not to be unappreciative, but to respond to the loaded How are you feeling? messages folks are sending me, Id say powerless. I have absolutely no control over the safety of my friends and family on the other side of the planet. My parents instruct me to go to the movies and watch comedies as often as I need to keep smiling, as we receive countless traumatizing updates of the dead, injured, or missing. Laughing in shame, my smile became a memento mori. Prioritizing my own future, pursuing further education--am I manifesting the ideals of Americas savior-complex? Am I settling for my own success as success enough? Settling is such an interesting term lately. I am only beginning to understand why my parents chose to work so hard to raise me in the US, where they found safety and security. I can understand why they settled here. So much so, that I cannot help but understand why Zionists settled in Palestine, in search of the same safety and security after their trauma. Now, as a middle-class, well-educated, white-passing settler myself here in America, I see how I am failing native people here in San Francisco everyday at the Department of Public Health. I often try to find myself in the data. When I see a chart about a health disparity, I try to find myself. Which data point could I be? I often plot myself at a tipping point. If I had any less privilege, Id feel at risk--any more privilege, and I wouldnt even be thinking about it. There is indeed a void of moral ambiguity in my conscience, where I see myself as succeeding, even though there is just as much evidence to predict failure. Perhaps, this is Zionism. Struggling in the shadows of Empire, Israeli politicians are simply reaching forward without looking back. To criticize Israel is to criticize myself.
Posted on: Fri, 08 Aug 2014 06:44:27 +0000