"Give my love to Palestine, every inch of it."

A letter I sent...

Family, Friends, Colleagues and Pumkins,

“Give my love to Palestine, every inch of it.”

As I sit in front of this computer struggling to send the perfect email to a diverse list of people, to let you all know that I will be traveling to Israel/Palestine for the next three and half weeks, I received the above from a dear friend and mentor, who is also a member of the St. Louis Palestine Solidarity Committee. She is Palestinian-American who carries with her the suffering of her people so profoundly that there is rarely a moment that the occupation does not enter her thoughts. Her love, like many of the relationships I have formed in the last four years doing anti-war work, has moved me to open my eyes to another side of the conflict that we so rarely see in Western media. We rarely hear the voices of the Gaza doctor who lost three daughters to Israel’s bombing during Operation Cast Lead, or of young school children subjected to settler violence, or from the villagers of Bil’in who have been engaged in non-violent resistance against the Wall. I certainly never had, until a few years ago.

It is hard to pinpoint the moment, that I connected personally with the Palestinian cause. I remember I began to see the situation in a dramatically different way after I was at a talk that showed a map of the progression of land transfer. However, after that, I can only point to relationships which continue to form and shape my understanding. I am honored and humbled to have come across so many people that are willing to tell their stories, gently correct mispronunciations of names, challenge my Western thinking and hold up the differences between being an educational advocate versus a solidarity activist. All the facts, while giving me a foundation of knowledge, have not touched my heart as much as the personal stories of friends who tell of closed school roads, a brutally long checkpoint or of a college student studying in Cairo in 1967 that was unable to return.

I am going on a three week trip to Israel/Palestine. I will be traveling for the first half with an organization called Interfaith Peace Builders, (www.ifpb.org). Their website states: “Interfaith Peace-Builders sends delegations to Israel and Palestine so that U.S. citizens can see the conflict with their own eyes. Participants have the opportunity to learn directly from Israeli and Palestinian peace/human-rights activists, to spend time in Palestinian and Israeli homes, and to experience the situation for those living in Israel/Palestine.”

I have been incredibly honored to have so many people support my trip, from monetary aid to emotional support, to borrowed clothes to late night talks learning Arabic phrases, that I carry a responsibility to reach out to as many people as possible. In the meantime, I will take the words of my friend with me, including all the yearning and ache those simple words hold for her and will “give my love to Palestine. Every inch of it”.

In solidarity,

C

If you would like to learn more about the conflict, two good sources are:

Slingshot Hip Hop: A movie that “braids together the stories of young Palestinians living in Gaza, the West Bank and inside Israel as they discover Hip Hop and employ it as a tool to surmount divisions imposed by occupation and poverty. From internal checkpoints and Separation Walls to gender norms and generational differences, this is the story of young people crossing the borders that separate them.”

I Saw Ramallah by Mourid Barghouti: A book by a poet that was “born on the West Bank near Ramallah in 1944. In 1966, he left home to return to university in Cairo. The Six Day War happened the following year, and Barghouti, like many Palestinians living abroad, was denied entry to Palestine. He joined the naziheen, the displaced ones, until he was finally allowed back, 30 years later.” (Review by Tom Paulin)