October 7th, 2023 @ 9pm
About Palestine
Isn’t it odd, that just across the street, hundreds of thousands of Israelis lived their day to day lives while overlooking the largest open-air prison in the entire world? Gaza is overpopulated, under-resources, and neglected when it comes to their mental and physical health, with thousands of people unable to support their families through constant siege for the past 20 years. And there were people who willingly chose to live across from all that, coming from all over the world with the promise that their housing and settlement (note: not REsettlement, but SETTLEMENT) would be subsidized by the government.
People had left their homes from around the world to live in occupied Palestine, coming from New Jersey, Britain, and even Russia to start their lives atop the bones of Palestinians. We now see those same people leave in droves to the airport, carrying suitcases, using their dual citizenship to their advantage as soon as they can.
It’s funny. My great-grandparents walked across the desert to Amman with nothing in their hands when the Israeli soldiers came. There’s a settlement now, where their house was.
All those people who came since 1948, who continue to come, CHOSE to settle there. They can leave. They can go anywhere they want to. So why did the Israeli government want them so badly to be near that border?
Why was the Israeli government so adamant about placing people so close to a border they deem unsafe (not that Palestinians are dangerous—they’re human and afraid and hungry), claiming it’s a “safe haven” for Jews around the world despite settlement on land that was stolen through rape, murder, and torture? How could someone CHOOSE to live on that land when they watched the previous family get run out of their home right in front of their eyes? Do they feel absolutely nothing seeing someone break a hole in this family's wall to push them out the front door?
Why are we focusing on the actions of the Palestinians when the very precedent of their occupation was so violent and so terrible, and the perpetrators of such violence are free to leave whenever they wish?
There are over 200 Palestinians murdered as of writing this post. There will be hundreds more. There are thousands of Palestinians injured as of writing this post. There will be hundreds of thousands more.
More than anything, I pray and hope for the safety of Palestinian children. I hope they never have to hear a bomb whistle past their homes as they hold their breath, thinking that that would be the moment they die. I hope every Palestinian family in Gaza do not have to huddle through a long night of bombings in a single room, because if they die, they will die together, their father said.
I hope more than anything that the children of Palestine will be able to raise a generation that does not know the rancid taste of occupation, and can dream of going anywhere and doing anything they desire.
October 7th, 2023 @ 1am
I've just recoded my blog. Let's see how this goes...
