disrupting the fragile balance of this garden

metastasizing over roots and flowers

disquieting the lives well-led

she demands i uproot them

winnow out the unworthy

expel them from the earth

a compulsory task

she doesn’t know their secret

(or maybe she doesn’t care)

but i know–

i know every single seed

contains multitudes

golden threads 

braided across time–

a refrain of past lives

hidden treasure

some childish hope

disguised beneath

gentle armor

a wish released and sold

the bees agree!

flashes of gold

zipping toward the weeds

the very same

parts of a whole

i sit amongst my weeds

listen

for the whispers

of a thousand wishes

promised on the wind

Why does the Muslim and Arab community at Wellesley have to audition for empathy? Why, in a meeting between the administration and Wellesley Al-Muslimat, did Muslim students have to read out the death threats they had received for supporting Palestine to gain President Johnson’s sympathy? Why, after three Palestinian students were shot in Vermont, leaving one student partially paralyzed, do we still have to justify the very real danger of Islamophobia?

Considering that universities have already or are facing pressure to disband their chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), websites like Canary Mission put up the names, faces and employers of anti-Zionist students, and conservative activist groups have sent ‘doxxing trucks’ around Columbia and Harvard University, it’s a little difficult for us to give interviews on major news outlets talking about how Israel’s psychotic bombing of Gaza has made us feel.  

I find it confusing that we have to spell out our pain like we’re speaking to toddlers to gain a morsel of understanding from the administration, professors or fellow classmates. But maybe I should be more understanding. Maybe, after decades of seeing brutalized, brown bodies in the media, it’s easy to forget that we’re humans too.

Do you remember the photo of the drowned Syrian toddler lying face down in the sand? His name was Alan Kurdi and he was two and so small. Maybe you remember the photos of the horrific abuse of prisoners committed by US soldiers in Abu Ghraib prison. The humiliation of those prisoners is so sick and depraved it would be an insult to their memory for me to describe it here. Maybe you remember the photograph of Samar Hassan, a five-year-old Iraqi girl screaming, covered in her parents’ blood as US soldiers killed them in front of her. Maybe you remember the massive swath of tired, hungry bodies lining up to receive food at Yarmouk refugee camp. Maybe you remember the faces of the nameless women, men and children, searching for loved ones in rubble, cradling the bodies of their dead relatives or sitting shell-shocked on the ground.

Or maybe you don’t remember. Maybe it’s all pixels and soundwaves to you. You’ve seen Muslim and Arab suffering so often that you don’t think of us as people who are capable of experiencing pain. You think this is our way of life. To drown while seeking asylum, to starve in homes without running water, to be shot, beaten, assaulted, left in bloody pieces on the ground.

Why would Muslim and Arab students be upset about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza: the starvation, the lack of drinkable water, the lack of housing, the lack of sanitary care for women? Why would Muslim students be upset about the deaths of Palestinian children? Why would they be upset about the deaths of innocent men and women? Why would they be upset about genocide? This is just what their lives are like. They’re meant to suffer.

And just in case you see our suffering and think it’s inhuman, the media will convince you that we aren’t humans. We’re monsters. Our women are oppressed and our men are rapists. Many of those in the West calling for sympathy for Palestinians limit their focus to the women and children of Gaza. They won’t mention the fact that the men of Gaza, the men pulling children out from the ruins of recently bombed buildings and holding crying orphans in their arms, are heroes.

Sometimes, I call my parents and cry when I talk about how disgusted I feel witnessing Israel’s crimes against humanity in Gaza. They listen to me in a sad, weathered sort of silence. All they can say is that they’re sorry because they used to be like me, until decades and decades of witnessing the suffering in the Muslim and Arab world, of seeing people with their own names die in horrific ways, has made them numb. Sometimes, though, they see an image so heart-breaking or hear of an atrocity so evil that it crumbles the walls they’ve built up. And then they’re nearly crushed by the weight of all the pain they’ve witnessed, of seeing their homelands torn apart, their religion and their cultures twisted by the Western media into something vile.

I don’t want to live in a world where Muslim and Arab suffering is the norm. I don’t want to see my classmates have to break down into tears to gain sympathy or support from their administration. Muslim and Arab students shouldn’t need to justify our pain. It’s unfortunate, and quite frankly disgusting, that this even has to be said.

Notice something strange there? Who is condemned? Who committed atrocities against whom? Only Hamas. Contrastingly, the invisible boogey-man that commits violence against civilian Palestinians only gets “denounced.” Not condemned. 

But this villain isn’t invisible, nor is it a boogeyman. It is the State of Israel. And pro-Palestinian students on this campus are sick and tired of vague references to Palestinian suffering when they are accompanied by the intentional omission of the perpetrator of said suffering. And make no mistake: Palestinians are suffering significantly more than Israelis. Over 20,000 Palestinians have been slaughtered as a result of Israeli attacks since Oct. 7, and many consider this an underestimate, with inevitable deaths from starvation and lack of supplies contributing to a greater death toll. 

The writers of this piece also add in this painfully unaware statement: “Many of our campus siblings failed to condemn the violent, inhumane acts committed by Hamas.” Yet, the writers themselves did not condemn Israel’s actions. 

Why is it only pro-Palestinians who have to condemn? Why is it only Muslims who have to condemn? Brown people, who have to condemn? Arabs who have to condemn? Why is it only the indigenous side — the side without white, colonial superpowers behind it — that is consistently put into a submissive position of needing to condemn whenever they enter a discourse about their oppression? The writers of that Letter to the Editor did not condemn Israel. The only reason any Wellesley student is hesitant to condemn Hamas is because 99.99% of the time, they are speaking with somebody who demands condemnation but cannot condemn Israel themselves. Their hypocrisy does not go unnoticed. For an entire paragraph, they detail all of the supposed ways in which Hamas has wronged the Palestinian population, claiming that their taxes “crippled” the Palestinians. These writers had the audacity to condemn Hamas for not building “supportive infrastructure,” like hospitals and mosques, in Gaza. Hey geniuses: Israel would have bombed that infrastructure! That’s precisely what they’re doing now.  

Alongside this hypocrisy is a negligent hastiness in labeling anything that contradicts their position “antisemitic.” They state, “Zionism, an essential tenet of Judaism, is the belief that Jews have the right to self-determination and statehood in their ancestral homeland of Israel. Denying Jews this right is antisemitic.” This statement claims that anyone who is pro-Palestine is antisemitic. Following this logic, all 20,000+ slaughtered Palestinians, thousands of whom are children, are bigoted anti-Semites because they denied Israeli Jews the right to take their land and homes and murder them with impunity. But you know what is most ironic? Arabs are semites. The writers are willing to label anything as antisemitic except the murder of over 20,000 Arabs, who are, by definition, semites. 

“We wish more of our siblings would have expressed their support by condemning the terrorism perpetrated by Hamas against Israeli civilians.” You did not condemn Israel. You are not in a position to ask your siblings to condemn anything when you have failed to do so. 

“We hope you will join us in condemning acts of terrorism and hatred in all forms.” You have not condemned acts of terrorism and hatred in all forms. You are attempting to pull the wool over everybody’s eyes and make them think you are just because you claim you are. It is, in fact, YOUR silence that speaks volumes.