There Are No Silent Vigils during Genocide

The U.S. and Israel have now murdered over 15,000 Palestinians, including more than 6,150 children—most buried alive under the rubble.

Know Their Names:

Mahdiya Abdullah Abdul Wahab Halawa
Suhail Ramez al-Souri
Julie Ramez al-Souri
Majd Ramez al-Souri
Moaz Hani Mohammed al-Aidi
Misk Mohammed Khalil Gouda

It takes five hours to read and remember them all.

One of the greatest heartaches for a grieving person is the fear that their loved one will be forgotten. We deserve to pause and grieve our Palestinian siblings. They deserve to have their stories told and remembered. Their families deserve the chance to talk about them, preserve their stories, receive condolences, pray to God to have mercy on their souls, comfort one another, plant an olive tree, and share sweets and coffee in their memory.

When we grieve together, we honor life, and we collectively promise that those we lost will live in our hearts forever. We pause and exhale together in our places of worship, in the graveyard, and in our living rooms. We make space for our bodies to feel the swell of emotions that are causing our hearts to pound with the aching torment of loss. And we persevere through our collective sorrow so that we can inhale new energy again.

But grieving is a privilege during a genocide in real-time when the bombs are still dropping, the water has run dry, and the dead bodies continue to mount. To be sure, there is no comparison between what our people are enduring in Gaza and all of Palestine and our lives in the diaspora. Still, many of us Arab Americans have not stopped shaking in our bones before the images of Palestinian children screaming for their dead mother under the rubble, “Mama! Mama!” Or the stories of entire extended families wiped out. Or the scenes of Israeli air raids flattening a complete refugee camp—Jabalia—over three short days. Our collective panic-stricken roots are turbulently shuddering over how much more brutality there is to come.

In the belly of the beast, there are no quiet spaces in our hearts for candlelight vigils. We watch elected officials engineer the slaughtering of our people—the Gazan men who embody the same tenderness of our brothers and fathers and the kids who resemble (or are) our niblings with their hazel eyes and long, dark brown lashes—before our eyes. Yet surrounding us—at work, at school, on the bus, at the local cafe, and on the streets—we strive to stop the isolation, the survivors’ guilt, and the betrayals in the face of business as usual from killing us—like the neighbors mowing their lawn while giggling with their children, friends on their way to a concert, and people gathering at the cafe sharing smiles and scones.

And with our growing allies, we strive to disrupt the silence, screaming vociferously: “Stop the genocide! And stop the attacks on Palestinians and Arabs in our community!” Wadea Al-Fayoume, a six-year-old Palestinian child, was stabbed to death twenty-six times inside his apartment by his white supremacist landlord. A woman just shoved her shopping cart into the body of an Arab American college student at the grocery store. Our students are sitting in class with tears rolling down their faces, wondering if their relatives in Gaza are still alive while the sky above their apartment buildings lights up with fire.

Indeed, death is a part of life, even as humans are rarely equipped to deal with the turmoil death inspires. But what of the turmoil of an immediate genocide in progress? An important part of any grieving journey is to find meaning in the loss, often expressed through sentiments like, “Well, at least he is not suffering anymore,” or “At least they didn’t have to live through the pandemic.” But what if U.S. and Israeli colonization is the only meaning to be made of the mass murders of Palestinians?  Yet we insist on more in our perseverance: “We will never forget!” “Never again means never again for anyone, anywhere, without exception!” “Our martyrs are not numbers!” “We will free Palestine in our lifetime!” 

I turn to the words I read etched in chalk on the asphalt at George Floyd’s memorial:  “From tragedy, love must prevail.” And we turn to those we trust, bearing witness with us—to validate our anguish and find a way through. During a genocide, there is no silent vigil. There are no pauses without action.

While we say their beautiful names:

Maria Yasser Kamal al-Masry
Mohammed Mamdouh Mohammed Abu Jazar
Zein al-Din Suleiman Moin al-Najjar
Aisha Jihad Jalal Shaheen

We relentlessly and unapologetically organize for and scream: “Stop the genocide! End the occupation! Decolonize Palestine!” And as the U.S. and Israel disenfranchise and gaslight our emotions—painting our sorrow as emblems of support for terrorism and anti-Semitism—we mobilize our grief as an insistence on Palestinian life and militant defiance of U.S. and Israeli terror. Drawing power from our love, our rage, and our pain, we leave not one space in our lives devoid of direct action and resistance.

In the time of airstrikes, stun grenades, tear gas, ground invasions, and the same skunk water Israel made for U.S. police to deploy against BIPOC communities at borders, in prisons, and at demonstrations and sit-ins—our radical grief is neither singular nor quiet. It is a collective practice that wails: “You have blood on your hands! We are more than death! We are life and love itself, and we will never be eliminated!”

I cannot keep up with who I am grieving for, but I will continue to say their names:

Qais Ali Nabil al-Aidi
Nabil Bilal Nabil Al-Aidi
Alma Moamen Mohammed Hamdan
Misk Mohammed Khalil Gouda

I say their names as this moment of silence bursts with the sounds of Israeli weapons and the images of Gazan emergency personnel searching for more bodies under the rubble. I can almost smell the fire and death emanating from my screen. What will the names of those I grieve be tomorrow? We grieve through the escalating brutality and we brace ourselves for a future violated by the loss of children who died stuck under the rubble. There is no moment of silence when we have to fight for those who remain alive. But just as our ancestors taught us, when the figs and the olives are ripe and ready for harvest, we should only eat after others have been fed. They also taught us not to give our power away and to turn toward each other to persevere. 

In the U.S.—on Turtle Island—our Palestinian and Arab moments of silence must be made public. They must interrupt the racist idea that Palestinians deserve to die—that their lives have no value—or that they are nothing more than savage fanatics or fodders of war in some faraway land. And they must unsettle the status quo and the war machine while shrieking and organizing:

Cease Fire Now!
Stop the Genocide!
Interrupt War Machine Financing!
Interrupt Everything!
Direct Action Now!
Free Free Gaza!
Free Free Palestine from the River to the Sea!
Cease Relations!
Mass Boycott!
Divestment Now!

This Palestinian and Arab moment of silence is a public disruption. It says NO to business as usual. Genocide is not normal. It is monstrous and vile for humans and non-humans.

Bahaa Mustafa Jamal Musa
Safa Nizar Jamil Hassouna
Rose Ramez Amin Hassouna
Maysoon Ali Alian al-Masry
Ammar Muhammad Ramadan al-Kurd

We will continue to say your names and honor your stories. Our scars and our hearts are fused with yours forever.

Editor's Note: A version of this blogpost was originally read on the podcast “Movement Memos.”