Here's a Long List of Actions You Can Take for Palestine

Whether you're disabled, socially anxious, or simply looking for ways to do more, there's a place for you in the struggle.

Photo by Latrach Med Jamil on Unsplash

In my last piece, I discussed how people who fear they are not doing enough to support Palestinian liberation can improve their emotional self-regulation, educate themselves on political organizing tactics and the history of Palestine’s colonization, and find their own unique position in the fight against genocide that plays to their individual talents and strengths. 

I received a lot of useful feedback in response to that piece from seasoned pro-Palestinian activists, who recommended a variety of additional strategies for getting involved. I also spoke to some disabled and neurodivergent organizers, who shared with me the ways that they’ve found to advance the cause of Palestinian liberation even while coping with mobility restrictions, energy limitations, a high risk of COVID exposure, and all manner of social, sensory, and information-processing needs that can make conventional forms of political organizing difficult. I thought I’d take a few moments to share what I’ve learned here. 

None of the tips here should be taken as a replacement for on-the-ground political activism; as I wrote about in my last piece, every single person who shows up to a protest provides the entire group with a tactical advantage, and uplifts morale significantly not just for those in attendance, but for the Palestinian people who watch us stand in solidarity with them from half a world away. 

Activists at Port of Oakland block entrance to military ship they say is Israel-bound
Protesters gathered at the Port of Oakland to block the entrance to a ship that they claim will transport weapons to…www.sfgate.com

Just look at the power a few hundred committed Bay-Area activists harnessed together on November 3rd: they were able to block a U.S. military ship destined for Israel from leaving the Port of Oakland for over nine hours. The following Monday, organizers in Tacoma, Washington gathered for hours to prevent the same vessel from being loaded, and successfully convinced dock workers to join them. The loading of the boat was cancelled after twelve hours. 

A genocide can only be stopped when the full force of a nation’s people refuse to be complicit in it. So if you can join other activists to storm a political representative’s office, smash the windows of an Israeli weapons’ manufacturer, or block highway traffic to express your beliefs, you absolutely should. 

I recognize, however, that many of us face significant barriers in taking political action, even as we wish desperately we were doing more. Many people can’t afford bail, should they get arrested; hell, a lot of people don’t even have bus fare to the protest location. Some activists with trauma freeze or flee instinctively when the police begin battering the group with fire hoses or rubber bullets; others have hair-trigger tempers that escalate fights even when that isn’t strategically sound. Some among us can only contribute to organizing meetings if we’re provided a chat box to type into; others are moving orators who can seldom leave their beds. 

Determining our limits and choosing a moral course of action is a highly personal matter: each one of us knows our own circumstances best, and ultimately must answer to our own conscience. But regardless of our positioning, we do have the opportunity to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people at this moment. There are means of community building, political expression, and disruption that are possible for us, no matter our unique constellation of skills, knowledge bases, and personal challenges.

You can consider this list a useful jumping-off point for expanding the meaningful work that you do, and a source of inspiration if all that you’re doing doesn’t feel like it’s enough. Each of these tips comes from calls to action that the Palestinian people themselves have voiced, and are informed by the legacy of decades of Palestinian resistance. 

Delete the McDonald’s, Burger King, Domino’s, Papa Johns, Pizza Hut, and Starbucks apps from your phone — and your friends’ phones. 

The Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions (BDS) movement was launched in 2005 by a collective of 170 Palestinian labor unions, refugee networks, women’s organizations, and popular resistance communities. They have since become one of the leading voices for Palestinian liberation worldwide, making the case that one of the best ways for allies to vouch support to the Palestinian people from outside of the country is by withdrawing our financial support from the state of Israel and from companies that serve the Israeli military.

Informed by historically successful boycott movements (like the Montgomery Bus Boycott), the BDS movement believes that we can only make a noticeable impact on a company’s bottom line if we carefully coordinate our actions together. After all, companies like Chick-Fil-A have stayed in business for years despite widespread criticism for contributing to anti-gay causes, because those of us who refuse to support them are small in number, and our individual efforts are quite diffuse. Similarly, there are many massive corporations who fund the state of Israel and its military, some of them with dozens or even hundreds of products, and asking the average consumer to memorize every single product and never purchase it ever again is unlikely to succeed.

Instead, the BDS movement calls on us to participate in a narrowly targeted action that will send a clear message to the Israeli government’s biggest supporters, including Burger King, McDonald’s, Domino’s Pizza, Pizza Hut, and Papa Johns. 

These companies make sizable direct donations to the Israeli military, and accordingly, they are a top priority for a concerted boycott effort. 

Many activists also suggest adding Starbucks to the boycott list, because the company is currently suing its employee union for posting a “Solidarity with Palestine!” tweet. Given Starbucks’ widespread and well-documented abuses of its employees and its frequent retaliation against unionizing workers, I can hardly take issue with a call for a boycott. 

However, keep in mind that BDS has not specifically identified Starbucks as a target, and the company does not donate to the Israeli government. We don’t want to dilute the intentional, meticulous organizing work of the Palestinian leaders of this movement by calling for additional boycotts haphazardly and confusing people. It takes very little effort to delete the Starbucks app from your phone and hit up the Dunkin Donuts across the street from it instead, so feel free to do so if you are so moved — but make sure you do the same thing with the Papa John’s and McDonald’s apps first. 

By deleting the mobile apps for these companies from your phone, you will effectively block the instinct to order from them without having to think much about it. An effective boycott must last for the long haul — the Montgomery Bus Boycott, after all, took over a year — and so you’ll need to get into the habit of ordering your quick, convenient meals elsewhere. Remind your loved ones of the boycott, and ask if you can help them stick to it by deleting these apps from their phones too. You can even replace them with local businesses by bookmarking restaurants’ sites and adding the bookmark as an app to your phone’s home screen. 

Keep Attention on the Other Boycott Targets

It’s tempting for many Palestinian allies to focus on boycotting fast food brands and coffee companies, because each of us makes multiple purchasing decisions involving food every single day. However, BDS has established a few even higher-priority targets, companies that provide both financial support and technology to the Israeli military and more actively enable its ongoing attacks upon Palestinian lives. 

These companies are: Hewlett Packard, Siemens, Sodastream, Carrefour, Puma, Ahava, Elbit, Sabra, and AXA. Each one has been identified for a specific strategic reason: HP for building the biometric ID system that allows the Israeli government to monitor the Palestinian people, for instance, and Siemens for helping construct an electricity grid on stolen Palestinian land.

I recommend reading BDS’s rationale for boycotting each one of these companies; it should only take you a few minutes to do so. It will really help inform you of the stakes of political actions like these, and make the misdeeds of these companies feel concrete. Then, when your mother asks you why you don’t want a brand new Sodastream for Christmas, you’ll be able to explain to her in really clear terms that the company discriminates against Palestinian workers, and has facilitated the expulsion of Indigenous people in the Naqab desert. 

Being able to share a specific purpose and narrative behind your decision to boycott may help to persuade other people to join you. At the very least, knowing the specific crimes committed by each company will serve as a strong reminder to you, so that the next time you need to buy a computer, home appliance, or shoes, you’ll know what to do. 

Many of these companies produce big-ticket items that the average consumer doesn’t buy regularly, so it’s especially important that we get word about the boycott out as widely as we can — speak to other people about what you have learned, and share about it online. Consider keeping a list of the boycotted companies near the credit or debit card you’d use for such major purchases, so that it doesn’t slip your mind. 

Remember: you do not need to throw away any Puma shoes, Siemens furniture, HP computers, or other items from these companies that you already own. We aren’t aiming to purge all guilt-by-association from our consciences. We’re trying to negatively impact these companies’ bottom line, so we should not make any new purchases from them until they stop funding and enabling the Palestinian genocide. 

Provide Food, Coffee, and Supplies to Help Sustain the Boycott

The Montgomery Bus Boycott was successful due to the widespread coordination of Black activists, community groups, and allies all throughout the city. If we want the BDS movement for Palestinian lives to be a success, we must coordinate our efforts, too. 

Individual bus riders in Montgomery made sacrifices, walking miles per day to work and school — but Black churches across the country also raised funds to buy those boycotters new shoes. Residents with cars drove instead of taking the bus — but they also arranged carpools so that others in their community could join them in avoiding busses too. Even local cab drivers extended their support, offering discounted rides to Black customers of less than 45 cents. Some white households also contributed, driving Black laborers to work.

Photo by Muhammad Shaheer on Unsplash

In order for movements like BDS to prove sustainable and far-reaching, we have to do more than call on individual consumers to always make the ‘right’ decisions. We have to enable people to participate in the boycott, and one way we can do this is by noticing the barriers to boycotting that others face, and building a workaround for them. 

One reason consumers sometimes breach a boycott is because they lack any option but to support a company. If someone lives in a food desert with a McDonald’s down the block or works in an office park that has only a Pizza Hut and a Burger King, they may have to choose between purchasing from a company that funds genocide, or starving. But you can provide vulnerable groups with other options by distributing free food in deprived communities, or even by calling in a food truck to do business on the corner. 

Another reason that a person might have no choice but to support a BDS-boycotted company is if they lack transportation to other stores. Here, you can take a page from the Montgomery Bus Boycott’s playbook and offer your friends and neighbors rides to other shopping centers, so they don’t have to visit their local Siemen’s store. If the only variety of hummus in your local grocery store is from Sabra, you can learn to make your own from scratch with chickpeas, olive oil, and a little seasoning in a food processor. Consider doing so in bulk, and distributing some extra hummus to people in your community, or even just sharing the recipe around. 

By pooling our resources and looking after one another, we can dramatically widen the impact of a boycott. We can also distribute food and other supplies to lend greater strength to a protest:

Provide Water, Snacks, Rides, and Bathroom Trips to Protestors 

During the height of the BLM movement in 2020, I notice a huge number of supporters on the sidelines at every protest, handing out hand sanitizer, masks, bottles of water, granola bars, and fruit. I’ve been attending public demonstrations since I was a teenager, yet this wasn’t anything I’d ever seen before. Something about the combined isolation of the pandemic and the rousing moral clarity of the uprising inspired many dozens of people to show up for the protestors in whatever ways that they could — even if they didn’t feel comfortable marching in the crowd themselves. 

Today, protestors need ground support and supply drops more than ever. After protestors in Tacoma blocked the Cape Orlando from being loaded for over twelve hours on November 6th, organizers put out a request for pizza deliveries. Hundreds of hand-wrapped sandwiches and burgers were also driven to the port by supporters, with additional cars pouring in just to aid in the blockade. 

Protesters block US military ship allegedly carrying weapons for Israel
The demonstrations in Tacoma, Washington, are the second to greet the supply ship, after similar protests in…www.aljazeera.com

As the uprising against Palestinian genocide rages on, activists on the ground will need help staying warm, watered, fed, and toileted. Many poor and suburban-dwelling activists will also need help getting to actions. If you have a car, or if you can’t participate directly in an action due to a health or mobility issue, providing such aid is a crucial way to make a difference. When protestors’ most basic physical needs are attended to, they can stay on the line for longer, and maintain greater energy and morale. 

I know that when I’ve left a protest early, it’s always been because my hands and feet were freezing or I was getting dizzy from hunger. You can help sustain a protest by keeping people like me from folding, and help everyone in the movement to feel noticed and cared for. 

Here are a few supplies you should bring to protests: 

Gloves

Socks

Ponchos / Umbrellas

Snack bars

Fruit

Water Bottles

Hand Sanitizer

Masks

Power Banks

Charging Cables

Wet Wipes

Band-Aids

Painkillers

Duct Tape

Cash

Eye Protection

If you miss the chance to attend a protest and lend your support, you can also assist activists by showing up to perform jail support the very next day:

Provide Jail Support to Arrested Protestors

Any good protest will result in some arrests. Look up your area’s bail fund and make a donation to it if you can, and consider showing up to the jail alongside other organizers to perform jail support. 

Jail support was one of my favorite duties during the 2020 protests, because it truly made me feel I was personally doing something necessary for the wider community. Typically, jail support groups line up on the sidewalk outside of the jail waiting with food, phone chargers, a change of clothes, and other supplies to offer each incarcerated protestor as they get released. They also communicate with the jail, the protestor’s legal representatives, and their family, to argue for their release and secure them a ride home. 

If you’re not equipped for the confrontation and discomfort of an on-ground protest, I highly recommend looking into jail support options in your city. Jail support work is less risky, but it’s still deeply interpersonal and impactful. You’ll get to know the other activists who report to the jail regularly, learn a little bit more about how the legal system is leveraged against political activists, and maybe develop more of the community ties and interpersonal skills needed to further level up your activist work. Here in Chicago, the go-to organization is Chicago Community Jail Support. 

Donate to a Bail Fund

In preparation for my last piece, I conducted research on mutual aid organizations operating out of Palestine and suggested that readers donate to them. I’m sorry to say that the facts on the ground have changed quite radically now — with virtually no aid or shipments of supplies being permitted into Gaza at this moment, pledges of direct financial support are no longer useful. As one woman in Gaza, Maha Hussaini, put it “Money in Gaza is useless while there is nothing to buy from the markets.” Instead, Palestinian activists ask that we devote our efforts to political actions that will help ensure their freedom. 

If you’re limited in the amount of direct activism you can do, however, and you have extra money you’d like to contribute to the cause, you can instead donate to your local bail fund. Pro-Palestinian protestors are staging disruptive actions all across world, and many of them are being arrested and brutalized by police for it. In addition to needing in-person jail support on the day of their release, incarcerated protestors also need help getting their legal fees covered, and paying for their release. By funneling what money you can to groups like the Chicago Community Bond Fund or the Liberty Fund in New York, you help get protestors out of the jails, and back onto the streets — where they can continue to make a difference. 

Organize Information on Upcoming Protests

Many people tell me they find it hard to keep track of all the upcoming political actions taking place in their area. 

Some of this is by design — organizers intentionally avoid broadcasting their plans on social media because they want to avoid legal repercussions and want to catch their city’s police force by surprise. But the many protests, rallies, and vigils currently being held are also difficult to keep straight because of the way that information is transmitted these days. Most activists are highly reliant on Instagram stories and Tweets to spread their messages, and outlets like those are difficult to archive, share, or even link to. 

Whether you can physically attend a protest yourself or not, you can contribute to the movement by collecting the many event announcements you encounter into one single place. In 2020, a local dancer and activist in Chicago named Angelica Grace became well-known for always posting about all the latest protests against police violence; plenty of other people were announcing protests and sharing flyers, but Angelica Grace was the most consistent. She seemed to always know everything that was going on, and her page was a place I could trust if I was searching for updates. 

You can be an Angelica Grace for your community by collecting information about upcoming events and sharing them with others. Screenshot protest announcements when you see them, and bookmark and repost information about actions as they come in. Try populating all upcoming events you’re aware of into a public Google calendar and sharing the link. 

Photo by Gaining Visuals on Unsplash

Learn About Your Local Activist Scene

With time and effort, you’ll gradually learn which organizations are trustworthy and stage meaningful actions, and which ones are unsavory and waste lots of energy and time. This too will be help you in keeping other people informed. Right now, you’ll want to prioritize actions put together by Palestinian-led organizations, such as Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and the Coalition for Justice in Palestine (CJP). Almost every major city and campus has its own chapter of these groups. 

Conversely, you’ll want to steer clear of groups like the Party for Socialism and Liberation (the PSL) and the Revolutionary Communist Party of the US (the RCP). They’re both white-dominated groups that have a long history of co-opting protests organized by Black and brown people and redirecting attention and funding into their own orgs. Also watch out for public “call outs” of political organizers’ tactics made by non-Palestinian groups or individuals.

For many small Palestinian liberation organizations, there are growing pains to suddenly having thousands of new supporters in your city. Lines of communication can be difficult to build, and different groups may have divergent views about how any given action might be run. When a diverse array of activists are at an action, spanning the full range of age, disability status, immigration status, and race, it’s important to be mindful of the risks we are taking, and who is calling for those risks to be embraced. Keep gathering information, prioritizing the messages of liberationist Palestinian organizations, and know the difference between a problem that merits a private conversation versus a public call-out. 

Call for an End to Genocide, Not a Ceasefire

While in the very short term, an immediate end to Israel’s hostilities against the Palestinians would be a massive relief, a mere ‘ceasefire’ would do nothing to right the injustices that people in Gaza face. They would still be living under an apartheid state, still be coping with the destruction of their schools, homes, mosques, and hospitals, still be trapped within a walled prison that’s pervasively denied resources, and they’d still be mourning the loss of tens of thousands of unjustly taken lives. The brutality cannot just end. It must be made up for — with justice. 

For these reasons, Palestinian activists have asked that their supporters call for an end to genocide — not a mere ceasefire. To call for a ‘ceasefire’ is to imply that Israel and Gaza are engaged in a war, with both parties exhibiting equal amounts of aggression, and that completely obscures the actual relationship between a nuclear-armed international superpower and the small reservation of displaced Indigenous folks it subjugates. You can help uplift the true goals of the Palestinian people by calling for an end to genocide in all your messaging about this humanitarian crisis — and by encouraging your friends and loved ones to stop asking for just a ceasefire, too. 

Archive Social Media Posts About Palestine

You can also lend your support to the Palestinian cause by archiving as much information about the ongoing genocide as you possibly can. This is a great way to get involved if you’re already a technologically-inclined data hoarder, if you’re unable to leave the house to attend political actions, or if you’d like to turn your doomscrolling habit into a force for good. 

One activist that I spoke to, Pradhi, told me that she screenshots nearly every article about Palestine that she reads, as well as all social media posts and news updates. She backs these images up on a private Discord server that only she and a handful of other archivists can access. Many of her friends’ posts have been deleted by Instagram, and some of them have lost their entire accounts. She sees digital record-keeping as a last line of defense against this suppression of speech. 

“There is a concerted effort to erase history,” another organizer, Mahila, told me. “So, take screenshots. Of images, of articles. Save dates, and make hard copies when you can. [Archive] both the facts that you do not see in mainstream media, and the anti-Palestinian propaganda being perpetuated to justify a genocide.” You can use Google drive, Archive.org, Mastodon, Linshare, a personal server, or a physical hard drive to back up all that you’ve collected. 

Preserve the Digital Footprints of Slain Palestinian People

Recently, Twitter adopted a policy of deleting the account of any user who has been inactive for more than 30 days. As a result, we will be losing every single one of the videos, photos, and moment-by-moment updates that slain Palestinian journalists sacrificed their lives to share with the rest of the world. 

It is vitally important that we fully archive the contents of these dead Palestinian journalist’s Twitter accounts before the site’s 30-day deletion window elapses. A regularly-updated list of their names is here. A guide on backing up the contents of another person’s Twitter account can be found on the r/DataHoarders subreddit here. If you have any technological savvy or access to a large server, you can work to preserve Palestinian history by archiving the contents of these accounts.

It is not only the reports of slain journalists that are worthy of preserving. The accounts of all Palestinian people murdered by the Israeli government ought to be lovingly preserved and honored, too. Dozens of family lines have been completely wiped off the face of the earth by Israel’s attacks on the Gaza Strip, and at the time of this writing, tens of thousands of people have died. 

Many of the deceased had Twitter accounts they used to document their daily habits, the things that annoyed them, their cultural practices, their relationships, their hobbies, their opinions, and their dreams. The surviving family members of these victims will want to be able to look back upon their lives and all that they’d expressed, not just their brutally painful final moments. Scholars and Palestinian activists also need to be able to access and derive wisdom from these personal accounts, too. Erasing the cultural legacy of a massacred people is one of the foremost tools of a genocide. We must do all that we can to prevent it. 

If you can, take the time to archive the social media accounts of any dead Palestinian people that you find before Twitter has them deleted. Gather as much information as you can about their lives, as activists like Imani Barbarin have already started to do. Honor the fullness of their humanity in your writing and art, as creators like Jen White-Johnson have done. Together, we can prevent the slain from becoming disembodied, voiceless, cultureless statistics. 

Document the Suppression of Speech Online

Platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram have always suppressed pro-Palestinian speech, as the Arab Center of Washington D.C. reports, but since Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip began in early October, their censorship has dramatically worsened. 

It happens in ways both overt and subtle: entire accounts get deleted on the grounds of “supporting terrorism,” and posts are removed for violating vaguely-written community guidelines, but just as frequently, pro-Palestinian accounts are merely downgraded by the algorithm and hidden from most followers’ view. 

When historians write about this genocide and the people that refused to let it occur, they will need to understand how the ideological war against Palestinians was waged. Today, we need to keep meticulous records on how pro-Palestinian speech is silenced, and collect data that proves that social media applications shadow banned and censored us, so that we can steel ourselves against such forms of propaganda in the future. 

One activist I spoke to told me that they create highlight reels on Instagram featuring the latest news out of Palestine, and track when Instagram takes the videos down. A pro-Palestinian influencer I know also shared with me that she uses her professional account’s user statistics to record how many ‘impressions’ each of her social media posts make. Thanks to this, she can demonstrate a clear downward trend the moment she began discussing the genocide. Users on TikTok have also spoken publicly about being approached by the Israeli government with paid offers to generate the nation more positive PR. 

@yourfavoriteguycreators like me are being offered large sums of money to support israel #yourfavoriteguy

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I have noticed that when I post about Palestine I receive approximately 10% of the “likes” I normally receive when I post about Autism, trans issues, or just about any other topic — yet paradoxically, my follower count grows far more rapidly. This indicates to me quite clearly that while the social media algorithms are hiding my content from the majority of people that already follow me, there’s a huge population of users who are hungry to learn more about aiding the Palestinian people, and are actively seeking out new sources of information on the topic. 

Whether you have a large social media platform or not, you can make note of trends like these, deliberately visit the social media pages you trust to in order to counteract their shadow banning, and digitally archive posts that run a high risk of being suppressed. It may seem like a passive act of consumption, but in this case it’s genuine activism. Each of us should do what we can to keep our living history from being overwritten. 

Translate Documents 

If you’re a polyglot, you can make useful information about Palestine more widely accessible by translating documents, news updates, and social media posts. One activist that I spoke to told me that they translated an empirical study on the economic impact of the BDS movement into Arabic, so that it could be shared with more Palestinian activists. Another activist I heard from has been translating Arabic-language posts coming out of Palestine into English, so that her educator friends could share them with their classes. 

Given the sheer volume of information currently being generated about this genocide, there is no shortage of translation needs to fill. And even if you’re solely an English speaker, like me, you can still contribute in a small way by using Google lens’ translate function to make some sense of screenshots and Instagram stories made by Palestinian journalists and other locals. 

An automated translation is likely to be riddled with errors, and we should always defer to those with actual linguistic and cultural expertise, of course. But in the short term, screenshotting and translating posts from out of Palestine can help ensure that their messages are more widely heard. 

Use Your Position & Your Privileges

The Oakland and Tacoma protests were only made possible because someone with inside knowledge of the U.S. military’s actions informed activists that the Cape Orlando would be loaded with munitions and sent to Israel. The United States government never openly acknowledged this fact itself — someone risked both a firing and federal charged to bring this information to light. 

No matter the work that we do, or the positions that we hold, we each have a unique set of skills and privileges we can lend to the Palestinian struggle. As a university professor, if I learn that a prominent Zionist writer, speaker, or political figure is going to be on campus, I can help my student activist comrades get greater access to that person, so they can hold them accountable for their support of genocide. At a protest, I can put my white, male body between a young Palestinian woman and a police officer that is harassing her. 

@mondoweissProtesters with Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at Loyola University Chicago (LUC) were grabbed and shoved by local and campus police during a demonstration against a visit to the university by U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL). Duckworth has remained vocal in her support for Israel during its ongoing attacks in Gaza, and has refused to join calls for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. Video Credit: Khadija Quadri al-Jilani/ SJP LUC #Palestine #Gaza #CeasefireNOW #OperationAlAqsaFlood #AlAqsaFlood #Israel #occupation #GazaStrip #IDF #InternationalLaw #arrests #violence #illegal #FreePalestine #SJP #TammyDuckworth

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Each one of us has distinct skills we can offer to the movement, and it’s quite empowering and morale-boosting to get creative about how we might use them. A good friend of mine is a manager, and she let her team off a few hours early last Friday, so that anyone who wanted to could attend a pro-Palestinian protest scheduled for that evening. Another professor that I know who runs a communication program lent several of his cameras to student journalists so they could cover protests happening across the city. There are so many small steps we can take to contribute to this movement; even a job that we used to believe was as a barrier between us and more radical political action can instead become a tool that we use for furthering the cause. 

Create Reading Lists & Watch Lists of Palestinian Art

As I wrote about in my last piece, the uprising against genocide requires we each become engaged students of history and past political movements. The war against settler-colonial violence will be a long one, and accordingly, not all meaningful actions that we need to take will be urgent. Sometimes just sitting in quiet contemplation with a book by a Palestinian author and unlearning decades of government propaganda is the most important thing we can do.

Many activists I have spoken to recommended that people get more involved by compiling lists of documentaries, books, podcast episodes, essays, journal articles, poems, and artwork created by Palestinian people. The Palestinian people have been resisting settler-colonialism since 1948, and those of us who are relatively new to the fight could stand a lot to learn from their work. Engaging with the creations of Palestinian artists and writers also helps to expand the world’s awareness and appreciation of their culture — itself a highly pressing goal during times of cultural erasure and mass violence. 

You can inform yourself and help others feel more connected to Palestinian liberation by compiling books, films, and other forms of art, and presenting them in an accessible way. For example, my friend Jesse Meadows holds regular book clubs for people who don’t finish books: members dip into the chapters that catch their interest, then report on what they’ve learned to the larger group. Another activist and digital archivist I know is creating a masterdoc filled with links to free films and books created by Palestinian people, and another is selecting Palestinian works for the poetry class he’s teaching this semester. 

The cover of They Called Me A Lioness, a 2022 book by Palestinian activist Ahed Tamimi. 

While we are encouraging other people to consume more Palestinian art & scholarship, we must also stand with the living Palestinian creators who are currently targeted by the Israeli government for their speech. Among them is 22-year-old activist and author of the 2022 book They Called Me a Lioness Ahed Tamimi, who was just arrested in the West Bank for “inciting terrorism.” 

As a colleague of mine noted recently, we authors can’t count on our publishers to be politically principled and stand with us when we take actions that might risk their financial bottom line. That’s why it’s important for all of us who support Ahed Tamimi to contact Penguin Random House, and particularly her imprint One World to demand they take a stand and commit their considerable resources and influence to getting Tamimi freed. Appreciation of art doesn’t have to be a passive act — instead, it can stir us to action. 

Talk About Palestine with Your Loved Ones 

One last thing that we can always do more of is discuss the Palestinian plight with our friends, neighbors, and loved ones. In the past, I used to avoid discussing Palestinian liberation because I was afraid I might be accused of antisemitism, and because I knew the topic was contentious and that I didn’t have ‘all’ the information. Now I recognize what a cowardly, fragile move that really was. 

It’s the Israeli government and its allies that want us to believe that the ‘conflict’ between themselves and the Palestinians is too complicated to ever be understood or be spoken about. Yet the moral reality of what is happening could not be more simple: it is wrong to take the lives of tens of thousands of civilians to score a military victory against an opponent. It is wrong for a settler-colonial state to force Indigenous people from their lands. It doesn’t take a doctorate in Middle Eastern studies to be able to recognize that.

Like most people in the United States, I was propagandized about Palestine. I was made to be confused about the fact that the Israeli state was created by the British empire a few decades ago, and that the safe haven the Jewish people were offered had been drenched in Palestinian blood. I did not know that Indigenous Jewish people were driven from the land, just as Muslim and Christian ones were, and that Jewish socialists who aligned themselves with the Palestinians were similarly run out of the country. 

Until I was a young adult, I had no idea that the Palestinian people were trapped inside a walled reservation, that they lacked citizenship within the Israeli state, and that they were tried by a completely different court system than Israeli’s were. I didn’t know that the Israeli settlers unleashed on the West Bank had essentially the state-sanctioned right to kill any Palestinians who got in their way, and that many of them were Americans.

There is so much that I never knew about the abuses of the Palestinian people, but in learning this history, the morality of their oppression never became any more complicated. The more that I learned, the more I realized I’d been misled into believing the Israel-Palestine “conflict” was an endlessly complex Gordian Knot, when really it was a series of racist historical injustices stacked atop more racist historical injustice. Now that I have a better understanding of what has happened, I am empowered to take a stand — and I can empower others by speaking openly about what I’ve learned, too.

If you’re reading this, you may harbor doubts about your ability to advocate for Palestinians. You’re probably well aware of the professionals who have lost their jobs because they openly decried the genocide Israel is committing. So many forces are conspiring to keep us silent, confused, and afraid — to make us too cowardly to defend a people enduring a massacre. But only the clarity of daylight can ward those dark, small feelings off. 

We can make a difference by broadcasting the news shared by brave Palestinian journalists. We can translate and archive the posts of the deceased, so that their memories are not destroyed. We can educate ourselves and inform other people about this humanitarian crisis. We can create the digital infrastructure that makes getting involved more possible for additional activists. 

We can feed hungry protestors, empty the coffers of murderous corporations, and put our bodies in front of the military boats. And we can speak about what is happening, early and often, so that the world won’t turn its back on a marginalized and massacred people ever again. We have to do these things, and we get to do them, because they are what a compassionate, open-eyed member of humanity would do. 

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Please feel free to use the comments to share resources or speak about any other actions you have taken to support Palestinian liberation.