Reflection: What is local environmental justice?

Last week, I was interviewed by an AP reporter on President Biden’s environmental justice record. I judged his record based on an understanding of environmental justice. I spoke about Biden’s disappointing domestic policies (including, but not limited to, his support for the Mountain Valley Pipeline), and his criminal funding of the ongoing genocide against Palestinians. Of the 25 environmental justice organizers interviewed, I was the only critical voice.

How could that be?

In judging administrations only by comparison with each other, we are, inevitably, accepting less and less, since both Democrat and Republican have worked their way to the ‘right.’

And, in setting aside the funding of the genocide, we are disregarding our own (alleged) principles of environmental justice. Have we forgotten points 1, 5, and 15?

I have been told by several NC environmental justice advocates that the genocide is not a local issue.

How can anyone claim it isn’t local?

The bombs are paid for by our taxes, with the support of all but one NC representative (Rep Alma Adams). The cries against the genocide are dismissed by our NC General Assembly, who have equated criticizing Israel with anti-semitism, and our local media, who continue to ignore the hundreds of local Palestinian families whose loved ones in Gaza (and the occupied West Bank) have been killed. Protestors against the genocide have been attacked by our local sheriff departments at university encampments, and our progressive city council members, who have called for a ceasefire, have been targeted.

And it doesn’t stop there. The harms caused by the US reverberate back to all here in the US. US-made and US-funded bombs sent to Israel contribute significantly to climate change, and people here are increasingly suffering from heat stress. (The emissions generated during the first two months of the genocide were greater than the annual carbon footprint of more than 20 nations, and rebuilding Gaza (if Israel will lift its criminal and illegal 18-year blockade on Gaza and allow rebuilding) will come at an environmental cost equivalent to 60 million tonnes of CO2.) Meanwhile, AIPAC has already unseated two progressive congressional members, Rep Jamaal Bowman and Rep Cori Bush. And, all the while, our top politicians ignore national and international laws, including the Leahy Law and the rulings from the International Court of Justice, by sending arms to a country that violates human rights (i.e. Israel), thereby weakening the adherence to laws by all governmental agencies.

I could make all those arguments, and I could also talk about the need to invest in care, rather than in harm, and about the massive environmental devastation of the land, water, and air in Gaza – caused by our weapons.

But honestly, it is much simpler.

How can the environmental justice movement set aside a genocide? A genocide. The deliberate, intentional killing of a people. Isn’t that the crime of all environmental justice crimes?

And aren’t we local? Pain has been inflicted on communities in North Carolina. Yes. We – Palestinian, Lebanese, and other Arab communities – live here too.  Do you see us? Are our communities not ‘local’? We have been crying for ten months. We have been trying to breathe for ten months.

When will the hunger for our blood be satiated?

The Lancet’s projected death toll of the genocide — when accounting for death from starvation and disease, as well as unidentified martyrs — is 186,000 in Gaza alone; 186,000 loved ones, and the genocide continues.

In 200 days of bombardment, the Israeli military had dropped 75,000 tonnes of explosives, turning much of Gaza to rubble. And the bombing has continued. We are now at day 314, and the bombs continue.

Amount of Israeli bombs dropped on Gaza surpasses that of World War II

This past Saturday, the Israeli army bombed a school at dawn, when hundreds of displaced men, women, and children were praying.Palestinians were targeted at a time to cause maximum fatalities.It was during the exact and known time of the dawn prayer that US-made, 2,000 pound bombs were dropped, splitting the ground beneath them.

More than 100 people were killed, shredded. Some people’s bodies evaporated in the bombing. Not one single whole body to identify. Paramedics gathered the human remains, split them into bags that weigh the average human weight, 154 pounds (70 kg) for adults and 40 pounds (18 kg) for children. They handed one bag of remains to each family of a martyr, and asked them to bury the bag and pray over it as though it were the whole body of their loved one.

One father said that Ali, his 6-year-old child, had been killed. He was given a 40-pound bag of body parts.

Please. Sit with that image for a little bit.

And then sit with this story. This past Tuesday, Mohammed Abu al Qumsan went to register the birth of his four-day old twins. He and his wife  endured ten months of genocide. They raised funds to afford anesthesia for the needed c-section (imagine, not having anesthesia).

The mother, Dr. Jumana Arfa,  miraculously gave birth to a healthy boy and girl. But when he returned to his home, Mohammed found that an Israeli missile had targeted their apartment, and killed the newborns, their mother, and their grandmother. The birth certificates became death certificates.

Dr Jumana had been reporting on the Israeli snipers targeting children directly in the chest and head, which she had personally witnessed. A targeted attack. Another targeted killing.

Please remember that Palestinians have been enduring one massacre, after another, for more than 300 days. Every day is another massacre, another heart-breaking story, another Palestinian child beheaded.

More than 115 infants have been born and killed during this genocide.

More than 2100 Palestinian infants and toddlers killed, with US-support, in Gaza.

More than 10,000 Palestinian men, women, and children missing, buried under the rubble.

Now read this headline: A torture survivor finds the corpse of his four-year-old son. And see this infographic about 30 days at Israel’s torture camp.

Then this headline: Israeli media’s coverage of the rape of Palestinian detainees shows support for sexual violence in service of genocide.

And this headline: Gaza genocide enters month 11 as Israel provokes regional war.

And this: Scorched-earth: making Gaza uninhabitable for generations to come. Yes, the land is deliberately being made uninhabitable.

Is this not our concern?

In spite of this relentless slaughter, yesterday, in addition to the $3.5 billion in military support authorized last week, the Biden/Harris administration approved a new sale of $20 billion worth of weapons to Israel, promising Israel years of continual weapons to sustain their killing.

Meanwhile, the US has deployed a nuclear-powered submarine to the region.

But are we to look away and say, not a local issue? Not a local environmental justice issue?

Is that what the movement has become?

Today marks 314 days of the most documented genocide. Live streamed on our social media.   Available for all who care, to see.

And yet the environmental justice movement is overwhelmingly silent. What kind of justice can we claim when genocide is unseen? Or set aside?

I have run out of tears. I have run out of breathing space.

But I will continue to say, yes, among many other crimes, the Biden/Harris administration deserves a failing grade on environmental justice. But even that is not enough.

They are not alone in failing.

– Rania Masri, NCEJN Director of Organizing and Policy

rania@ncejn.org

p.s. the latest news.