I love my anger. It motivates my activism. I am angry at violence, at racism, at injustice, at hypocrisy, at bigotry. My anger has served me well, as it is frequently the impetus for my writing. I am a firm believer that if you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention. And if you’re not paying attention, that’s outrageous.
I know how to deal with my anger. I’ve been dealing with my anger since I was a child, when I first realized I was a refugee who didn’t belong in the country where I grew up, but also, that I was a girl in a grown men’s world. My anger has made me the woman I am today, a feminist who cares deeply about social issues–and also, when it comes to certain social expectations, a feminist who could not care one iota less.
I don’t know how to deal with bitterness. It’s like a wound that won’t heal. How do you channel bitterness out, without simply being bitter? Bitterness does not help me organize, strategize. There is no “righteous bitterness,” like there is righteous anger. I am bitter about the response to Russia’s attack on Ukraine. Walking in my neighborhood, I saw a blue and yellow ribbon around a tree, and I felt bitter. Some young kids were waving hand painted posters in blue and yellow, and I resented that. Then I had to drive somewhere, and on not one, but two overpasses in a short distance, there were people flying the Ukrainian flag, with a banner that said “Stand With Ukraine,” and again, I was bitter. Not about the war, which of course I decry, not about all the dead and those who love and survive them, and the significant losses, but about what many in the Palestine solidarity groups have pointed out: Russia is doing to Ukraine what Israel is doing to Palestine, but Russia is the bad guy, and Israel the good guy. And the Ukrainian resistance fighters are heroes, but the Palestinians are terrorists. And boycotting Russia is great, but boycotting Israel is racist. And those who support Ukraine are not being censored, and churches are holding bake sales for Ukraine, and Amazon has a banner where you can “donate now” to help Ukraine, and many of my Facebook friends have a little blue and yellow flag on their profile picture, when they didn’t have a Palestinian flag during any of the many massacres Israel has engaged in, and basically at no time during the many decades of a brutal military occupation by this evil apartheid ethnonationalist supremacist state. And my Palestinian friends don’t have blue and yellow on their profile picture, because we are bitter, and maybe some will think we don’t care, but we do, we’re just really bitter…
I am bitter, not angry, because I happen to agree with the people standing with Ukraine, and denouncing the war. I can’t be angry at them. But I resent having to be opportunistic, having to ask—as indeed many are doing—“what about Palestine?” I am bitter about the fact that we must so often, still, piggyback on other causes, and still point out the double standards, the selective support, selective mourning, selective outrage. And just as I argued with Palestinians against the hijacking of the slogan Black Lives Matter, explaining that we can and must come up with our own, without diluting the BLM statement, I now want to tell Palestinians that we must not distract from what is going on in Ukraine.
And yet, it is no different from what is going on in Palestine, where our resistance heroes are deemed terrorists, our insistence that we belong in Palestine—from the river to the sea–is termed antisemitic, our desire to return criminalized.
I will turn my bitterness into anger somehow. I have to. Then I’ll be able to utilize it, rather than let it consume me.
Bravo!
We are even denied the right to call it Apartheid, when it’s not just Apartheid it’s Zionism. Yet Zionism in the West is treated like some wonderful vision of righteousness and Democracy akin to The Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, when the historic and present reality of Zionism is no different to the ideology of Marxism, the Islamic State, the Reichstag, and Apartheid all rolled into one.
While I too am stricken with bitterness, the feeling of gross injustice, and rank hypocrisy in the current climate, I do well to remind myself that my bitterness along with colonial Zionism, like these fascist and supremacist ideologies, will too pass like a kidney stone into the bedpan of history.
Thank you for this article.
What a great piece. Just and honest.
It’s exactly how i feel: bitter,
It makes me sick to my stomach, how US officials can call Russia’s actions barbaric and savage (not that they aren’t) and then stand up for what they’ve done in Iraq, Libya, and what israel does.
We have to utilize this, expose that hypocrisy and use it to motivate and educate.
Really great read.
Nada, thank you for this magnificent piece. You articulate so beautifully and with such passion the turmoil so many of us feel, torn between outrage at the assault on Ukraine and bitterness over the stupefying double standard that permits others to ignore the suffering of Palestinians.
I’m ashamed to say that I don’t want to see any more blue and yellow banners, not because my solidarity with Ukraine is less than 100%, but because I can’t help but associate those banners with the hypocrisy of supporting one aggrieved polity while ignoring – or reviling – another.
This is not a useful way to feel if it does not, as you suggest, evolve from bitterness to the sort of anger that animates productive action.
Good luck to both of us, and thanks again for this inspiring piece.
Statement on Israel’s Latest Repression of Palestinian Universities | US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (usacbi.org)
“Statement on Israel’s Latest Repression of Palestinian Universities”“The Organizing Collective for the US Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI) writes in support of Birzeit University’s call to action ‘to defend the Palestinian people’s right to education, free from duress, intervention, & political persecution.’ We invite you to join us in heeding their call to ‘Work with us to break the siege that these regulations impose on Birzeit & other Palestinian universities. Accept our invitation to teach & learn in Palestine. Help us exercise our basic right to education & to preserve the institutional autonomy that we built over the decades despite all obstacles.’
“We express our strong opposition to Israel’s most recent attempt to restrict Palestinian rights to education & to undermine the freedom & autonomy of Palestinian academic institutions. Scheduled to take effect in May 2022, the ‘Procedure for Entry and Residency of Foreigners in Judea & Samaria Region’ grants the Israeli military absolute powers to select which international faculty, academic researchers & students can be admitted to teach or study at Palestinian universities. Under this law, Israeli authorities will be in the position of determining which fields of study are permissible & what qualifications are acceptable. Further, it requires applicants to submit to Israeli investigation at diplomatic missions in countries of origin. Finally, it sets a limit on the number of foreign teachers & students (100 & 150 per year, respectively) & limits the duration of employment to five non-consecutive years, effectively denying the hiring & promotion of faculty, & with immediate effects for current faculty & students who do not hold residency permits. This includes many Palestinians, who will lose their jobs, their access to education, & their rights to live in their homeland. The new directive also would effectively end all student exchanges. In short, it is an all-out assault on Palestinian academic freedom & collaborative intellectual exchange. In the words of Birzeit University, it “puts Palestinian Universities under siege & divests them of basic control over their academic decisions.”