Pearls & Pigs & Palestine

We've now spent nearly two years trying to make others understand why the Palestinian genocide is about abuse, oppression, injustice, evil, and has no "two sides".

We've done this by comparing it to abusive relationships, to murder, to the Holocaust, to the South African apartheid, to the genocide of Native peoples in "North America", to narcissistic abuse, to Jim Crow laws, to slavery. We've emptied out every metaphor-weapon we could think of. We've come at it from this angle and from that. Only to realise that the people who don't care or see the truth of Palestine, also don't genuinely understand care about those other injustices either. Not really. The problem doesn't lie in linking Palestine to an injustice they believe. The problem genuinely lies in their apathy towards injustice. And it's time we started getting honest about that.

Palestine isn't one item on the menu of social justice issues that simply "doesn't qualify" like the rest do, doesn't quite measure up to the other items. Palestine isn't an issue in which people who generally deeply care, and are actual allies to victims of other types of injustice, simply can't get on board with this particular issue. (The unspoken conclusion there being that this issue just isn't as clean-cut, isn't as clear, has more grey zones, is "complicated".) No. The truth is actually, what you're seeing around you, is a revelation of people's characters. Where they really stand. Not where they say they stand. Their response to Palestine is a revelation of where their heart truly lies on all those other matters too. And that is chilling. And clarifying.

People like to think that they're in the right and that they'd "do the right thing"; that they'd be on the right side of history. But Palestine is like a flashlight that lights up the people in our lives who really, deeply care about justice. It also clearly shows us those who don't. Those who were never allies. Those who were merely performative allies. Those who don't even grasp what allyship to the oppressed is. Palestine shines a spotlight on those who really do stand with the oppressed, who really understand the dynamics of abuse, oppression, racism and systemically inflicted suffering, whether inflicted by an individual, an institution, a system, a government.

Have you notice how the people who are genuine allies in the resistance against systemic racism, capitalism, white supremacy, western colonialism, ecocide, ableism, and misogyny, also care about Palestine? That is no coincidence.

But this is what is currently happening in many of our lives: we are continuing to beg harmers to stop hitting us. So many have continued to argue and explain and explain and explain the utter evil of the white colonial project called "Israel", why it cannot exist, why the Palestinians are 100% victims. People are explaining themselves into an early grave over this. And this over-explaining - obsessive explaining even - is something which people who experience abuse (interpersonal abuse, racial abuse, etc.) know all too well. That "explaining yourself in good faith", spending your energy, your time, your words, explaining yourself into a stupor of self-doubt, the feeling of talking to a wall, spending yourself into exhaustion because you assume that people's ignorance, people's silence, people's coldness is done out of a lack of understanding. You are projecting your character and integrity unto other people.

This push to explain is not lost on me. As an educator I fall into this trap all the time. I ache to educate. I get it: you want to help them, enlighten them, liberate them. You think that if you can just find the right switch, the right button, the right words, you will flick on their empathy. Their racial bias will fade away, and they'll suddenly wake up and realise that they're wrong. That they've been horribly wrong all this time and tomorrow they're going to start posting about Palestine and marching and boycotting. The problem is, you're functioning in good faith. But they aren't.

Any good therapist of abuse victims will tell them at some point that they need to stop assuming that if they only explain things enough, or in just the right way, then it'll finally click, and the people who are denying their abuse, inflicting or enabling their abuse, will finally, finally come to their senses. They will apologise, they will change, they will admit to their wrongs.

That doesn't happen.

That activity is just begging for people to love you, to do the right thing, to treat you as a person. But just like you're making choices, they are making choices too. And it's not up to you to save people from the consequences of their choices.

Some of us have to start admitting to ourselves - to find some way to accept - that certain people will never see. They don't want to. The might not be able to.

This is not to say that we stop advocating. We will never be silent about our Palestinian brothers and sisters. We fight, we shout, we educate for them. But it is to say that you and I have to make decisions about where, and on whom, we are going to expend our energy. An already depleted, stretched energy, drained by the trauma of witnessing a genocide. The painful truth is: not everyone is worth an equal part of your time, and effort. Not everyone is worth any of your time and effort. At some point, you have to call it.

That person whom you've been going round and round and round with about Palestine, who simply won't listen or see (yeah, that person!), you need to accept that you might not be the one who gets through to them. It's possible that no-one will ever get through to them.

Spend more time on your allies. Spend more emotional labour on those who need us. Create and populate community. Direct your efforts in wise and discerning ways. This will not only develop you as a person, it will help you grow in healthy boundary setting, it will massively improve your mental health, lessen your mental load, and it will also make you a more effective ally in this fight. Don't throw your strength into black holes that devour everything you give us, but into which all light and life disappears.

And I already hear the protests rising like a wave... because they rise in me too. "But... but we can't give up on people! At some point we were ignorant about Palestine too! We have to keep trying! That isn't the Christian thing to do! What about grace!?"

Firstly, I would ask you: "Yes, but when you started glimpsing the Palestinian fight for freedom, didn't you start digging deeper? Didn't you take hours out of your time to learn, listen, research, seek the truth? Is that how they are responding?"

Secondly... you think it isn't the "Christian thing do?"

Let's turn our eyes to Jesus...

Because Jesus talked about this dynamic to his disciples. He talked about pig and pearls. Even God himself taught that sometimes we have to make the decision to stop throwing valuable, precious things at creatures who don't even know that a pearl has any value. After all, what is a pearl necklace to a pig?

Let's be abundantly clear: This is not about deciding whether or not there is hope for another person. It is however about deciding how you are going to be a steward of your limited time and energy. Because that is a real responsibility we've been given by our Creator. Turn it towards wise investments. Walk in the light. Those who are seeking the light and truth and justice will seek you out. They will be looking for it. Don't burn yourself out by screaming at people who would have also been silent and enabling of the Holocaust, of slavery, of apartheid. Run towards those who love the light. Run after the Spirit and wherever he leads you.

You don't even have to "give up" on people.

You just have to release yourself from the unrightful responsibility of saving them.

Because you can't do that.