First Page From My Diary
I’ve watched the horrors that are unfolding in Gaza, and now in the West Bank, for over 40 days. As you may or may not know, I befriended a family in Gaza for over 10 years. Kareem’s younger brother, Zein, reassured me weeks ago, “Don’t worry, sister. This will be over in one month”. He was more than likely making an estimate based on the time it took for the catastrophe of 2014 to conclude.
Sara is still holding on strong. With no stable internet connection, she gave me a brief status report on WhatsApp: “I’m still alive”. Kareem’s sister, Eman, is now a mother of two small children. She’s downhearted as she posts about martyrdom. She wants her children to survive. I tried my best to ease her fears by writing a quote from Bobby Sands, “Our revenge will be the laughter of our children”. Kareem’s mother still has hope that one day we all will be together. She sent me a photograph of an immaculate spread of Palestinian cuisine with the caption, “I will cook all of this for you”.
I don’t consider myself a religious person, but I asked my mother to recite her rosary for my Gaza family. Since the violence is escalating daily, she recites her rosary upwards to three times a day. An eerie sensation came over me last week. I couldn’t shake it. With tears stinging in my eyes, I expressed to my mother that I didn’t know why but “PCS” was connected to all of this. PCS, or Pleasantville Cottage School, was an abusive foster care placement I experienced. It’s run by a nonprofit called JCCA.
I needed to know why I was having these emotional flashbacks. Sure, traumatic world events can be triggering, but I felt this was something deeper. I became aware that JCCA has ties to Israel. Through its Compass program, Jewish clients went on a so-called birthright trip to Israel. Additionally, JCCA has a health and human services partnership with the UJA Federation of New York — an ultra-Zionist organization.
My inner child was sending me a “Bat-Signal”. To reclaim my power and to be a voice for Palestinian children, I participated in a march to demand a ceasefire and to take a stand for the several thousand children who were killed in Gaza. Our pain is more connected than we realize. An abusive foster care provider is tethered to a regime that’s murdering children.
Another reminder of my painful past was brought to my attention as I saw The Bronx Defenders come under scrutiny for its management and directorial staff’s denouncement of the union’s statement of support for Palestinians. Several months ago, I emailed the managing director of the Family Defense Practice at The Bronx Defenders. I needed assistance with addressing my family’s foster care horror story and finally obtaining my foster care records. She didn’t respond to my email for months. When she finally did respond, she scheduled a day for us to have a discussion on Zoom. She didn’t email a Zoom link. I never heard from her again.
Cynicism washed over me as I began to observe the situation analytically. My unaddressed and undiagnosed c-PTSD led me down a path of criminality and finding myself in less-than-desirable situations. The Bronx Defenders employed the public defenders who represented me in court. Now, I’m a healing adult who wanted to confront the abuse and corruption that was causal to my outcome, I got ghosted by a director at The Bronx Defenders. Funny how that works.
On social media, I bore witness to white foster care advocates policing social media posts of non-white foster care advocates for not denouncing Hamas, in a manner that pleased them. I’ve also seen highly regarded foster care advocates failing to acknowledge the over 70 years of occupation and brutality inflicted on Palestinian civilians. I’ve read claims of “anti-Semitism” because their colleagues are standing in solidarity with Palestinians. This collective gets its bread and butter sitting on panels, publishing academic articles and books on family policing, unchecked abuse of foster children, and the foster care-to-prison pipeline.
So, Palestinian children who are egregiously abused in Israeli prisons don’t matter? How about the seven-year-old boy who died of a heart attack because he was so frightened by Israeli soldiers chasing him? Want to talk about family policing? I heard so many stories of Israeli soldiers coming into Palestinian homes and dragging out children over claims of them “throwing rocks”. The levels of hypocrisy and Westernized privilege are stomach-turning.
The same hypocrisy is seen with JCCA’s Compass program. White Jewish Americans with autism and other disabilities get so-called birthright trips and services, while their counterparts in Palestine are murdered and are in danger at this very moment. For years, disabled Gazans and their families weren’t provided with adequate services to live in an environment where they could thrive. Who you are and what you were born into, shouldn’t determine levels of importance or if you deserve to have your needs met.
My loved ones in Gaza still have a long road ahead. I wish there was a way to undo their “new normal”, so to speak. I’m so grateful to wake up and know they’re still here. It’s heart-stopping to see photographs and videos documenting the brazen cruelty toward Gaza’s most vulnerable citizens.
It’s otherworldly that my childhood trauma is connected to what children are being subjected to right now in Gaza and the West Bank. It’s hard not to step into the realm of disillusionment. I always knew the world could be uncaring and callous, but this is something I didn’t know was possible. I wish I could wake up and this was just a bad dream.
Perhaps, Nietzsche’s Eternal Recurrence is real in some ways. If I’m reliving a cycle, or if we’re all reliving it collectively, maybe could we do things differently this time around. Being psychologically transported back to my life’s hardest era was challenging. With what I endured in my life and discovering how it’s connected on a global scale, I have the right to be brusque in my delivery. Witnessing man-made horrors carried out on innocent people is indescribable. I feel I have written all I needed to. Until next time.
