A few weeks ago a Facebook friend posted a Washington Post article about Harper Collins publishing an atlas where Israel does not appear. This atlas was intended for sale in Middle East schools. My Facebook friend was pretty appalled by this and said something to tune of "facts are facts" and Harper Collins has no business printing a map that omits Israel. Now I agree that Harper Collins was enabling denial in this situation. Like it or not, Israel does exist, and pretending it does not exist doesn't solve anything. But on the other hand, millions of people don't acknowledge the State of Israel. When my friend called Israel a fact, well, that gave me pause.
Are countries really facts? Or are they merely opinions agreed upon by a majority of people? And not just opinions, but opinions that have shifted and changed enormously over the course of human history. Climate change? That's a scientifically proven fact. The climate is changing regardless of how many deny it. Genocide? Also in the fact area. Millions of dead Jews, Native Americans, Tutsis? Those dead bodies are facts. Borders of countries, on the other hand, fall more into our belief system.
Over the past few months I've met three Palestinians. None of them hail from the West Bank or Gaza. One of them left Jerusalem for Jordan with her family when she was four, one was born in Egypt, the third in Jordan, I believe. But they will all tell you they're from Palestine. Palestine still exists for these people as a physical place. They see the borders even if the maps don't show them.
I feel as if there's a general attitude of, "Well, shit's different now people, get used to it." "Why the hell are you hanging on to this when Israel is here and it's not going away and you live somewhere else now, so get over it." We Americans, we colonizers, we usurpers of land are not in a very good position to empathize with the Palestinians. No one's threatened to move our borders in a very long time. We're full of immigrants and assimilators, but most of our people came here by choice. (Unless we're black, then likely not so much by choice.) We don't get it.
So, I say, imagine this:
The US and Canada have a scuffle. A large scale disagreement. Toes are stepped on, tempers flare, we need a little detente, so we give them Michigan. And the Michiganders (yes, that's the technical term) are pissed. They're all "What the fuck? We don't want to be Canadian! We're fucking American." Except, now they don't live in America. And the Canadians don't consider them Canadian, because they're not.
Meanwhile, let's say that Canada is flooded with Arab Muslim refugees. There's been an upswell of hatred and violence toward Muslims (hard to imagine? not really, right?) and the world powers are thinking: These people need a place. They need a place to be together and feel safe, and hey Canada, you just got that new sub-province --- which, let's face it, they're gonna call The Mitten --- let's put all these Muslims in The Mitten.
Before I go on, I want to acknowledge that this analogy is rough and does not properly include a shit-ton of context, like say, that whole Holy Land thing or the millennia of unresolved conflict between peoples. Civilization was not born anywhere near Michigan. This analogy is a stripped-down, exponentially less-loaded version of the real deal. And let's remember that in a truly equal analogy the entire United States would cease to exist, not just Michigan.
Now let's imagine that the Mitten is not as vast and unpopulated as it actually is and Canada (backed by the entire Western world) says to the Michiganders, "Yeah, you know what? You gotta move. You gotta get out of your houses and you know what? Detroit's pretty empty. You can all go live in Detroit. And Flint. We'll throw in Flint because we're really generous. Now getting moving. We gotta put these Muslims someplace. They've been through enough." And everyone in Michigan is forced to leave their homes. And they can either go be refugees in some other country, or they can live in the city of Detroit. Or Flint.
Do you think that those ousted people of Michigan are going to stop seeing Michigan as their home, stop seeing themselves as Americans? Do you think that they're not going to have Michigan flags and maps of the United States whole and how they remember it? Do you think they're going to call it a province, accept that as a fact? Do you think they're not going to tell their children, "That house at 127 Pine St in Saginaw that is now occupied by the Hussein family, That's our house. That will always be our house. This will always be your land because what was done to us was wrong and unfair." C'mon, this is the country where people still fly the Confederate flag and are so in denial of our own history of genocide that we still have a team called the Red Skins. We're not good at letting go of even the blatantly offensive, wrong-side-of-history stuff. You think we would behave differently than the Palestinians if we were treated this way? I don't.
I think we'd be publishing maps with our version of the "facts" and hanging them in every classroom.
Also, if you think the Palestinians are an anomaly, I recommend traveling to the northernmost parts of Greece and asking what country you're in. I think you'll find you're in Macedonia.
© 2015 by Mia McCullough
Are countries really facts? Or are they merely opinions agreed upon by a majority of people? And not just opinions, but opinions that have shifted and changed enormously over the course of human history. Climate change? That's a scientifically proven fact. The climate is changing regardless of how many deny it. Genocide? Also in the fact area. Millions of dead Jews, Native Americans, Tutsis? Those dead bodies are facts. Borders of countries, on the other hand, fall more into our belief system.
Over the past few months I've met three Palestinians. None of them hail from the West Bank or Gaza. One of them left Jerusalem for Jordan with her family when she was four, one was born in Egypt, the third in Jordan, I believe. But they will all tell you they're from Palestine. Palestine still exists for these people as a physical place. They see the borders even if the maps don't show them.
I feel as if there's a general attitude of, "Well, shit's different now people, get used to it." "Why the hell are you hanging on to this when Israel is here and it's not going away and you live somewhere else now, so get over it." We Americans, we colonizers, we usurpers of land are not in a very good position to empathize with the Palestinians. No one's threatened to move our borders in a very long time. We're full of immigrants and assimilators, but most of our people came here by choice. (Unless we're black, then likely not so much by choice.) We don't get it.
So, I say, imagine this:
The US and Canada have a scuffle. A large scale disagreement. Toes are stepped on, tempers flare, we need a little detente, so we give them Michigan. And the Michiganders (yes, that's the technical term) are pissed. They're all "What the fuck? We don't want to be Canadian! We're fucking American." Except, now they don't live in America. And the Canadians don't consider them Canadian, because they're not.
Meanwhile, let's say that Canada is flooded with Arab Muslim refugees. There's been an upswell of hatred and violence toward Muslims (hard to imagine? not really, right?) and the world powers are thinking: These people need a place. They need a place to be together and feel safe, and hey Canada, you just got that new sub-province --- which, let's face it, they're gonna call The Mitten --- let's put all these Muslims in The Mitten.
Before I go on, I want to acknowledge that this analogy is rough and does not properly include a shit-ton of context, like say, that whole Holy Land thing or the millennia of unresolved conflict between peoples. Civilization was not born anywhere near Michigan. This analogy is a stripped-down, exponentially less-loaded version of the real deal. And let's remember that in a truly equal analogy the entire United States would cease to exist, not just Michigan.
Now let's imagine that the Mitten is not as vast and unpopulated as it actually is and Canada (backed by the entire Western world) says to the Michiganders, "Yeah, you know what? You gotta move. You gotta get out of your houses and you know what? Detroit's pretty empty. You can all go live in Detroit. And Flint. We'll throw in Flint because we're really generous. Now getting moving. We gotta put these Muslims someplace. They've been through enough." And everyone in Michigan is forced to leave their homes. And they can either go be refugees in some other country, or they can live in the city of Detroit. Or Flint.
Do you think that those ousted people of Michigan are going to stop seeing Michigan as their home, stop seeing themselves as Americans? Do you think that they're not going to have Michigan flags and maps of the United States whole and how they remember it? Do you think they're going to call it a province, accept that as a fact? Do you think they're not going to tell their children, "That house at 127 Pine St in Saginaw that is now occupied by the Hussein family, That's our house. That will always be our house. This will always be your land because what was done to us was wrong and unfair." C'mon, this is the country where people still fly the Confederate flag and are so in denial of our own history of genocide that we still have a team called the Red Skins. We're not good at letting go of even the blatantly offensive, wrong-side-of-history stuff. You think we would behave differently than the Palestinians if we were treated this way? I don't.
I think we'd be publishing maps with our version of the "facts" and hanging them in every classroom.
Also, if you think the Palestinians are an anomaly, I recommend traveling to the northernmost parts of Greece and asking what country you're in. I think you'll find you're in Macedonia.
© 2015 by Mia McCullough
