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1. I haven't told my story for awhile about how the Israeli government tried to intimidate me.
In 2010, I wrote a story for the Village Voice about a young woman named Emily Henochowicz, a Jewish American college student who was studying art at Cooper Union.
In 2010, I wrote a story for the Village Voice about a young woman named Emily Henochowicz, a Jewish American college student who was studying art at Cooper Union.
2. Emily was really bright and interesting and, as an artist, she was obsessed with eyeballs—she drew them, she loved them, and she even went out on Halloween as a giant eyeball. 
3. Well, Emily decided to do a semester abroad at the Cooper Union's program in Tel Aviv, where she became dismayed at the conditions of the Palestinians and especially at the separation wall when she saw them up close.
4. & when a flotilla of aid to Palestine resulted in the death of several ppl, Emily went to a protest in Israel. She was shot in the face w a tear gas canister by an Israeli soldier & one of her eyes was blown out of her head; she was left with one eye, like one of her artworks.
5. I wrote up a profile about her with the photographer CS Muncy, and it was published in our little Village Voice, then in its dying years. villagevoice.com/2010/07/27/a-c…
6. So a couple days after we publish, the Israeli consulate called for & RECEIVED a meeting with the editor in chief of the Voice—at which the consulate suggested I was bad at my job (I wasn't), was wrong about what I'd written (I wasn't) that I should be fired...
7. ...and that if I wasn't fired, anything I wrote should be run past the Israeli consulate in the future before publication.
8. (The editor in chief who took the meeting was not Jewish, but another editor who was Jewish tried to intervene on my behalf, tried to stop it from ever happening & defended me rigorously. I mention this bc while Zionism & Judaism are often conflated, they shouldn't be.)
9. I wasn't fired, but the tactic was meant to intimidate me. It was an absurd episode; why on earth should a foreign government have any say in what I write? At a dying alt-weekly, no less?
10. And while I haven't ever been similarly threatened by another government in that way, I sure as shit have been intimidated by American municipal and state governments repeatedly.
11. When I've covered the deaths of Eric Garner in NY, Freddie Gray in Baltimore, Mike Brown in Ferguson and Oscar Grant in Oakland, I have repeatedly had police threaten me —both as person & as a reporter—with tear gas, brandished guns, handcuffs & the specter of arrest.
12. None of this is appropriate, in Israel or in the United States. I have been thinking about two Black women as I reflect on these events, nearly a decade apart.
13. Angela Davis teaches us how connected the policing is from Ferguson to Baltimore—and how the tactics of control and intimidation circulate across the U.S. border, as the U.S. sends our police to train in Israel. haymarketbooks.org/books/780-free…
14. And Toni Morrison (whose excellent new book THE SOURCE OF SELF REGARD I am currently reading) teaches us that fascism & racism will always try to control not just dissent but any documentation of dissent, critical thought, & writers who try to speak. penguinrandomhouse.com/books/566846/t…
15. The Israeli government did not want to Palestinians to get food from the flotilla, nor for anyone in Israel for protest that, nor for an American writer to even pen a story about it 4,000 miles away in a dying alt-weekly...
16. ...just as it does not want for Congresswoman #IlhanOmar to express concern...just as the Sacramento Police wants not only the ability to kill Stephon Clark w impunity, but to be able to keep clergy from protesting the murder & reporters from covering the protests.
17. And yet, as much as the state tries to intimidate us, we must speak about what we see and report on what we know to be true to the best of our ability.
18. The state (be it Israel, Sacramento or the US fed) & the private market have a shared interest in creating a population which believes "questioning support" of ANYTHING is unacceptable—bc if we don't question, they can extort more $ from us for guns (to better police us, etc)
19. Anyway, this was a long way of explaining why #IStandWithIlhan.. As @IBJIYONGI pointed out, we all owe Rep. Omar a debt for speaking her truth with courage.
So go forth and speak your OWN truth, too—even when the world tries to intimidate you.
So go forth and speak your OWN truth, too—even when the world tries to intimidate you.
@IBJIYONGI 20. I should also add that while this didn’t end my career obvs, I no longer can get work as a journalist (for a variety of reasons). On days when a half million of you read a thread like this, it makes me sad I can’t work anymore. Hopefully there will a book someday...
@IBJIYONGI 21. ...But there are real costs for speaking about what the state & the markets want to be “unspeakable,” and really few opportunities for those who go against that. Like, it feels weird that I have more knowledge & experience than ever but can now only publish on Twitter.
@IBJIYONGI 22. But I’m hella lucky I have a job where I can do research & teach the next generation how to fight the good fight, and I’m grateful to you, Tweeps, for reading & fighting the good fight wherever you are.
@IBJIYONGI 23. The past couple of days, I have been thinking about the price Marc Lamont Hill, Steven Salaita, Angela Davis, Emily Henochowicz, Razan al-Najar, Rachel Corrie & others have paid to speak & act against violence.
