Sunday, March 10, was the 94th annual Academy Awards, a day for Hollywood and all of its biggest stars to show off their glitz and glamour and for everyone else to ogle and watch with bated breath to see which films and performances will be deemed the highest forms of art. Millions of Americans tune into this show every year, with a reported 19.5 million viewers this year, a high for the past four years. What is most important about this event, however, is not who did and didn’t win or get snubbed, but what was going on just outside the event. On the street outside the venue, hundreds of people rallied in support of Palestine and to protest the ongoing genocidal campaign against Gaza by Israel and supported by the United States. The protestors successfully shut down Highland Avenue, keeping traffic gridlocked for 30 minutes and causing the awards ceremony to start late. Not only was this protest a way of directly confronting and inconveniencing those putting on and attending the show, but it also highlighted the role of “normalcy” in maintaining the status quo. Why are so many of us tuning in to a show that represents such opulence when a genocide is going on and we are the ones funding it?
“While you’re watching, bombs are dropping.” This was one of the phrases that was reportedly chanted at the protest outside the Oscars and one that can be heard at many pro-Palestine rallies. It draws attention to the cruelty and complacency of our inattention. As our government continues its historical legacy and commits atrocities with our tax dollars, many of us look away. The American attention span is a precious commodity, and Israel and the U.S. are banking on us running out of steam. Days such as that of the Super Bowl and the Academy Awards have been some of the most devastating for Palestinians in Gaza. I think of the Flour Massacre Feb. 29, during which Israel shot and killed over 100 Palestinians trying to get food in the midst of a famine that Israel has imposed on them. It was horrific and a reminder of what Israel and the U.S. have done and continue to do. And, because there were no consequences, Israel has continued to target points of aid. Just this Wednesday, Israel bombed a UNRWA aid center in Rafah. In my opinion, it is clear that they are banking on our collective conscience getting used to events such as these and the shock wearing off. We cannot allow that to happen.
It has been five months of genocide that we have watched through our phones. It is unfathomably sickening that Palestinians must document and put their pain and trauma on display for us in the West in hopes that we will do something. The only thing more deplorable would be for us to see their experiences, hear their calls for a ceasefire, see them, and do nothing. We demand their pain, we consume it, and then we grow tired. We cannot accept this as the world we live in, or the world we hope to build. Palestinian writer and activist Mohammed El-Kurd published a piece in Mondoweiss this past week in which he asks if, as another popular chant wishes to profess, we are in fact all Palestinians. In words much better than mine, he reminds us all that if we mean what we say when we claim that we are all Palestinian or position ourselves as pro-Palestine, we must “abandon the metaphor and manifest materially.” He writes, “this is not about their status quo, but ours. It is about our relationship with ourselves and our communities.”
Our attention is precious, especially in the belly of the beast. It is about what we are and aren’t willing to normalize. What choice are we going to make?
