Why I stand with Palestine

Reflections on my own silence.

I’ve been trying to reflect on 2023.

The title of my final newsletter for the year was going to be “the good, the bad, and the celebrations I forgot to make”, and I was planning on sedning it out on the 14th December.

But as I wrote it, safe and warm in an overpriced budget hotel on London, I couldn’t shift the heartbreaking images of Palestinian bodies out of my head.

Because that’s the thing right, I thought I was activating my allyship by sharing the content of creators who really understood the issues. By using my platform to elevate the voices of others. But you can’t do that without consuming the content. And the content is painful, heart breaking, and leaves you questioning everything you know about humanity.

Today, Monday 11th December, I attended a session that was due to be run by a wonderful friend of mine, Animah Kosai, Co-Founder of the Speaking Up Network, and I was reminded how what I had been doing was not enough. I was still silent as to the depth of my own personal feelings on this matter. And so I knew that I wanted to make it perfectly clear. 

I stand with the people of Palestine.

Now I’d be lying if I didn’t say there were times when I asked myself “Am I missing something…?” because as much as I know the genocide of Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim people is something we should be condemning on a world-wide basis… it’s just not happening. World leaders appear to be silent.

There are conversations about antisemitism, and the “complexities” of the region’s history. And this led me to second guess myself. I mean, who am I to understand this after all?!

But the point still remains.

I know genocide, ethnic cleansing, and colonialism are bad.

So, it has to be that any government, nation, group, institution (pick any name you like) that carries out these atrocities is racist and should not be supported. It’s just not possible that any one marginalised group can benefit from the genocide of another. And I can’t help but feel any story we tell ourselves to explain it otherwise is racism by design and is gaslighting of the highest order.

I mean, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it is a complicated issue. Maybe I’m missing the complexities of it all. It just doesn’t feel that way when I see parents carrying the bodies of their dead children. Over 7,000 dead children. Or when I think about how I would explain to the children that do survive why it was too complicated for me to understand from the safety of my Travelodge hotel room.

So, while I will continue to share the content of people who have a closer connection to the atrocities than I do, I also want to be explicitly clear. To you. I stand against racism. Against antisemitism. Against Islamophobia. Against genocide.

I stand with Palestine. 

Because my silence is causing harm and I can’t allow that to continue.