Posted January 26, 2024 by Alice Wong Guest Blog Posts

Palestine is Disabled

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

I am not the first or last person to say this, but: Everyone in Palestine is disabled right now.

Whether it’s disabled as in brand new amputations after AI-targeted bombing blows up your house and your leg needs to be amputated without anesthetic by your dad.

Or disabled as in 360,000 cases of infectious disease from almost no water or sanitation. That’s one in every six Palestinians in Gaza, and likely an undercount. The 1.9 million people displaced during the winter, left to face the rain and cold in tents, face soaring infectious disease that could kill more people than the bombing.

Or disabled as in a created starvation impacting all of the Palestinian population as of this writing- the worst hunger crisis on the globe. Starvation kills- disabled people, sick people, children and elders first. Starvation also creates disability through creating long terms effects of high rates of heart attack, stroke and heart disease, as well as suicidal ideation.

Disabled because of and in a country where only 9 out of 36 hospitals as of this writing are partially functioning and “at least 337 medics and 45 rescue workers targeted & killed, including Fadi Al-Ma’ni, assassinated this past week alongside three other members of the Palestine Red Crescent Society in an israeli drone strike on their ambulance.”

Disabled like heroic young citizen journalist Bisan, who I have watched every morning since November report on the current conditions in Gaza- broadcasts she begins every morning with her trademark “Hello this is Bisan from Gaza and I’m still alive,” – stricken by intense spinal pain she can find no treatment for.

Like Bisan, who I am listening to right now saying “This is a war on women, on people with disabilities, on children” as the IOF (Israel Occupation Forces) attacks the last functioning hospital in Gaza and she does not know if she will live through it.

Disabled like heroic citizen photographer Motaz Aziza posting about contemplating suicide because he says he literally cannot keep recording what is happening.

Or a million disabled, Deaf, and neurodivergent people facing extreme challenges getting medicine and access equipment. Navigating blown up roads in wheelchairs and with canes and walkers. Trying to get into inaccessible shelters. Not being able to access information because of a lack of captions, WiFi and interpreters. Being autistic and trying to cope with complete sensory overwhelm and constant noise of bombing.

I write this on the 100th day of the Israeli war on Palestine. 100 days of genocide. Of starvation. Of destruction of hospitals, places of worship, homes, schools, graveyards. Of 31,000 Palestinians murdered. One out of every 100 Palestinians in Gaza are dead.

I have been shocked but not surprised over the last 100 days, to occasionally see (usually white) disabled people comment “Disability justice has nothing to do with Palestine, why are you posting about this?” or “Israel has much better disability politics than the Arab world” on posts about Palestine made by disabled people of conscience, including Alice Wong and me.

The cognitive dissonance, willful ignorance, pinkwashing, and racism is just fucking wild. Please look up a thing or two or keep our name out of your mouths.

I’m going to say it again for the people in the back: Disability justice has always been about Palestinian liberation. Period.

Disability justice was founded by a bunch of revolutionary disabled people, mostly BIPOC, who had been involved in radical movements against imperialism and racism for all their lives. We created disability justice out of our lived disabled experiences with war, occupation and genocide.

A free Palestine is a disability justice issue.Disability justice will not win without a free Palestine. Where disabled people live in a land that is at peace. Where we get to just be.

*****

The IOF has targeted disabled places in this war and in many previous wars on Palestine. Hospitals and care homes, places specifically where disabled people are or depend on for care. The IOF has destroyed 120 ambulances, leaving 6 functioning ambulances for over 2 million people. Human rights organizations have for years charged that the IOF shoots for Palestinians’ legs on purpose, deliberately trying to cause amputation and disability.

The IOF also has targeted places where everyone, including disabled people, live their everyday lives and/or are trying to shelter to survive. Cafes and refugee camps and homes and workplaces and schools. Nowhere is safe.

Everyone in Palestinian diaspora is also disabled. From the CPTSD and overwhelming stress of watching a genocide in progress and the grief of losing countless family members. Organizing protests every day and it still not being enough and trying to save your loved ones and families.

Palestinians in diaspora are literally dying of heart attacks after living with panic from not being able to reach their families for days.

Disabled Palestinian writer Abla Abdelhadi tweeted, “I can’t imagine how our people in Gaza are coping with the trauma, I’m in Jordan, I’m a survivor of childhood abuse, patriarchal violence and American police violence, so I already have PTSD. Now my brain can’t handle that 26,000 of my people have been massacred without the world stopping Israel’s holocaust. It makes my brain want to explode.”

A photo looking downward at Leah's crossed legs as they sit down on grey stone steps (post a march, watching speakers, though you can't see that). Their legs are fishnets, a white, brown and black high top sneaker and their rose gold cane with a red rose are visible and a black backpack is to one side. — A photo looking downward at Leah’s crossed legs as they sit down on grey stone steps (post a march, watching speakers, though you can’t see that). Their legs are fishnets, a white, brown and black high top sneaker and their rose gold cane with a red rose are visible and a black backpack is to one side.

Disability Justice is a politic of peace, anti-empire and anti-war and colonization.

It is a politic created by sick and disabled Black,Indigenous and people of color. It is a politic of our issues–for us and by us. Colonization, warfare, and violence in our homelands are part of our disability issues.

I am not Palestinian. But I witnessed the genocide in Palestine as a Sri Lankan diasporic person who grew up and came of age during the Sri Lankan civil war of 1983-2008.

Like many diasporic Sri Lankans, I grew up watching the genocide of Tamil and Muslim people during the war and the disabling of tens of thousands of Sri Lankans from bombs, landmines, and CPTSD. I know what it’s like to watch tens of thousands of some of your people be murdered and disabled while the world coughs and looks away.

I witness what is happening in Palestine through the lens of being the disabled, autistic child of a neurodivergent Sri Lankan father whose neurodivergence was fundamentally shaped by growing up in Sri Lanka and Singapore during the Japanese invasion of World War 2. My father was born during an active war, a year after his older brother and grandfather were killed during the Japanese invasion of Singapore and my grandmother fled back to Sri Lanka on one of the last boats out. War, death, and invasion made my father grow up with CPTSD as the child of two people who had CPTSD.

Both these experiences mean I come to the present moment in Palestine understanding what war and empire do. I am a disabled, autistic survivor from a forever-war country who has learned from and try to contribute to a deep Sri Lankan feminist humanism created by the courage of ordinary people insisting there is a third way, a way of peace, decolonization and justice. They do so out of all our disabled experiences of war and genocide – whether we call it disabled or not.

This is my Sri Lankan disabled, disability justice politic. Maybe you have your own.

I am not separate from what is happening in Palestine. None of us are.

Image of Leah and two friends at a protest. One friend is a white, Greek/Irish femme person in her 40s with greying undercut brown hair wearing a black KN95 mask, they are holding a sign that says 50% OF GAZA IS UNDER 18 STOP KILLING KIDS. The second person is a Syrian masculine person wearing a green hat, a green and black flannel over a black t shirt with lilac lettering, holding a sign that reads CEASEFIRE NOW: FREE PALESTINE with two red black green and white Palestinian flags. Leah stands to the right leaning on their friend with their head on their shoulder, wearing a black leather jacket, black leather skirt, pink and white keffiyeh and lilac KN95 mask, holding a sign that reads, "Affirm life." Protestors can be seen in the background at a rotary in mid fall by a tree — Image of Leah and two friends at a protest. One friend is a white, Greek/Irish femme person in her 40s with greying undercut brown hair wearing a black KN95 mask, they are holding a sign that says 50% OF GAZA IS UNDER 18 STOP KILLING KIDS. The second person is a Syrian masculine person wearing a green hat, a green and black flannel over a black t shirt with lilac lettering, holding a sign that reads CEASEFIRE NOW: FREE PALESTINE with two red black green and white Palestinian flags. Leah stands to the right leaning on their friend with their head on their shoulder, wearing a black leather jacket, black leather skirt, pink and white keffiyeh and lilac KN95 mask, holding a sign that reads, “Affirm life.” Protestors can be seen in the background at a rotary in mid fall by a tree

For the past 100 plus days of the war, I have been disabled and brown and enraged and grieving and brain split open from watching the worst things an imperial state can do to human beings on my phone every day. I have been marching every time I can and I have been doing everything I can–posting news, signing statements, boosting crowdfunds, texting Palestinian friends that I love them and offering support daily and after actions.

I’ve been taking my camping chair to rallies and holding my sign sitting down next to a sick and autistic queer Armenian herbalist friend, facing down their own genocide, who brought multiple kinds of herbal tea for grief with them for the crowd. Being protest buddies with sick and disabled friends who find us bus stop benches to sit on and watch the rally, park our shared car in blue spot, bring breakfast sandwiches and pain balm in the pockets of our backpacks. Pick up a dropped scarf and tied it around my L5 when I forget my SI belt at home. Pool money to get a cheap hotel room to crip crash in after we make it through a DC march and definitely can’t drive home after.

I’ve been invited to arrestable actions and wanted to pop my arrest cherry despite all the risk, and then declined when the actions were mostly white and some organizers couldn’t answer my question clearly about whether my mobility device would be taken from me by the cops if I was arrested. I’ve been bummed that it’s 2024 and people are still going “Oh we forgot” about disability.

I have been witnessing as the names of hundreds of the dead from the same family, all with the same last name, are read out loud at a multifaith prayer rally in the middle of Market Street in Philly.

With Jane Shi and Alice Wong, partially fueled by my laying away in disabled insomnia unable to sleep from watching images of the dead, I have been a part of co-creating Crips for e Sims for Gaza, an initiative that draws inspiration from past disabled BIPOC made community fundraisers, like Stacey Park Milbern’s community fundraiser to buy the Disability Justice Culture Club, pooling large amounts of small crip dollars to buy eSims so people in Palestine can stay connected to the internet and cell phone service–crucial when the IOF continually cuts service and people have no way of getting news or word to their families they are alive.

Many Palestinian writers have talked about even if we feel helpless and like nothing we do is enough, it is important for us to do whatever we can, to “throw sand on the gears of imperialism, whether a shovelfull or a truckload full” as disabled Palestinian poet and organizer Rasha Abdulahdi asked us to do. As Dan Berger said, none of it is enough and all of it matters.

None of us are “too ordinary’ to do something. Crips for e Sims for Gaza was literally dreamed up by three freaked out Asian disabled people in a crip google doc. I think about disabled made protests in different times, like the Power To Live Coalition’s lockdown of PG&E where they brought a bed to the lockdown.

What kinds of resistance are you uniquely suited to do? What are the disabled experiments in resisting that abled people could not think up in a million years, but maybe you can?

a close up of Leah's sign in their car, it is made of brown cardboard and reads AFFIRM LIFE and underneath "life is a right, not collateral or casual"- Suheir Hammad and the words "no genocide/ let Palestine live" are visible. The sign rests on Leah's knees in fishnets, their cane is visible stuck to the left of where they are sitting in the driver's seat, behind their steering wheel. — a close up of Leah’s sign in their car, it is made of brown cardboard and reads AFFIRM LIFE and underneath “life is a right, not collateral or casual”- Suheir Hammad and the words “no genocide/ let Palestine live” are visible. The sign rests on Leah’s knees in fishnets, their cane is visible stuck to the left of where they are sitting in the driver’s seat, behind their steering wheel.

Pissing your pants for Palestine

My friends Nomy and Jonah, at first feeling like going to a protest was impossible, then asked each other: “What would it take for us to get there?

Asking this question means getting really fucking real about our bodies, our risks, our fear. My friend Max Airborne got really real when they wrote this post two months ago about navigating their fear of protesting as a superfat, sometimes incontinent wheelchair user and their choice to take part in the action blocking the Bay Bridge:

As the violence in Gaza ramped up I was aching to take to the streets, but kept hesitating. I felt afraid. Years of isolation due to covid had changed me. No longer having a partner to go with made it feel more risky. Fear of covid was/is real. AND, a med I tried for a year caused incontinence that hasn’t gone away. How could I possibly go out and protest?

I began talking about my fears, asking for help, determined to figure out how I could get out there. I knew folks had worn diapers to actions so they could endure. Did diapers come in my size? Could I cut up a chuck and stuff it in my pants? One of my beloveds clued me in about pads that stick to your underwear like menstrual pads but are wider, meant for pee. I didn’t know if they would work, but I’d also kind of stopped caring. If I had to piss my pants for Palestine, then so be it! Maybe being soaked with pee would be a reason kops wouldn’t want to deal with me.

I’ve been out to multiple actions now on my scooter with my mask on tight and my pants filled with “poise pads.” I carry extra and offer them to others, because fuck shame. I want to be in this amazing body as it is AND support others — disabled or not (yet) — to do the same. I want to be building a culture of solidarity where we truly give a shit about each other and put that into action as we fight together for justice and freedom.

The more we try things as small bold crip experiments, the more we are able to dare. A month after the above post, Max wrote about being a wheeled mobility device user in the January 4 action shutting down the first 2024 session of the California legislature demanding a ceasefire in Gaza. Disabled Indigenous fat activist Lindsay Briggs tweeted about the action, “Don’t say you can’t make events COVID safer. This activism action had 400+ people engaged. Everyone wore N95 masks and tested 2 days in a row to make sure this event would be accessible to everyone.”

Max writes of this action:

While I personally have little faith in lawmakers and the state, I want to keep putting my body and my voice in the gears of the death machine when there are opportunities to do so… (as part of a) crew of rad disabled folks who are working hard to build disability access and disability justice into the movement.

Yesterday I counted 6 folks (myself included) using wheeled mobility devices and risking arrest. That might sound small, but it’s the most I’ve seen in one arrest-risking action…The love in our action yesterday was so deeply felt. Love for Palest!ne. Love for Gaza. Love for life. Love for this movement.

Please join us in the streets if you can. Find other fat and/or crip friends in your town and come out together. Find friends and comrades who will have your back and support you to be part of the movement fighting for an end to genocide in gaza and a free free free Palest!ne — a community that has been deeply disabled by Israel’s violence.

Disability justice, for me, has always been about this kind of fierce, real, risk-it-all crip love. When I think about crip resistance I think about everything from my friend’s friend who snuck a ham radio in his ass into the psych ward and pulled it out in front of the nurses to freak them all out, to disabled Palestinian and Indigenous friends involved in Block the Boat actions and highway lockdowns where they offer prayer and organize while sitting down. There are a million more, including many that you reading this may create that don’t exist yet.

The time is now for all of them. It’s literally life or death. I am among many who feel that the powers that be are trying to get us used to mass death–whether it’s the normalization of forever COVID or massacring tens of thousands of Gazans- so they can increase repression and fascist attacks on all people.

It is essential for our connected survival to resist this death cult of a world with everything we’ve got. As Rasha Abdulhadi recently tweeted: “WHEREVER YOU ARE: YOU CAN GET IN THE WAY. TRY EVERYTHING YOU CAN. TRY THINGS NO ONE HAS TRIED.”

The survival of not just Palestine, but all of us, depends on it. And all of us- with our disabled trying things no one else has tried.

ABOUT

Leah, a nonbinary Sri Lankan and white femme in their 40s with sand colored skin, grey smoke, chestnut brown and faded teal curls on one side of their head and a shaved side on the other, rose gold glasses and purple lips, looks at the viewer with their head resting on their left hand. They wear a apple green mesh top through which a neon yellow bra strap is visible. They sit in front of a hot pink couch heaped with cushions and a blonde wood coffee table with a pink protest sigh on it.

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (they/she) is a writer, disability justice and transformative justice cultural and memory worker, divinator, writing teacher, space creator, low-tech survival technologist and structural engineer of disability and transformative justice work. An Aries/ Taurus four horns compulsive maker and documenter, they are the author or co-editor of ten books, including The Future Is Disabled: Prophecies, Love Notes and Mourning Songs, (co-edited with Ejeris Dixon) Beyond Survival: Stories and Strategies from the Transformative Justice Movement, Tonguebreaker, and Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice. They make performance/ ritual with other disabled mostly BIPOC creators/family, most recently Kinetic Light’s Wired and the i wanna be with you everywhere crew. A Lambda Award winner who has been shortlisted for the Publishing Triangle five times, Piepzna-Samarasinha won Lambda’s 2020 Jeanne Córdova Award “honoring a lifetime of work documenting the complexities of queer of color/ disabled/ femme experience.” A 2020-2021 Disability Futures Fellow and YBCA 100 member, they are currently building Living Altars, building power and space by and for disabled QTBIPOC writers/creators.

They are Jackie and Anna’s grandfemme, from Burgher and Tamil Sri Lankan, Irish and Ukrainian/Galician/Rom lineage, sick, disabled and autistic, a nonbinary femme on the stoop, a survivor and a grown up runaway making home and family. Raised in Worcester, MA, they have home in Toronto/T’karonto, South Seattle, their body, with the beloved dead and in the disabled brown web and imaginary. They are a new Philly resident after being a long-time visiting cousin.

Palestine is Disabled