Day 353- Spring Break!

Dear Mr. President,

This week I'll be applying to join the US Boat to Gaza, (the ship you probably recall is named after your book.) It may not be the most conventional way to spend spring break, but I think that it's exactly as self-indulgent as I'm willing to be. I have no idea what the odds are of me being selected to actually go, but I suspect that I'll always regret it if I don't at least apply.

Even if I don't make it to Gaza in 2011, the discussion of the gaza blockade has taken to the sides of city buses right here in Seattle. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this. While I wholeheartedly agree with the message and support the intentions of those running the ads, I don't know how effective this is as a strategy. Is $1794 better spent on an ad campaign that might not change any minds, or would it have been better used to send help to the people affected by the policies being protested? The awareness created might be considerable, but I'm not sure it will lead to the public outcry necessary for any substantive policy change.

When I lived in DC, the metro tunnels were routinely home to issue ads. One was the picture of a baby (presumably Palestinian( wearing a pro-hamas headband, and said "This child could grow up to be a: ( ) Doctor ( ) Lawyer (x) Terrorist" (The ad can be seen here thanks to flickr user louko.) The ad made my blood boil. I have visceral reactions every time I passed by it. Targeting the blameless children of this conflict seemed especially sickening, and to have it shouting at me from every wall every day of my commute ensured that I began and ended each work day so angry I could barely speak. The very nature of advertising made discussion or argument or dissent with the people placing the ads impossible. I think my intense reaction to these ads has made me hesitant to feel any joy at seeing ads supporting my views. I understand that the very effective (and well-financed) tactics of the Israeli lobby and PR organizations need to be balanced somehow, but I don't feel great about sinking to their methods.

The most I can hope for is conversation. If it gets people talking, thinking, questioning the policies supported by their taxes (often without their knowledge) I will swallow my objections and applaud the efforts of the organization purchasing the ads. The argument that a controversial, thought-provoking ad like this one is at least better than another Macy's ad is not lost on me, either. Do you think this is a helpful or appropriate forum for foreign policy conversations?

I should probably go work on my application. I know you don't agree with the mission of the US boat to Gaza and you could certainly never support it publicly, but I hope that, even if it is only in private, you find a moment to consider your own responsibility for the people who end up on this ship and for the policies that have made such an organization necessary.

Respectfully yours,

Kelsey

I encourage all of my readers interested (and fully aware of and prepared for the risks) to apply to the US Boat to Gaza. If you don't want to go yourself, a financial donation will help purchase supplies to deliver to the people of Gaza, as well. Other great gift ideas for those concerned with social justice can be found in Nicholas Kristof's latest New York Times column, or on etsy.com

Day 238- Talk

Dear Mr. President,

I talk too much. Ask any one who knows me. I talk out loud, I talk online, I talk in writing. I speak when I should be silent. I process things out loud in conversations with others. Even when there are no answers, even when I have no better option besides wait and see what happens, I will keep talking about things just to keep myself calm. What I mean to say is that in general I am a fan of talking. When it comes to countries talking, especially when talk is substituted for violence or oppression, I'm almost always going to think it's a good idea. I do think that direct talks between Israel and Palestine are necessary and that the steps taken by your administration recently are at least well-intentioned.

Still, I have to say that today's Op-ed from former ambassador Martin Indyk is way off of the mark. His forced optimism about upcoming negotiations is painfully evident in his biased and poorly reasoned argument. He cites as a reason for optimism the low number of Israeli deaths due to terrorism in the last two years, (eight), but neglects to mention the number of Palestinians killed at the hands of Israelis in the same time period, (1,497.) I can see why this information wouldn't fit into his roses and sunshine picture, but that he doesn't even mention the recent decrease in Palestinian deaths (which are down to about 100 since the end of Operation Cast Lead) as a factor is telling that he doesn't consider them to be as significant as the Israeli deaths. Indyk also declares "The demolition of Palestinian houses there is also down compared with recent years." without any supporting evidence or statistics to place such a statement in context. In 2010 about 232 homes have been demolished so far, though that number does not include the four Al-Araqib demolitions. (In case there is any confusion I don't mean 4 houses, I mean the entire Bedouin village has been demolished 4 times.) While that is a significant decrease from the more than 5,000 demolitions in 2009, I think the number is still large enough to make Mr. Indyk's readers uncomfortable with citing it as a hopeful indicator.

I don't want to sound this cynical, and I do hope that these talks find success, however unlikely it may seem. Talking to one another is the best option for all parties. Until the true power dynamics are discussed plainly, however, I fear these talks will be all for show. I think true indicators for optimism would be an end (not just a superficial easing) to the blockade of Gaza, withdrawal of the illegal settlements in Hebron and throughout the West Bank, and anything resembling a workable solution for the long-suffering populations of refugees still living in camps. Those would give me hope that talk might lead to peace. Instead, I think that this is all an elaborate performance designed to boost confidence in your administration's foreign policy and to allay Israeli concerns at their waning American support. I hope that I'm wrong. I hope that this time talk leads to actual change, but I've yet to see any signs to inspire real optimism.

Respectfully yours,

Kelsey

Day 221- Fighting the darkness in Gaza

Dear Mr. President,

Gaza has been granted enough fuel to run one of the power station generators for 36 hours. Officials have warned that a complete shutdown will drastically impact the ill and elderly patients who rely upon electricity for their life-saving treatment. The Palestinian authority in the West Bank is citing funds shortage as many Gazans cannot pay for electricity, given high levels of poverty and unemployment.

The people of Gaza need a functioning economy; they need schools and building supplies and the ability to travel and trade outside of the confines of the Gaza strip. How does this US-approved, unjust, illegal policy of collective punishment serve our interests there? Surely economic stability, education and contact with the outside world is the surest way to strengthen moderate voices and empower the next generation of Gaza's leaders to see America and Israel as something other than the ultimate enemy. Right now, with hospitals barely able to function, victims of Israeli wars unable to rebuild their homes, students kept from studying in adequate schools, unemployment affecting an overwhelming majority of families, it would be miraculous for anything other than hatred and resentment to take root.

How are we so steadfastly determined to perpetuate this suffering? To impose poverty and isolation as though it will teach an entire people obedience? Breaking their will, it seems, is not only our design but our official policy. When I read the news from Gaza it is so hard to stay proud of my country. Mr. President, if you never answer any of my letters or address any of my questions within them directly, I will understand. But if you have time for even one honest, non-talking-point, unscripted answer, please, tell me this: how can you, a man with demonstrable respect for human rights, justice, and freedom for all, look at the situation in Gaza and call it acceptable for our time? Especially in light of the poverty and death caused daily by flood and fire and natural disaster, how do you live with the decision to impose this kind of crisis on an entire population?

The 30 billion dollars we'll be giving Israel for the next 10 years will buy a lot of tanks, guns, bulletts and bombs. I wonder how much goodwill you think it will afford us? That kind of money might keep the lights on long enough for Gaza to move out of crisis state, but I wonder if we might just stop sending checks all together until the siege is broken? Buy a little justice for the people of Gaza without spending even a penny? Today you raised $1.6 million for the DNC war chest, but, unfortunately, I doubt it will be enough to buy even a single politician brave enough for the change this country needs.

Respectfully yours,

Kelsey

Day 206- The Audacity

Dear Mr. President,

This morning I woke up to news of a US organization working to send their own aid ship in defiance of the Gaza blockade. This ship will be called The Audacity of Hope, and, because it has also been endorsed by Rashid Khalidi, it is being linked to you by some right-wing media sources. I can see why it might be annoying to suffer the criticisms of political convictions you don't actually have, so I would imagine that you viewed this news as one more headache. I heard it, and, for a moment, all I wanted to do was throw out my plans for the next year and join the crew.

I've spent the day talking myself out of it. As much as I want to go, to stand with those brave people willing to defy the unjust and cruel policies of the Israeli government toward Gaza, I have obligations. Completing my education this year is something I need to do, not only for myself but for all of the people in my life who believe that I can. Going out into the world to fight oppression and injustice is something that will have to wait another year. Still, I believe with all of my heart that this is the right thing to do, and so I am donating what I can to their efforts. The magnitude of Israeli crimes toward the Palestinian people and the people of Gaza, especially, demand resistance.

I do regret any political problems this mission will cause for your administration, if only because I think it is a shame you haven't adopted official policies that would warrant this criticism from the right. In your book, you talk about the courage it takes to keep having faith in our country, in change, in a better future. Your whole moral and philosophical worldview seems to demand equal rights, freedom, and the end of oppression. So I don't think you should be offended by the name of the ship. Hope has been an audacious thing for Gaza, and for those who would see it freed. That the Americans organizing this act in the spirit of your writing is not nearly as surprising or difficult to accept as your own willingness to set that spirit aside when convenience or politics demand.

I know, my provocation likely falls on deaf ears. You will not support this ship, if anything, you are likely to denounce it and seek to distance yourself from Khalidi. I know this. But I have the audacity to believe, still, that I could be wrong. That your courage and your convictions might not be strangers on this issue forever. I have faith that you could change your mind, and see that, no matter how hopeless, the fight against this kind of injustice is always worth whatever criticism it will face. The people of Gaza deserve the same justice, opportunity and hope that you promised to America. Can you fault the Americans who would invest time and money, put on hold their lives, risk physical safety and freedom to make it happen? Does it make you, even in secret, even just a little bit proud?

Respectfully yours,

Kelsey

If you'd like to donate to the Audacity of Hope, please visit US to Gaza.

Day 188- Walls

Dear Mr. President,

Today I've been thinking a lot about walls. Right now it feels like it's about 1,000,000 degrees in my apartment, so, while wondering what to write to you, I got more than a little agitated. I know what I want to write. I want to write about PM Netanyahu's visit. But writing to you about foreign policy is a lot like banging my head against a wall. I write, impassioned and angry and sometimes in tears. I feel better. I print or copy the letter, address the envelope and affix postage. I wait. Weeks later, I receive a form letter from your office thanking me for writing. I hold this form letter in my hands as the headlines scroll up my screen. More people are dead. Or arrested. Or homeless. Or starving. And we welcome the Israeli Prime Minister and assure the world that our policies of absolute support will continue. And the IRS hands out tax breaks to donations that support the very settlements we claim to have stopped. And I bang my head a little more hopelessly, each day.

But walls are not just for banging one's head in frustration. Walls keep us safe from the elements, they support roofs, they keep us warm and sheltered and make caves or holes in the mud more like homes. There are a number of walls in Gaza that have been knocked down over the past few years. Knocked down by bombs, knocked down by bulldozers and knocked down by nature. But still, the material to rebuild them is forbidden. But because cooking spices have been permitted through, the Israeli government is praised for their efforts. The list of banned items may be shorter, but normalcy, or the kind of economic stability that would help create a stable society, are still too threatening to be permitted past the checkpoints.

And still other walls are only to divide. To divide people from other people, to divide land and power and resources, to confine or exclude or dominate. Sometimes they make a nice canvas. I've even heard these walls make great projector screens, in a pinch.

Don't worry about that dull thumping noise, Mr. President. Even when it's 1,000,000 degrees, and I'm hopeless and frustrated and so angry I could cry, I still live on the side of the figurative Wall that allows me to live inside my walls and bash my head against them. I'm one of the lucky ones.

Respectfully yours,

Kelsey

Day 156- No one died.

Dear Mr. President,

No one died. That's how I answered my friend when she asked what happened to the Rachel Corrie. Certainly not for the first time in my life, I've had to readjust my threshold for acceptable behavior. I felt this frustration often when I worked as Loss Prevention, and often found myself thinking "Well, this person is drunk and disruptive, but at least they aren't smoking crack in the magazine section." (Yes, that actually happened.) It isn't that I think it's acceptable for Israel to prevent cement and building material from reaching the people of Gaza, for them to board ships and forcibly redirect them; but no one died, so I guess that's acceptable behavior, now. Or, they might have shot a girl's eye out during a protest, but at least they didn't crush her with a bulldozer. Is the behavior actually getting better or am I just become numb to the smaller injustices because of all the larger ones?

I'm tired and frustrated and finished adjusting my tolerance for injustice by this nation that we protect like it's our younger sibling. I caught sight of my reflection today, the silver necklace I wear, which is an outline of Palestine, suddenly looked delicate and fragile, a leaf that might be carried away or crushed at any moment. Isn't that how Israel impresses it's vulnerability upon visitors? Helicopter tours designed to show off how endangered it still is? This recent act of violence will not tempt me to the same folly that Israel has fallen to. I don't call for violence, for the inversion of the oppressed into the oppressors, for the fear I feel to become a weapon of some one else's destruction. I just want it to end. I just want the world to wake up and see the injustice we have perpetuated without any one else having to die to prove it. I know it isn't that simple and it isn't that easy and if there were some obvious solution we'd all leap at it. I am just so heavy with grief, these days.

So I'm not going to ramble any more, when words have long ceased to be enough. I'm going to sleep for a few hours and hope things look better tomorrow.

Respectfully yours,

Kelsey

Day 151- Memory in blank verse

Dear Mr. President,

I walked to work today in the pouring rain. My blood still boiling from last night, drums in my ears asking me to keep my compassion, to keep my cool, I walked and sulked and snapped at anything I could think of. I know, today is a day for remembering. Today is a day to remember the girls and boys we put in men's uniforms and gave weapons and made murderers (and murdered.) To remember the suits who sent them to their deaths and destinies. To remember the placid, peaceful suburbs and 3-day only sales we sent them to protect.

Sometimes I feel like I'm watching a microcosm of US history on fast-forward in Palestine. I fear that Palestinians face the same fate as the Native Americans; refugee camps like reservations, ostensible autonomy that creates isolation, not independence, dying traditions and tongues, hunted, then marginalized, disenfranchised, disarmed, disbanded, disappeared. When we remember the soldiers who have died for this country, do we also honor the dead who died for us to take it from them? Where is their bank holiday, their 3-day only sale? I'm so confused today, tangled up in the inevitable contradiction of being an American; of being born with blood on my hands, bearing the burden of an original sin, not against God but against my fellow man. I want to sort out these feelings; to tease out these threads into distinct narratives, of America, of Palestine, of wars and war crimes, to place it all on a timeline that makes sense.

Nothing makes sense today. Grief is giving way to disorientation and disbelief. Some lady was yelling at me about swiping her gift card too many times, because I might scratch it, and people are being taken off of a humanitarian ship in Haifa, to be taken to a room in the Tel Aviv airport, or to a prison cell, a hospital room, or a morgue. I'm just not sure I understand how these realities overlap. I've stepped, too far, off of some undersea shelf, and now I can only tread water. I can't tell if the White House thinks this is bad because it looks bad for Israel, or if, underneath the suits that control the truth, there are fathers who would not see their daughters suffer as daughters of fathers across Gaza are suffering. If you believe your own spin, or if you're saying it in the hopes of making the truth less devastating. Those boys in men's uniforms dropping down zip lines from choppers onto boats were acting in self defense. They were terrified of a truth so horrible it cannot be erased by bulletts. The truth that makes it so much harder to put on the uniform and pick up the gun. It was self defense, and if you say it enough times, it might be true.

In Washington, an unknown tomb is honored. The Schrödinger's cat of Identity. He could be white or black or Native or فلسطيني. Unknown could be any of us, bones bleached anciently to only human. The shifting, changing, contradictory American; he no longer needs to know how to live, it has been answered for him. He might have died for freedom, or security, or national unity; fighting the British, the Union, the Confederates or the Nazis. He might have fallen on a Pacific Island, or a Vietnamese jungle, or an Iraqi city. He might have been young, he might have been frightened, he might have been ready. He knows how to be an American, if he is all of these things.

Walking home, the rain had stopped. A day spent laboring under the layers of glass and steel and light that make up this city had made me tired, but hadn't made sense out of anything. I don't know what I remember and what I've just been told. I was told to remember those who died to make America safe for me. To teach me how to be an American on days like these. Overwhelmed, other people's memories wash over me; of Crow and of Blackfoot and of Cherokee, of Gettysburg and Bull's run and Blakely; of Pearl Harbor, and Dresden and Nagasaki; of Kabul and Baghdad and Karachi. (Of the dead, from a ship, in the darkness between Gaza and Turkey.) Lies are pouring in from men in suits on TV, while witnesses are being processed and discredited, until no one knows what they saw or who shot first. I still know what I believe. The drums haven't stopped. Compassion. Compassion. Compassion. I can't let it be taken from me.

To the dead, today, I remember you. I am humbled by your lives and how you lost them, for me. I still don't know how to be an American the way I am intended to, especially on days like these.

Respectfully yours,

Kelsey

Day 148- 9 Ships

Dear Mr. President,

9 ships are on their way from international waters to the Gaza shore. Israel has vowed to turn them back or reroute them, and is already constructing a makeshift camp for detaining those onboard. These ships are being called, by Israeli officials, absolute provocation. One even commented on the mission to break the blockade, as a violation of international law. I found this to be especially interesting phrasing for a country so often acting as though it is unaware of, or even above, international law. Might now be the time to discuss illegal settlement expansion, or collective punishment, or the 1977 protocols of the Geneva convention, or, perhaps, Nuclear nonproliferation? While I'm glad to know that the Israeli government has enough of a passing familiarity with international law to acknowledge its existence, I think it would have more credibility citing these laws if it even pretended to obey them in times of war or in "peacetime" occupation of Palestine. But, I suppose the dire threat posed by 9 boats full of construction, education and medical equipment must be weighed against the risk of looking a touch hypocritical, and if there is one thing the Israeli government has never shown itself to be averse to, it's hypocrisy.

Are humanitarian efforts to supply the people of Gaza a threat to anything other than Israel's moral authority? What strikes me the most about this is that the Israeli government has decided to handle it by declaring that there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The EU disagrees. The UN disagrees. Human Rights Watch disagrees. Israeli human rights group B'Tselem disagrees. Certainly there are many sides to every story, but there is also reality, there are also facts. We cannot escape or deny or doublespeak them into submission. There is a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. There will be no peace, no progress, unless this is acknowledged as reality. The actions of this convoy may be provocative; they are also compassionate, courageous and the only course left to peacefully redress the atrocious abuses of human rights against the people of Gaza by the Israeli military.

I have little doubt that the White House lacks the political will (and not to mention courage) to address this situation with more than a bland equivocation calling for restraint from all sides. I would hope that you, my president, could see the obvious absurdity of these peaceful activists on a humanitarian mission being treated as though they were a military threat, and would denounce both the siege that has prompted their mission and any aggression directed toward them in response. 9 ships will not carry enough supplies to help the people of Gaza rebuild; they will not have enough educational materials for all the children of Gaza who long to go to well-equipped schools; they will not stabilize the Gazan economy, or provide shelter for all who seek it. 9 ships will not be enough, but they are a start. We should be sending ships, Mr. President, we should be sending funds and supplies and personell and political support. We should be on the side of ending the suffering, defending the weak, and promoting the freedom and dignity of all. If we cannot do this, if we lack the political will to do the right thing ourselves, we at least ought to bring the weight of our influence with Israel to protect those brave enough to do it for us. Please, Mr. President, ask Israel not to arrest these activists, to allow these 9 ships to dock in Gaza, and to let what little help they bring to come ashore.

Respectfully yours,

Kelsey