In New York, Muslim Americans React to Israel's Deadly Attack on Gaza Flotilla

News of Israel's brutal attack on a flotilla of ships carrying humanitarian aid into Gaza seems to have moved even this generally apathetic world. As the reactions of global leaders, activists, lawyers, journalists, academics and other public figures saturate the media, hope builds that growing political pressure will have the effect of ending, at long last, Israel's inhumane blockade of Gaza.

The events of last week also present us with an opportunity to pause and to reflect upon why this attack -- in particular -- has captured our imaginations more powerfully than previous instances of Israeli aggression.

In search of answers, I decided to talk to everyday Muslim Americans about the events of last week, asking each of them how they felt about the recent flotilla attack and what, if any hope, the event held for a better future. I interviewed this diverse group of New Yorkers over a period of two days, and my accounts include the voices of a shop clerk, a business owner, wait-staff, an immigration lawyer, a photographer, a retired journalist, bankers, engineers, and a number of students.

What I learned in listening to their narratives is that the flotilla attack - which has largely been produced by the media as a critical moment of rupture - is for many Muslim Americans, an event that indicates not rupture, but continuity: the continuity of Israeli brutality and injustice, and the continuity of Palestinian despair.

As Adil -- one of the men I interviewed -- astutely observed, a critical response to longstanding Israeli aggression seems to have been possible in this case, because the citizens of another nation were attacked, injured and killed. In so noting, Adil's sentiments gesture towards the sad realization that recognition of the violence that Palestinians face on a daily basis, is contingent upon violence being enacted upon the bodies of non-Palestinians. Perhaps this is the reason why the Israeli attack of Gaza in 2008, which resulted in the deaths of over 1400 Palestinians in a mere 22 days, failed to produce the breadth and scale of international response that the flotilla attack is currently receiving.

The meta-questions embedded in Adil's sentiments are worth pondering: Why is it that some events produce an outcome of historical rupture while others fail to have the same effect? Why do the deaths of certain kinds of people compel us to speak and take action while the deaths of 'others' seem only to induce silence and inaction?

Some of the answers to these questions can be found in the sentiments of the men and women that I interviewed:

Yassine (waiter): Israel doesn't respect the law. That's the bottom line. This is just one scene in a long movie, and there is no end to this movie. Never. You know this. There's no end.

Miriam (waitress): I feel sorry for the Palestinians. They really are alone. The Israeli government has the solution to this issue, but they choose not to fix it. It's always going to be this way. I have no hope. The problem is that Palestine is alone. Everyone else ... all of us, are just talking. Israel has power and the Palestinians have nothing. Palestine is like Guantanamo Bay. I feel like its never going to be over ... in fact it is over.

Mohammad (engineer): Israelis think that they have the divine right to Israel, and that Palestinians should not be there. This attack is just an example of the Israeli strategy in Palestine -- to take over by force, with the non-stop killing of men and women and children and babies. It's ugly ... like no one can imagine.

Adil (student): What makes me angry is that it has to come to this for governments around the world to take note of an issue that has such a long and horrendous history! As long as it was just Palestinians dying, everybody was silent. Now activists and citizens of other countries have been killed and it's an atrocity? It's unbelievable that global condemnation only comes now, and to be honest, it is too little too late. Until the United States government stops supporting a state whose very existence is a violation of international law, a state that ruthlessly enacts killings ... really enacts genocide, nothing can ever change. The root of the problem is not Israel ... Israel does not act alone ... it acts with the support, economic and political, of the United States, and unfortunately this country does not consider the plight of Palestinians to be in line with its domestic and international interests. You ask me about hope ... what hope is there in the face of this reality?