The White man's guilt is not mine to bear

Disclaimer: My opinions and experiences are my own and I will not allow them to be held against the movements or spaces I am organized in. To do so is to take away my agency. Furthermore, what I share is by no means all-encompassing, and covers only what I went through from a very specific entry point. I have since this experience communicated with some activists from BDS Austria, and reached out to some who ignored my requests to talk. I am writing this after yesterday's incident at the "Decolonize 8th of March Demo", when some activists from there, two of whom are white, and one a Palestinian man, expressed their discomfort by the dancing happening as well as specific parts of a speech given by another group, resulting in their withdrawal and storming off from the demonstration. I view this behavior as extremely disrespectful, in addition to mysoginistic, towards me and my comrades, and was the last straw that led me to write this blog after years of keeping things in. No names were mentioned to maintain the anonymity of the BDS Austria group, which is systemically criminalized by the Austrian state and attacked by "AntiFacists".

Ramadan is in two days, the holy month urges us to practice compassion, endurance, patience, and discipline. A discipline that requires being and setting boundaries with oneself. As the month slowly approaches, I continue to work on the boundaries that priotitize self-care and my well-being over others'.

Don't get me wrong, for a long time, I got the ick from most wellness healers who centered the individual over the collective. We see in many examples how "self-care" can oftentimes be exploited and misused, mainly as an excuse to ignore the suffering happening around the world. Yet as black, indigenous, and people of color, how much of that suffering can we continue to endure without receiving care from our communities? Without experiencing passing moments of joy that amount to nothing in the face of the constant grief we experience in our daily lives. When we operate in the West, we are expected to shove this grief back into our souls, and follow a guilt-driven agenda engineered by white folks. We seize to become the oppressed, and are expected to do the reparation work for the oppressor. After all, it is our job as BIPOCs to clean the mess that white people made, isn't it?

For a very long time, I was driven to believe so by white people who claimed to be in solidarity with me in "my struggle" and, for a very long time, I was driven to believe that I should be grateful for it. A classic case of white-saviourism mixed in with respectability and acknowledgement politics. A classic case of self-serving activism that seeks to free the Other from itself. My continuous suffering becomes a requirement for white leftists to build an activist career. For them to work around my pain.

I come today preparing for Ramadan with a lot of rage, a rage I have been bottling up since the Summer of 2022, and probably, for much longer; I just didn't have the words to articulate it. I am sick and tired of articulating my words and mincing them into bite-sized pieces for the white person to digest, and for those BIPOCs who defend their white "allies" to come to terms with their deeply ingrained racism. An internalized racism I can gently excuse, as it tends to emerge when you are constantly dehumanized and told that you're not enough. 

I too was told I was not enough in different contexts; ever since moving to this country, my Palestinian-ness was questioned as it did not fit the image of the racialized, Orientalized subject that white leftists want to save. How could I be outspoken, articulate, and most of all, ungrateful for the work that they do for me and my community? How could I be priviliged and entitled to my Palestinian-ness, with all the nuances in my identity? A new spectacle has emerged, and gave the impression that perhaps Palestinians are not worth fighting for after all. 

I of course become the exception, because I look nothing like the poor Palestinian men in the camps, or the ones protesting for their land in Farkha; a village near Nablus that a lot of activists from the Austro-German context apparently like to visit for a festival in the summer. Naturally, going to the place in which the oppressed resides open up a new portal for leftists, who get to finally be embedded in the struggle, to "see the situation for themselves". They feel connected to the Other, a prequisite for manufacturing empathy. Because why else would someone who benefits from white supremacy seek to dismantle it, unless they profit from it themselves? Fighting for oppressed people's liberation offers white people the opportunity to liberate themselves, and lessons on how they can deal with the guilt from their past. It is almost biblical, to want to liberate yourself by visiting the holy land, the Oriental land, the racialized land. 

I do not want to take up too much time writing about my accounts with white leftists, as this topic has consumed and informed most of my political work. I do think it necessary, however, to share my experiences, for them to act as a prompt for reflection. A learning opportunity for those who are yet unable to detect abuse, an opportunity for them to let go of the guilt of the white man, as it is not theirs to bear. 

I say this a day after managing to organize a demonstration that centered BIPOC voices and their struggles, a demonstration that centered their grief, anger, and joy. Amidst the moving and the dancing to different music, we were approached by a bunch of BDS Austria activists, two of whom are white women, who expressed their disappointment and wanting to cancel their speech, after a previous speech given by another group was misunderstood, and for the reason that dancing when genocides are happening was disrespectful. The demonstration truck was packed with black and people of color, many of whom are actively witnessing genocides happening against their bodies as I write this. The tonedeafness of the situation took me aback: white people policing BIPOCs on how to grief, on how to protest, and most importantly, policing their joy. How could you be happy when people are dying, shouldn't you be self-loathing and feel an immense amount of guilt, just like me? 

This situation triggered the same reason I have left the movement to begin with, where I was constantly tested and made to feel bad that my own people were dying. I want to here challenge the revolutionary writer Ghassan Kanafani, who continues to be exploited by white so-called "radical leftists". Particularly, his quote: “The Palestinian cause is not a cause for Palestinians only, but a cause for every revolutionary, wherever he is, as a cause of the exploited and oppressed masses in our era.” While I understand his point per se, and connect it very much to June Jordan's "Palestine is a litmus test", it is important to hold our own selves accountable, and to go back to the concrete analysis of white saviourism that is enabled through citing a quote like this. We must first understand what Ghassan meant by revolutionary, and to question who a revolutionary truly is. We must secondly remember that he was a cis-man married to a white woman. 

I point these two facts out to access his writings from the point of view of a Palestinian woman who has lived in diaspora for most of her life, whether in the UAE, Jordan, Cyprus, Austria, or Greece. A Palestinian woman who also grew up in Nablus in the West Bank, and navigated her teenage years under an apartheid system. I point these places out to paint a picture of my exposure to the different forms of racism that emerge from each country's context, and how detecting white racism is very specific in the ways it finds loopholes for it to mask as not such. 

To Ghassan I say: while the Palestinian cause may not be a cause for Palestinians only, Palestinian pain is, and I will not be sharing it with "allies", above all not white ones. I will not be sharing my kuffiyehs, my Palestinian map necklaces, or my entire culture with them. Excuse my distrust, but as a thirdculture kid I know what it's like to have things taken away from me, most white 'allies' don't. They have the privilege to enter and exit a place I can only imagine having access to, most Palestinians can only imagine having access to. It is defeatist to accept the dissimenation of our own knowledge by our oppressors. Read this sentence again. It is defeatist to allow our oppressors to come into our homes, to steal our food, and claim to be feeding us from it. There cannot be a "Global North" without a "Global South". The humanitarian approach to activism must end, and yet some of us BIPOCs seem to be stuck in the cycle of being complicit in repeating it. We welcome the white ally's offer to hold our hand while we do the tedious labour of saving ourselves. And just like that, Ghassan becomes the excuse for white allies to ponder on the oppressed, and more extremely, to feel entitled to their oppression. 

I mention pain because pain is the defining catalyst for revolution, one driven by the desire to end it. White 'allies', no matter how well-read and 'reflected', do not have a true desire to end the pain being inflicted by them on oppressed people, as this would entail going through the process of being in pain themselves. So let's cut the bullshit, and admit, once and for all, that we fundamentally can never be in total solidarity with each other, as this would involve a complete shedding of the racism, mysoginy, sexism, ableism, and ageism we all have inside of us. It only becomes easier for BIPOCs to feel empathy towards each other due to the intersections of their struggles, and relativization of their grief. This also allows conversation from different points of perspective, where emotions are perceived as facts that should be taken into consideration when building solidarity amongst each other. Something I have had a very difficult time with when I was organized in the BDS Austria, as well in other movements which I will perhaps be writing about a different time. 

Despite being Palestinian in a movement that claims to work for Palestinians, I was tested multiple times before being able to fully access the resources of the movement. Operating in a third language I could barely speak at that time, the switch to speaking English from German only seemed feasible when non-German speaking white people joined the group. When I expressed my discomfort in white 'allies' visiting Palestine multiple times, verbally and through Instagram stories, trips there were and are still being taken. I was made to be convinced that this is part of the work and necessary, for them to inform themselves about the reality of Palestinians, and to learn from and about them. I was once approached by one of the activists and told: "I know you expressed how you didn't like white activists to go to Palestine, but I'm going to be in Nablus in the summer." As if saying: "I know you told me where it hurts, but I'm going to poke at it anyways, because I can, I have the privilege to". These same people claim to fight for my and my people's liberation with every breath, yet can't get themselves to make the sacrifice of not travelling to wonderland, where I come from and can't even go due to Israel's control over my body. 

Some of you might be thinking: what's the big deal? Just let them go! The big deal comes from the sense of entitlement we as BIPOCs enable in white people by disrespecting ourselves. For example, why would I as a Palestinian want to go to Kashmir or Sudan or any other part of the world where people experience oppression, when I know it all too well myself? Why would I subject myself to a situation where I am constantly triggered? I once told a friend that one of the highest forms of privilege is choosing to be oppressed. And while I understand the argument of fostering solidarities amongst people from different struggles by visiting and connecting with them physically, this should not be the foundation on which I base my empathy on. I do not need to go anywhere in the world to affirm that it needs to be liberated. That it "deserves" to be liberated, because apparently, human rights come with a criteria oppressed people need to fulfill in order for them to be handed to them by the Western empire.

But what about the economy? What about the aid? To the white folks out there who genuinely want to do better, I say take your aid and resources that we gave you, and put them on educating the white people in your lives who reproduce the violence they practice on us. We have already done enough educational labour, and it is now your responsibility to take over dismantling the white supremacist machine, as we save our energies for building united fronts among ourselves. 

This is my conclusion, for now. The conclusion that led me to leave most of the activist spaces I am in, and attempt to build my own. It has been a rocky road, and what lies ahead is only more trials and errors. On 1st May 2023 I posted a series of reflections on my Instagram stories in Arabic. After being in Athens, and experiencing another political trajectory there, I returned with a lot of anger on the hypocricy and abuse being replicated in pro-Palestine spaces, and activist spaces in Austria. 

In the stories, I write: (translated from Arabic - to the white woman who screenshotted them and used google translate to then attack me, here's a better version for your convenience)

1. "Woke up with a bad mood, and thinking of a couple of things which I think are important to address. They follow the events of the Farkha Festival which happened last summer with a group of activists from Germany and and and... despite not participating in the festival, I expressed my opinion about the problematics surrounding visiting the occupied land especially that millions of refugees are still fighting for their right to return. A lot of activists who were participating in the festival (mainly white) expressed how this experience changed their lives and perception on the Palestinian cause, and that it was important for them to "see things for themselves" and "with their own eyes". As if we do not have enough journalists reporting and sharing about the situation. I expressed the reasons I was upset about the festival, and the bigger problem of these self-proclaimed activists visiting Palestine, and masha'allah, they're also famous in the country as well. This is the reason that led me to slowly distance myself from the circles that claim to be in solidarity with the Palestinian cause when in reality it's only self-serving. The period I spent in Greece forced me to face a lot of conflicts which I will speak about another time, but made me realize how we as Palestinians love to build spaces that accomodate white people in solidarity with us, more than we love each other. We welcome them and treat them well, but harass, expose, and criticize each other. F*ckery." 

2. "My return to Vienna some weeks ago made me realize how I as a Palestinian (like other Palestinian and Arab comrades in the city) are not given spaces to express ourselves in, and everytime we try to build something it is destroyed or silenced by white people and sometimes even unfortunately other Palestinians from the diaspora under the pretense that we "do not understand the Austrian/European activist sphere", and that we should take our times to learn about it before expressing our opinions. For a long time, I believed this, stayed silent, and organized activities under the framework of some movements that pretend to be radical when they don't even have a single Palestinian there, most of them are white people controlling the framework of our movement. If we do not fundamentally change the essense of our struggle, and we continue to work on the same sh*t, we will never arrive to any results. You keep talking about liberation but do you understand or know its context? Enough... Inshallah I will be issuing a statement soon. For all the comrades who would like to talk about their experiences with the Palestinian movement in Austria or Germany and other countries in the diaspora, feel free to reach out to me. I intend to expose every harasser, every spy, every white person that is working for their own gain. Enough!" 

3."The community spaces built by white people in order to bring together Palestinian youth under the framework of protecting their rights from the European countries that oppress them do not serve anyone justice. They only have the time to go on registered protests to let out our rage but who of us is ultimately making decisions and under whose name? They just want a wedding to dance in or a reason to live for, and we are dancing with them." 

4."Anyways... I will see you at the Nakba protest next week, and the year after, and the year after, under the auspice of the BDS and Palestine Solidarity Austria, all white and Austrian and sometimes there are Palestinians in the meeting for diversity. Let's all go and be the faces of diversity and take pictures for them, but don't you dare be the decision makers, or criticize anyone! We are just hangers! Yalla!" 

I have, since this statement, been called on by BDS Austria activists for a meeting, and while my criticism was taken by some older comrades I was organizing with, it was mostly met with white fragility and tears, for how dare the Palestinian criticize the efforts being done by white people to leverage my cause! It becomes apparent how the sitution was dealt with; I have since been discarded with no aftercare from people who called themselves "comrades" only when it made sense to them. 

As this genocide unfolds, and as Ramadan approaches, I learn to speak truth to power, and to own my values without having to compromise them in order to maintain the integrity of others. This post highlights my personal experiences with organizing in the movement in Austria and does not reflect my opinions on the BDS as a whole. By all means, keep boycotting, and keep calling for divestment and sanctions, I do too. If anything, this blog post implores all of us to do better, and to continue holding each other accountable. We cannot keep pretending to be "united in struggle" when we are all working towards different political agendas and not true collective liberation. We cannot claim to fight for Palestine when we drive a Palestinian out of the BDS, when we gossip about and harass Palestinian women, when we police black and people of colour for dancing in protest against their own genocides. The whites have entered the space to disrupt the foundations of something that is being built without them, a natural reaction. 

This pretentious "moral superiority" of the woke white ally is only a tool for them to center themselves in the fight for liberation. Do not blame them, they were never used to not being in the center, and are too afraid to experience the margin because they've seen what it looks like; they visit it every year. 

The white man's guilt is not mine to bear. May this be the mantra of unlearning the supremacy within ourselves. The supremacy of morality that defines what and who a 'true' Palestinian is, what and who a revolutionary is. To be truly revolutionary is to break cycles, and to move with the truth that no one around you wants to hear. For the Palestinians who tread carrying some form of moral superiority, I ask you to tread lightly, for it is us who are supposed to be united in the struggle against settler-colonial patriarchal violence, not the white allies who only offer to hold our hands as we experience it. For all the BIPOCs, I will be addressing you soon as well, to try to figure out what to do with this whole solidarity business beyond oppression olympics. For now, I will continue to hold my communities accountable, and to expose those who claim to be principled yet their actions tell otherwise. 

To the white "allies" I most importantly say: you will never be a person of color, no matter how much you try to relate your pain to ours. We will never grieve the same, even when this grief is allegedly about the same things. So pack up and sit with yourself, leave us to lead our own revolutions.