An Email to My Dad

Dear Dad,

I left Palestine five days ago, forced out of my chosen home because I am not Jewish and so do not merit a work visa, this according to Ministry of Interior from which I sought the visa. At my desk now with the computer in front of me and just beyond it the TV, I watch the same story over and over.

The Israeli military storms an activist boat full of humanitarian aid. No one knows how many dead--up to 19 it is thought. Dozens wounded. There's no information except what the Israelis offer. Ehud Barak and five other Israeli officials are played with different backdrops but the same lines: "We did all we could avoid this." "These were not activists but terrorists." "They attacked us. Blame the instigators." I stare at the screen in shock. I know these to be blatant lies. It doesn't take much intelligence to see the logical fallacies in the state line.

Then my shock is replaced by the growing nausea in my belly. It's been sitting in my gut for days but now as it shifts, I feel I might not be able to go down to dinner or leave this room. I look around at my daily life and I think how it seems and sometimes feels so normal because it is our reality: the Jewish settlement across the hill, one of hundreds that steal land illegally and yet continue to be built and expanded; the murders and imprisonments, deportations and beatings with rarely a name attached to the body. How is this normal?

Dad, I've put my heart and soul, my income and energy, my very life into this place, believing that one must not only speak about justice but must lead a life that contributes to a more just world. But I feel helpless and wholly hopeless.

They crushed Rachel Corrie and they left the blade down as they reversed over her broken and gasping body. They shot my friend's five-year-old nephew in the back from less than 5 feet away. They massacred 1,400 people last year in Gaza, "guarding" one family in a house with parents dead and children starving to death. I watched a boy bleed to death 6 years ago, shot and then blocked off by the soldiers who waited for his death. And I have seen nothing of the horrors Israelis have done over the last century.

Dad, do you believe in justice?

Long time gone...

I know I haven't written in forever. What to write? When to write?

Today a grown man cried as he told of his mother's exhaustion, walking and walking--having been expelled from her home in 1948. He was one year old. She was too tired. She couldn't go on. She set her child under a tree and dragged herself on, relieved of his weight. The child stayed under the tree alone, witness to the massive expulsion. But his ten year old sister came back for him and bore his weight on her hip.

We were just eating lunch. His age came up and then...then he started telling of how he was one when the Nakba happened. 62 years ago. And how he was left. And how his poor mother was so tired that she would leave her own child. And how she was not alone in this. How could she? How could she not?