7 Comments
User's avatar
Lorraine Suzuki's avatar

I. Can't. Breathe. (Thank you for this, Deena. I will share it widely.)

Expand full comment
James Janko's avatar

Thank you, Lorraine, and a deep bow to Deena for bringing this to you.

Expand full comment
victoria vanzandt's avatar

Compassionate, honest and courageous! Thank you James. I’m a member of Codepink and continued to be educated about this injustice!

Expand full comment
James Janko's avatar

My thanks to you, Victoria, and to Code Pink. I'm a long-time member of Veterans for Peace, and have been especially active with the Climate Crissis and Militarism Project of VFP. We are allies.

Expand full comment
Joe M Lamb's avatar

Essential medicine for a world suffering from the spiritual sickness of othering. Deep bows to James Janko for writing, and to Deena for sharing.

Expand full comment
Deena Metzger's avatar

May 22 “The Israeli army just stormed a friend's house, one of the committed peacebuilders in the West Bank. They have threatened to return. I have been asked for prayers. This is my prayer at this moment of learning of this: I pray do whatever you can to stop the war of genocide against the Palestinian people, our kin.”

Expand full comment
Deena Metzger's avatar

May 22, after learning of the Israeli army storming a Palestinian Peacebuilder’s home today. Several weeks ago, his infant child was in the hospital suffering teargas burns afflicted by the same army. This poem by Naomi Shibab Nye:

Before I Was a Gazan

Naomi Shihab Nye

1952 –

I was a boy

and my homework was missing,

paper with numbers on it,

stacked and lined,

I was looking for my piece of paper,

proud of this plus that, then multiplied,

not remembering if I had left it

on the table after showing to my uncle

or the shelf after combing my hair

but it was still somewhere

and I was going to find it and turn it in,

make my teacher happy,

make her say my name to the whole class,

before everything got subtracted

in a minute

even my uncle

even my teacher

even the best math student and his baby sister

who couldn’t talk yet.

And now I would do anything

for a problem I could solve.

Expand full comment