How's My Driving?

This post originally appeared at allthatsleftcollective.com

“How's my driving?” The question was spray painted on the back of an Israeli army jeep driving in Hebron. Occupied and barred from walking streets and unable to believe that it is not the post-apocalypse.  

Palestinian peoplehood and Jewish peoplehood and hoodlums and hooded fangs and BDS and Zionism and the unclear marked line ironically drawn all over our dinner tables and houses of worship and houses and warships, and everywhere except our maps.
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Equality is supposed to be at the core of our movements. If it is left, alone liberation doesn't happen and keeping Israel out of the conversation doesn't work and shutting down one side for business doesn’t work and stopping talk of shutting down one side for business doesn’t work.  

Look forward to sitting calmly in the face of racism and live ammunition and nonviolence at all costs. Picture passports with identities and institutions in our pockets and freedom of movement and movements.  

Attempts have been made for mutually agreed upon peace over borders and over papers and under pressure and indeed this is the only thing as ongoing occupation and one-eyed moves leave us violent and bloody and seething. 

אבא‘s politics reflected by Abbas these days and when we know how to fix the world it might be taken to the old town hall, but the algorithm we use these days is not meant for that and no one listens under the blaring lights and soft saxophone and 'buy me now' signs where we shop and where we sleep.  

In a cramped space some night I understood that nonviolence is the right choice; choice gives way to better, but ways of wielding resistance become more and more limited, as more and more are oppressed or oppress. The future has impressive wins under its belt and we can win, but it is hard when extremists shoot it in the head and blow up the bus it’s riding on. Forward.