Where do we draw the line?

For nearly the first year after October 2023, I would occasionally learn about the latest attack on a hospital, or a university, or elementary school, or the market, or a residential building, or journalist, or EMT, or fisherman on a boat, or a handicapped child, or an old woman … and I’d think, “OK.  Surely this is the wake-up call that will make the U.S. do something about this.” But it never is.

Each time I see Bisan Owda‘s latest Instagram reel saying, “I’m still alive” I get a knot in my stomach, because I’m not confident in our media to tell us when her statement is no longer true, and no longer able to be uttered. I find myself asking, “If we lost Bisan, would that be the last straw? Would the world finally come together and be strong enough of a force to make our governments change their ways?” Her presence on Instagram has always given me a sense of optimism, and a modicum of comfort—knowing she is still there as a messenger for the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians cut off from the world.

I reach out to my representatives and my state senator, and it doesn’t seem to make a difference. My senator lost her legs in a war that Netanyahu got us into, but she won’t bite the hand that feeds her—even after that hand effectively amputated her. Money talks, I guess.

So, when will enough be enough? What will our children and grandchildren say when they learn about this moment in history? They’ll surely ask us, “What did you do when all that was happening?”

I’ll be able to point to this site, I suppose. But, does this count as “doing something?” It has certainly been therapeutic to create this site, and has proven to be useful to me even in its short time being on line, but will it be useful for others? I suppose time will tell. I just don’t want to come back here to write about Bisan in the past tense. That would be a horrific day.