« If the language I’d heard all my professional life had been wrong, had been deceptive even, then what was the language to describe the project I now saw? It’s true that “Jim Crow” was the first thing that came to mind, if only because “Jim Crow” is a phrase that connotes an injustice, a sorting of human beings, the awarding and stripping of the rights of a population. Certainly, that was some part of what I saw in Hebron, in Jerusalem, in Lydd.
But it was not just the literal meaning of “Jim Crow,” it was the feeling of the thing too. I say the words “Jim Crow” and a casket opens before me, and inside is a boy beaten out of his own humanity. I say “Jim Crow” and I see the flag of slavery waving above a state capitol. I say “Jim Crow” and I see men on a balcony of the Lorraine Motel pointing toward the shot. I say “Jim Crow” and Detroit Red turns to me and asks, “Who taught you to hate?” I say “Jim Crow” and I hear “poll tax,” “redlining,” “grandfather clause,” “whites only,” and each of these phrases conjures additional images too. But “Jim Crow” was the language of analogy, of translation, not the thing itself. As much as anything, my mission in Palestine was to grow new roots, to describe this new world, not as a satellite of my old world but as a world in and of itself.
I stopped in Jerusalem just long enough to check into my hotel. I allowed myself a very nice room—one with soft sheets and a bathtub. I would pay for this self-indulgence. But not yet. I had five more days abroad, and whereas for the first five days I’d had comrades who were having their own set of revelations, now I was alone. Part of me would have done anything to go home. I was familiar with that part—it was the part that always grouses about the rigors of reporting, the awkwardness of asking strangers intimate questions, the discipline of listening intently. The voice is only in my head—but it was louder in Palestine. The days were longer and the revelations more intense. I remember walking up an inclining street in Hebron and reaching a large metal fence with a revolving gate. At the top of the gate was a device about the size of a shoebox with a tube protruding from it. It looked like a camera. In fact, it was a turret designed to lock on and immobilize a target using “nonlethal” rounds fired via remote control. The device’s name—“Smart Shooter”—was written on the side. This was oppression’s avant-garde— the first initial steps to automated imperial dominance—and I had little reason to feel that such trailblazing efforts would remain in Palestine. And at that I despaired.
I was away for ten days, ten days in this Holy Land of barbed wire, settlers, and outrageous guns. And every day I was there, I had a moment of profound despair. I truly wanted to look away, to go home and mumble some words about what I had seen in private. And maybe if I were left alone to my own devices, maybe if I were loyal only to myself, I would have done it. But I am a writer, and a bearer. I am a writer and a steward. I am not alone, and I don’t just mean ancestors but the people I met every day living in abeyance of Israeli rule.
And I was not done. I took the elevator down to the lobby, where I met Avner Gvaryahu, who leads Breaking the Silence, a group of former IDF soldiers who now oppose the occupation. We walked outside, where an old pickup truck idled in front of the hotel. The driver, Guy Butavia, wore a baseball cap and thick glasses. We exchanged greetings, then I slid into the truck and we drove off.
My hosts were both Israeli—as nearly all my guides would be for the second half of my trip. This was a conscious decision. What it was not was an empty declaration to “hear both sides.” I had no interest in hearing defenses of the occupation and what struck me then as segregation. Journalists claim to be hearing “both sides” as though a binary opposition had been set down by some disinterested god. But it is the journalists themselves who are playing god—it is the journalists who decide which sides are legitimate and which are not, which views shall be considered and which pushed out of the frame. And this power is an extension of the power of other curators of the culture—network execs, producers, publishers—whose core job is deciding which stories get told and which do not. When you are erased from the argument and purged from the narrative, you do not exist. Thus the complex of curators is doing more than setting pub dates and greenlighting—they are establishing and monitoring a criterion for humanity. Without this criterion there can be no oppressive power, because the first duty of racism, sexism, homophobia, and so forth is the framing of who is human and who is not. »

Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Message

@tortureneverstops

Oui, Israel est une création occidentale.
Mais ce n'est pas une démocratie, et ça ne l'a jamais été.