On the politics of possibility vs the hope that a better world is possible
Gaza’s Palestinian Christian community celebrate the holiday season by lighting the Christmas tree
Benay Blend writes in The Palestine Chronicle on 31 December 2025:
New Year’s Eve is a traditional time for making resolutions for the coming months, personal promises to oneself to do better. Given the state of the world, in particular Palestine and the Global South, perhaps this year should be a time to make collective resolutions to work for a better world.
In the words of journalist Arundhati Roy, taken from her speech “Come September” (2002): “The time has come, the Walrus said… Another world is not only possible, she’s on her way. Maybe many of us won’t be here to greet her, but on a quiet day, if I listen very carefully, I can hear her breathing.”
On a recent edition of Democracy Now, Roy spoke about her support for Palestine despite the reversal of India’s decade’s decades-long policy, which in the past did not favor Israel’s Occupation.
Though conceding to an almost universal sense of helplessness, she also states that “we have to be unreasonable, and we have to hope, and we have to do what we have to do.” Her message is not meant to be “some cute, you know, person saying, ‘Oh, everything will be all right,” but rather acknowledging that while Israel has devastated Gaza, it has also destroyed itself, despised as it is in the eyes of the world for war crimes beyond the scope of human imagination.
In “The Optimism of Uncertainty,” the late Howard Zinn reiterates a similar point. “An optimist isn’t necessarily a blithe, slightly sappy whistler in the dark of our time,” Zinn explains. “To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.”
“What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives,” continued Zinn. “If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something.”