For Palestine and for Lebanon, Do Not Allow Your Wounds to Heal

This speech was delivered by an organizer with the Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine coalition on September 25, 2024, at a rally protesting the Israeli bombardment of Lebanon.

For reasons unbeknownst to me, everyone seems to care about Harvard. As protestors, this makes our job easy — any noise we make here will be amplified ten times, one hundred times over. So, as students at a school where campus news makes national headlines, we have a unique obligation to make noise. We must wield this global obsession with Harvard to our advantage and force Harvard to stand on the right side of history, for once.

This onus extends to our calls for divestment. When Harvard does something, other institutions follow suit. Harvard will divest — not do out of the good of its nonexistent heart, but because we push it to do so — and when it does, the rest of the world will look to us and do the same.

I understand that the wounds of campus suppression are no longer fresh, but dull. They are not throbbing blows, but bruises and scars. It has been a year now of revised rules and regulations, unprecedented disciplinary sanctions, and blocked divestment resolutions. What happened on Saturday — what happened when administrators threatened and IDed students for wearing keffiyehs and studying silently in a library — is nothing new. These tactics have been beaten into us time and time again — we know the administrative playbook all too well by now. Respond to any and all pro-Palestine rhetoric and action with an iron fist. Do not do the same when it comes to organizing for any other cause.

We also know, though, how we must respond. Do not let the administration have their way. Do not let this suppression have the exact effect that Zionists want it to have. Instead, let their scrambling — because, gosh, are they scrambling — spur you on. It is through the most draconian measures and during the harshest crackdowns that the exact strength of our movement comes into the clearest view. The creation of absurd, reactionary policies — and the discriminatory, anti-Palestinian enforcement of said policies — is a direct testament to the University’s fear and, simultaneously, to the sheer power of our dissent.

Institutions resort to scare tactics — like banning chalk and silent protests — when they have exhausted all other options. We have already forced their hand this far, now is not the time to give up.

So do not let a year of administrative crackdown make you afraid. Do not let a year of genocide make you complacent. It is imperative, now more than ever, to continue to show up to rallies, to bring your friends, to organize, to disrupt the Zionist narrative, to call for divestment. EVERY MOMENT THAT ISRAEL’S GENOCIDE, APARTHEID, AND OCCUPATION OF PALESTINE ON IS A MOMENT MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER TO ACT. Wounds only fade into scars if you allow them to heal, if you remain stagnant. As long as you continue to move and to act, every wound will remain fresh, and each will serve as a reminder of how the injuries dealt to us are nothing compared to the irreversible loss of homes, families, and lives in Gaza. Do not allow your wounds to heal, because those in Gaza have no choice but to live — and to die — with open, gaping wounds.

Today, 51 people in Lebanon were killed by continued, relentless Israeli bombardment. 1,200 Palestinian detainees from Gaza face systematic torture, abuse and assault in an Israeli prison in the Negev desert. Three Palestinians were killed and several others wounded when Israel bombed a house in central Gaza’s Bureij refugee camp. 25 Palestinians were arrested in the West Bank, and three bulldozers were sent in to demolish a home. All of this happened in the last 24 hours alone. How much do you think has occurred in 8,496 hours since October 7th?

DO NOT ALLOW THE ZIONIST KILLING MACHINE TO OPERATE FOR AN HOUR LONGER. Even when you cannot see an end, when you are not sure what showing up to protest after protest does, continue to do so. Administrative suppression is proof that we are doing something. We owe it to the people in Rafah, Khan Younis, Ramallah, Haifa, East Jerusalem, Baalbek, and Beirut to remain steadfast here, in the comfort of Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is the least we can do.