The genocide against the Palestinian people continues, and hundreds are dying from starvation as concentration camps are being built to move their remaining families. While it can be tempting to succumb to hopelessness, poet Mx. Yaffa recently implored us to ask, “Do you think your misery is the food people in Gaza are demanding?” This call to revolutionary action was ringing as we geared up for National Moth Week (July 19-27). Founded as an annual “citizen science” event in 2012, individuals across communities from 90+ countries participated this year, gathering in the evening to see all the flying moths and other insects (including, if we’re very lucky, ants) attracted to the mercury-vapor and blacklight-lit sheets. Although the Monarch butterfly is perhaps the most well-known migratory insect, moths can be migratory as well, seasonally flying hundreds to thousands of miles, at low or high altitudes, to escape famine and environmental stress. Hummingbird hawk-moths, Madagascan sunset moths, armyworm moths, ipsilon darts, vestal moths, and celery loopers are all migratory moths in the Lepidoptera order of insects. Moths and butterflies feature prominently as political animals, often especially so with connections to Palestinian communities who so often have been forced into migration. They flutter through the air, sparking imagination, as light as a spirit and as grand as a soul, symbols of destruction, rebirth, and resurrection.
In her moving memoir, All Water has Perfect Memory, Palestinian writer and teacher Nada Samih-Rotondo recalls the awe and wonder of encountering a beautiful monarch soon after immigrating to RI. She wrote, it was a “spellbinding beauty,” which reminded her, as a child, of her own travel, and as an adult, of the delicate and interwoven dependencies between organisms and their environments. A naturalist and scientist at heart, Samih-Rotondo was also struck by the many unanswered questions about the biology of migrating monarchs, wondering where and how their internal compass emerges. Sumud is a Palestinian cultural value, itself having emerged after decades of the Palestinian people having been subjected to violence and occupation, to represent steadfastness and perseverance, and perhaps also, the internal compass guiding Samih-Rotondo and the monarch home. According to Yara Dahdal, writing in August 2023, swallowtail butterflies with large wingspans and black and yellow coloration could be seen throughout Palestine. Are they still there? Communities in Jaffa (Tel Aviv) and Al-Quds (Jerusalem) were able to organize events for National Moth Week this year, and while we helped out at the Cambridge Moth Ball, there will not be one in Gaza, where the people are being starved and attacked at so-called relief sites. If we’re lucky and stayed up late enough, we might have seen a Luna moth or a rare flying ant queen (stay tuned), and if we do, I hope next time you will join me in greeting it as imagined by Emile Habibi, a Palestinian-Israeli writer, whose work referred to them as “bashoora” – an omen moth, miniature, but with the power to tip the balance. •
Follow Dr. Jane and her research lab on Instagram @antlabpvd or on the web at lovetheants.org.