History Does Exist

As the World is getting more dangerous and frenzied by the day, and as I am slowly adjusting to our recent move, I found that there were a few  pensive moments to contemplate as I was unpacking boxes and situating my “stuff” in their new home. I took the time to delightfully look over my high school yearbooks; I wistfully read over documents from my activist days and our hopes for Palestinian/Israeli Peace that were doomed before they even started; then going through family pictures and albums as nostalgia overwhelmed me and memories brought tears to my eyes! During that process I also realized that History Does Exist! You can’t simply erase, forget or alter it to suit your purposes, which is exactly what Trump, Project 2025, Authoritarians, Dictators, Racists, Colonists and Extremists are always trying to effect. Yes, they might issue Executive Orders, Rewrite Laws, Ban Books, Trash Progressive Cultural Issues, Attempt To Re-educate Children, Ram Their Hypocritical Christian Values Down Our Throats, or do any other nefarious stuff of this sort, and, they might even succeed for a few years, a decade perhaps, but they cannot succeed in the long run because History Exists despite their best efforts to rewrite, alter, or erase it! I published a post on October 15, 2021 which I have hereunder updated and from which I extracted some excerpts to suit my purposes for today.

My granddaughter asked me once: Why do we need to study boring history? I hesitated. What do I tell her? That we do that in order to learn from our mistakes and not repeat them when we have been doing so for thousands of years? That we learn about other Countries? Politics? Wars? Major Events in our Journey on this Planet in order to become Wiser, Kinder, More Peaceful, Less Bigoted? That “Never Again” has been repeated since the Holocaust by Everyone and their Mother but does not seem to apply to Palestinians, or “Others?” None of the answers i was thinking of made any sense to me, let alone that they would to a bright young adult who hears every day of individuals targeting others for being ethnically, religiously, culturally, sexually, politically, or any “other” differences? Any explanation is bound to sound hypocritical, untrue and vacuous. So I just said: History Exists.

And, yes, History Exists, and, it has been for centuries written by the Victors, those who painted themselves as the Gallant, Righteous Knights who only subjugate, discriminate, enslave and kill the Bad Guys in order to save The World for the Good Guys. Simple, huh? And this argument was sold to humanity and most people bought it until recently! So, what happened? What happened was that some of the World’s Colonized People, who were studying about their history in schools where curricula where set up by the Colonizers woke up one day and said to themselves: That’s Not What Happened! And so they began Writing and Writing and Writing . . . and they have no intention of stopping! However, some of the Victors decided that the Colonized People’s Version of History was Untrue and they worked themselves up into a frenzy, ranting and raving about “Critical Race Theory” “Woke” and “Cancel Culture” while claiming that the Only Valid History Is Their Version. In doing so, they are attempting to negate the Fact that History Exists, and that their racist and frenzied denials will not and cannot change that.

This brings me to The Book of Lost Friends by Lisa Wingate, The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates and “The 1619 Project” by Nikole Hannah Jones all of which talk of the experiences of Black Slaves in the United States. They are a Must Read! I have read quite a few novels and historical documentation about this subject, and they never fail to mesmerize me as to how cruel, ruthless, merciless and heartless slavery was, and to how Black People endured all that pain, suffering and dehumanization, as well as the massacres of Indigenous Humans wherever in the World White People were Occupiers and Settlers. However, History Exists and Facts Don’t Lie as the three writers mentioned above (as well as many, many others) prove, whether it is through writing novels, or producing movies, or through the plentiful fact-based historical documentation that is available in America’s and the World’s archives. So, yes, they began Writing . . . and Writing . . . and Writing . . . and Whistle-blowing . . . and Investigating . . . and Exposing all that had been white-washed and hidden and, they have no intention of ever stopping, nor should they! The Palestinian Humans won’t either no matter how Brutal, Savage and how Long Israel’s aggression perseveres!

Whether it is Slavery, Occupations, Colonialism, Runaway Capitalism and Greed, the Separation of Families and Heartless Immigration Measures, or Climate Change and its severe effects on the Developing World when it was mainly caused by Industrial Societies, this same horrific story continues to unveil itself, and, unfortunately for the world, there seems to be a concerted effort by numerous Western, US and other Nations to steer humanity towards Authoritarianism and Dictatorships. This includes Shameful Gulf Arab Dictators in Nations where populations are seething with rage while not being allowed to protest on the streets lest they be jailed, tortured, disappeared. However, Resistance is a Badge Of Honor that All Of Us who express it wear with Pride, because Authoritarianism, Occupations and Colonialism in any of their sinister forms Have To Be Resisted!

And Resisting Israel’s ongoing and constant attempts to rewrite the catastrophic story of Palestine and the Palestinian People and to erase any vestige of our existence, our history, archeological relics, cuisine, and culture (while claiming some of them as their own), this, too, is being vociferously countered by an abundance of writers some of them brave Israelis; others, Jewish people in the US and Europe; documentation; eye-witness accounts; movies and songs that tell our story again, and again, and once the bloody hell again! History Does Exist, despite the Israeli Government’s savage denials, futile brainwashing, antisemitism victimization, lies and colonist propagandist white-washing. History Exists! Not the Victors’ sanitized version of it, but the Facts! How this heartbreaking and tragic story ends I have no idea, but until it does the massacres, the starvation, the cruelty, the brutality and the criminality are ongoing and absolutely heartbreaking! There are No Justifications for these horrific, merciless, heartless crimes, nor for those Complicit with them! None! None Whatsoever!