The politics of speaking about politics

In the streets of my neighborhood, Madinat Nasr, during the first two days of Eid Al-Adha, men in robes stained with blood would pass through, usually in pairs, announcing their trade out loud: “Butchers!” Some neighbors would call on their services to perform the ritual sacrifice of livestock, a tradition during Eid for those who can afford it.

This scene has faded in recent years. Neighbors now arrange the ritual slaughter in advance, agreeing on a time and place with their regular butcher. Furthermore, large segments of society can no longer afford to sacrifice livestock, having fallen to the lower rungs of the middle class.

I imagine two men passing through our neighborhood’s streets in the coming days, bellowing “Butcheeeers,” as they scan entrances and balconies, hoping to be called on. They catch sight of a Palestinian flag draped across a balcony, a strange child behind it gazing down at them. They look away, not engaging with the child; they are butchers, after all. What happens in the world, or the region, or on their country’s eastern borders is none of their business. Politics is none of their business.

They run into Mahmoud, the retired civil servant who used to call on their services years ago, standing at his building entrance. As they exchange greetings and Eid wishes, he tells them he won’t be offering a sacrifice this year. He can no longer afford to slaughter and distribute as he once did, and has settled for buying a few kilograms of meat for his family.

The two butchers join him in voicing their frustration over rising prices and a life that grows harder by the day—until suddenly, they realize they are talking politics. They wrap up the conversation because they, after all, are just butchers, and Mahmoud is just a retired civil servant who should stick to watching Ramadan soap operas during their summer reruns. They are not politicians.

Mahmoud and the two butchers remind me of two fishermen I filmed aboard a small fishing boat in Gaza in 2006: Abu Muhammad and Younis. Abu Muhammad talked to me about his family, his circumstances, and fishing. He complained about difficult living conditions, about Palestinian fishermen feeling squeezed in—barred from fishing in Israeli waters as they once had, and from approaching Egyptian waters on the pretext of preventing smuggling, and about Israeli frigates firing shells at them at night, sometimes blowing up their small fishing boats and sinking them.

Younis listened, nodding along. But when Abu Muhammad turned to the blockade on the Gaza Strip, imposed as punishment for Hamas’s victory in the legislative elections, Younis jumped in, warning him not to talk politics. We all laughed because everything he had said, about fishing conditions and boats being targeted by shells, was also politics. It was inseparable from what followed, all part of what Abu Muhammad called “fishing and fish and living and life.”

Can a Palestinian avoid engaging with politics? Having no opinion? Impossible. Which is another reason to laugh, if bitterly.

The cowardice of fame and success

We all know people, in our daily lives or among public figures we admire, whose professionalism and competence we respect. But some are either nihilists, indifferent to public affairs and ignorant of what lies outside their professional sphere, or simply afraid, preferring to keep their heads down.

When someone expresses a political position in front of them, they respond: “We are not politicians. Leave politics to the politicians.” This argument is far from innocent: leaving political power to politicians alone, and so only to those with financial power, serves to perpetuate exploitation and injustice.

These types show charity and generosity toward the poor, without ever concerning themselves with actually changing those people’s lives. They rarely take a public political stance, and when they do, it is a “safe” cause—one that exposes them to no risk, no punishment, no anger from those in power. They express solidarity only with faraway victims, like Europeans condemning the persecution of migrants in the United States, while ignoring the thousands drowning, as a result of their own governments’ policies, in the nearby mass grave of the Mediterranean.

They justify this apolitical stance through a strange division of labor: some professions are allowed to engage with politics, while others are not. Yet at their core, these are arguments for self-protection, for selfishly preserving fame, status, and money. They dress up abstention from taking a stand—cowardice—as something natural that everyone should follow.

These figures embody a deep moral and intellectual crisis. Among its recent faces was the great film director Wim Wenders, who, as jury president at the last Berlin Film Festival, refused to allow cinema to be “contaminated” by politics. The politics in question, specifically, was taking a stance against the genocide of the Palestinian people, even as several of his earlier films are themselves “contaminated” with politics.

We are seeing the same arguments about elevating art above politics—or sports above politics—repeating in Spain. When Lamine Yamal, son of Moroccan immigrants and star player for Spain’s national team, raised the Palestinian flag during celebrations of Barcelona’s La Liga title, it sparked numerous objections, including from the club’s management and his coach.

They were not irritated before, when the player used to hold up a sign with the postal code of his marginalized, impoverished neighborhood after scoring goals, even though that gesture was a declaration of social and political belonging, a reminder that Yamal came from the ranks of the poor and of immigrants. Here lies the biting contradiction: that cinema and football should rise above politics only when the political position conflicts with the direct interests of those in power, or when the matter involves the Palestinian cause.

Those who consider themselves “above” politics, who somehow escape its contamination, do not realize that solidarity with Palestine is no longer a taboo, and that it will only grow, even if it faces temporary setbacks. But they do understand the difference between an unknown player raising the Palestinian flag, whose gesture they will ignore, and a global star like Lamine Yamal raising it. They are keenly aware of his influence over millions of young people and teenagers, and it is that influence which frightens them. Just as there is a vast difference between an unknown actor at an obscure festival draping a Palestinian keffiyeh over his shoulders and Javier Bardem or Susan Sarandon wearing one.

The intellectual’s amnesia

What is truly alarming is the cultural and moral decline of the prominent intellectual who deliberately forgets that politics is everything, without exception. He knew back in the day, during his studies, that “art for art’s sake” was among history’s most trivial arguments, easily dismissed. He knew it was equally absurd to say: football is for football, laughter is for laughter, butchery is for butchery, fishing is for fishing.

When the “art for art’s sake” argument collapsed—having only ever served to prop up those in power—a new rhetoric took its place: that of “specialization” and “focus.” If you are a successful footballer, it urges, focus on football. If you are an artist, focus on art. The intent was to shield the famous and successful from “contamination” by political struggle. Then “struggle” was softened to “activism.” Then we arrived at the final stage: having no political opinion at all—or if you happen to have one, keeping it to yourself.

The double standard is laid bare in the case of Hansi Flick, Barça’s coach. When asked in a press conference about banning Russia from sporting competitions, he defended the ban with concern: Russia had invaded Ukraine, and the world should not stay silent. But the systematic genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza did not warrant the same concern because German and European interests demand it. 

This is not ignorance. It is a game of interests, and Flick plays it knowingly. As a German, he is bound by a national constant, built on blackmail and lies, that ties Germany forever to defending everything Israel does, as cover for the entanglement of its financial elite’s interests with Israel. As Barça’s coach, he would rather avoid anything that could expose the club to negative press. Meanwhile, the young player risks his entire career to express his allegiance.

This is precisely what makes Lamine Yamal’s gesture significant. What he did, the reactions condemning it, and the campaign to shame him, are all politics. Had he stayed silent or said, like others, that all lives are sacred—also political acts—no one would have criticized him. But Yamal, despite his young age, understood that everything is politics, and chose to declare which side he stands on.

He knows, without grand words, what the retired civil servant Mahmoud also knew but feared to say: that the price of a kilogram of meat, whether it costs ten piasters or a thousand pounds, is politics. We must demand answers about it from those in power and the financial elites who made them and sustain them. And the absence of the question is a political silence, one we pay for economically, in our livelihoods, and politically.