What do we know about what survives?
On colonization and what survives after crisis
Dear friends,
I’ve been reading Palestinian poet Batool Abu Akleen’s work in the collected diaries of Voices of Resistance, and I’ve found myself stunned by the grace of a poet’s spirit under genocide.
I find her diary entries comforting, oddly enough, as I’m looking for a morality, a way of living, that can survive crisis. Diagnosing the problem of colonization and resulting genocide is at least for me no longer urgent; those of us who know, we know. The resistance continues with audacity—the Freedom Flotilla sails!—but what do we know about what survives?
Batool Abu Akleen wrote in January 2025, days before the second ceasefire was announced: “I have seen the truth of the human spirit: individualism overwhelms everything and is difficult to contain. […] When a missile falls and you hear its sound, you smile. You smile because you are still alive, even though you know that another person was killed the very moment you realised you were safe.”1
The individualism she writes of is at odds with what I suspect are her desires toward selflessness, faith, and generosity that, with patience, sustains a strong collective. It is my hope that Batool returns to these values not from her own efforts but because she comes to live in a place that makes faith and generosity easy. Colonizers can erase a city to dust but they cannot erase a survivor’s faith.
If you are reading this from the Global Majority, or what was called the Global South, chances are you are a survivor too. Your ancestors survived unimaginable conditions and birthed you as an answer to their sleepless nights. You who rises to the present moment, you who steels your courage to make something good out of the ruins we’ve been given, you’ve got this and we’ve got you!
I don’t have a full picture yet of what survives on my end. I am (we are) still in the thick of it. But I have mantras for the coming months to get there: surrender to the limits of my understanding, love easily and laugh easily, and serve as if with infinite energy.
What are you cultivating in the wake of crisis?
Voices of Resistance: Diaries of Genocide. Batool Abu Akleen, Sondos Sabra, Nahil Mohana, Ala’a Obaid. Published by Comma Press (2025).