I Don't Want to Be Civil Anymore

Cover art by Fuad Alymani

Imagine someone telling you they felt nothing on 9/11. No horror, no fear, no grief or compassion. They simply watched the burning towers from a balcony in New York, unmoved. How would you feel about this person?

When I read this scene in a novel for a transatlantic literature class I was surprised, but not for the reasons one may think. The insensitivity of this character didn’t repulse me, nor did I question his humanity. Rather, I felt worried for the author. What are the repercussions of writing a scene like this? Won’t this anger the readers? I asked my professor these very questions the next time we met. 

She smiled at me before she spoke - a smile that told me I belonged here, that gently pushed back against the voice in my head calling me an imposter. It was because of that smile, I think, that I was able to remember her response three years later. That and my obsessive note-taking. 

“This absolutely will anger some readers,” she said in a tone that wasn’t regretful, but flippant, excited even. Almost like my little brother responds when I threaten to tell on him for misbehaving, as if to say: who cares? “What does it reveal that they were angered by this?” she asked, “and what would it mean if this writer made the conscious decision to not write this scene?”  

Who cares?

I cared, during my first five months of grad school. I cared so much about the possible anger of my audience that I betrayed my own. I lived in Palestine for six years before returning to the United States to study. For six years I knew only Arab faces, the Arabic tongue, and the Palestinian culture and decolonial struggle. I didn’t have to think twice before entering a room and saying Assalamu Alaikum. I didn’t leave a store or classroom without saying Yateek Ilafya. I didn’t have to feel that I betrayed my language with an inadequate explanation of how this means God bless you, but also so much more. I didn’t bat an eye when the person sitting next to me in the seven-passenger taxi asked Allah to “torture them” while we scrambled for our green ID cards, rushing to hand them to the impatient Israeli soldier at the window. 

Yet in those first months in my American classrooms, I was consistently over-thinking, hyper-alert and self-contradictory. I was too focused on the structures that told me that I did not belong, that my seat at the table was conditional upon being a good “other.” Soon, however, I realized that I could exist within those Western hegemonic structures while simultaneously dismantling and disrupting them. 

Truth is, regardless of why the character in the novel didn’t react, I understood the act of non-reaction itself. I understood not reacting to hegemonic pain. You see, the man sitting next to me buried his twelve-year-old son after an Israeli soldier shot him in the head at point-blank range. His big brother is serving his seventeenth year in an Israeli prison. The small plot of land his father left him was stolen by settlers. Then, just last week, he was herding his sheep when settlers unleashed their dogs and cheered them on as they ripped into his herd. 

Can you tell this man not to be angry? Can you tell him to be civil in the face of an Israeli soldier?

The fundamentals of civility do not serve this man and others like us. They were not made for the wretched of the earth. Civility is the oppressor’s way of policing our behavior. It keeps us docile in the shackles of structures that were never built for us. 

We saw this during the protests over the murder of George Floyd in the summer of 2020, when news outlets and politicians condemned Black people’s violent reactions. Activists and allies took to social media to demand: Do not tell Black people how to react. 

We saw this when Israel launched heavy airstrikes on Gaza, the world's largest open-air prison, in May 2021 - not to mention every bombardment since 2008. Western liberals and Zionists alike criticized Palestinian resistance groups for launching rockets into Israel. Palestinians demanded: Do not tell a colonized people how to react. 

We see this today as the settler colony of Israel wages a genocidal war on Gaza. With the sounds of bombs and anguished cries in the background, and with debris and dust clouding the skies, Palestinians in Gaza record videos for us to bear witness to this horrifying injustice. “Don’t stop posting! Show the world! Spread our voices! Look!” 

Just look. 

Tearful and ashamed, we honor their requests. We post eyewitness testimonies - interviews, photos and videos – as Instagram accounts are shadowbanned and TikTok accounts are deactivated. Images of bloody Palestinian corpses and videos of rescuers digging mangled bodies out from under the rubble are not palatable for viewers: they are too violent. We are invited to speak on news channels, but we refuse to condemn Hamas. When we highlight our right to resistance, or if our tone betrays anger, our segments are pulled: they are condoning violence. Our language is policed: Zionism, white supremacy, and settler colonialism are not acceptable terms. They inspire antisemitism and, thus, are violent. Celebrities and influencers with large platforms who do decide to speak out make sure to first and foremost to condemn all violence and end with a prayer for peace. Meanwhile, our death toll mounts. Do not tell a dying people how to react.  

In Palestine and in other resistance struggles, violence is lamented as an innate attribute of the subaltern, juxtaposed against the supposed peacefulness of the status quo. Our inability to react peacefully against oppression becomes proof of our developmental failure. We failed their gracious attempts to civilize us. 

But this failure is our success, a refusal to capitulate to Western ways of knowing that have relegated us to the subordinate position of every binary: Modern/backward, cultured/savage, peaceful/violent, civil/uncivil. 

I wish I had accepted incivility as a form of resistance sooner. In my second semester of grad school, we read books by writers from Mexico, Russia, Zimbabwe, the United States and Pakistan; books that questioned the ideological integrity of the global system. During a class discussion on what constitutes a nation, I spoke about Palestine and how the idea of nationhood was critical to the decolonization of the land and people. In response to my comment, a fellow student – let’s call him John – confidently posited that nationhood is just an abstract concept, created as a result of arbitrary borders drawn to separate spaces and people. He insisted that if people overcame the concept of nationhood and simply spoke to each other, their similarities would surely overcome “conflict.”

I didn’t hear any of the other comments. Instead, I sat in silence, dumbfounded, trying to control my anger. For thirty minutes I policed myself in silence, reminding myself that this was a civil debate. When I was finally able to, I began to speak, my professor offering me another one of her encouraging smiles and nodding in what I could have sworn was relief.

My face reddened with emotion as I pushed through stutters, fidgets, and sweat. Somewhat comforted by my professor's warm gaze, I met John’s eyes as I spoke. 

My mouth said: colonized people uphold nationalism because it’s their only hope for a life free from colonialism. 

My heart said: you casually trivialize an entire people’s collective trauma and suffering. You are a white man, you are privileged, you live in the US, and your tax dollars fund the weapons used to massacre and occupy Palestinians. To you, nationhood is abstract because you do not face constant erasure. Your idea of the nation is what this neo-colonial country has indoctrinated you with since grade school: blind patriotism, freedom as a military export, and the declaration that all men are created equal–unless you aren’t. This nation has failed. But don’t tell colonized people that nationhood is abstract, not when they are still fighting for self-determination. Are our martyrs abstract? 

Nationhood is how we preserve ourselves. 

My mouth continued to speak: It’s not about our similarities as people. It’s about the social, economic, and political power imbalance between the colonizer and the colonized. We can’t praise trivial commonalities and dismiss the inequalities.

My heart said: Are we supposed to bond over TV shows? Over hummus and falafel? Will food and pop culture liberate Palestine? 

It reminds me of this infuriating phrase, spray painted on the apartheid wall in Bethlehem: Make hummus not war. I imagine it was written by the hand of a foreign tourist, there to snap some pictures in front of the wall, caption them with words about both sides and peace and love; vapid humanism masquerading as solidarity. Does Israel know that Gaza’s children also bleed red? Settler-colonialism and humanism are mutually exclusive. The very nature of the former excludes the latter. We are, by design and in our daily realities, not equal. There is little that making hummus can change about that. 

It took four years not only to articulate what my heart said to me that day but to change my entire approach to writing about Palestine. In my original comments, I policed myself into a language and tone that was concise and level-headed. I no longer police myself. I hold space for anger, sarcasm and condescension, not just in my heart but also in my words. This authenticity might isolate and insult some readers.

But remember: who cares? 

I will not carry the labor of, in the words of Toni Morrison, making our subjugation palatable to those in a position to alleviate it. That our own words are contingent on the feelings of the reader from the global north is a testament to the colonial vestiges in not only our thinking but our very being. If to be unpalatable is an act of act of violence, so be it. Let our books be violent, our stories, our speeches, our classroom discussions. Let us isolate some people. Let us force people to question the hierarchies that privilege them. Let us be violent in our confidence in academic and professional settings.

And yes, violence is also the gun, the rocket, the rock. To be anti-colonial is violent. After all, who can turn the world on its axis peacefully?

Imagine someone telling you about a time they broke out of Gaza prison and resisted their oppressors. They excitedly recount how, when the rockets from Gaza launched into the lands they were expelled from in 1948, they shouted “Allahu Akbar!” Imagine a mother tells you that when she was holding the dead body of her youngest child, while the bodies of her husband and three other children lay next to her, she yelled, “Ya Allah destroy them!” 

I shout “Allahu Akbar” with them. I say “Ameen” to their every supplication. Their pain consumes me. It moves me beyond description.

I think back to the character who did not react to 9/11. As a white man he is not like me. He was not consumed with one kind of pain and unmoved by another. But similar to his description of himself, I was “event proof” to the killings on the 7th of October. I felt no horror, no fear, no grief or compassion. Unmoved. I did not feel insensitive, nor did I question my own humanity. I am sure that, for some people, this admission is horrific. But I remind myself: who cares? Because if I do care, I decenter Palestine. I disparage my grief. I trivialize my anger. I implicitly admit guilt. I cater to civility. I don’t want to be civil anymore. Instead, I ask: who is worthy of a reaction from the global north?

I wonder how John reacted to Palestinians breaking out from Gaza prison on the 7th of October. What does he think of Israel’s response? Did John read the names of the hundreds of families that have been wiped from the civil registry since? Did he see children digging through the rubble with their bare hands in search of their mothers? Did he see the father carrying the remains of his children in plastic bags? Does he want us to condemn violence? Does he still think nationhood is abstract, arbitrary, and obsolete?