OPINION | PALESTINE | RELIGION
Jesus Was a Palestinian Revolutionary
“I speak not for myself, but for humanity.”
Oct. 10, 2023
From besieged Ramallah, I continue to report. I am no fighter. The only weapons I hold are a pen and a keyboard. For them I get pushback, from friends no less. Well-meaning advice pours in: “Calm down; take a deep breath; don’t get caught up in the war-mongering rhetoric; don’t become an instrument; forgive; ignore the world; your loyalty is to the Lord, not any country or movement; Both sides; both sides; both sides.”
What does all this mean in the face of systematic Israeli colonialism, land theft, aggression, and incipient genocide?
To all my well-meaning friends, who sit in the relative safety of countries free from war, I reply, “Let the colonized speak for themselves, and determine their own strategies.”
Jesus was a revolutionary. Love did not stop him from overturning the tables of the money-changers in the temple. In fact, love is what drove him to do it.
In my book, Fugitive Dreams, I do call for forgiveness and reconciliation. “To be truly free, I have to forgive the Israelis.” I say that with conviction, but with a very important CAVEAT: “I will continue to oppose the actions of their government, and to write down historical Truths.” Turning a blind eye to injustice does no one any good.
They advise me to stay out of it. Literally, to remain silent. When the fighter planes buzz overhead, will my silence protect me?
This is not about grievances past, but about right now. My silence makes no difference to those bent on taking the land I stand upon. Israel wants every inch of Palestine, whether I spoke, or not; whether I resisted, or not.
“Settlers” come with the age-old colonial formula — call us “savages”, for merely persisting on our land. Make up fake events to justify our genocide. Buy the media to smear us. They stack settlements around my home, pack them with militant fanatics who see me as less than human. It is only a matter of time before they repeat what they’ve done to Yafa, Palestine’s largest city at the time, on May 13, 1948 — ethnically cleansing it and sending its inhabitants to — you guessed it — Gaza!
My “friends” want me to keep my silence, to forget the history, to forgive them for taking my mother’s house and even bless them, so that the colonizers can do it again and again. This is not about taking sides in a war among world powers. This is not about revenge, nor even recovering my patrimony. This is about survival, and not only mine.
I speak not for myself, but for humanity. For if Palestinians remained silent, what is to stop colonial powers from doing it again to some other unfortunate people around the world?
Truth is my only sword, and shield; while theirs is the nuclear bomb of Fear.
With love from Palestine,
Ramsey Hanhan
