October 7: A History in Threads

What follows is the final installment of ‘October 7: A History in Threads,’ which connects the present to the past 141 years of Zionism and Israel’s occupation of Palestine. Please go here to see all of the 11 threads in this series that includes embroidered portraits of the ongoing Palestinian struggle for liberation.

According to professor Joseph Massad, “European Christian colonization of [Palestine] throughout much of the 19th century was the prelude to Zionist Jewish colonization at the end of it… By the 1850s, Palestine’s population was under 400,000 people, including about 8,000 Jews.”

As Israeli historian Ilan Pappé says, It was in the year 1882 — “the date of the first Zionist colony in Palestine” — that the settler colonization of Palestine began. Thirty-five years later, on November 2, 1917, UK’s foreign secretary, Arthur James Balfour completely changed the face of historic Palestine with the stroke of a pen by issuing the infamous “Balfour Declaration,” which favored the establishment in Palestine “of a national home for the Jewish people.”

Pappé tells us that soon after the 1967 war, defense minister Moshe Dayan opened the West Bank to Israelis for settler tourism: “Our guides were from the ‘Israel Exploration Society,’ founded in 1913 in an attempt to substantiate the Zionist claim for Palestine with archaeological finds.With such tour guides, you see what allegedly had been there thousands of years ago, but you do not see the present. You gaze at ancient ruins while ignoring the humanity around them. The early Zionists, pre-state, were taken on a similar tour upon their arrival to the ‘land without people.’”

Only a settler Zionist, head full of phantom ideas, could lay claim to a “land without people” while surrounded by the people of that land.

And only a settler Zionist backed by US arms could do this to one of their own, and then blame Hamas for it…

… or this to a beloved Palestinian educator…

… or this to the niece of 22-year-old Palestinian journalist and commentator Abubaker Abed…

… or this to the library of a Palestinian writer & poet…

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… or this to a Palestinian toddler…

… or this to the resistance fighter Yahya Sinwar…

… or this to a Palestinian prisoner…

…who was gang raped by a group of reservists in the infamous Sde Teiman detention camp in the Negev desert, east of the Gaza Strip, prompting this year’s “right to rape” riots in which Israeli protesters, politicians and TV commentators defended the right of soldiers to rape Palestinian prisoners in detention.

On November 13, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor released an infographic that included a host of shocking statistics. Since the start of the war on Gaza, the Israeli military has engaged in a scorched earth policy, completely destroying “the strip’s civilian infrastructure, property and essential buildings,” including 845 mosques, 3 churches, and 203 heritage sites. 90% of hospitals, 74% of the buildings, and 85% of the schools and universities have been destroyed or damaged.

Furthermore, 90% of the population has been forcibly displaced, violently driven to “relocate in schools and makeshift tents.”

At least 52,030 Palestinians have been killed, according to Euro-Med, with 33% of the casualties being children and 21% women. And of 46,410 civilians killed, 190 of the casualties were journalists, and 2,313 were healthcare professionals, including 83 doctors.

Out of the 108,320 Palestinians injured by Israeli attacks, “several thousand have suffered amputations or permanent impairments, with over 10,000 children losing at least one leg.”

To make matters worse, adds Euro-Med, “97% of the per capita share of the water has decreased due to the extensive destruction of water infrastructure; [and] 96% of the population face high levels of acute food insecurity. Around 100 Palestinians, including 42 children, have died due to severe malnutrition.”

According to HuMedia, the most dangerous place in the world to be a child is the Gaza Strip, where, among other horrors, 17,000+ children have been killed by Israel since October 7; 90% suffer from severe hunger, and 1 million are in dire need of mental health support.

Reporter Abubaker Abed—who, in the face of a Zionist genocide that has engulfed him and his people (a holocaust supported by Western governments, especially the United States), has been taking care of a yellow rose bush, among other plants—told The Electronic Intifada in an April 27 interview, “This is our yellow rose [and] we see hope through it. Despite the destruction, despite the truly unbearable circumstance we are living under at the moment, we still seek out hope [and] we see hope in you.”

I later asked Abubaker to elaborate a little on the situation on the ground in Palestine, and the role of the West in stoking this genocide with no end in sight.

Q: Abubaker, what are your earliest memories of your family under the siege? And what did your parents do for a living?

It has been all wars since 2008. It was a normal life where we would wake up, have our breakfast, and go to school. But at any time, you could expect a war to rage on. It’s just like this. My mom is a housewife. My dad is an art teacher at UNRWA.

Q: What is your message to the governments of the most powerful countries in the western world who have done nothing to hold Israel and the United Staes accountable for this genocide happening in clear view of the world in real time?

My message is, I am not a party to this war, and you’ve forced me to dream to live, while you and your sons and daughters live to dream. You’ve forced hell on me, and this is something I’ll never forget or forgive you for, no matter what you do in the future. You killed my friend and my aunt’s family and forced this horror upon me. Every single moment will never fade away from my mind. It pains me that my biggest dream has become a cup of clean water. This is a symptom of your barbarity.

Q: How, in your view, has the mainstream media and the so-called international community failed you and your people?

In every way. They’re paid propagandists. What they do is just dehumanize us as Palestinians. I’ll never forget these people, who I call “linguistic criminals.” Just robotized journalists who’ve remained silent and never shown Palestinian journalists or people support. They were afraid of being humans, and that’s why they will remain “cheap” for all eternity, just as they preferred money and sold their humanity.

Q: Do you believe that one day the Israelis and their children will be haunted by what they have done?

I never wished and will never wish hardships for children. Children are the birds of the world. If they have a good environment they’ll be educated. I wish eternal peace, ease and comfort for all the people around the world. But again, there’s no such thing as an “Israeli.” Israel is a colonial state that has expelled Palestinians from their lands. And the children of Israel will someday understand that their grandparents were just murderous and vile. I believe they will be haunted. The day of tasting what has been inflicted upon us will come to them. And it’ll be unprecedented.

Q: And what do you have to say to people who insist on asking, “Well, do you condemn Hamas?”

Regardless of political affiliations, do you really condemn someone who defends you and has your back against a terrorist state? Israel has been butchering, dehumanizing, torturing, and bombing us for 76 years. And it has really imposed a strict siege on us in Gaza for 17 years. In this context, where does this question fit? It’s incredibly enraging that people are trying to justify Israel’s genocide by asking such silly questions.

Q: In light of Donald Trump’s victory, what is your message to the Democratic Party and the people who voted for Kamala Harris?

I don’t have trust in you. I am sure you’ll continue the legacy of genociding us. I don’t care about the U.S. administrations. But I do care about its human and noble people.

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Joseph Massad said the following in 2008, and it remains true today: “Palestinians have resisted and resist the Nakba with steadfastness and a refusal to leave their lands… While land acquisitions started in the 1880s and the en masse theft of the country occurred in 1948, Israel has still not been able to take over the entire land… [and] while Israel has used this situation to project itself as a victim of its own victims who refuse to grant it legitimacy to victimize them, Israel understands not only in its unconscious but also consciously that its project [of the Nakba] will remain reversible.”

The holocaust that is going on in Gaza didn’t start on October 7, 2023, when Hamas launched “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.” A century-and-a-half-long thread connects us to the origins of that day. A thread that was wound up in a messy clump of  Zionist occupation, siege, death, destruction, torture, displacement and ruin. This ball held within it an indigenous struggle that on that October morning finally breached a hole, and Gaza’s resistance fighters broke free from their prison, out of the clump, and carried out a successful military operation. As pointed out by Asa Winstanley’s groundbreaking reporting for The Electronic Intifada on the first anniversary of the breakout, “Al-Aqsa Flood was the first time in history that Palestinian armed groups were able to retake Palestinian territories lost since 1948, however briefly.”

Through these threads, I have sought to make the point that October 7 is not separate from this ball of loose threads; it’s the thread that got away and might just bring down Zionism and the military occupation once and for all, Insha’Allah. Whether through Refaat Alareer’s Expo marker, or martyr Yahya Sinwar’s stick, or Abubaker’s hope-giving yellow rose, occupied Palestine is sending us a clear message that we need to heed. We — the privileged west — must not stop exposing our government’s complicity in this genocide. Abubaker and Aylool and all of Palestine are counting on us.

Zionism will be defeated. Palestine will be free.

‘October 7: A History in Threads’ is inspired by Tatreez which is an ancient art of Palestinian folk embroidery. There is a stunning film directed by Carol Mansour titled Stitching Palestine that you can watch at Solidarity Cinema.