From our series on Israel and Palestine since the bloodshed began on Oct 7th, 2023.

If you are finding it difficult to function, it’s because we have not witnessed children massacred on this scale, this efficiently, in this short a time, in our lifetime. 3,500 Palestinian children have been killed in the Gaza Strip in 3 weeks. More than the number killed in all armed conflicts across the globe, in more than 20 counties, in a year.

The moral injury of watching and doing nothing exceeds the risk of speaking out. What to do: Call and email your representative. It is a numbers game. Tell them you want a ceasefire resolution and a release of all hostages. Tell them you grieve the deaths of all children — Palestinian, Muslim, Jewish, Israeli. Go here to be automatically connected with your representatives.

If others attack you for taking a side, say: I am on the side of humanity.

Last night, I had a dream that my children were missing in the streets of Gaza. Maybe it’s because my children look like their children. Maybe it’s because hate crimes in the U.S. are the highest they have been on record, and the fate of Muslim children has always been tied to the fate of Sikh children, and six-year-old Wadea who was killed in a hate crime could have been mine. Maybe it’s because I fell asleep pondering what constitutes the legal definition of genocide, and wondering why the massacre of children should have to reach any kind of criteria for the whole world to cry out: Ceasefire Now.

I woke in a sweat, startled to find my children next to me. I reached out and touched them.
How many mothers awake still in the nightmare?

Today I will make my call to Congress and finish work early. I will help my children dress up and walk them in our neighborhood and knock on doors. People I do not know will smile at them and give them candy. Later I will do the same. It’s a beautiful kind of practice. Your children as mine, mine as yours. A practice for the world as it ought to be.

This is my wish for us: May we be present to the children in front of us tonight. If joy knocks, let it in. Let it whisper to your grief: There is still a world worth fighting for. 

Images by Jennifer Bloom | Radici Studios