Don’t look away

Interrupting Thanksblogging for an important message…

I have been meaning to write a fully fleshed out blog post about this with citations and everything but haven’t made time for it. It’s like my brain refuses to settle down and do it. Maybe I will do it in a few weeks…

I want to try to articulate why I think it’s difficult for some white Christian Americans to vocally protest Israel’s war against Hamas… what feels different about this decades-plus-long conflict. 

It’s speaking up about two oppressed peoples at war with each other, when you don’t have a specific personal connection to either people (aside from Jewish and Arab friends or family, as many white Christian Americans do have, and that almost complicates things).

It’s jumping in to a conversation where you’ve heard a summary of what came before but suspect you may be missing something.

It’s talking about politics when you don’t want to talk about politics (because sometimes it’s just not worth it).

It’s “both sides-ing” in the most gruesome way that a faraway spectator can.

Gabrielle Blair’s article about it a few weeks ago was helpful for me in framing my thoughts. https://designmom.substack.com/p/two-groups-at-war-and-both-are-marginalized

Melinda Gates’s quote from several years ago that I have never forgotten and that has echoed in my head every day since October 7, has been helpful for me in framing my thoughts. “when you see a mother and her children suffering in another part of the world, don't look away. Look right at them. Let them break your heart”

 https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/6496686-the-world-is-full-of-what-seem-like-intractable-problems#

Reading experiences of Jews and Muslims, Israelis and Palestinians, has been helpful for me in framing my thoughts. (This is what I mean about citations, I would like to add these later)

Reading about the stages of genocide has been helping for me in framing my thoughts.

Reading about the histories of Palestine and Israel, has been helpful for me in framing my thoughts.

Thinking about the legacy of colonialism in my own ancestors, and holding it up next to my own deep-seated patriotism which is still alive and well in me and which I intend to hold onto anyway because two things can be true, has been helpful for me in framing my thoughts.

Seeing the photos and videos coming out of Gaza, has NOT been helpful in forming any sort of thoughts. 

Seeing these has wiped away every rational thought. 

Seeing these has torn my heart open. 

I am not a crier and yet I have shed tears every time I see a mother holding a dead child, or a child crying for his dead mother. Every time I see a traumatized child in shock as he goes through a medical exam, a traumatized child looking for her siblings.

As part of my job I teach students to question their emotional reactions to information and to trace the sources. For the most part, the images and videos I have seen can be traced to very credible sources.

I am a religious person and that is why I say unequivocally that this war is terrifying on a biblical level.

Speaking of my whiteness (lol) I’ve been thinking about a quote from Murtagh, my favorite character in my favorite pandemic-era binge watch (IYKYK). “There’s always a war comin’.”

I grew up in an era of American prosperity, in a location and demographic that could comfortably move through life feeing grateful that all the wars were so long ago or so far away.

Until I visited the Udvar-Hazy Air & Space Museum as a new mom and learned about how people have thrown red paint on the Enola Gay, https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/history/controversy-over-enola-gay-exhibition/

I literally never thought about the impact that the atomic bombs had on the children and families of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Because I had learned that those bombs made the world safe for democracy, and I had learned that the collateral damage was necessary. 

I want peace and safety for all of the world’s people. I want to renounce war and proclaim peace. Despite any complications of such a view, despite any assurances from Antony Blinken or other politicians I respect that Hamas will only become more dangerous if given space and time to regroup, I believe that a ceasefire is the only way to stop our hearts from hardening more. 

I want a ceasefire for those mothers and their children. I can’t look away.