Thursday 🇵🇸 Reflections

Reflections on 223 Days of Genocide

Hello Friends and Family,

On Thursdays I am fasting and using the money from lunch and the time gained to reflect and write to you, donate to UNRWA (still defunded by the US) and pray with Sabeel’s wave of prayer. Below is this week’s reflection:

I failed yesterday.

There was a teacher appreciation lunch and it was Thai food and it looked so good and I ate.

This teacher appreciation week has been a whirlwind of emotions. I had a school site visit or a interview or offer for a job nearly every day this week. I passed the EdTPA (a notorious test teachers are required to pass in the state of California) and am starting to shift towards celebration of my accomplishments this year concluding grad school. All the while, the most horrific news continues to come out of Gaza. I continue to feel extreme cognitive dissonance.

This week, I really didn’t know what to write about.

I considered continuing the theme from last week about state sanctioned violence and thinking through how the FBI is investigating teachers in SFUSD for false allegations of antisemitism (they supported students walking out against genocide).

As Israel seizes key Gaza border crossings and launches its offensive on Rafah, the news out of the strip seems worse and worse. As protests on college campuses rage across people’s timelines and American media, I wonder if it would be pertinent to highlight how Israel continues to block aid into Gaza.

Pasted image 20240510132914

I also have been thinking about the size of the strip. Imagining what it would be like if the entire populations of San Francisco, Daily City, San Bruno, and more were forced at gunpoint into an area the size of San Francisco. More than one million people, mostly living in tents. Then I began to imagine if the the occupying army began to bomb the tents and homes in Bayview, Portola, Silver Terrace and Dogpatch while ordering everyone to move north. Then closed the Bay and Golden Gate Bridges to prevent people from escaping while promising a private US security firm control of the crossings. And took detained people out to Stockton and held them in concentration camps.

I have been thinking about the song I grew up singing based on the Palm Sunday story. “The rocks and stones will cry out.” This afternoon, hundreds of hornets attacked IDF soldiers after they ran over a wasp nest. All creation cries out against the genocide in Gaza. Yet it continues. Paid for with our tax dollars.

Pasted image 20240510134604 Perhaps then the real teachers who should be appreciated are those in northern Gaza who are opening up school for the first time in months. Resisting, surviving. They know that failure is not an option.

What I’m Reading This Week: