Victims and Villains

 Since the beginning of this thing, there have been only two acceptable lenses to view Palestinians. Either they are victims in all of this or they are part of Hamas and therefore villains. Thousands of children dead - victims. The monsters that carried out the October 7th attacks - villains. That's it. There is no other option.

That's not what we see in the video and images coming out of Gaza. The thing which made me realize this framing was Biden dismissing the Gaza Health Ministry as a bunch of liars. They are villains because they are "Hamas controlled". Maybe some progressives can see them as victims for being thrust into this situation. But they are neither. They are people who find themselves facing worse conditions than we can even imagine and doing their best to meet it. When those people aren't Palestinians, we call them heroes. Is that controversial? That the Palestinian health care workers struggling to save lives in Gaza's hospitals this past month are heroes? But it's not just the doctors and nurse and medics. People trying to dig survivors out of the rubble with their hands. Running through the streets to transport the wounded because there is no fuel for ambulances. We see people under a vicious siege, with modern military might brought to bear on a population that is majority refugees - and still they rally together to support each other. There's little other option for them. Journalists who have lost their families and friends, and a disgustingly large number of colleagues - they still go out every day to report, to bring us the stories - so the rest of us can bear witness to the tragedy as it unfolds. The conditions right now are such that merely saying the word is considered antisemitic and support for terrorism. Despite the countless words I've spewed about this, I have yet to use it myself. But how else can this be described? The resilience, the defiance, the continued effort at going on in the face of overwhelming disaster - this is resistance. What else can we call the response to an occupying state committing the war of aggression. It is resistance. The Gazans aren't just victims or villains here - they are resisting the aggression of an apartheid state. They are resisting the violence of the force occupying their lands. The world did not begin existing on October 7th - nor did history stop that same day. Things happened before that attack and things continued to happen after it. And they are still happening now. But the stories we get in the West are still stories of victims and villains - when it is clear to anyone willing to look that this is a story of resistance.