*This post is part of a three-part series. An audio teaser of this post is directly below. If you would like to hear part one in its entirety, as told in my own voice, the full audio is available for paid subscribers beyond the paywall at the end of this post.
There are infinite things I could write about. Every star in the night sky is a topic I want to explore, entire galaxies of words I want to say. But much like those stars, they are out of reach. Much like that sky, only one star is burning the brightest right now, not because it is some shimmering beacon of blazing hope, but rather because it is the core of truth now being illuminated, a testament unto itself: it is burning.
This star represents the current state of the world because everything is on fire, yet because it is so seemingly far away, so far removed from the majority’s reality, we cannot see it for what it is. But thank god/Beyonce/the universe/nothingness (or whomever – whatever – you believe in), that we are beginning to.
Early on, before much of the happenings in Gaza were widely publicized, I knew in my heart something was gravely wrong with the way things were being portrayed, but I was back then in the very small minority.
I have grappled with this topic for weeks now, as I have watched more atrocities unfold in the Middle East. While we go about our lives here in the US and the world over, our cognitive dissonance increasing by the millisecond, we have simultaneously watched the terrifying firsthand accounts of the people in Gaza there on the ground dying on the daily before we’ve even had our morning coffee. Many of us live paycheck to paycheck but don’t give a home base war a second thought – constant bombings are not a looming threat here in the US (nope, just guns, but perhaps I’ll save that gasoline explosion for another day), and yet here is this oppressed people who have flown under the radar for years, fighting for their right to just exist, hour to hour.
We have an incredible amount of privilege from this perspective, and we must use it to their benefit, to stop the world from descending further down the dark and twisted path on which it has set its compass.
What this has asked of me has become a rabbit hole of questions. At first, before we had all the information, the conflict asked me, “As a Jewish American, which side do you stand on? Can we even take sides? Is this self-defense? Is this justified?” As the weeks unfolded and the truth was revealed, the questions deepened. “Who is oppressing whom? What does it mean to be a Jew today? What is a human? What is freedom? To whom have we denied it? What truths have been buried and hidden from the history we were taught?”
The conflict has grown tenfold and has become a beast of its own undoing. While I have wrestled with finding the right words to say, week after week as I poured into podcasts on the history of the conflict attempting to educate myself, researching Zionism and the creation of Israel, forcing myself to watch videos of the heartbreaking bombings in Gaza, seeing face after face of bloodied children, I could never find the right words to explore this topic from my own Jewish American perspective.
Who was I to speak out on the topic? To stand up and proclaim, in such a now polarized world, that I stood on the side of Palestine to exist as a free people, no matter how confusing with my own Jewish identity that felt in the beginning?
While I reposted videos and information and shared outspoken, heavy and powerful poems on my social media platform urging us to look at these atrocities for what they were – a genocide, an ethnic cleansing perpetuated by the government/military comprised of the very people who suffered one – I knew there was more. There had to be.
And I make the important, emphasized and italicized distinction here that it is those in power throwing bombs and making these military decisions, just as it was Hamas who launched the attack killing 1,400 Israelis (which has now been lowered to 1,200 according to Israel itself). We cannot – we must not – fall prey to the generalizing rhetoric that it is “all Jews” or “all Palestinians.” This divisive and wildly inaccurate generalization only spans more generations of hate when it is taught. If there is ever to be peace not only between the two but among the numerous diverse populations of the world, it begins right here, in the conscious use of our words and adaptations of our beliefs.
Just as I asked myself who I was if I spoke out against this (and who would I become in my proud Jewish mother’s eyes if I did), I found myself there on the other side, answering back with a much louder rhetorical question: “Who was I if I didn’t?”
Speaking is a radical act. Art is a radical act. Writing is a radical act.
We write for a myriad of reasons but many of us write to expose others to new ideas or to things that people are unwilling to look at: trauma, emotions, new ways of thinking and doing, politics, society, what’s not working. I write to expose, to discover, to encourage critical thinking, to tell my story. I write for all of the above and many more, but with a heavy-handed dose of hope because this world is starving for that. Is it any wonder why?
We write because we have seen life not only for what it is, but for what it could be.
I had a long conversation one night on what has been weighing heavy on my heart for some time now - how we are a society of sufferers rather than thriving souls. And I recognize my own privilege here. I have a stable job, shelter, a little bit of money in savings, my country is not being bombed to bits. I’m not fully satiated but at least I’m fed. At least I’m safe. So many are not even a fraction as lucky.
The 1905 painting above, “Job” by William Orpen, is a powerful reflection of where we still find ourselves today. It portrays human suffering, stripped bare. Notice how the bystanders can barely look at his suffering.
The same thing is happening today - with people, with the planet. Those in positions of power with the ability to affect great change for the better have shirked their responsibilities, reduced to little more than onlookers while the world burns. Many have fallen silent in regards to the genocide happening in Palestine - or worse, continue to fund it. We’re bleeding ourselves dry in every sense of the word because we can’t stop killing each other over everything. We can’t stop taking from one another. We can’t stop forcing a single narrative and when one resists, we persecute them for it. We are bleeding all the good from this world.
Have we learned nothing?
There is little I can do as one human. I can’t solve world hunger or homelessness alone. I can’t single-handedly stop oppression. I am not in the 1% but if I was, you can be damn sure I’d be doing some good with it. But this is why I, like many, write: to lend my voice to the fight in pursuit of a better world, a more just world, a kinder world, a more diverse and equal world, a world finally awakened unto itself.
If I am but one person, let me be one more person with a pen and an idea. Let me be one more person willing to believe. Let me be one more person who is willing to stop, look, and listen to the world’s suffering and to speak.
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