Were I Palestinian…

This morning I woke to the news on my phone that three Israeli hostages were to be released by Hamas in Gaza. I started the coffee machine and gave my dog his breakfast, then showered and wandered over to the couch to watch Fareed Zakaria, which has become a Sunday staple for me.

The celebratory news was remarkable in Israel, with people congregated in a square in Tel Aviv, attention wrapped, watching a large screen that telecast the three women in a van surrounded by Hamas fighters, all armed, protecting their hostages before releasing them to the safety of the International Red Cross, for transport to a crossing where IDF helicopters would whisk them to safety in Tel Aviv. There the best medical care in Israel would assess each hostage and provide each with whatever they required in terms of medical intervention, and upon treatment, release the three women, all in their twenties to the care of the mothers and family.

The contrast between the release of the Israeli hostages and Palestinians in the crowd assembled in Gaza to witness the handover to the Red Cross, could not be more stark, or more obvious.

I was struck with a thought. One that has wandered through my psyche for much of my life.

Were I Palestinian, how would I feel?

I was born into an English family, poor by western standards, in 1953. My home was a pre-war home in a poor neighbourhood that contained four kids and two adults. My friends were generally WASPs with a sprinkling of German, Dutch and Ukrainian neighbours. My father had served in the RAF from September 1st, 1939 until his release from the Air Force in 1947. My parents emigrated from England with the intent of crossing Canada by train, then boarding a ship bound for New Zealand. They had almost no money. But they had something more important, a dream. The dream evaporated half-way across Canada when they ran out of money, and they stopped in order for my father to find a job, and hopefully make enough money to be able to continue the dream.

My mother’s sister had attempted the same journey but a year earlier with her husband, and they too had stopped in Winnipeg, to find work, which they successfully did in spite of it being excessively difficult to find work post WWII on the prairies of Canada. For a short time my parents lived in a garage with an earthen floor, and no insulation, no running water and no sanitary toilets. I imagine how hard that must have been for them in 1948. Especially where winters were more like the weather I was experiencing today. A year later they found they could rent a property in a poor part of Winnipeg, where I was born and grew up.

We lived in what was a tiny two bedroom home, originally with three kids sharing a closet of a bedroom, that was approximately fifty square feet. When I was about seven, my brother was born, and I moved into the attic which my father had turned into a bedroom. It was poorly insulated, and had no ventilation to speak of, with a single window, in a dormer at one end of the attic that until my father built an illegal set of stairs down to my sisters tiny bedroom, had no real access.

There was no headroom, but of course I was short at seven years of age. In the summer, temperatures in the attic would easily reach well over a hundred degrees, and in winter seldom above fifty Fahrenheit. Often, I would not come home until dark as a child, simply because I did not want to climb the rickety stairs and lie on my bed, either very cold or extremely sweaty and hot.

Yet, I thought I was fortunate. While I truly didn’t know anyone in my neighbourhood who had less, I would read incessantly, taking books from either the school library or the cities public library, where I discovered that I could actually have access to a library card. It opened up my entire world.

And with access to the world at large, I understood how precarious and dangerous the world could be for children. And yes, again, I felt lucky.

I normally had enough food, although I clearly understood what hunger felt like. We had no luxuries to speak of. My prized possessions were a football, a baseball glove and a baseball. My friends were mostly not much better off, however when I became a teenager, my high school was across the tracks, into what was a more affluent middle-class area.

There, I met kids from a very affluent area of the school district. The most affluent families were Jewish and owned sprawling properties along the Red River, with expansive lawns, docks on the shore, cruisers moored along the docks. I had never experienced anyone from the Jewish faith until then. It was my first opportunity to learn about Judaism and to experience their religious holidays.

A friend of mine, was Jewish, and wealthy. While we spent time together on occasion, it was obvious that I was an outsider, a goy or goyim, otherwise a gentile, non-Jew. I was also a poor goy. One that is ‘less than’. It tainted my relationship with Larry, who socially never felt comfortable in my company, especially if other teenagers were around.

Why is this important to me?

Simply because I knew what it meant to be different, to be ‘other than’, and to be seen as ‘less than’. It changed the way I saw the world and made me determined to never be looked down upon again, by anyone.

But I had the opportunity to make a better life for myself. In Gaza, where is there hope, where is there opportunity, where is there even, home?

I have been successful in my career and my life, doggedly for 24 years pursuing a 3 year certificate in management, then an B.A. and then a graduate degree in Public Policy, all part-time.

So this morning I sit in my comfortable luxurious apartment within a Jewish part of the city, which is very affluent and has been since it was first built back in the 1960’s, and I ask myself, if I were Palestinian, living in Gaza today, how would I feel?

So much has been written about Israel and Palestine, Jews verses Arabs, Jews verses Muslims, yet, we are now 77 years down a historical path, punctuated by division, hate, war and the inhumanity that only hate can create.

I don’t want to revisit the history of Israel and Palestine. Many writers, much more knowledgeable than I have done so, eloquently from both sides of the issue.

But today, on this frozen morning in Winnipeg (-44 C) with the windchill, I cannot help but ponder how a seven year old Palestinian child, deprived, hungry, malnourished, unable to attend a school, which is now rubble, — or even to sleep in a building, while living in a tent city with no sanitation, with no running water, — feels.

How is it that after 77 years, –after so much death and deprivation, that Israelis, themselves products of genocide, can justify what they have been doing to Palestinians in Gaza this for the last fifteen months?

They have dropped enough munitions in Gaza to average 32 pounds of explosive for every man woman and child. How can this be anything but retribution?

I grieve for that seven year old child and the 47,771 others who have died in Gaza. So too do I for the estimated 2,040 Israelis who died due to the attack by Hamas and the subsequent incursion into Gaza since October 7th, 2023.

Is anything resolved? Is Israel safer? Has retribution made Israelis happier?

I have no answers, except to say that if the partition of Palestine in 1947 by the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine was a disaster in the making, for both entities, for both religions, for both peoples.

I’d like to revisit the history and the outcomes in a future post, but this morning, all I feel is sadness for both parties.

There is no winner in this war, no resolution, no fairness, no adequate solution.

I saw a picture today that made me physically hurt inside. A seven year old boy, sitting on a piece of concrete, with blood on his hands and face…looking at where his family was killed by an Israeli bomb. He was in shock, obviously, yet people, afraid for their own lives were either too afraid or two broken to stop and help.

What will this seven year old do with his life? What must he think, now that he is an orphan, wondering, through tears, why his mother and father and siblings had to die? For what?

And meanwhile, what is everyone talking about? TicTok.

The clock is ticking, and TicTok is irrelevant in a real sense. Not so, time, to a 7 year old boy in Gaza, hungry, hurt, and alone.

Be well, be safe and hold those who you love, close. And remember this Sunday, that the comfort you feel, the safety you experience and the conveniences you enjoy, are not for everyone. And until they are, I will not be satisfied or accept that this is either right, or just.

Peace be with you this Sunday.