recently interviewed Norman Finkelstein, a renowned scholar on Israel/Palestine and a Jew whose parents were both concentration camp survivors. He offers profound reflections on the existential aspects of the conflict, plus a lot of raw knowledge, historical and present-day. There’s also an episode from April with journalist Noah Kulwin, discussing the hard-right shift in Israel’s political leadership that happened earlier this year. And, if you want to really venture beyond the horizon line, join the TrueAnon Patreon to listen to the episodes where they deep dive on the links between Israeli intelligence, the US CIA/military, and the Epstein trafficking ring. Woa.
- “US media is evading its responsibility to acknowledge the Gaza genocide”, an article in The Prism on Oct. 26th, is a good concrete write-up of the current crisis. It breaks down the historical definition of genocide and gives concrete examples, with lots of linked sources, of the way Israel’s actions align. This is also a good place to start if you want to get familiar with the way Israel is manipulating traditional media and social media.
Plus, a few helpful Instagram posts:
7. On Pinkwashing — the twisted pro-Israel talking point that Palestine hates queers, therefore queers should hate Palestine
8. The 10 Stages of Genocide — a breakdown of Gregory Stantons’s genocide theory, with Israeli examples for each stage
9. “Things happening right now in Gaza we cannot see” — an important reminder
10. “When it was us” — a gorgeous poem by Katherine Wela Bogen — especially for those with Jewish bloodlines whose ancestral anguish is activated
Also: please follow & bear witness to the Palestinian journalists on the ground. I’ll list a few, but there are many more. As of Nov. 7th, 37 journalists have died in Gaza since the genocide started, many of them with targeted airstrikes on their houses. The IDF knows who the journalists are, where they live, who their families are. They and their loved ones have targets on their backs, yet they are documenting the horrors of the genocide and livestreaming it to the world. These three journalists are age 22–25:
A resource that is not here, because I don’t think it exists yet, is something that directly compiles and addresses the Israeli government’s shameless lies and propaganda. From the beheaded babies lie to the (first) hospital bombing lie; from the way IDF soldiers killed Israeli civilians on Oct 7th to the way they are likely killing more as they bomb the hostages in Gaza; from the cruel social media posts of Israeli influencers to the actual torture, humiliation and murder of Palestinians in the West Bank, both the propaganda and the reality coming out of Israel are very, very dark. Multiple Israeli political and military leaders have explicitly expressed genocidal aims. But you likely won’t know any of this if you only get your info from the New York Times or CNN.
The astrology of the moment is also stunning. It is extremely telling that exact peaks of the US Pluto Return have corresponded twice now to massive upheavals in the geopolitical order. Pluto is the archetype of the deep state / military economy / global war machine. At America’s Pluto Return, our country’s allegiance is being laid bare. If you want to learn more, I expand on all of that here.
May we continue to radicalize towards the brightest potentials of humanity.
✨H
