Palestinian Poets on the Role of Literature in Fighting Genocide

As a Palestinian in diaspora, nothing builds my connection to the land more than literature. It is not just the scenes detailed by our great poets that makes the ground feel realer under my feet, but the gravitational pull towards each other that gives me belief in that liberated homeland. In my work as a critic, I’ve often played it safe; devoted my time to works I loved or could situate as a positive contribution to the culture, shying away from being public in my negative critiques. As I read and re-read Ghassan Kanafani’s On Zionist Literature, I am reminded that this work is, in fact, a matter of life-or-death; literatures can set the stage for the attempted annihilation of a people, and it is our responsibility to point to it. How often have I chosen a slow death in service of comfort? The truth is, I have never been able to look around a room and not see the genocidal escalation to come—if the vitriolic disregard for human life, for Palestinian life, did not permeate through to our most mundane of activities, over 18,000 Palestinians would not have been killed in the past 67 days, over 1.5 million would not be displaced from Gaza. 

As Gaza’s poets are assassinated, as the libraries are destroyed, as Palestinians across historic Palestine (and all over the world) are arrested for dissent, as writers face censorship globally for speaking the truth of the genocide that is occurring, we must consider: if literature is your corner, what will you do to rid it of these violences? 

I myself struggle to find utility in the work I am capable of, in the face of genocide. Do I believe my writing is capable of changing anyone but myself? Reader, admittedly, I don’t; and so, I must learn new capacities. I have been lucky enough to cultivate a global community of Palestinian writers and allies whose work I do believe in, though. 

In this roundtable conversation conducted over email, I corresponded with Palestinian writers Samah Fadil, Priscilla Wathington, and Rasha Abdulhadi about the role of poetry in genocide, countering Zionist propaganda, and mobilizing our art into tangible action. 

In the few weeks since I sent these questions to my peers, there have been countless devastations: high-profile kidnappings and deaths, destructions of hospitals and historic sites, and nothing to recover the thousands and thousands of Palestinians still under the rubble. 

​​​​​​​Summer Farah: Since we’re all poets, I wanted to start with poetry. I’m drawn to this definition offered by Solmaz Sharif at a talk hosted by Washington University in St Louis: “Poetry is not an exercise in aesthetic pleasure. It is an opportunity to name, diagnose, and draw attention to actual violences that are occurring.” In an interview with Raja Shehadah at BOMB, Mahmoud Darwish said “[The Israeli Communist party] introduced me to the notion that poetry can be an instrument of change. I took this very seriously until I arrived at my own conclusion that poetry changes nothing… The only person it changes is the poet himself.“

So, I want to ask: what is the role of poetry in genocide?

Samah Fadil: This question reminds me of the call to action Rasha Abdulhadi sent to me and urged other writers to use: “Whatever sand you can throw on the gears of genocide, do it now.” Poetry is sand that can be thrown on the gears of genocide, so I agree with Solmaz—the aesthetic pleasure comes second. But, one must remember that sand is made up of trillions of particles of eroding rock. Poetry is sand but sand is not only poetry… Poetry is a tool that can be wielded by anyone—for good or bad, status or self, self or salve. In my experience, I can’t say that my poetry has changed anyone but myself, but when I think of all of the poets that have inspired me to reach for my pen, and who continue to do so, I’d like to think that in some way, we are all continuously changing with each other’s words.

The answer above was written before the recent targeted assassination of beloved Gazan poet Dr. Refaat Alareer, and feels especially haunting now. I wish more people knew of him and his work before he was martyred. I wish people knew the poets who are still breathing as much as they knew the ones who are not. But to go back to the question, what is the role of poetry in genocide? After seeing the literal hundreds of people around the world who translated Refaat’s poem “If I must die”, it’s a reminder to me that in our hundreds, in our millions, we are all Palestinian. My last interaction with Refaat was him asking me to send him a clearer image of my poem “lucid”. I was so incredibly honored he asked. I did, and I hope he got to read my words. I hope he enjoyed them. He is someone who held poetry very, very dear to his heart and someone who taught its revolutionary potential to his students. My role as a poet is to honor that legacy.

Rasha Abdulhadi: Writing can be propaganda, counterpropaganda, or distraction. It can be healing, or harm, or escape. These trinities are no more guaranteed to be comprehensive than a good/bad binary. I think Solmaz Sharif is right, that poetry offers us some particular “opportunities” and that we can use those opportunities to make invitations to readers, to editors, to other writers, to censors, to enemies, to the audiences of those who have declared themselves our enemies. I have certainly experienced poetry that changes the self, and some work I do write for this still-very-valuable purpose.

I think of the effects of writing in concentric circles: it certainly affects the writer first (and if it means nothing to me, why would I bother?), but I am also aware of it affecting any who read it, including slush readers who reject it. I cherish those rejections, and I certainly do send work that I wish for that sometimes-antagonistic first reader to encounter, even when I am certain work will be rejected from a venue in which I might never wish to be published except for the purposes of implicating them by association with Palestinians. I embrace that the expectation for poetry to be nice or mean nothing and change nothing may enable us to say and publish and distribute work that would be considered more volatile in other formats or venues. 

Priscilla Wathington: If you are a poet of conscience in this moment of genocide, this question must come up. Poetry is not a life-saving surgery. No matter how much we may repeat the metaphor, poetry is not water. It cannot write the bombs out of the sky. It cannot put back together the bodies of a loved one, or build a safe place for even a mouse to sleep in Gaza. But this is not to say that poetry or words in general are useless in a time of genocide. If words had no power to influence people’s feelings about the bombing of hospitals or the military detention of children, then Israeli forces would not be arresting poets and other writers. And more broadly, if books did not have the capacity to shift attitudes and open up new ways of seeing the world, then there would not be so many banned books. As much as poetry cannot be a replacement for other forms of action, such as calling our Congressional members here in the U.S., it can and should be an extension of our overall decolonial belief practices and commitments. 

Summer Farah: For the past two months—and 75 years, and more—we’ve been subjected to Zionist propaganda that ranges from the most vile, racist tropes towards absurd logical fallacies. I’ve really learned that propaganda does not have to be good, it just has to be there. 

As writers, how do we counter the efficiency of imperial propaganda? It seems so much more difficult to undo than to plant. 

RA: I look for counterpropaganda that speaks truth directly rather than debunking, that endless tail-chasing, exhausting busywork that would have us repeating the lie, wearing its groove so deep as we try to get the heavy truck unstuck from the mud. We need a tow, a plank wedged under the back wheels that turn. May we be fleas, porcupines, not countering overwhelming force head on but forcing them to address our endlessness, all our irritating smallness, close to the earth, close to the skin.

SF: I don’t know that I ever sit down and ask myself, “How can I, as a writer, counter the empire”. I live it in my daily life, and it comes through in my writing because it’s also part of who I am. The most inspiring thing I do is be authentic to myself. I never planned to write so much about Palestine and how fucking trapped I feel living in the imperial core, but it’s what’s been consistently coming out of me. When I put pen to paper and speak that truth, it’s the best way for me to counter whatever hasbara talking points are being spewed out that day. I use my words and my natural ability for storytelling, one I think that’s been gifted to me by my ancestors, as a way to counter the propaganda. Of course some people will just hate you no matter what. That’s not who I focus on. And honestly, I feel like their propaganda is getting weaker by the second.

PW: I agree with you both so much. We have to keep writing our truths, and our most brilliant, wild imaginings, in our own terms. As far as possible, we should not let any repressive systems set the terms for what our art or our lives can contain. 

Summer Farah: Rasha and Samah, the bios you’ve used in your recent publications ask for a call to action: “[The poet] is calling on you, dear reader, to join [them] in refusing and resisting the genocide of the Palestinian people…” Samah, you take this moment to connect Palestinian struggle with others globally. I’m thinking, too, of Priscilla, in a recent interview with NPR, you complemented your explanation of the “permit regime” with a poem, as a way in for the listener.

How best can we mobilize our art into action? How best can we use our writing to build with others? 

RA: Every point of contact is an organizing opportunity and a chance to inoculate against genocidal propaganda. I am unembarrassed. I will organize with customer service reps. My email signature is currently:

“If you and/or any of the folks you work with (or beyond) have a chance to listen to a podcast I was on Monday October 16th, that would mean a lot. I am making a steady practice of warmly inviting everyone I interact with to become more skillful in keeping Palestinians alive, here and in Palestine. Please share & discuss widely. A transcript & show notes with additional links is up now as well.”

I reply to every rejection to say thank you, and make sure they see that link. Many people have surprised me by replying with an acceptance of the invitation! Any place I’m invited must let Palestine in, whatever the reason they’ve invited me: Long Covid, disability justice, fiber arts/knitting/crochet, southern arts groups, grant makers. I will invite them to care and become more skillful in that care. I don’t argue, but there are many who might be ready to do something or know something, who might already suspect what they understand and could do, and will take a leap if that validation is reflected back to them by even one person: that their instincts toward life are correct, that their readiness to act and connect are welcomed.

SF: I talk nice.  For real though, I’m pretty good at simplifying complicated shit the average person might not know about, and keeping it conversational. No ill-will towards the Norman Finklesteins and the Noam Chomskys of the world, but I can connect with the average person on a way more personal and personable level than these older, white, sometimes well-meaning-but-sometimes-also-long-winded-academics. Talking nice is an art and will lead people to seek out your words in other forms. In my case, people hear me and end up seeking out my writing. So many people have come up to me in person or online and told me that I was able to get something to “click” in them when they heard me speak on a subject they didn’t know much about before. And my writing is extremely varied, if I do say so myself. I’ve written news articles, poetry, personal essays, viral tweets, whatever, about Palestine, and people from all types of organizations or institutions or just on their own have reached out to me because of it. So really it’s me who seeks to build with others through my writing, by inviting them in with my words, if that makes sense. 

PW: I suppose there is an almost unlimited way that I could answer the question about how we might mobilize our art into action. One way might be to use your poem as a fundraiser, as Aria Aber, Noor Hindi, and others have been doing. Another way might be to have things inside the text that point the readers out of it again. Instead of trying to hold the reader inside the poem’s world, you could try to send them outside the poem to go and engage with histories or ongoing atrocities. Another way might be to try and surprise a reader into recognizing you after they had decided not to. Or, maybe you want to engage speculatively in an impossible future, and give yourself that space to imagine everything as it could be. What’s important is the intentions, I think, and for the work to come out of a place of real investment, so that it shows up in the world with that rootedness in care and in a set of broader commitments.

Summer Farah: Cultural institutions, as well as other writers, often use the line of “Well, what can I do?” when pressured on their silence. Generously, I see an issue where so many believe they are expected to lead. Ungenerously, why would we want that from non-Palestinians? So: what are we asking for from both our colleagues and the institutions built on our creative labor? What minimum expectations for existing in these artistic spaces together are not being met, other than joining PACBI [Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel]? 

RA: Read, quote, teach, share the words of living Palestinians. Withdraw from places that benefit from or take a studied and calculated indifference to our spectacular annihilation. Do what Palestinians ask you to; stop trying to be clever or develop your own opinions about something you have spent no time studying, something you have no material stake in. If you have a material stake in Palestinian freedom: by all means speak and act clearly from that, broadcast that clarity wide and loud and elaborate it deeply. Believe in the meaning of your own life without thinking you must be a genius to matter—this is an imperial lie, a patriarchal lie, a capitalist lie, an ableist lie, a white supremacist lie, and only those who wish to support those violences benefit from you believing you have no power. Vajra Chandrasekera’s recent blog post—a second book announcement, of all unlikely places to find sincerity—is a must read on this topic, with searing clarity on the role of writers publishing and announcing their own work in the context of multiple ongoing genocides. 

SF: Literally could not have said it better than Rasha. Every single word, amplified times ten.

PW: For me, the minimum line is always rooted in human rights. If an institution can’t affirm that we are all deserving of clean water, food, and dignity, and cannot condemn the indiscriminate bombing of civilians and civilian infrastructure, then what “cultural” role do they have?  Culture is a celebration of people. It depends on people. What is a love of culture without a love of people? 

I find myself constantly re-assessing the parts of myself I feel are “allowed” in literary spaces. I see writers—established or otherwise—struggling with this compartmentalization, constantly falling for prestige. I appreciate when people are honest about these temptations. Does anyone have thoughts, guidance, offerings on the trappings of compartmentalization? Of this journey away from prestige? 

SF: Compartmentalization is a big big trap. I tried to do it for so long as a young, wide-eyed Black Palestinian J-School student in a sea of white peers and professors. Whenever “the Middle East” came up, “isn’t that whole place a little iffy?” was the level of nuance I was working with. I tapped out early on, and I also stopped mentioning I was Palestinian because it always brought unsolicited questions and comments from said white peers. But this was a disservice to myself.

I tried to keep the charade going when I entered a formal 9-5 newsroom-type job that quite literally ended up breaking me, both physically and mentally, especially when I had to work on content I did not approve of. Not going to lie, I was pushed out of these institutions by my own body. It rejected the shit after 5 years of laborious paper pushing and pathetic pizza parties. I had to find a way to make myself whole again. What you see now, the fact that you even know who I am, that you’ve read my words and even see me as a writer and poet… that is the direct result of me abandoning the idea of careerism within institutions and focusing on bringing together all the facets of me I was always told would never fit together. And not for nothing, but 90% of the literary orgs I once clamored to be a part of or published in have been totally silent during the genocide on Palestinians, so my respect for them has plummeted. The news orgs I once applied to be a part of but was met with radio silence all those years ago now ask me to go on their shows. They can keep asking, because I realize that they were never worth my time, care or energy. They want a mouthpiece, and they won’t find one here.

RA: Empire, capitalism, ableism, meritocracy, anti-Blackness, settler colonialism, cisheterosexism, more… all of these coercive “norms” come with their own recruitments and organizing projects, their own orientations and trainings. And their own incentives. There are many rewards for being digestible, a tasty morsel, another commodity for well-established markets. We should never underestimate the capacity of such systems to recycle even our best attributes or hardest held hurts into reasons for us to reinvest ourselves and everyone we love into the mouths of the death machines. This is what is means to be one of “the good ones,” to be “chosen.” I laugh when folks tell me they’re surprised I haven’t been “accepted” for one or another kind of opportunity, funding, or publishing or “nominated” for this or that award. Believe me, I am not at all surprised!

Summer, you’ve reminded me before of Zaina Alsous’s line: “I don’t know what they thought I was capable of; / I wish I was more capable of it” from “Violence” in A Theory of Birds. I wish for every one of us to become “more capable of it.”

Look, I don’t blame people for being confused about how to make a meaningful life—or what a meaningful life could even look like—much less how to understand their own power in this heavily weighted context where so much is set against us and kept from us. I don’t even necessarily fault folks for following the advice to “take the money and run” if that’s the option they have to survive. All of these institutions owe us reparations, but with blood money, the amount of money is never anywhere equal to the volume of blood. It’s very important, if you take the money: to Run, to Resist becoming a poster child or firewall for institutions that would elevate and save a few and reject so many others. I encourage us to be wary of survivals that depend on so much suffering, on extraction from others who are just as precarious as we are or even worse off. I would rather we keep our focus on making life with each other than appealing to the village gods of well-endowed institutions for ascension to the heavens that have been build with our bones.

PW: ​​​​​​​There’s a lot in that question so I will focus on the end of it, around prestige. There’s a tension in this question because people who are oppressed and marginalized are typically most in need of those high-prestige opportunities and funding in their immediate lives. And there is also a justice in seeing people who have typically been excluded getting those big opportunities.  So, I just want to name that. And at the same time, we have to really be careful about what an opportunity is asking us to be faithful to.

So I want to answer from both directions by saying we have got to keep building alternative platforms and opportunities that uplift marginalized folks. We need to sustain and take care of the spaces for us that already do exist. And at the same time, if we accept a high-prestige prize or opportunity, we have to do our best to move responsibly within that type of space, to try to leave it better and wider than we found it.

PW: I’ve got to start with Mosab Abu Toha, who has been arrested and bombed and has barely made it out of Gaza, to Egypt. He shouldn’t have to choose between life and his homeland. His recently published poem, “Obit,” is so stunning and haunting, and I hope it gives Americans pause, because it is our tax dollars that paid for the shrapnel and the bullets described in that poem. Recently, I have been reading Asmaa Azaizeh, who is both a poet and a journalist. She is based in Haifa, which I want to highlight because some 20% of Israel’s current population is actually Palestinian. Some of her poems have been translated into English, including by the phenomenal Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, so I encourage folks to look up her work. She is quite an acrobatic writer—I admire her leaps! And I bring up her craft because I want to point to her deftness and artistry. I want to keep insisting that Palestinian life deserves the chance to be as abundant and gorgeous as it wants to be. 

SF: The Institute for Palestine Studies is currently publishing an ongoing series called “Letters from Gaza: Collected, Submitted, and Translated Testimonies from the Ground.” There are over 20 testimonies so far, and Protean magazine has been republishing them as well.

RA: Anyone who is still alive. Anyone we can keep alive. Anyone reposted by other Palestinians. I’m so heartsick over how endangered our folks are and how hungry empire is to make us or them into superhumans, supercriminals, tragic heroes, museum exhibits, cover models, or numbers in unmarked graves. Catch me on another day and maybe I can answer this question more “strategically.” Today, my heart is in the rubble.

About the Writers

Samah Serour Fadil is calling on you, dear reader, to join her in refusing and resisting the genocide of the Palestinian people, the Sudanese people, the Congolese people, the Sahrawi people, the people of Tigray, and all oppressed peoples all over the world. Wherever you are, whatever sand you can throw on the gears of genocide, do it now. We can refuse with every breath, with every action. Resist. Resist. Resist.

Rasha Abdulhadi is calling on you—yes you, even as you read this—to renew your commitment to refusing and resisting genocide everywhere you find it. May your commitment to Palestinian liberation deepen your commitment to your own. May your exhaustion deepen your resolve and make you immovable. May we all be drawn irresistibly closer to refusals that are as spectacular as the violence waged against our peoples.

Priscilla Wathington is asking you to resist the lie that you are too helpless, or too busy, or too small to do anything. Take your small hand and your small voice and add it to this symphony against the genocide taking place in Gaza; and speak up not only about Gaza but also Congo, Sudan, your own backyard, and everywhere that humanity is at risk.

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