Last year, I gave a talk at Dar al-Kalima University in Bethlehem, Palestine. The title of my presentation was “When the Oppressed Become Oppressors.” A few days later on October 7, war broke out.

A year has passed and the war continues. The innocent continues to perish as the violence is exported beyond Gaza.

A year before my presentation, I was honored to spend several weeks at Dar al-Kalima, where I premiered my own documentary, “Trails of Hope and Terror.” During that time, I learned about this institution and the unbelievable work they do. More importantly, I saw first-hand the plight of the Palestinians and the daily injustices and indignities they faced.

Dar al-Kalima is an accredited institution of higher education located in the West Bank that focuses on the performing arts, visual arts, and cultural heritage. Such institutions are dangerous for settler colonialists because they debunk the Promised Land narrative, which spiritually justifies land theft and genocide.

Through the arts, consciousness is raised about the indigenous population, those whose identity is tied to the land that has witnessed generations of their births.

Dar al-Kalima is a shining star in Bethlehem! So imagine my shock and disgust when I heard that this institution of higher education was attacked because they dared to engage in freedom of expression.

On September 16th,^, Israeli forces attacked the university. This was an attack on Palestinian art and culture.

Soldiers aligned and under the protection of the global empire, did not find swords, just pens.

No guns, just paintbrushes.
No bombs, just cameras.
No military boots, just ballet shoes.
No weapon-making machines, but machines that made jewelry.

Instead of terrorists, they were confronted by dancers and singers.

Fortunately, no one was physically hurt, although the emotional wounds may be more difficult to heal. Bullets rained down on the university, destroying numerous panes of glass and security cameras, sending students and staff scurrying for cover.

Remember, the school is located in the West Bank, miles from the military operations in Gaza. But the attack was an attempt to silence dissent, to infuse fear among the population.

I reached out to the president of the university, Mitri Raheb, who told me: “What we are experiencing in Palestine is settler colonialism, Israeli settlers who want to take all the land and push the native Palestinians out. To that end, they exercise necropolitics, a policy that brings death and destruction. They do that in Gaza on a larger scale, in the West Bank on a different scale, in Lebanon in a third fashion. They utilize the latest AI technology in their wars and they can afford all of this because of the uninterrupted support from the so-called democratic West. Yet, we will not give up, not surrender to the power of death and destruction. This is our promise to our people.”

Such acts of aggression are the norm, not the exception. Targeting the cultural heritage of the indigenous population is in line with the colonial settler’s handbook, which seeks to obliviate the cultural memory of the original people of the land so that it could be replaced with the constructed memory of the colonizer. Such acts of terror are calculated.

If life for the Palestinians becomes so difficult that living on their land becomes too dangerous and too unbearable, they might simply leave and go elsewhere. Thus, contributing to the mythology that the Palestinians have willingly abandoned their properties rather than the truth of them being driven out. And once they are gone, their land can be confiscated.

I am tired

. . . tired of U.S. politicians trying to outdo each other as to who would be more subservient to a foreign state so as not to fall foul of AIPAC.

. . . tired of talks about the fantasy of a two-state solution when illegal settlements have created a one-state reality.

. . . tired of evangelicals providing full-throttle support for the State of Israel while maintaining the apocalyptic theology that all Jews will be thrown into the lake of fire for rejecting Jesus.

. . . tired of how a Zionist political movement re-signified a term – antisemitism – which always meant the holocaustic hatred of Jews, to now include opposition to a political ideology.

. . . tired of the cowardice of good people who see the injustices faced by the Palestinians but choose silence in fear of being labeled an antisemite.

. . . tired.