Following the Marxist, queer film critic Robin Wood, I argue that horror is a genre that refuses to normalize this deep repression. Instead of burying our longings for freedom and self-expression, horror allows us to manifest our desires, delving into the darkness within and without.
Read MoreOn World Water Day, the Africa Water Justice Network leads the way
World Water Day was established by the United Nations more than a decade ago. In itself, this date, like many others, carries numerous contradictions. Movements and peoples in many parts of the world have been fighting for water and against its privatization long before and do not recognize a single day for its defense.
Read MoreBeyond the State of the Union: Confronting the State of the Genocide
Last week, as President Biden delivered his State of the Union address in Washington DC, a broad coalition of antiwar and Palestine solidarity groups in Chicago, including Jewish Voice for Peace, CORE (the Caucus of Rank-and-file Educators), IfNotNow, American Muslims for Palestine and many others, came together for a 24-hour vigil where the names of Palestinians killed since October 7 were read.
During the demonstration, an alternate State of the Union, “The State of the Genocide,” was delivered. A lightly edited and adapted version of that address was subsequently published at Truthout.org the following day. As the authors make clear, the usual operations of the US empire endorse and fuel the genocide in Gaza. Until we, the majority of Americans who support a ceasefire but go unheard by the government, can change the status quo, their words remain evergreen. We are publishing the address here with permission from Truthout and the authors.
Ari Bloomekatz and Eman Abdelhadi offer their alternative "State of the Genocide" address on March 7 in Chicago at a 24-hour vigil and protest that occurred during President Biden's State of the Union address. (Photograph by Sarah-Ji)
The State of the Genocide: An Alternate Address
By Eman Abdelhadi & Ari Bloomekatz , TRUTHOUT
Mr. Speaker — Mike Johnson — you tried to overturn the 2020 election. You do not believe even in the feeble version of democracy that rules this country. You attack the most vulnerable members of our society at every turn. You represent hate and speak only for haters.
Madam Vice President — Kamala Harris — we see through your opportunistic calls for a ceasefire that lasts only six weeks. There can be no sunset to peace, no expiration on justice.
Our Second Gentleman — Douglas Emhoff — do you really think impassioned college students are a larger threat to Jews than an Israeli government that, in the name of Jews, kills children for sport?
Members of Congress and the Cabinet — your pressed suits and performative respectability cannot hide your vicious cruelty. When a small fraction of your colleagues — mostly women of color — cried out against the atrocities (their pain rooted in a deep belief in shared humanity) and demanded we see humans as humans, you responded by marginalizing them.
Leaders of our military — you are our masters of war and, indeed, you have fastened all the triggers for the Israeli military to fire.
Our fellow Americans, our comrades, our people — our message is for you: We have work to do.
Our elected officials have abdicated their responsibilities. They do not care that we want peace, that we want justice, that we abhor murder, that we will not stand for genocide.
Our fellow Americans, we are facing an election in which millions of people are declaring themselves “uncommitted” — an apparition conjured into the primaries by voters who do not know where else to turn.
President Biden, did you feel the spirit of the “uncommitted” with you in the U.S. Capitol as you gave your own State of the Union address? One hundred thousand voters in Michigan, 88,000 exasperated voters in North Carolina, 46,000 Minnesota voters are showing they are desperate for an end to this path of death stacked on top of death.
Our fellow Americans, the current State of the Union is the State of the Genocide.
For over 150 long days and nights, the United States of America has enacted a genocide.
Dollar after dollar, we have funded a genocide.
Bomb after bomb, we have armed a genocide.
Veto after veto, we have protected a genocide.
Make no mistake. The genocide in Gaza is not a faraway foreign policy issue. Not with nearly $4 billion a year going to the Israeli military. Not with President Biden trying to give over $14 billion more. Not with Biden sneaking around oversight to send gigantic bombs for the Israeli military to drop on crowds of civilians. Not with three Palestinian students shot in Burlington, Vermont. Not with 6-year-old Wadea al-Fayoume brutally murdered by a white supremacist in a Chicago suburb.
No, the genocide in Gaza is an American project.
The genocide in Gaza would not be happening without the active support of our elected officials. Most U.S. senators support and enable this genocide. President Biden actively supports this genocide.
They have supported the slaughter, in cold blood, of more than 30,000 Palestinians. The slaughter in cold blood of 13,500 children. Of 12,000 women. They have actively helped wound 70,000 more people. They have aided and abetted the destruction of nearly every home in Gaza. The systematic and deliberate destruction of libraries, universities, archives, mosques, hospitals, schools, and so much more.
They are currently overseeing the starvation of Gaza. The 17-year siege on Gaza that the United States enabled and protected has made this moment possible: a moment where every entry point of food, water and fuel is controlled by Israel. The same Israeli officials who have openly declared their intent to ethnically cleanse Gaza — that dehumanize Palestinians as “human animals” — now reap the rewards of the U.S.’s unconditional support.
They can stop food, medicine, water and fuel from entering the Strip — and that’s exactly what they are doing. Meanwhile, President Biden’s milquetoast gestures at humanitarian aid do not absolve him from enabling the genocide that makes that aid so necessary.
Just a few days ago, in what is now known as the Flour Massacre, Israeli soldiers opened fire on hundreds of besieged and hungry Gazans, killing 118 for the crime of simply trying to survive.
And make no mistake. The genocide in Gaza is not a problem without a solution. It is not a problem too complicated or too intractable to solve. It would have ended months ago if our elected officials had been doing their jobs — if they had listened to us.
Our politicians have supported this genocide against the will of the American people.
Poll after poll shows that the majority of Americans want a permanent ceasefire. We have risen up in one of the largest social and antiwar movements in American history to say that this is not who we are, that our values align with celebrating life, not cheerleading death.
We have flooded the streets, jammed the phone lines and inboxes of our leaders. We have issued condemnations from every corner of civil society, using every platform we can possibly conceive.
We have marched, we have occupied, we have cried and screamed. We have tried to reason and educate. And yet, the people who are supposed to represent our interests ignore us.
And instead of listening to us, our leaders have followed a familiar playbook — investing in power, money and bloodshed at the expense of humanity.
As of January, half of Americans could not afford their rent and a record number of Americans are now unhoused.
We are drowning — drowning in medical debt, in credit card debt, in student debt.
Yet our elected officials send the money earned from our labor to fuel a genocide rather than solve any of these problems. No one in Washington, we are told, can agree on anything — until it’s time to send 2,000-ton bombs to Israel.
The ruling class has chosen death over life. And when that happens, the State of the Union is the State of the Genocide. Our fellow Americans, there can be no confusion, this genocide is ours. It is U.S.-made through and through.
We recognize it because it harkens to the ongoing genocide on which this country was founded, to the slavery on which it was built, to the continued exploitation of immigrants and the working class to keep it running — on the principle of profit over people that continues to rule these lands.
Our elected leaders represent not our interests, but the interests of the pharmaceutical companies, the insurance companies, the developers, the weapons manufacturers and the war profiteers. We are here to draw a curtain on the theater of blood they have constructed for us.
This genocide is ours — but it is also ours to stop.
Today, we say no more. We are done.
We demand an immediate and permanent ceasefire.
We demand the end of military aid to Israel.
We demand our government wield its power to stop the killing and immediately secure the free passage of food, water and medical supplies to Gaza.
We demand the restoration of free movement for Gazans on their own land.
We demand a free Palestine.
We will not stop marching, protesting, blockading, screaming until we get these demands.
We are done listening to presidential rhetoric that only serves to obfuscate what is a very simple solution to the genocide: that the Israeli military stop killing Palestinians, that not one more Palestinian is murdered, that not one more parent will have to bury their child — that the genocide must stop, immediately.
Our fellow Americans, join us in resistance. As state militaries, defense contractors, governments and morally bankrupt corporations prioritize profits over liberation and death over life, join us in building a better world, a world where Palestinians and all oppressed peoples are free.
And to this bloodthirsty ruling class, we remain — and will always remain — uncommitted.
Originally published March 8, 2024 at truthout.org. Published here with permission from Truthout and the authors.
EMAN ABDELHADI is an academic, activist and writer who thinks at the intersection of gender, sexuality, religion and politics. She is an assistant professor and sociologist at the University of Chicago, where she researches American Muslim communities. She is co-author of Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052 – 2072 (Common Notions).
ARI BLOOMEKATZ is executive editor at In These Times. He was previously the managing editor of Rethinking Schools and spent several years as a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times. He organizes against the occupation and for collective liberation with IfNotNow, Jewish Voice for Peace, Center for Jewish Nonviolence, Never Again Action and Jews for Racial and Economic Justice. Follow him @bloomekatz.
Publishers for Palestine: Statement of Solidarity
A statement from Publishers for Palestine calling for a ceasefire and denouncing repression of Palestinian solidarity.
Drafted November 3, 2023
We invite publishers, editors, and writers around the world who stand for justice, freedom of expression, and the power of the written word, to sign this letter and join our global solidarity collective, Publishers for Palestine.
We honour the courage, creativity, and resistance of Palestinians, their profound love of their historic lands, and their refusal to be erased, or grow silent, despite Israel’s horrific genocidal acts of violence. Against the chilling complicity of Western media and cultural industries, we find hope sparked by the surge of bodies and voices that continue to gather, write, speak, sing, combat falsehoods, and build community and solidarity across social media and on our streets, across the world.
Over the past month, we have witnessed Israel’s incessant bombardment of Gaza as a form of collective punishment, using banned phosphorous bombs and unusual new weapons, with the support of governments in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., France, Germany, Europe, and Australia. We have watched 1.1 million Palestinians flee their homes in the north, only to experience the brutal destruction of hospitals and spaces of shelter in schools, refugee camps, churches, and mosques in the south of Gaza. We are currently witnessing 2.3 million people, of whom 50% are children, being cruelly denied basic necessities of shelter, food, water, fuel, and electricity as Israel launches a ground invasion. Over 9,000 Palestinians have been killed thus far, along with entire generations of families that fled to Gaza during the Nakba of 1948. And with unbearable grief, we have watched Israel’s horrific killing of over 3,500 children. As Raz Segal, a Jewish scholar of Holocaust and genocide states: “Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza is quite explicit, open, and unashamed.”
Israel and Western powers are making a concerted attempt to extinguish dissent and maintain their faltering control. Across the publishing and media landscape since October 7th, 2023, the reprisals for speaking out have already been severe and extensive. We decry the killing of dozens of journalists in Gaza, including Mohamed Fayez Abu Matar, Saeed al-Taweel, Mohammed Sobh, Hisham Alnwajha, Mohammad Al-Salhi, Mohammad Jarghoun, Ahmed Shehab, Husam Mubarak, Mohammad Balousha, Issam Bhar, Salam Mema, Assaad Shamlakh, Ibrahim Mohammad Lafi, Khalil Abu Aathra, Sameeh Al-Nady, Abdulhadi Habib, Yousef Maher Dawas, and Roshdi Sarraj.
As cultural workers who pay careful attention to words and language, we note that this genocide was inaugurated with Israeli occupation military leaders using words such as “human animal” to justify their attacks on the civilians of Gaza. It is shocking to observe the use of such dehumanizing language from a people who have themselves experienced the same in the context of genocide. We are also reminded of the language of erasure and genocide embedded in the Zionist (and Christian) mythology of “A land without a people for a people without a land,” enacted by colonial Britain’s Balfour Declaration 106 years ago on November 2, 1917.
These histories of white supremacist, colonial, and capitalist systems of erasure, extraction, and control are reflected in the current moment, even within the rarefied worlds of arts and culture. From the Frankfurt Book Fair/Litprom’s refusal to honour the award given to Palestinian author Adania Shibli (a letter of protest against this was signed by over 1,000 well-known writers), to the cancellation of author readings such Viet Thanh Nguyen at New York’s 92Y, and Mohammed el-Kurd at the University of Vermont, and therecent firing of David Velasco, the editor of Artforum magazine, Western literary and publishing organizations have revealed their deep imbrication in U.S. and Israeli political and economic interests by silencing and punishing writers who speak out for Palestine.
We condemn the complicity of all those working within corporate and independent publishing who enable or condone such repression through their cowardice, silence, and cooperation with the demands of Israeli occupation and imperialist donors, funders, and governments. We condemn the policing and censorship of writers, the bullying and harassment of bookstore owners and staff, and the intimidation of publishing workers who are in solidarity with Palestinians. Publishing, for us, is the exercise of freedom, cultural expression, and resistance. As publishers we are dedicated to creating spaces for creative and critical Palestinian voices and for all who stand in solidarity against imperialism, Zionism, and settler-colonialism. We defend our right to publish, edit, distribute, share, and debate works that call for Palestinian liberation without recrimination. We know that this is our role in the resistance.
The silencing of Palestinian authors and writers only reinforces a fear of Palestinian literary resistance and contributes to the genocide of Palestinians and land theft. The same fear that is behind the bombs, the demolitions, the abductions, and the torture of Palestinian prisoners, is the fear that holds the Palestinian archives in Israeli control. As the writer Ghassan Kanafani said, “the Palestinian cause is not a cause for Palestinians only, but a cause for every revolutionary.” He reminds us that none of us are free until all of us are free.
Now is the time to stand with Palestinians and step into a new era of anti-colonial resistance– an era that refuses the Oslo concessions and the normalization of ties with the Zionist state. Now is the time to remember and uphold other historical victories against settler-colonial regimes, such as the resistance that rid Algeria of its French colonizers. Now is the time to intensify our support for Palestinian liberation from Israel and its U.S. and European backers. Now is the time to build solidarity amongst us to collectively refuse intimidation, repression, fear, and violence.
We call on our comrades, friends, and colleagues across various publishing industries to sign this letter and support the following demands:
Stop the genocide and bring an end to all violence against Palestinian people in Gaza, the West Bank, across historic Palestine, and in the diaspora.
Hold Israel and its allies accountable for the war crimes they have committed.
Assert the demands of Palestinian people to freedom, resistance, and return.
Uphold the call for boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against Israeli apartheid.
Assure that Palestinian voices should not be silenced from future international book fairs and literary festivals across the world. Instead, they should be invited as guests of honour to share their stories.
Commit to making the publishing industry a genuine site of learning and freedom of speech. As publishers we are dedicated to creating spaces for Palestinian voices and those who stand in solidarity against the war machine.
(If you work in the publishing industry and would like to add your name to this statement, please fill out this form.)
Signed:
ArabLit Quarterly and ArabLit Books, Morocco
ARP Books, Canada
Arsenal Pulp Press, Canada
Between the Lines, Canada
Beyond the Pale Books, Ireland
Charles H. Kerr Publishing, US
Common Notions Press, US
Daraja Press, Canada
Écosociété, Québec, Canada & France
En Toutes Lettres, Morocco
Fernwood Publishing, Canada
Hajar Press, UK
Haymarket Books, US & UK
Interlink Publishing, US
Interventions, Australia
Invisible Publishing, Canada
Left Book Club, UK
LeftWord Books, India
Lux Éditeur, Québec & France
Manifest Llibres, Catalunya, Spain
Marjin Kiri, Indonesia
Mémoire d’encrier, Québec, Canada
Pasado y Presente, Catalunya, Spain
Pluto Press, UK & US
Pluto Journals, Ltd., UK
PM Press, US & UK
Radical Books Collective, US
Roam Agency, US
Saqi Books, UK
Setu Prakashani, India
Stree Samya, India
Tilted Axis, UK
trace press, Canada
Upping the Anti, Canada
Verso Books, US and UK
Verso Libros, Catalunya, Spain
Women Unlimited, India
Essay Press, US
Microcosm Publishing, US
Ketebe Publishing, Turkey
Out-Spoken Press, UK
dpr-barcelona, Catalunya, Spain
Seven Stories Press, US
The Hobbyhorse, US
AK Press, US & UK
Zand Press, Nairobi
Canadian Dimension, Canada
Shed publishing, France
Monthly Review, US
Communis Press, US
Tajfuny, Poland
Small Beer Press, US
Uitgeverij EPO, Belgium
Sin Permiso, Spain
CounterPunch, US
Sambasivan & Parikh, US
Pinhole Poetry, Canada
Assembly Press, Canada
Penerbit Anagram, Indonesia
Tanah Air Beta, Indonesia
POST Press, Indonesia
Bamboe Roentjing, Indonesia
Intensif Books, Indonesia
Basanti Press, India
Labirin Buku, Indonesia
Pustaka Bahamut, Indonesia
Svara, Malaysia
Puan Catra, Indonesia
Buku Fixi, Malaysia
Rotasi Books, Indonesia
Penerbit Buruan & Co., Indonesia
Yayasan Bentala, Indonesia
Penerbit Terang, Indonesia
Enggang Media Publisher, Indonesia
Ilhambookstore, Indonesia
Renard Press, UK
Entypois Publications , Greece
Zuka Books, Pakistan
Dalam dekapan cinta dan pembebasan, Indonesia
Fernwood Press, US
Three Essays Collective, India
Mascara Publishing, Australia
Cipher Press, UK
Antinomi, Indonesia
Mkuki na Nyota Publishers, Tanzania
Peninsula Press, UK
Edisi Mori, Indonesia
Editora Terra sem Amos, Brazil
Taipa Editorial, Brazil
Surrey Muse Arts Society, Canada
Grieveland, US
Bookmarks , UK
Anarasa, Indonesia
Vita Books, Kenya
BULANDU Publisher, Indonesia
Open Protest Network, UK
Arc Poetry Magazine, Canada
Sigikata, Indonesia
Penerbit Cerita Kata, Indonesia
Black Goddexx press, US
Pro You media , Indonesia
404 Ink, UK
Panitia Jumaahan, Indonesia
ContraEscritura, Spain
Rachna Books & Publications, India
Založba /*cf., Slovenia
Kedai Hitam Putih, Malaysia
Litani Literasi, Indonesia
The 87 Press, UK
IS Editora, Brazil
Cassava Republic Press, Nigeria & UK
Editora Faísca , Brazil
HOMEF books, Nigeria
Fahamu Africa, Senegal
Katarsis, Indonesia
Perpustakaan Online Genosida 1965-1966, Indonesia
Penerbit Partikular, Indonesia
Blaft Publications, India
Dahlia Books, UK
Pustakapedia, Indonesia
Turos Pustaka, Indonesia
Footnote Press, Indonesia
Divan Kitap, Turkey
Babil Kitap, Turkey
BPPM Balairung UGM, Indonesia
OWN IT!, UK
Les Pages Noires, Canada
Carnation Zine, Canada
Spectre Journal, US
Saffron Press, Canada
Penerbit Pelangi Sastra, Indonesia
Penerbit Shofia, Indonesia
Gantala Press, Philippines
Litwin Books, US
El Viejo Topo, Spain
Edicions del 1979, Catalunya
Icaria Editorial, Spain
Menino Morreu, Coruña, Galiza
Anti-Racism Daily, US
Skein Press, Ireland