Over 8 nights, beyond borders, around the globe, Jews and our accomplices have lit millions of candles as part of rituals of resistance against genocide—and this evening, Jewish direct actions shut down 8 bridges in 8 US cities, including with enormous “candles” lined up like on a Hanukkah menorah as blockade material. We wanted so to believe that somehow the collective power of our sacred flames would enact a miracle—the heart of our diasporic Hanukkah story—stretching from not just one short ceasefire, but an end to all bombing, displacement, dispossession, siege, occupation, apartheid, Zionism, and fascism, toward the real miracle of freedom, dignity, and life.
As we Jews like to say, “May it be so.”
But it isn’t yet so.
All of our rededication feels for naught.
Yet as the days wear on—with Hannukah night 8 reflecting Gaza day 69 or even 70 depending on moon zones—as the last of our candles flicker out, we cannot “go gentle into the night,” as antifascist poet Dylan Thomas penned. Even if all of our brilliant diversity of tactics have not been enough these past 8 days, 70 days, 75 years, back further to well over 500 years of colonizers and capitalists and nation-states; even if despair now wraps its icy hands around us and the cold brutality of this world steals our fire, Hanukkah reminds us that liberation will always be a struggle, a journey, a task we can never abandon.
We must rage, rage against the genocide.
We must rage, rage against white Christo-fascist supremacy.
We must rage, rage against all states, all nationalisms, all of their prisons, militaries, cops, courts, and borders.
We must rage, rage against Islamophobia and antisemitism.
We must rage, rage for solidarity, mutual aid, and fierce love among us.
Our flames of resistance can never go out.
Mon amour—from the rivers to the seas, may Palestinians and Jews, may everyone, be free.
(photos: my candles and Alfredo M. Bonanno’s “Palestine, Mon Amour” as zine [DM me your email for PDF]; sticker spotted on stolen Cherokee land: “free Palestine, fuck the police, from Turtle Island to Gaza, no borders, no states, #ACABeverywhere”)
