Love Letters to
Written and illustrated by Malak Yassine
@awholeheartedsoul
Palestine
“The function, the very serious function of racism is
distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you
explaining, over and over again, your reason for being.
Somebody says you have no language and you spend twenty
years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t
shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that
it is. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up.
Somebody says you have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up.
None of this is necessary. There will always be one more thing.”
― Toni Morrison
I wanted to start this zine with this quote by Toni Morrison; for me, I read that and
have a flash of the following words present themselves to me “ The worst thing
about racism and white supremacy is that it wastes our time. It keeps us explaining
ourselves repeatedly, regardless of whether the truth is very well evident.”
I say there is a Palestine. I say there are Palestinians. I say the land of Palestine
belongs to Palestinians. These are simple truths that I have become allergic to
questioning.
In this zine, I didn’t want to waste your time any further, as you being here and
spending time with these pages is my biggest honour and privilege. We have seen
enough suffering over the last 4 months to last us a lifetime - not even counting the
suffering happening to the Palestinian people over the last 75 years- I STILL
wanted us to dive into the imagination of a free Palestine and celebrate the
Palestinian soul.
As much as I have been consumed by grief, not in my wildest dreams did I think I
would be watching millions of people chanting
“In our thousands in our millions we are all Palestinians”.
For years I couldn’t even mention that I’m Palestinian since the follow-up question
would always be “Where is that again?” and Palestine is no longer on the map.
It was too much of a complicated explanation.
I didn’t think I would witness this in my lifetime at all. Mentally, I have always
thought we would have to prepare our kids and grandkids for this kind of
revolution, but the revolution is happening now in our lifetime among our people.
So it's time to dream up a free Palestine, to prepare our kids and grandkids and
ourselves for the possibility of a free Palestine. I’m determined to hand over a
much softer world to the next generation.
None of us are free until we are all free.
I’m determined to hand
over a much softer world to
the next generation.
I’m determined that my
people deserve ease in
this lifetime.
Everything is linked. Just like our liberation is linked; our collective
suffering is connected. I choose to look at and witness how we can -
together- free ourselves from white supremacy. I want these pages to be
an invitation to start transferring our skills when it comes to anti-racism
work. When we see our governments and media justify what is
happening in Palestine, we need to understand that they are future-
projecting and justifying the lack of liberation here as well.
Everything that is happening in Palestine is a mirror reflection of our
state of humanity. Some might read this as “the world is suffering” but I
see it as “the world is liberating itself”. I want to remind you that if you
are reading this and you are exhausted, you are doing what you can. It's
the systems around us that aren’t facilitating the best outcomes for
humanity and the planet. It's the systems around us that are crumbling.
Our job right now is to have transferable skills and to look at everything from an
intersectional lens. We need to recognise how white feminism, homophobia,
transphobia and dismantling toxic masculinity are all connected.
The free Palestine movement has been years in the making - this isn’t new.
We have been doing this for a long time. If you ever wondered how the movement
has so much momentum it is because of all the activists that have laid the
foundational work. I have always thought we as Palestinians are very good at
counting our dead, rescuing people from under the rubble and documenting / tell
stories of our suffering. The only different is that we are being witnessed now.
None of us are free until we are all free.
We all can do our part little by little.
We are powerful.
Over the last couple of months of working in a capitalist
environment, I have been witnessing something that I have
started labelling as “racism joy” - when people make racist
statements in such a nonchalant way, weaving it into the
conversation, followed up by a smile or a little laugh. I have
heard my neighbour say “Israel is dealing with the problem
head-on.” followed by a laugh. I have heard white women
say “Palestinian women are oppressed.” followed by a
smile.
There is no need to offer another example.
These kinds of statements need to be erased.
We erase them by showing our collective joy even louder.
We find as much joy as possible in-between the moments or
hours of grieving. We bring joy into our activism to show
ourselves as much grace as possible as we fight for
liberation. We start thinking radically and know that we
are never being too much.
When I was creating this zine, I was wondering if the art was
good enough all the time. But the more I would draw, the more
it hit me that art is revolutionary. There is no place for
perfectionism in revolution. When my great-uncle Naji Al Ali
was making artwork for Palestine. I’m without a doubt sure that
he didn’t bring perfectionism to his drawing table. If you want
to make an impact, in any social movement, start with the art
and the artist that these movements gave birth to.