At the time of this writing, since October 7, 2023, Israel has killed 42,612 people in Gaza, including 16,765 children. 97,166 people have been wounded. Academic estimates place the actual death toll to be as high as 335,000, out of a population of 2.3 million. In the West Bank, 742 people have been killed. As Israel escalates its rampage against Lebanon, more than 2,000 have been killed there. Numbers such as these do not even come close to capturing the depth of the genocidal horror that has been unleashed against the Palestinian people by Israel, aided and abetted and armed by the United States. We can compile numbers, share anecdotes, link to videos, repost poetry, and more, but no frame is large enough to hold the scope of the devastation. It is incomprehensible.

To mark, remember, resist one year of genocide, I had originally planned to write a lengthy post contextualizing Palestinians as agents of their own history as well as survivors of histories imposed upon them. I wanted to problematize narratives, challenge conceptions, propose nuance, and foment action. Alas, exigencies beyond my control have led me to abandon such a plan. I can leave only a title: Every prison riots. Every colony rebels.

At the same time, I have been, as seemingly mandated by this world we inhabit, contemplating mourning. In particular, a quote by Christina Sharpe, from In the Wake: On Blackness and Being, has been stuck in my head: “how does one mourn the interminable event?” She was referring to chattel slavery and its afterlives. But I think it could also be appropriated, respectfully and with conscientious modification, to the context of Palestine. How does one mourn an event that has not ended? How does one mourn a year of genocide that shows no signs of slowing? Or, as Rashid Khalidi argues, how does one mourn more than one hundred years of war against Palestine that shows no sign of abating? Questions no longer seem to offer answers; they can only carry lamentations. What does it mean for one’s existence to be an unanswerable question? I would argue it means this world is broken, no longer capable of comprehension. It is time for another one.

Instead of creating something new, I thought of revisiting that which is old, out-of-date, archived, but still relevant. I don’t have much to give, nor is it my place to propose much. I have my voice, with which I’ve tried to intervene over the past year. In this movement backwards, there is one new addition and six old ones. I am reminded of a poem from elsewhere, “From this country where our words don’t work in the face of their bullets,” we must nonetheless continue speaking, acting, organizing, thinking, fighting, grieving, and loving. Here is an offering.

• Interview on the It’s Going Down podcast This Is America. The new addition. Recorded on October 1, 2024, we discuss political dynamics inside Israel, the ongoing genocide in Palestine, and Israel’s attacks against Lebanon.
• A Letter to the President (of my university): A few days after October 7, 2023, the president of the university I attend sent a letter to the community taking a firmly pro-Israel position. This is my response. I received no reply.
• Netanyahu, the global far-right, and building solidarity with Palestine: An interview I did with It’s Going Down in mid-October 2023 looking at the emergent genocide, analyzing the politics behind it, and examining approaches for solidarity.
• Afro-Pessimism and Palestinian Liberation: From October 31, 2023. By far the most viewed post of the past year. I have no idea why. I wish I would have written a better piece. More of a response to a book group reading, this contemplates how Afro-pessimism may inform conceptualizations of Palestinian struggle.
• A front-line report from the West Bank of occupied Palestine: An interview I conducted with a comrade based in Ramallah in mid-November 2023. It looks at events on the ground, the role of the Palestinian Authority, anarchism and Palestine, and international solidarity. It’s really good, in my opinion.
• Empathy amid extermination: From March 2024. A critical look at empathy, including my own complicity, and investigating other means of affinity and solidarity.
• The campus movement and academic self-management: From April 2024. Here I offer an analysis of José Revueltas’s theories on academic self-management and how they can inform the Palestine solidarity movement on campuses.