Sadness and Disbelief

It is with great sadness and disbelief that we read about the ongoing war between Israel and Palestine. Thousands of injured, hundreds of dead. I read with new eyes about the deaths of children as I hear Clara playfully sucking on her hands next to me. I try, but fail, to imagine what it must be like to be trapped in one of the most densely populated areas on earth, Gaza, while death and destruction rain from the sky. Surrounded by the wall and unable to run to anywhere safe, starving, without power or water, what would we do? I simply cannot imagine. I would hope that Clara would be too small to know what she is seeing and hearing - but how can we know what war does to the soul of a child? The thought brings tears to my eyes.

We are saddened to know that the USA is in part funding this war. We thank God that our government does not sell Hamas the hundreds of rockets that fly into Southern Israel, but our government does sell or just donate a huge majority of the bombs, weapons, and concrete that are used to kill and imprison Palestinians. One third of all US foreign aid goes to Israel, and the majority of that is in weaponry or wall construction. How can this be? How can we support this?

We cannot believe that despite the innocent dead and injured, the blockade of humanitarian aid, medicine, food, electricity, gas, and even journalists, our elected officials refuse to demand anything of Israel. We have called our senators and congressfolk and president, begging for a response, for humanitarian aid, for anything resembling human decency - but it seems our words fall on blocked ears. Are our voices too small, or perhaps our petitions for food and medicine are too great for a government only able to sell and give the bombs that fall?

Clara now has somehow got her stuffed bear balancing on the top of her head. I thank God that we awoke in a land whose US funded 36 year civil war ended 12 years ago. But thanking God for our own good luck is not enough. Not when we are citizens of a nation whose tax dollars pay for bombs and barriers, not when our privately spent dollars support companies complicit in the oppression of people in Guatemala or Palestine or anywhere. We struggle to know what to do from here, or maybe more importantly, what not to - in the meantime maybe we'll call our senator just one more time.