We Are Both | A message about Gaza from our CEO
I was talking with someone recently who is of both Jewish and Arab descent. They are feeling deeply all of the horror of the October 7th Hamas attack and Israel’s brutal retaliation. Within their body, they are connected to both sides of this decades-long conflict.
As a black woman in the U.S., I can understand this. I hold the DNA of my ancestors – those who were brutally oppressed and those who oppressed them – in my bones too.
Her story made me think about the color of my skin. Within my own body, I can clearly see the features of those who beat and terrorized my ancestors' bodies.
Much of my life has been about fighting back and fighting for justice for black and brown people in the U.S.
At the same time, I have stayed committed (even through the tears and trembling fear) to the work of helping my white brothers and sisters see the harm of our shared history without getting stuck in the shame that so often stops them.
I’ve tried to help white people learn how to pivot away from fear-based thinking. To let go of the scarcity mindset capitalism sells us. To critically examine practices they find normal but which often uphold white supremacy. For example, controlling land, power, resources, and narratives, in an effort to feel safe.
Without shaming people over their conditioning, my team and I invite people of all races and ethnicities who participate in our work to realize our separateness is an illusion and our solidarity is the only thing that is real.
Systems of oppression hurt all of us, even those they were ostensibly designed to protect. To abolish systems of dominance, extraction, and greed, and build new ones – that is our collective path forward.
One of the most famous lines from Dr. King’s Letter from a Birmingham jail is, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” What he wrote next is equally important but often gets left out: “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
Here in the U.S., those of us with privileged identities are sometimes shielded from injustice, violence and human rights violations and we fail to see that oppression is like a communicable disease. It spreads if not treated. Oppression is no respecter of persons. It does not show partiality. It will come for all of us.
Right now, my heart is breaking with every image, story, and live stream from people trapped in Gaza as their families are killed, and their homes, and land destroyed.
In just 100 days tens of thousands of people, most of them children, have died in this genocide.
Palestinians are being killed by Israelis who share their DNA, histories, and cultures. Israelis were killed by people who grew up nearby, in a geographic region just the size of New Jersey, yet who have never been allowed to co-exist.
Not all – but many Israelis and Palestinians on both sides have been taught to fear, hate, and dehumanize the other, and to believe that their own safety is predicated on the harm of the other.
Does this sound familiar to any of you who lived during the Jim Crow era in the U.S. South, or recall stories of your family from that time?
Black author and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates visited Palestine in 2023 and wrote about just how familiar it felt being in a segregated society. He went in with the impression that the situation between Israel and Palestine would feel “complicated.” But as he put it,
“The most shocking thing about my time over there was how uncomplicated it actually is. Now, I’m not saying the details of it are not complicated. History is always complicated. Present events are always complicated. But the way this is reported in the Western media is as though one needs a Ph.D. in Middle Eastern studies to understand the basic morality of holding a people in a situation in which they don’t have basic rights, including the right that we treasure most, the franchise, the right to vote, and then declaring that state a democracy. It’s actually not that hard to understand. It’s actually quite familiar to those of us with a familiarity to African American history.”
I know some of us here in the U.S. – what feels like a million miles away – feel like the situation in the Middle East is too complicated. We are wondering what we can do, or why we should care.
What is happening in Palestine should feel deeply familiar to Americans, as a people with our own history of genocide, displacement of indigenous people, racialized oppression, political disenfranchisement, antisemitism and Islamophobia.
We need to accept that we are Israel and we are Palestine. They are us and we are them.
As MLK said, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.”
We cannot have justice and freedom in Richmond, in Virginia, or in the United States if we don’t have justice and freedom in Palestine. We will not be safe until all Palestinians are safe. We will not be safe until all Jews are safe.
If we want our humanity to remain intact, and our bodies and planet to survive long enough to realize the beauty of our solidarity – we must demand a ceasefire now.
A word about the protection of Jewish people:
I had the privilege of working with the Jewish community in Richmond for several years and have been forever changed by that experience. We worked side by side for justice and fought to see change in our community. I stand against Jewish hate, against the attack on Israel, and against the taking of hostages and I stand against the genocide of the Palestinian people. One does not contradict the other. Two things can be true at the same time. We are both.