n o u r a e r a k a t
It’s the sound that guts me. the mama
grasping her baby boy wrapped in a white
shroud, moaning in shock. A little girl curled
up next to the wheels of a stretcher holding
her father. Between her cries, we hear her implore,
“Baba!” There is also the father with skinny
arms, still in his slippers, covered in ash, screaming
his children’s names one by one. He turns over a
piece of shattered concrete searching for his babies,
but there is nothing but wreckage.
Palestinians are certainly not the first people to
endure genocide, but they are most certainly the
first to have it broadcast in real time. How pathetic
that we can’t stop this. Every night I make a single
wish: Please let us wake to news of a cease-fire. But
in the morning, when I pick up my phone, I already
know what I see will keep me up another night.
I’m barely up, and my phone is already ablaze
with requests. I won’t be able to respond to all of
them. My title—human rights attorney—gives the
impression that I have a law practice. A Palestinian
family from Gaza has arrived in Cairo; 46 members
have been killed. They want to sue Israel and need
help. A journalist friend writes from Gaza. His
employer is demoting him for being “anti-Israel,”
as he and his family scramble to find food and
shelter. What can he do? I frantically try to respond.
It never feels like enough.
Besides work and protests, I only leave home for my
daughter’s sake. She always asks me to put away my phone.
She explains her poor test score is a result of her baba and me
“talking about the war too much.”
I broke my self-imposed isolation
to take her to a school Halloween
party. I joked with one of the parents
that my costume was a Palestinian
pretending to be OK. She didn’t
laugh. Ever since 6-year-old Wadea
Al-Fayoume was stabbed 26
times by his family’s landlord,
I have been acutely
afraid for my daughter’s
safety and anxious that my
public-facing work could cause her harm. I stay in
costume and pretend everything is OK.
I marvel at the sky: How lucky we are it does not
fall and crush us without announcement.
The requests for comment from journalists and TV producers
start to pile up. I wade through them on my commute
to campus. I’m usually calm with the media, but these days
I’ve been livid about their coverage and exhausted by the cable
networks that have blacklisted me or refused to post my interviews.
A TV producer who invites me to appear on his show
several times but then never has me on writes to share that he
“trying to connect with Hamas leaders Ghazi Hamad and Osama Hamdan.” He
asks, “Do you have their contact info?” I am boiling.
In my pre-interview prep with the BBC, a producer asks me how Palestinians
feel about Hamas, and I snap: “You know that’s a racist question, right?”
“I’m just trying to help,” she says, “because not all Palestinians are Hamas.”
“What does it matter what Palestinians feel? Their ideas don’t alter their
civilian status; nothing justifies a genocide. You’ve never asked a single Israeli
what they feel about their government. You
didn’t even ask if Americans supported Bush
when his administration invaded Iraq…”
“OK, thank you. I’ll talk to the team and get
back to you.”
I know she won’t call back. So I send a text
suggesting other Palestinians she should call.
I’m so mad at myself that I may have lost this
opportunity for Palestinians to be heard.
In class, I walk a tightrope. I want my students
to ask me about what’s happening. I want
to tell them how lucky we are to have classrooms,
how hundreds of schools in Gaza have
been destroyed or turned into makeshift shelters
and 100 percent of the students don’t have
access to education, how “too much
reading”—their standard complaint—
is a wonderful problem to have. But no
one asks. They are reluctant to speak
in a charged environment. So I open
space for them to share. At the very
least, discussing Palestine will not be
a taboo.
In our critical race theory class, we’re covering
the last chapter of Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s
Golden Gulag. My voice cracks as I read to them:
“If the twentieth century was the age of genocide
on a planetary scale, then in order not to
repeat history, we ought to prioritize coming to
grips with dehumanization.”
Though my university likes to boast about
its faculty in the news, it has avoided mentioning
me for the past three months. I’m grateful
it’s not worse. Despite 12,000 complaints
and congressional interventions, our teach-in
on “Race, Liberation, and Palestine” in early
December was not canceled. Meanwhile, at
UPenn, donors are calling for the resignation of
for freedom “from the river to the sea.” At Harvard, protesting students have been doxxed by roaming trucks plastered with their faces and names. Our Students for Justice in Palestine chapter became the first to be suspended at a public university. Suspensions, punishments, and threats mount at nearly every campus in the country.
After the last student leaves, I put down my mask. I pretend to be OK here, too.
On my commute home, I take calls: about a campaign to address the United Nations’ inefficacy from within; about a nascent effort to organize artists; about legal strategies to supplement and amplify our International Criminal Court petition… I’ll never be able to respond to everyone.
Once home, I rush to set up a makeshift studio for a live TV interview. Even before I am done, the angry e-mails are pouring in.
“Poor Hamas, right? You are a morally depraved black hole.”
“You are like poison…. Thank goodness my children are not exposed to you.”
“Go to Palestine so we can kill you too.”
I also receive remarkable messages. People around the world, enthusiastically supporting freedom, who ask over and over again: “What can I do?”
I’m late again. I rush to pick up my daughter, who is embarrassed by my tear-stained face. She likes to joke that I sound the same when I laugh and cry. That always makes me laugh. At the park, we find the sidewalk colorfully chalked with the words “Kids say no to genocide.” My heart pops with the promise of the generations to come.
The evening is filled with Al Jazeera Arabic, a refreshing reprieve from US media coverage. I tape a podcast, jump on an emergency Zoom. More e-mails come in, more speaking invitations, some that I know will be canceled. History didn’t begin on October 7, so why are we asked to teach everything from scratch again?
It’s past midnight. I get into bed and back on my phone. I witness and listen intently. I cry with my eyes shut, and I wish to wake to the news of a cease-fire.
eveNoura Erakat is a human rights attorney and an associate professor at Rutgers University.
THE NATION
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