One Year Of Livestreamed Genocide

Saira Rao interviews Palestinian storyteller, Jenan Matari, on where the Palestinian movement is now, how to find joy, and calls-to-action.

Jenan Matari is a Palestinian storyteller focused on amplifying Indigenous storytelling, particularly from Palestinian and other marginalized communities. Through her work, she highlights the struggles of Indigenous peoples globally, weaving narratives of resistance, resilience, and liberation into her advocacy for gender-based violence prevention and climate justice.

Jenan’s storytelling centers on preserving cultural heritage and empowering Indigenous voices to lead the fight for their rights and autonomy — and for the last year, Jenan has been educating us all on the injustice, apartheid, occupation, and genocide in Palestine.

Last week, on September 27, our co-founder Saira Rao interviewed Jenan on where the Palestinian movement is now and how she as a Palestinian finds joy in a world seemingly determined to extinguish it . . .

Saira: How are you TODAY?

Jenan: Today — in the mix of always feeling proud and centered — I also feel exhausted and sometimes a little bit lost. I think if you’d asked me this yesterday or a week ago because it fluctuates, I’d tell you I feel motivated and focused but part of playing this horrible long game of collective liberation is that some days you don’t know what the next step is and what the next move should be but you know you need to push through it and navigate it so you feel focused and motivated. Today is “a day” but tomorrow will be better and we will push forward. 

Saira: We are coming upon the one year anniversary of October 7th. Has anything shocked you about where we are one year out? 

Jenan: I think the thing that’s shocked me — and I don’t know that things shock me much anymore these days — but the thing that’s left me perplexed is that I’m still surrounded by people in my real physical life that are still attached to Israel. Like my neighbors still look at me the same way as they did last October. Which, to be clear, is like a terrorist. 

This is the problem with always believing the best in people. I really thought by now, “friends” who said some really, really nasty things back in October early November or the ones who didn’t say things at all . . . as in they disappeared — I really thought they would have fixed themselves at this point. Some days I wonder — is it because they’re not seeing the same things I’m seeing, and if that’s the case — it’s a reminder of the system we are fighting against — or is it that they really don’t care and they really are racist and they really hate Arabs and I really was the exception for all these people. Some days I wonder this. A lot of days actually. 

And I think the turning point for me is what’s happening right now with Lebanon. For as much as we talk about Arabs being this one big family, there is a difference in the way the West views Arabs from Palestine versus Arabs from Lebanon. Palestinians, we have always been bottom of the barrel in the West and some of that trickled into the Arab world, but the Lebanese held a higher standard for the West. White people vacation in Beirut. Beirut is seen as this metropolitan city like New York or Paris or London. The Lebanese speak Arabic and English and French and everyone loves the Lebanese. There are Lebanese restaurants everywhere. People love Lebanese food. The exposure to Lebanese culture is different from the exposure to Palestinian culture, even though it’s very similar. White people LOVE Lebanese culture. They actually see the Lebanese as having culture, unlike how they view Palestinians. We come from the same lands and eat virtually the same food and have the same music and very similar cultural traditions but Palestinians are associated with violence in the West. 

I thought people would have gotten it when they started bombing the shit out of Lebanon. But nope. I was so wrong. So, so wrong. It’s clear that they really hate all of us. They hate all Arabs. They don’t believe that we should exist. They don’t see any beauty in any of it, in any of us. They don’t understand our history. ALL of us. Palestine, Lebanese, Syrian, Jordanian, Iraqi, Yemeni, etc. 

We — ALL of us Arabs — are trash to the West.

And as an “American” I often wonder if we’re all just robots — are we really just desensitized to all of this? Do we really not think it’s not coming to us next? Or do we — in the West — really hate brown people this much that it’s normalized for us (brown folks in our homelands) to be living under bombs all the time. Murdered. Starved. Raped. Beheaded.

The Lebanese . . . they’re the cool Arabs, the cool, pretty, “classy” Arabs, that’s the reputation the Lebanese have with the West. And the West is cool with bombing the shit out of them in their homes. The West is still okay with watching people they actually related to in the sense that they fetishized them, they wanted to be a part of Lebanese culture, they found it comfortable, they interacted with it, adopted parts of Lebanese culture — and STILL, the West is cool with utterly decimating Lebanon and the Lebanese people. 

So, I’ve come to the realization that ALL Arabs are considered disposable, and dispensable to the Western world. And that’s a tough one to swallow.  

Saira: Where do you see the movement for Palestinian liberation today?

Jenan: I see the movement as strong and steady but at times a bit disjointed, fragmented, which is exactly what the colonizer wants. It’s easy to slip back into “normalcy” (whatever that is these days) and get distracted — we live in the entertainment capital of the world for a reason — so we need to always remind each other that whatever is important to you in this fight against empire — it’s all connected. This work is something that has to be included in our everyday life. Every day we need to do something for collective liberation. Even if it’s something as “small” as being a little more conscious of where we spend our money (which is actually a huge blow to the empire — they need your money to survive). 

I know everyone is tired — momentum fluctuates — and those in power are constantly coming up with new ways to throw wrenches into our communities (hello Kamala Harris), but we need to take care of ourselves and each other so we don’t become so fragmented to a point where we can’t piece it back together. 

We’re realizing that a lot of folks didn’t understand when we kept saying “this is a long game.” People really believed they’d be bombing Gaza for a few weeks, a month or two and it’d stop and we’re coming on a year and they’re bombing more areas in the Levant and they are questioning whether their work is worth it and meaningful and if it’s actually doing something. So we have to find ways to constantly keep us all together. To keep us from going down paths of despair and confusion because remember — that’s what the colonizer wants. We can feel that way some days but we must pull ourselves out and calculate our next move. The colonizer is always fifty steps ahead of us. So we have to be fifty steps ahead of where we think we are.

In other words, Lebanon shouldn’t have been a surprise to any of us. We knew this was coming. We told people it was coming. 

Looking ahead now . . . we’ll probably see it seeping into Jordan and Egyptian territory, you’ll find them encroaching on more areas in Syria, remember they are still occupying the Golan Heights in Syria. 

Zionists are adamant on destroying the whole region. How do we know? Because they say it out loud all the time.

They use the Greater Israel map all the time. But nobody takes it seriously. They are doing it. They are going to do it. And when they are done killing everybody in the Middle East, don’t forget all these fuckers have dual citizenship and they’re coming back here. 

When they start killing us “over here” next — don’t be surprised. 

Saira: What keeps you going? What gets you through the day? What brings you joy?

Jenan: My children and my community. Knowing that I am raising another generation of Palestinian children — in a time when Palestinian children are being stolen from us at rapid speed — is what keeps me going and reminds me that we need to be strong AND that we need to always have joy. They can’t kill it.

Palestinian children deserve joy and so do their parents and families. So, in a world that is intent on stealing everything from us — our lives, our lands, our traditions, and especially our joy — it’s an act of resistance to make sure you hang onto that joy and I remind myself of that every day. 

Saira: You said to me months ago, the call to action was this: change one person in your life to be pro-Palestine. Would you say that’s the same call to action now?

Jenan: Yes, that is the same call to action. Because a year in, I still haven’t been able to do it with a number of people in my real life. Same call to action.