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| Death and suffering in Gaza. Cartoon by Marilena Nardi. |
I believe in a Free Palestine.
Wait, hold on… that wasn’t how I wanted to start at all.
This poem isn’t going to solve the Middle East peace crisis.
Well, that’s hardly any better, but what I’m really trying to say is,
I love my Jewish husband.
I love my sweet, supportive, circumcised Jewish husband,
and I love his family,
and I love their families,
all of whom accepted a shiksa who adores Christmas
right into their homes; right into their tribe.
But I believe in a Free Palestine.
And I am the first to acknowledge that I know absolutely nothing
about the epigenetic trauma of being Jewish;
after all, my people have always tended to do more of the oppressing.
I cannot speak to the experience of a Holocaust
or to the damage that comes from being hated and hunted
for 3,000 years in a row.
But I believe in a Free Palestine.
So when my husband and I sit down
to discuss Gaza and the Nova Festival and all of the starving babies—
the horror and the suffering and all of the fear—we do not always see eye to eye.
And if we have issues discussing human rights and geopolitics and the existence of war crimes,
you can just imagine how family dinners at my in-laws’ get.
I am a mother and a pacifist, at the end of the day,
with too much empathy
and an unfinished Ph.D. regarding the philosophical nature of ethics;
I like it best when everyone just gets along.
But I also believe in a Free Palestine
while simultaneously attempting to respect my Jewish husband’s heritage
and that is apparently an untenable position in which to be.
This poem isn’t going to solve the Middle East peace crisis.
But maybe it will alleviate some tension in my marriage.
Shannon Frost Greenstein (She/They) is the author of Through the Lens of Time, a forthcoming fiction collection with Thirty West Publishing. She is a former Ph.D. candidate in Continental Philosophy and a multi-time Pushcart Prize nominee. Follow Shannon on Twitter at @ShannonFrostGre. Insta: @zarathustra_speaks
