I came home from a couple of retreats this week. One has become my regular fall pause, and the other’s winding down a fellowship. While I was away, some news seeped through, but I’d intentionally not checked in much.
I’m plugged back in now, and have a small sense of how Moses must have felt as he came down the mountain of Sinai having just seen God.
I imagine him hearing the sound of shenanigans and strange music; I can see him rounding the last corner before he reached the plain and stopping abruptly as he met the chaos; I can almost hear him asking Joshua, Aaron, somebody, anybody—What the hell?
In the 1980s and 1990s, British afternoon television was TV time for children. One of the major channels sandwiched its news program for kids between cartoons and a science and culture showcase. And they weren’t playing at news; they were news, with sober journalists connecting young people to the world we’d soon inherit and shape.
So we learned about famine, resource wars, and sovereignty conflicts in Ethiopia and Eritrea and central Africa, and refugee migration across Africa and Europe.
We learned about the Troubles in Ireland, paramilitaries and hardliners. Few adults at the time dared to invest hope in peace negotiations, but when they eventually succeeded, the Good Friday Agreement became part of our national history curriculum.
We learned about the first Gulf War southeast of the Mediterranean Sea, and Yugoslavia falling apart to the north; about the staggering numbers of people slaughtered in the Bosnian and Rwandan genocides; about the fires at Mount Carmel, Waco, and the bombing in Oklahoma City; about Mandela’s release from prison and his hopes for South Africa post-apartheid.
And we learned about Palestine, Israel, and Arafat, Rabin, and Shimon’s shared Nobel Prize. We learned about Rabin’s assassination the year after that, and bombings, recriminations, and displacement each year since.
My generation was raised with these daily headlines and stories of power-hoarding, thwarted freedom, blood, greed, and grief. Maybe these themes have always been active? They’ve definitely been active the last four decades.
Today, we can get news about them all day everyday, both from legacy media organizations and from independent reporters and ordinary folks telling stories about their lives and the world as they see it through their cell phone cameras, through TikTok, through reels and tweets and newsletters like this.
And as much as I sometimes get to go up mountains and not plug in, witnessing and feeling the weight of the world’s normalized violences feels inescapable to me—unavoidable. This is as it should be, since I’m not separate from any of the people who find themselves, their families, their lives in what comes to me packaged as news.
But my environment shows no sign of the distress. I’m typing to you in a quiet living room. I hear only ordinary street outside and occasional air traffic overhead. My partner is reading something on the couch; I’m drinking some tea and about to join a Zoom. The dog and cats are all snoozing in a home approaching Thomas Kincaid-levels of romantic calm, and I am unafraid.
But just a few globe spins east of our household, there are millions of people, most of them children, for whom my scene is absolutely impossible. This country, my country, is funding and fueling the conditions making it impossible for them, and the US—funded by us, acting in our name—has far more influence than it should on how much food, sovereignty, and freedom from fear and want those people can experience.
So I am already enrolled in their story, and so are you. The primary question for us, then, is what part we will play now.
And so, thinking of the devastation in Gaza and Israel, and the unconditioned military mobilizing the United States is doing there right now, I invite you to do a few things.
US residents: make some calls this week.
On Tuesday, I called my local legislators’ offices for the first time.
The website GovTrack lists their phone numbers and websites. All of them issued statements about Israel last week. None have mentioned Gaza or Israel this week.
After reading what these lawmakers have already done or said, I jotted down what I wanted them to hear from me, as a constituent that they’re each accountable to. I told them I wanted them to:
insist on an immediate ceasefire and return of all hostages;
condemn the use of terror, scapegoating, indiscriminate bombing, and chemical weapons like white phosphorus;
facilitate the free flow of humanitarian support through Egypt and Israel to Palestinian and Israeli civilians so electricity, food, water, and other fundamentals are restored across the region; and
use their legislative influence to help preserve life now, knowing that their constituents are concerned and engaged, and will not back off.
Right after I called them, I learned about the Gaza City hospital bombing.
This can’t go on.
So if you’ve never called Congress before (I hadn’t before Tuesday, and I became less awkward by the second conversation) it’s worth knowing something about the person on the other end of the phone line. Fourteen years ago, I was one of those people, sitting in a congressional committee office listening to people calling in from home, steeling myself for their verbal abuse and happy to hang up when it was over.
Know that the people who answer your calls are not your legislators. They’re usually low-ranking administrative staff members, and even more commonly short-term interns or recent college graduates.
They also don’t make decisions about your legislators’ statements or behavior—that’s above their grade. They’re overwhelmed during crises and underpaid or unpaid all the time; they’ll be surprised if you treat them with the respect they don’t always receive in their daily work; and they are not your enemy.
They will pass on messages you leave for lawmakers because it’s their job to do so, and they will also log some kind of call record for senior staff. They might not track every word you say, so it’s helpful to be brief and direct, and to use clear, simple language.
They will definitely monitor caller volume and caller sentiment: if they don’t capture all the specifics of what you say, they’ll note your “positive” or “negative” tone and trend of your comment. They’ll notice if there’s a series of calls from different people about a specific policy or action and in which direction the majority lean. And they’ll want to confirm that you’re an actual constituent of theirs, not a random soul instructed by lobbyists or shock jocks to jam up the lines.
So whatever’s on your heart this week, whatever’s on that short list of things you want your legislators to hear from you, please call them and tell their staff.
It’ll take less than 15 minutes, and it’s one way to help lawmakers acknowledge both the gravity of this moment and the wider audience they have beyond their congressional colleagues, the press, and closed inner circles.
Then, find others to learn and act with.
As the ReFrame team often says, “We all have individual contributions to the movement, but this project of changing the world is a collective task.”
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg writes, “We can refuse to root for the safety and lives and rights of human beings like they are sports teams.” Sharing some of the women’s coalition groups who’ve been working in Gaza and the West Bank, she says: “We are obligated to be involved in what happens to other people—to keep them safe, to keep them from harm.”
B’Tselem has long been committed to ending the occupation: “Revenge cannot be a plan of action for a state. We can – and must – demand other solutions: ones that are based not on more death, destruction and loss, but on a fundamental acknowledgement that all human beings are equal and deserve to live. Every single one.”
There’s US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, a US-based solidarity organization that’s asking members to call Congress in support of a ceasefire this week.
And Friends of Sabeel North America, which shares updates and perspectives from Palestinian Christians and their friends around the world.
With an appeal for “the safety of Palestinians of all faiths and Israelis of all backgrounds,” Jewish Voices for Peace’s rabbinical council has published a prayer for this moment from my colleague Rabbi Alissa Wise.
And World Central Kitchen shows up in disaster and conflict zones and coordinates with local organizations, chefs, restaurants, and hospitality workers to feed families good food. Their Ukraine work continues and their Gaza/Israel effort is in partnership with Anera. I donated to WCK this week and encourage you to do the same.
Finally—
People living in Palestine recently recommended I read historian Rashid Khalidi’s 2021 book The Hundred Year’s War on Palestine. I’ll get started as soon as it arrives. Let me know if you’ve read it or have other recommendations for me.
This would normally be where I tell you about my new work and pending events, but I’ll share a separate note about that in a few days.
Again: if you’re in the US this week, call the legislators responsible for your area and co-responsible for the actions of the American government. Tell them your convictions and concerns, and then invest some money, time, or both with organizations or coalitions intervening meaningfully.
If you’re outside the US, your country also has solidarity groups tied to impacted Palestinian and/or Israeli people. Reach out to them.
And do all you can to keep your heart tender… even if it’s breaking.
Keisha
Thank you Keisha this was extremely helpful. I linked to you in mine today. Going to work back through these resources.