Fear and Loathing Under the New Rules
As a person of Jewish heritage I can’t be silent about a genocide. Jews aren’t the only people who’ve been threatened with annihilation.
I walk for miles at night
arguing with a half-century old friend
who talks about the Middle East
like it’s a problem to be solved
I am a Jew. I am ashamed of those wanting to kill.
The people of Gaza shake their own bodies
in six directions, with nowhere to go,
their only harvest, soil.
We can feel brokenhearted for the suffering of the children of Isaac and of Ishmael. We must.
The UN special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories implored other countries “to mobilize their fleet to grant the flotilla safe sailing to Gaza, and deploy a real humanitarian convoy to break the blockade.”
They feared the olive trees — the trees that know, more than anyone, who the true owners of this land are.
What is urgently needed is for the General Assembly to hold an Emergency Special Session to vote on a UN protection force, as well as a UN-led arms embargo, trade boycott, and divestment from Israel.
This is an engineered famine — deliberate starvation under Israeli siege: Markets are empty. Aid trucks are blocked. Weeds are being boiled for soup.
Israel, you have become like Joseph’s brothers
who abandoned him in an empty cistern
and then sat down to a feast.
We tear up chairs for firewood. Soap is watered down to make it last. Basic necessities are increasingly out of reach.
Israel “is carrying out a deliberate campaign of starvation in the occupied Gaza Strip, systematically destroying the health, well-being, and social fabric of Palestinian life,” Amnesty said.
When those who seek to help resolve a conflict are captive to one side’s definitions and perspective, it’s a recipe for continued tension and ultimately disaster.
I can choose to motivate students by manipulating their fear of grades or I can subvert their ideas about grades and inspire them to learn because a good human being becomes a better human being when they are learning for real.