A Sunday And My Future
A Short Note on Gaza
I’m sitting in my apartment, thinking about my future. I’m wondering what story I want to look into next, what I want to pitch soon. I’m thinking about a way I could get paid to go on a road trip. I’m sitting here, on the second slightly cold day in November, taking my time to write this, and wondering if my aspiration will come to fruition, or if I’m just wandering a path that might lead nowhere and if I should just accept that a guarantee is something the world cannot promise me.
I think about all this, and nearly cry, or laugh at myself, for the incredible fortune that I worry over that is the bare minimum of my life. I am here, in California, have a decent job, time to write and to surf. Regardless of aspiration or dreams, my life is a truly lucky one to live. And so I laugh at my worries.
What makes me take a step back, especially these days, is because of what is happening in Gaza. Terribly, the fortune I have has been shown again to me in stark contrast to the horrors of what Palestinians face in Gaza, in this genocide. It shook and pained me to hear of the attack on October 7, but so quickly, horrific, and thoroughly violent was the Israeli government’s response that it left me little time to grieve. As it stands the Israeli death toll is about 1,200 according to Al Jazeera and the New York Times, while 13,000 have been killed in Gaza, just over 42% of whom are children.
I wonder how many have wanted to play soccer, to become doctors, to paint, to travel the world. With each death goes the dream of a life unlived, stifled by unrelenting death. And yes, this pain is also felt for those who have died in Israel. I, along with so many, are not attempting to take away the tragedy that are those deaths. We just want the killing to stop. When we as United States citizens, whose country is heavily implicated in this war financially, see such unwavering slaughter and dehumanization, how can we not call it a genocide? When you go about tactically maneuvering inside of a giant hospital complex that was the only safe place for civilians, how can we not call it unjust and horrible?
Famously now, Human Rights Watch called Gaza an “open air prison” in 2022, and now with no way out for the people of Palestine, it looks as though we are watching bombs being dropped by the warden on their prisoners.
And me? You? We get to worry over rent, over what to do with our lives, death to some of us still such a far off concept, though it can creep in at any moment. We worry over the success of our dreams. Not our survival. And so please, take five minutes of your day to email or fax your Federal representative and ask for a ceasefire. All this death is worth nothing, and saving who else is still alive is worth everything. Don’t let up with your bothering of representatives. Don’t let the news cycle forget what is happening, and what has happened. And don’t let your congress member forget, because we have small and simple aspirations we can pursue, but those in Gaza don’t even have clean water.
Some Links:
https://act.uscpr.org/a/callforgaza
https://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/resource/email-congress-support-ceasefire/