The power of the Sumud Freedom Camp
Building the Sacred Community
Facing physical assault, deportation, and incarceration, the Sumud Freedom Camp continues on — unwavering in the pursuit of restorative justice, equality for all, and peace that addresses the trauma of 50 years of military occupation. The viability of the camp depends on a robust media strategy, a multi-layered fundraising strategy, and an advocacy approach that aims at reshaping the legal regimes that perpetuate violence. However, this is not enough. It takes something more. It takes intentionally building authentic friendships during the process. Broad movements of social justice, while brought together by shared principles of humanity, are ultimately empowered by relationships of trust and respect. These authentic relationships are the key to the sustainability of justice work.
The problem is not that we are short on the skill sets needed for a movement of social justice. We have community organizers with decades of shared experience. We have a diverse team of legal advocates who have invested their entire lives in challenging the apparatuses that perpetuate Israel’s military occupation. We have photographers, writers, journalists, accountants, translators, logicians, and programmers…collectively, we may have more human capital than some Fortune 500 companies. We are an incredibly skilled coalition. But we are not unique in this. Most coalitions identify a mode of operation, and by leveraging their networks, they gather personnel to facilitate their framework for engagement. Recognizing this dynamic, the Sumud Camp coalition is not concerned with lack of human capital, but rather with cultivating the grounds for the sacred community to take root and flourish.
As the coalition forms, an inherent diversity forms: different nationalities, genders, sexualities, socio-economic backgrounds…all of the differences in our identities and histories make each one of us beautifully unique and sacred. However, society privileges some differences over others within this diversity. We acknowledge that each one of us brings with us our own unearned privilege to various degrees, and that this movement isn’t immune to social and interpersonal oppression. Without calculated programming, we know that the natural progression perpetuation of oppressive structures within the movement. However, we work internally within a model of undoing oppression, and recognizing how power dynamics of privilege perpetuate violence. Within the coalition, we understand, for instance, the importance of addressing the oppression that is perpetuated from operating out of unchecked white privilege, male privilege and Israeli and Jewish privilege. The camp creates a space for others to bring their full selves into dialogue and decision-making.
This paradigm of undoing oppressions is essential, not just within coalitions, organizations, and businesses, but in our personal affairs. It is the creed to live by. When there is a Palestinian population that has languished under Israel’s military occupation for 50 years, confronting oppression that is birthed from unearned privilege becomes paramount. There must not only be focus on resisting the occupation by confronting the structures of violence; there must be a deliberate focus on creating a space to heal the historical trauma that comes from generations formed by violence, within the relationships amongst with Palestinians, Israelis, and internationals.
At the Sumud: Freedom Camp, we understand that non-Palestinian activists simply don’t carry the risks that their Palestinian co-resisters face. Simply put: Palestinians are more likely to face prolonged incarceration, have their property confiscated, be physically assaulted, and have their families be a target of the State of Israel for years to come. It is by understanding these dynamics that non-Palestinian activists enter into this space and use their unearned privileges to directly challenge the occupation.
Challenging the violence birthed out of unearned privilege isn’t enough to hold the tensions of these relationships together. Weaving each relationship together with trust and respect is the final thread of hope that binds us together.
From time immemorial, since Pandora opened up her large jar some 2,700 years ago in Hesiod’s fable — thus freeing the sins unto the world — humanity has struggled with the question: Is hope the saving grace, or the greatest sin of them all?
Hope, in and of itself, is a rare commodity that is hard to produce without outside influence. We recognize that, for too long, those who would seek to undermine movements for radical change have tried to be the “definers” of hope. They have beat and hammered at hope and reshaped its meaning until hope and naivety have become one and the same. To be hopeful is then to be gullible, uninformed. They have forced us into a corner: Either we choose to be hopeful at the expense of being labeled as naive, or choose to reject hope (and with it, justice) and be accepted as reasonable, smart, and reliable.
We are reclaiming the vernacular surrounding activism. We are tearing away the negative stigma around being hopeful. We are refusing to allow people to reframe our hope for a better tomorrow as naivety. We are restoring the meaning of hope in radical, yet practical ways. For those who would look at this movement as a “lost cause,” we will not offer up the cliche of “good always triumphs over evil” as an argument for why we persist. No. We will lay down our rigid analysis of the situation and present our course of action as our basis for hope. As people attempt to label us as ‘Idealists,’ we will let our collective track record of sustained social change be our rebuttal.
The intersection of undoing oppression and restoring hope in a better tomorrow springs from the camp’s intentional willingness to challenge power dynamics between the privileged and the oppressed, and camp participants’ willingness to risk their privilege in real, authentic ways.
One of the ways in which the Sumud: Freedom Camp challenges the power-dynamics of the privileged vs. the oppressed, is by ensuring that historically marginalized voices are heard in the processes and formation of the camp. This means making sure that Palestinians are actively engaged in authentic ways within the day-to-day functioning of the camp, as well as the strategic planning of the camp; this means that women are lifted up into leaderships roles with real responsibility. For us, it is crucial that when we look at the decision-making structure of the camp, we don’t find domination by white-privileged males, Israelis, or Jews in general. We are intentionally ensuring that the Palestinian voices are steering the direction of the movement.
Resisting in real and authentic ways is necessary — not just in terms of challenging Israel’s military occupation and the oppressive laws perpetuating the conflict, but in building relationships of trust and respect that challenge the status quo.
At the Sumud: Freedom Camp, our non-Palestinian co-resisters must acknowledge that because of their privilege, they don’t bear the same risks as their Palestinian counterparts, and that they must enter into this space being willing to risk their privilege in real ways. For us, equality isn’t just about restructuring the unjust laws, but having everyone step into this space and share equitably the challenge of resisting. This manifests itself by having non-Palestinian co-resistors invest in the physical labor of rehabilitating the community of Sarura; that they contribute financially to camp, and that they challenge themselves with a willingness to be deported, black-listed, and arrested. While we understand that everyone has personal limits regarding resistance, and that everyone faces different consequences.However, we at Sumud are in continual conversation about pushing our boundaries regarding what we will risk for the sake of liberation and a sustainable peace.
It is within this model of intentionally undoing oppression and building hope that the Sumud: Freedom camp is not just a single demonstration to fight against the structures of violence in the Holy Land. It is a place where people are coming together to push back against the structures of oppression found everywhere in the world. It is a place the recognizes the parallels of oppression within indigenous people’s rights throughout the world. It sees the the same instruments of oppression at play in the Holy Land and within oppression of People of Color. Sumud is a place where movements are gathering and building atop each other in unison, in order to reshape the systems of violence. It is a place where hope is being rehabilitated.
Join us in the building of the sacred community.
