Dear Reader, How does it feel to be a Palestinian American at this time? What are the implications of the ceasefire for Palestinians here and in the Middle East? Join me tomorrow at noon on Midday with Tom Hall, WYPR-Baltimore, 88.1 FM or online. You can also catch me in person Saturday at the Palestine Youth Movement’s fundraiser picnic, ‘Gaza is the Compass’ (Arlington, VA). I will be tabling, so it’s a good opportunity to pick up your signed copy of Fugitive Dreams. In this newsletter, I...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
Dear Reader, “Palestine lives!” I write in an 800-word essay published in Scene48 magazine in Haifa earlier this month. “Our brightest light in this enveloping darkness is our own century-long history of struggle; to keep Palestine alive, to unite, to forge our collective dream.” In this issue of my newsletter, while the genocide continues, I celebrate Palestinian culture and its ceaseless resistance to erasure, and affirmation of life. In that spirit, I share highlights from the Al-Bireh...
3 months ago • 2 min read
Dear Reader, ‘How do you cope?’ I sometimes get asked. ‘How do you function, with everything that’s going on in Palestine and the world?’ Truth is I don’t. I try. I do what little I can. I plan only for plans to be derailed by the morning news. It looks like nothing is changing. Hopelessness hovers near like a vulture. Then I hear from one of you. A compliment here, an argument there. It doesn’t matter which. I see a constant stream of new readers engaging – new people interested in learning...
5 months ago • 2 min read
Dear Reader, A short note as I ready to travel: It’s an honor to be delivering this Sunday’s sermon (6/22) at West Hill United Church in Scarborough, Ontario (also live-streamed, details below). I will be speaking at two more events next week in St. Catharines, Niagara region. Please reply to this email if interested in the latter. Thank you for all the contributions to my Gaza 5k fundraiser for UNRWA-USA. While the world is focused on the Israel-Iran war, Gaza remains in the dark, it’s...
6 months ago • 1 min read
Dear Reader, As the Catholic world awaits a new Pope, and Pakistan and India brace for a new war, 290,000 children in Gaza face starvation because of a two-month blockade that Western governments are supporting. It is not accidental that “hostilities” are erupting in South Asia at the same moment the Russia-Ukraine war is coming to an end. Weapons manufacturers, who nowadays include big tech and big media, need to keep the business going. The narrative is written in favor of war because the...
7 months ago • 2 min read
Dear Reader, … and February has run into March … where is the newsletter? In the interest of getting my upcoming book on Gaza ready for launch (soon), I’ve been taking a hiatus. Further, when I returned from Palestine in Oct. 2023, I emptied miscellaneous items in my suitcase into a laundry basket that has remained untouched since. The hiatus is also giving me time to unpack that figurative laundry basket and resume everything I have suspended for the last 16 months, including my grief (see...
9 months ago • 2 min read
Dear Reader, “Spring is our proof that radical, revolutionary change is possible, and very quickly.” This comes from my opening remarks at a “Poetry for Palestine” event, two nights before New Years’ Eve: “I invite you to look at Spring. Trees lay bare for what seems like forever, then buds sprout, and again it seems like forever, but you wake up one morning and you see flowers of every color, and the next week it’s green all over, and bird-songs fill the air. Yet it happens in the most...
11 months ago • 2 min read
Dear Reader, This second Christmas under genocide, Moses comes to mind—not the wrathful old man, but the helpless infant in a papyrus basket floating downriver. The child was destined to perish were it not for the compassion of one person, the daughter of the very Pharaoh who condemned a generation of infants to death. Like Moses, Jesus was a survivor of a mass-infanticide. Jesus was saved by the compassionate intervention of his adoptive father, Joseph. Their journey to Egypt was a mirror...
12 months ago • 2 min read
Dear Reader, Thank you for sticking with me during this difficult year. I appreciate all your interactions and notes of support. Reflecting on a poem I wrote last year from Palestine on October 7, it occurred to me that everyone killed in Gaza during the past year – estimates range from 43,000 to 200,000 or more – were alive at the moment I wrote that poem. This sad truth points to a starker fact: that the loss of life since Oct. 7 was entirely preventable. By the evening of October 7, the...
about 1 year ago • 3 min read