Where We Are Now Is Laying the Groundwork For What Is to Come

Our identities are ever-changing due to the accumulation of experiences, thoughts, and interactions with the world around us. Some years ago, my mother showed me a diary she had written when she was 19. She had started writing it at the beginning of the new year, and the revolution had succeeded at the end of the year. By that time, based on the evidence of her diary’s content, she was a different person; she was a revolutionary. She stopped caring about the small details of everyday life, petty interactions with friends and family, or what she had to eat for dinner. Instead, she expressed opinions and concerns about the rights of workers, women, and students; she wanted to know what it means to be truly free. All of her major life decisions following that year have traces of that experience, her work, her marriage, and how she raised my brother and me.

I wrote my last editorial at the end of 2022 while Iran was witnessing a major uprising for ‘liberation’ under a slogan called Jin Jiyan Azadi (Woman, life, freedom), which had originated within women-led Kurdish movements. Today, writing this editorial for our third print volume, is the 176th day after the escalation of the horrifying genocide of Palestinians in Gaza by the settler-colonial, apartheid state of israel. Since then, we’ve seen the pro-Palestine movement ever louder, stronger and more determined than before, taking over public and private spheres—well, at least some of them.

Finland has been a peculiar spot to join the movement from. Despite the tireless efforts of different organisations and activists, the number of people taking to the streets hasn’t exceeded a few thousand, and that is despite the protests being the mildest and least disruptive one can experience anywhere (safer spaces guidelines are even read before the start of demonstrations for some strange reason). The Finnish state has shown complete disregard and moved on to finalising a €317 million deal with israel, sending humanitarian donations to them, and even temporarily freezing support from UNRWA. The art institutions that we’ve been adamantly hopeful of changing either remained silent, issued infuriating both-sidist statements of solidarity or just asked for a ceasefire alone, not an end to the occupation nor an end to apartheid, no call for boycotts, divestments, or sanctions.

Some months ago, I joined a 3-hour sit-in for Palestine at Helsinki’s railway station, taking over the space right before people’s entrance to escalators that would take them to the metro, making sure we were disruptive and visible enough for everyone to take notice. Yet jarringly, I saw many people not taking even a glance, not bothering to remove their headphones, just quickly passing us by and going about their day. It’s unsettling how freely people remove themselves from situations in which they and their states are far from innocent. The violence that is at the core of this indifference is rooted in an unapologetic white supremacist belief that, contrary to its favourite slogan, “All Lives Matter," is convinced that some people are insufficiently deserving of a good life, and since that is the case, they are entitled to those people’s lands, resources and culture.

Outside of Finland, in Iran, I received a barrage of sarcastic remarks from friends and family, questioning why I seemed to care more about the Palestinian struggle than the Iranian one. This lack of empathy is often blamed on the state’s disengious co-optation of solidarity with the Palestinian struggle, which would not be completely untrue if the “persian” majority of the country weren’t deeply racist towards Arabs, Afghanis and generally any living organism to whom we can afford to feel superior to.

While in Tehran, I met G, an artist whose work and thoughts I admire. She was excited to tell me about her experience participating in the pro-Palestine movement in the Netherlands and how impressed she was at the surprising turnout of the Dutch people who previously had little idea of the Palestinian struggle. To encourage that presence, she had the idea of making propaganda-esque imagery out of the people she had encountered. She also told me about events she’s held in Tehran to open up public and private spaces to discuss the idea of Palestine and how it’s relevant to us, and how that was met with an enthusiastic response from those who attended. I didn’t get as excited about her ideas. Somehow, it seemed awful to me to rejoice at the idea of a few white people and Iranians transforming their narcissistic political identities and learning/unlearning via a genocide. I made sure to remind G that these transformations rarely stick around; after a ceasefire is reached, the same people will go home and gradually forget about everything they learned, that these newly-formed dissident identities are borrowed at best, and that we shouldn’t rely our hard-earned hopes on these people and negotiate with their deep-seated liberal mindset that does little but slow down our movements.

G was not happy with my response. She said that although she understands my pessimism is a survival tool in navigating treacherous gaps between illusions of hope and grim reality, I need to know that ultimately there is not much difference between my contemptuous approach and that of the whiteness I complain about. I too am measuring my supposedly revolutionary capacity based on a loss-and-profit ratio. After all, what remains of our revolutionary politics if it is hollowed out of any sense of generosity and compassion?

I had to sit with that conversation for a bit. Had my pessimism been a temporary solution for dealing with having to live with the shame of watching the daily horrors inflicted by racist, zionist, imperialist, colonialist and capitalist ideologies? And isn’t it true that our movements against them have seen more setbacks than achievements? What does that shame accomplish apart from alienating us from the collective political sphere into a personal one where we merely resign to creating an illusion of self-progress? Failing to interrogate the social and historical conditions that reinforce that comforting scepticism. There is, after all, less complexity in life in a world where the sufferings and crises of colonial modernity are naturalised and depoliticised and it’s there that we allow our pessimism to be the reason we root for the failure of people, their transformation and their efforts for change. In that light, how can we adopt an expression of pessimism that sees suffering and our unavoidable limitations on the one hand while also motivating a hopeful critical position that stands firmly against oppression, anywhere and for anyone?

Finland, as I said, is a peculiar spot to join the movement from. Things move slowly and undramatically, which perhaps gives you the chance to see what happens around you rather clearly. On October 17th, I was invited to a WhatsApp group made by a very newly formed intersectional organisation called Sumud that works to end israeli apartheid, occupation and colonialism and to realise Palestinian human and political rights. The purpose of the group was to encourage active participation in organising demonstrations and events calling for a free Palestine. Since then, 500 people have joined. Everyone has to introduce themselves upon joining. I’ve read many accounts of people with no background in activism, having just learned about the Palestinian cause, wanting desperately to be of some use to the movement, to find others who are as devastated by them, and to not go through this moment alone. Six months later, many are still active, showing up every Saturday at 15 at the Railway Square in minus-degree weather. I think about every single person (white and Iranian included) I know who hasn’t and will not allow their life to go back to normal. I think about students who’ve resisted their universities against censorship, even succeeding in getting them to cease exchange with israeli universities. I think about every immigrant in the police state of Germany risking arrest and deportation but still not giving up.

Where we are now and who we are becoming is laying the groundwork for what is to come, and what is to come is an all-encompassing will to collectively learn from and imagine alternative ways of conceiving active ‘by any means’ resistance that liberates us from every form of oppression that is perceived as ineradicable. We’ll come to see, without a doubt, in our lifetime, a free Palestine, from the river to the sea.