yin yang, palestine israel judaism intersection

there's something happening inside me that is feeling torn and conflicted...

there often is, I feel gaps, I feel injustice...

I feel frustrations and sadnesses...

I am drawn towards knowing it.

so many jews were killed at a music festival, at a kibbutz... in Israel.

It could have been me...  in a different time it would have been me...

but yet, it also would not likely have been... because, I was unlikely to have ever made alliyah, and been living there...

but that's also not the point...

people came in... people that are living in place that keeps getting pushed into a smaller and smaller and smaller area of space... I can imagine that the PRESSURE built up... and once they finally burst OUT... through Israel... they did the most awful... but yet still, I somehow get it... even though I will NEVER get it... they killed tons and tons of people... they just killed them....

I am so sorry and sad to think about the experiences of all these Jews who experienced this...

but then...

I move my compassion, my empathy.... my attempting to even begin to tap into the experience of a Palestinian person... a person, people, generations back of people whose land was Palestine.  

At the hands of Jews, of Israelis, of Zionists- the Jews who want Israel to be Israel and one that excludes all people called 'Palestinian'...they've cornered, they've killed, they've put walls up and cornered and captured and disappeared... and minimized and displaced and threatened and taken and erased... all these people, these humans, their histories... and now their present.  

Palestinians are dying... they are dying... and it is at the hands of Jews, like me...but not like me... but like me. 

I've been trying to navigate it, trying to figure it out... trying to figure out my approach to express, to resist to FEEL to have compassion and care and honouring my self and my history and my 'people's history'.... but how to feel proud when this is what 'I' am doing?

How can I look at my Palestinian Friends and Family's....who went to a March today against the genocide THEIR people are facing... when I went this morning to my synagogue, to show my kids what it means to be a Jew... and nothing was said hardly at all about what's REALLY going on...granted, it was boys Bnei Mitzvah's- a rite of passage for teens, to sing and lead some of the services... and I wanted my kids to see this... these kids had been preparing for a long time for this... when there's suddenly an uproar in Israel/Palestine... the congregations focus was still on Joy...  

and yet... in knowing this... it is in STARK contrast to the reality for a TON of Palestinian people...who cannot relish in the joy.... perhaps they could try, and celebrate their festivities while living here in Canada... but can they really? their homes/lands/existence is being bull-dozed/bombed/shot into oblivion right now...

so while I want to stand in solidarity with my friends who are Palestinian, be that Jew who is an Ally... I felt like a fraud by the end of the day... the jews still doing their ritual, while the Palestinians have no choice but to protest for their LIVES.

So I baked warm banana muffins to arrive to their home with, to share a kids movie with these other folks who were at the protest to stand up for their lives.... to stand up against genocide.

It didn't feel good enough...

but we're all suffering... granted, at very different levels/quantities, and direct/ion...

but it's suffering... it's suffering to know al those deaths happened in Israel... and it's suffering- so much suffering- to imagine the plight of the Palestinian people... at the hands of the Jewish people... historically...

and now.

we can't let it continue... we can't watch Israel do this. why are we letting it happen? how can this be happening? what about the people, how are they alive, how are the people living... and how are they dying... how are they having the conversations, with each other, knowing they are dying... how are they dying? how can it be? 

they are starving to death... they are in agonizing pain, from infected wounds taking over... from illness with no treatments... from bombs taking their whole family out in one second.  from army with guns...in front of their family members... from dehydration. it's too much... it's too much suffering...

I wish it would stop...