First Writing Since

for Suheir Hammad, my countless other teachers, and my students

The news unfolding in Palestine and Israel has stopped us in our tracks and we felt compelled to write. We hope you will read it.

For the last few years, I have taught my 10th grade students a brief unit about 9/11. I start the unit by asking them what they know: “Terrorists attacked the United States.” “A lot of people died.” “People started becoming more… what’s the word where you hate someone just because they’re Muslim… ‘Islamophobic.’” 

I ask them about who the victims were (“White people?”) and the perpetrators (Iraqis?) 

Then we listen to “First Writing Since” by Palestinian-American poet Suheir Hammad.¹

This year, when I shut the lights off to watch her 2006 performance of the piece in my windowless basement classroom, I realized it would be the first time my students wouldn’t see me cry as we watch it together. 

Later in the week, students read “Ground Zero,” an essay by Karla Cornejo Villavincencio about the undocumented Americans who died as a result of 9/11. One stays with me in particular:

Rafael had been a firefighter in Mexico; he showed his Mexican firefighter badge to the first responders, and they geared him up. They didn’t care that he was foreign. They needed all the help they could get. As everyone else was running out of the buildings, Rafael ran up the North Tower. He encountered a pregnant woman whose water broke. She begged him not to leave her, and he didn’t. He reportedly carried her down twenty-eight flights of stairs. Not long after they made it out, the tower fell.

Rafael didn’t leave Ground Zero for months, working day after day. Eventually his lungs got so fucked up he had to be hooked up to a ventilator to sleep. He died in 2011, the ten-year anniversary of 9/11.

Few, if any, undocumented people made the list of 2,753 official victims. 

We read others, and we continually revisit the question: Who were the victims and who the perpetrators? Who is considered an “American victim”? Whose humanity is maintained? Students usually come to the same conclusions year-after-year: The United States government claimed so much “inconsolable grief” about the victims of 9/11 that “we needed to go to war to make sure it would never happen again.” But, they only cared about some of the Americans who died that day. They didn’t care to tally the thousands of undocumented people who died in the towers or from the after-effects of being first responders. We know, too, that the government didn’t even care about the victims and first responders who actually were counted. They were put through hell–many dying before they saw a dime of support from the American government. If the U.S. government could spend billions on bombs, but not healthcare payments, we start to see what they really cared about all along. We collectively grieve for those who passed, and begin to see a picture of how this tragedy became twisted and mythologized to justify an unrelated war.

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I teach because I am personally implicated in the American story. We all are. 

Opposing the “War on Terror” was a political right of passage for a young leftist. In 2008, I wrote a letter to President Obama beseeching him to end the PATRIOT Act, FISA Courts, and torture, especially at Guantanamo. But, by the time I was writing and condemning, hundreds of thousands had already died. Today, the estimates of people who died from the War on Terror are more like 4.5 million. The anti-war activists like Susan Sontag and Congresswoman Barbara Lee got it right by September 14, 2001, before a single bomb had killed an Iraqi child. They were pilloried.

In an increasingly stratified society, the “moral clarity” of going to war seemed gleeful to many. You could now beg for war with a clear conscience. You could even add a “limit civilian casualties,” as if you weren’t causing them in the first place. If the brown people who died on 9/11 were systematically stripped from the record, the fates of the brown people “over there” were sealed too—out of the reach of our “moral leadership.” “Wiping them from the map” was a hearty cheers. “Killing those towel heads” was a rallying call. The white Americans who whipped up this hatred saw no material benefit from the war, of course, dehumanizing ourselves in the process. The war machine laughed all the way to the bank.

And still, there were those who dissented.

Kevin Millington, our varsity basketball coach and my freshman history teacher, will forever be a hero to me. I doubt we align on politics, at least we didn’t at the time, but he made sure that every student who took his class was disabused of their Islamophobic vitriol. 

I played middle school basketball with a boy named Hawreh, a Kurdish Iranian-American and now published author. His family is Kurdish and came to America in 1997. His faith, his color, his accent made him a target of hate, but one too of filial love. In my heart, I know that Kevin Millington took it personally to make this young boy feel safe in a school of 1200 who didn’t share his faith, his color, or his experiences.

In Mr. Millington’s class, we learned how Islam is an Abrahamic faith–closer to “us” than we thought. We learned that it preached peace, like the other faiths “of the book.” We learned about the sects of Islam, its history, and context. We learned that the Middle East is an incredibly diverse place. We learned that none of the hijackers were Iraqi or Afghani. We learned that the Kurds were consistently denied self-determination and the United States often used them as a pawn for its own machinations. I can still hear Mr. Millington retorting back to students: “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” 

What he taught us was factual, and yet it performed deeply political and personal work. While many Americans were sitting around “waiting for the barbarians,” as J.M. Coetzee termed it, Mr. Millington, a fairly conservative basketball coach, put a stake in the ground. He wouldn’t let us peddle falsehoods, hate, or ignorance. He insisted on educating us and showing us that nothing in Islam was inherently anything different from what we espoused to value ourselves. It may sound trite from a 2023 perspective, but it moved mountains. 

I was able to go to a book talk of Hawreh’s at UMass Boston a few years back. He told me there were other teachers too, like Pam Carter and Pete Small, who had the courage to stand against the tide. I’m a teacher today because of these people. They will always be my heroes. 

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I sit with these memories pregnant in my throat as we refresh our news feeds, trembling at the news from Gaza. Many have already said it better than I ever could. David Klion, writing in n+1, describes “the hundreds of Israeli civilians murdered by Hamas, the most Jews killed in a day since the Holocaust; revelers butchered at a music festival, whole families snuffed out in an instant; the young and the elderly alike violated, mutilated, kidnapped, and held hostage for a ransom that may never be paid.” I cannot fathom the pain of these peoples’ loved ones.

I look to people like Arielle Angel, editor of Jewish Currents and her brilliant piece “We Cannot Cross Until We Carry Each Other.” I am inspired by Rabbi Miriam Grossman to hold space for so many. Their words teach me that there is something we can do while we grieve. 

I am reminded of one of my other great teachers: my dad. I managed to find an article written about the two of us in 2001, four months before 9/11, “Cowards push hate with an aerosol button.” You can read it below or here.

Someone had drawn swastikas on Jewish gravestones. My dad grabbed a toothbrush and me, to go scrub them off. 

There were other moments too. I remember the McDonald’s cashier who apologized to us for the wait, “The guy before you tried to Jew me down.” My dad ripped him a new one. I was embarrassed then, proud now. I was Elie Wiesel for our seventh grade wax museum. I read Night and Dawn over and over. Exodus and Mila 18 by Leon Uris, too. One of our few high school field trips was to the Holocaust memorial. I became obsessed with learning about Nuremberg, the Mossad, and the “Nazi hunters.” Exodus convinced me of the righteousness of the Zionist project. I never once learned the history of the land or the Zionist movement. I never learned how it stretched long before the Holocaust. I never learned that it would push Palestinians out of their homes. I say all of this not so much as exculpation, but indictment. I never learned a thing about the Palestinian people.

I know now it’s because their lives were “inconvenient” to Western aims at a bigger piece of the pie. Their fate sealed in ignorant Islamophobia² and racism. I think of Suheir Hammad’s words again:

one more person ask me if i knew the hijackers. one more motherfucker ask me what navy my brother is in. one more person assume no arabs or muslims were killed.one more person assume they know me, or that i represent a people. or that a people represent an evil. or that evil is as simple as a flag and words on a page. we did not vilify all white men when mcveigh bombed oklahoma. america did not give out his family's addresses or where he went to church. or blame the bible or pat robertson.

It wasn’t until college that I started to learn about the plight and resistance of the Palestinian people. “A land without people for a people without land” has always been a myth. It’s a myth too that Zionism starts with the Holocaust, as it’s most commonly described in the United States. The Palestinians have been systematically run out of their homes for decades. There are people in Gaza living today who had their farms taken from them. 750,000 Palestinians were forced from their homes in 1948, what Palestinians term the “Nakba.” That’s 750,000 living, breathing people. They live in an apartheid state according to Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Palestinians have their own license plates and they have limited to no freedom of movement both within and without their allocated territories. Settlers, buoyed by Netanyahu’s right-wing government, continue to take homes and land in the West Bank, cutting Palestinian communities off from one another. Thousands of Palestinians have been killed by settlers, police, and indiscriminate bombings of Gaza. Palestinians live with the daily indignity of being occupied and blockaded in their own land. Gaza is often described as the largest open-air prison in the world. The statistics are endless. If you want to read something about the facts to decide for yourself, I’d encourage you to start with The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Very Short Introduction. The author, Martin Bunton, is a Canadian academic historian, not a politician.

The West, but particularly America, as part of misguided Cold War policy, desire to expand influence in the resource-rich Middle East, and disregard for the lives of Arabs and Muslims, has been the primary benefactor of the Zionist project and the primary blocker to peace. In The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017, renowned Palestinian-American scholar and Columbia University professor, Rashid Khalidi writes:

Truman bluntly revealed the motivations behind this major shift when a group of American diplomats presciently warned him that an overtly pro-Zionist policy would harm US interests in the Arab world. “I am sorry, gentlemen,” he said, “but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who are anxious for the success of Zionism. I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents.

Professor Khalidi used to train teachers in New York City; in 2005, he was banned from doing so. I think again of Suhei Hammad’s words:

most americans do not know the difference

between indians, afghanis, syrians, muslims, sikhs, hindus.

more than ever, there is no difference.

Who gets to be considered “American”? There are 700 Americans waiting at the crossing in Rafah. What will we do when Israel bombs them too?

People are calling this “Israel’s 9/11.” I think the description is apt. 2,753 people, by the official count, died on 9/11. Between 4 and 4.5 million people have died as a result of America and the West’s response in the global “War on Terror.” The loss at the hands of Hamas is enormous, and horrific. The loss at the hands of the IDF with the support of the United States government will amount to genocide. 

I teach about 9/11 because I believe it exposes a fundamental American hypocrisy: the rights of the American only apply to some of us. And the lives of everyday Americans are wielded as pawns in a game that only benefits the few. Rafael, the Mexican-American fireman who rushed to save lives in the wake of 9/11, did not matter to the United States government, officially or otherwise. Neither did any of those in the official death toll. All that mattered was a global campaign of our own terror that lined the pockets of shareholders to the tune of an unfathomable $8 trillion. 

We continue to allow this in America because we do not see the preciousness of life in all people. When we say the lives of those slaughtered by Hamas matter to us, I believe us. When the U.S. and Israeli governments say it, I can’t help but think of 9/11. Will these victims continue to matter when the dust settles? Or will they go the way of the victims of 9/11?

And how about the lives of the countless innocent people who are being slaughtered in Gaza as we speak? Just today a hospital was bombed, killing over 500 people. Why do our hearts not break and weep over them? How long can we glibly ignore history? How long can we make the same mistakes over and over until we see the humanity of the people we are killing?

In these moments, it can help to remember that there are, and there always have been, people who resisted. One of the oldest and most ardent supporters of the Palestinian cause are Jewish people. You should read this beautiful piece by the editor of Jewish Currents. You should look at the work of Jewish Voice for Peace and If Not Now. You should read Ilan Pappé (freek ebook links) and Antony Loewenstein. I ask this as a desperate bridge. Hopefully, you can begin to see the Palestinian struggle with new eyes and begin to let the plight and strength and resilience of Palestinians sink in in their own voices. Read Edward Said and Rashid Khalidi and Noura Ekrat. Follow Mohammed El-Kurd. Look to the doctors who will not abandon their neonatal babies and bombing victims. Look to the rescue workers who continue to dig for others even as their own families have perished. 

In this moment, I think of the relative bravery of Kevin Millington. Of my dad. Of all of my teachers who lit the spark to bravely state the truth and fight for justice. 

Do not allow the United States to turn another tragedy into another genocide against real people, just like us, who have hopes and dreams and beating hearts. Who desire to live in peace and freedom and self-determination. We have a chance to stop genocide. Calls to “limit civilian casualties” are causing them before our very eyes. The only way to stop this is to end the occupation, the blockade, and the settlements. We must continue to apply pressure to our political system to refuse to support the Israeli apartheid state and their impending attack on Gaza. We must rally for a free Palestine.

I leave you with the end of Suheir Hammad’s “First Writing Since”:

there is life here. anyone reading this is breathing, maybe hurting,

but breathing for sure. and if there is any light to come, it will

shine from the eyes of those who look for peace and justice after the

rubble and rhetoric are cleared and the phoenix has risen.

affirm life.

affirm life.

we got to carry each other now.

you are either with life, or against it.

affirm life.

1. Thank you to James Soares, my former colleague and a brilliant educator, for introducing me to this poem and how to teach to disrupt Islamophobia.

2. There are significant Palestinian Christian and Jewish communities.