The Union Theological Seminary and the legendary Riverside Church overflowed on November 1 as New Yorkers arrived to see “But We Must Speak: On Palestine and the Mandates of Conscience.” The conversation among left luminaries including Rashid Khalidi, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Noura Erakat about the unfolding genocide in Gaza may have marked a moment when Palestinian liberation — long a suppressed cause in America — entered the mainstream conversation and rallied thousands to listen online and in person to the history, poetry, and testimony of the movement. The event was chaired by Lux editor Yasmin El-Rifae as a longtime organizer of the Palestine Festival of Literature. What follows are excerpts and photographs from the evening’s talks. The text has been lightly edited for clarity.
Yasmin El-Rifae, PalFest Producer
Since 2008 PalFest has been bringing writers and artists from around the world to Palestine for a week-long festival staging free public events in multiple cities. Some of you have been our guests, participants, and advisers.
As we come together in this beautiful sanctuary tonight churches, mosques, hospitals, and refugee camps in Gaza are being bombed by Israel. Our PalFest colleagues, friends, and partners in the West Bank are living in terror for their safety and the safety of their families. The young writers in Gaza who organized a night of poetry in the besieged strip, ahead of the opening of PalFest in Ramallah last May, have stopped replying to their messages. Mohamed al-Qudwa, who contributed a poem to that evening is still posting on Instagram. With no food, water, or power in Gaza, he says that when his phone lights up, the internet feels like a miracle. Some of the writers and activists whose homes PalFest visited just last May are having their photographs and addresses circulated on chat groups among armed Israeli settlers, calling for their murder. Some of the publishers and editors who have worked with these writers and activists are in this room today.
In response to this disaster, we are holding this event as an urgent intervention by writers, scholars, and poets who have worked at the unavoidable intersection of art and politics, who have thought deeply about land, segregation, colonization, history, and liberation.
We thank the Union Theological Seminary for taking us in at a time when events in this city are being canceled and censored. I’m told that there are 300 people across the street at Riverside church, watching this online. Thank you also to Jewish Voice for Peace, whose rabbinical council helped us approach various places of worship to host this event. Their volunteers are also doing crucial work with our ground team tonight. Thank you. Thank you to the many friends and advisers who have helped make this happen on such short notice, you all know who you are.
Mohammed El-Kurd, Poet & Journalist
“What do you say to children for whom the red sea does not part?” (“No Moses in Siege”)
“We must speak out collectively because together they cannot crush us… it’s hard to say this sentence but now is not the time for despair, as the death toll mounts, now is not the time for fear… This is a moment of courage for all of us, so I invite you all, and I invite myself, to be courageous.”
Ta-Nehisi Coates, Author
“One of the things I’ll probably make amends for until the day they put me in the ground is that in one of my most celebrated works of journalism, when I had to demonstrate tangibly how a reparations program could be done, I looked to Israel [as a form of reparations to Jews after the Holocaust]. One of my golden rules about writing is you only write after you’ve reported… and I wrote without going. So while there is this long tradition of solidarity, for me personally there’s a thing of making amends and it is ferociously important to me. I think about that and I think about how gracious people were when I was over there. And I think about how their only request was, when you go back, don’t lose your voice. ”
Noura Erakat, Lawyer & Scholar
“Absolutely yes, absolutely yes, I cannot tell you the joy I have right now, joy that I have not felt in many many weeks, but the joy that I feel right now in your company. The joy in being able to gather with a testament to our ancestors, with a commitment to future generations, that we are fighting. That we fought for our humanity, that we were here, that we said no, that we gathered, that we said no.”
Morgan Bassichis, Performer, Writer, Organizer Jewish Voice For Peace
“Critiquing Israel’s actions is not antisemitic, quite the opposite. Challenging Israel’s behavior is a good way to be in solidarity for Jews, it is a good way to be a good friend for Jews… Nothing worth doing in times of crisis and urgency is without risk. This is a time of profound moral reckoning and history will judge us by what we did or did not do in this moment. We all must have our answer.” (letter from Rabbis Alyssa Weis and Brent Rosen, co-chairs of JVP Rabbinical Council)
Natalie Diaz, Poet
“Beloved occupiers, we are posting notice. There is no more vacancy When this world has ended, we will carry our people home” (“Alchemy Horse”)
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