MENTAL HEALTH | PALESTINE
Are You Okay?
With every child killed in Gaza, ten thousand other souls are crushed.
Are you Okay?
I’m not.
Just months ago, like every other parent, I found much joy viewing the photos of my daughter that my phone periodically suggests. Here’s when she was ten years old, and that one’s of her eighth birthday. Every photo evokes beautiful memories of watching your child grow and become an integral part of your life. And now? I cannot look at a photo of hers without thinking which would be used to memorialize her, if she was to prematurely be robbed of her life like the tens of thousands other children in Gaza! I cannot look at my child anymore without seeing the children of others.
Few people feel well nowadays, and I suspect those who say they do are lying to themselves, or believe empathy a weakness or a sin.
“Many of us like to ask ourselves, ‘What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?’ The answer is, you’re doing it. Right now.”
These words came from the Facebook post of a 25-year-old US serviceman Aaron Bushnell. On Sunday, February 25, he set himself on fire in front of the Israeli embassy in DC, and later died from the burns.
As a parent, my heart breaks as I imagine what his parents must be going through, and I send them my love.
Though I pray no one else follow his example, I stand in awe of his heroism. Aaron understood the interconnectedness of Life that the empty heads in Washington and London could never fathom. He understood that with every child killed in Gaza, ten thousand other souls are crushed.
As I had written only a few days earlier (“The Pisdom of Solomon”):
“The Genocide in Gaza is not only a crime against Palestinians, but against the whole world. Children throughout the world are traumatized watching and hearing about Gaza. Your children.”
The Tuesday after, 100,000 Michigan Democrats voted ‘Uncommitted’ in protest of Biden’s Gaza policy. That’s enough votes to eliminate his chances of reaching 270 electoral votes in November, at least through Michigan. Yet, rather than replacing him with a better candidate, the Democratic establishment prefers to bully us into voting for someone so contemptuous of human lives.
Even if a ‘ceasefire’ takes place tomorrow, 145 days of bombardment have left Gaza a wasteland, with the entire population homeless. Today, the official death toll surpassed 30,000, half of whom are children. The deaths from disease and starvation are only just beginning.
In the poem “A Gazan Child’s Valentine to a Consumptive World” I question, What stake has the world given Gaza’s children in its miserable existence?
In the opinion piece “Israel’s Genocide in Gaza Should Terrify You,” I wonder whether “our very helplessness is the intended consequence.” And in “‘Free Palestine!’ What It Means To Me,” I reflect on the meaning of Free Palestine, and remember that “‘Free Palestine’ is a commitment to freedom not only for Palestinians, but also for Israelis.”
With love,
Ramsey Hanhan
Author, Fugitive Dreams
Adapted from my monthly newsletter (March 2024). To subscribe, please add your name and email to this form (takes you to an external site):
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