Author: rayela

Brazil 18years + Chicago 20yrs + Paducah since 2005 These have shaped my path and interests. I spent many years as an active artist (ceramics and textiles) but have focused on promoting the creative community online since 2010. My current projects are Artizan Made and this site, Creative PlaceMakers.

I have been trying to learn about what is happening in Palestine for the last three years. There are so many layers of history to dig through along with daily horrors that go by so fast and leave me reeling.  Coupled with what has been happening here in the United States and in many other places around the world, I struggle to find hope for a future that can create a peaceful world where there is justice, joy and safety for people, animals, plants, the water and our minds.

We will be hosting Morgan Cooper of Handmade Palestine this June and I wrote a separate post about her work in Palestine and how we can support her and her community.  See that post here.  I also want to share my Palestinian journey as I think it might help people think about their own understandings about how the United States, Israel and Palestine are connected and why we are watching a massacre happen before our eyes through the internet.

Back Story

I grew up in Brazil under a military dictatorship (1962-1980). I didn’t really understand what was happening until I was in college, where I studied Religion, Sociology and Political Science.  (St. Olaf College in Minnesota.) I spent my Junior Year in Colombia with the now defunct HECUA urban studies program  and Brazil at the Lutheran Seminary.  I never met any Jews nor Palestinians in Brazil, but we had quite an active protest life on St. Olaf’s campus. We tackled apartheid, a visit from the deposed shah of Iran (the students rebelled), getting arrested for trespassing on Honeywell Property in Minneapolis (anti nuke protest), the CIA in Nicaragua and Palestine… They were all on our radar.  That was when I got my keffiyeh, which is now over 40 years old!  We were bright eyed and bushy tailed, ready to make a difference and to see changes for the better. Instead, 25 years later, the world is in crisis, demanding renewed commitments from all of us.

I graduated in 1984 and went to work in inner city Chicago, also starting out with the Lutheran Church.  My focus was on poverty, after school programs, etc. until I found the marriage of all of my interests:  the economic development potential of using handmade and the arts to create change. I learned the ropes of retail, wholesale, and selling online, worked with recent immigrants and fair trade groups that had products to sell.  I am a maker, too, so I LOVE the process and have many skills that I have used to make my own products. But, there are so many other points of interest for me:  the historical importance, the loss of knowledge as industrialization has taken over the handmade process and the sense of community we have in sharing knowledge and making together. Palestine receded in my radar, but I still watched documentaries and thought I had an idea of what was happening over there.  I also met my first Jewish friends and later, Israeli creatives.

Jews have a long history of standing against injustice in the United States.  The Civil Rights movement had many, many Jewish advocates who worked with the Black community on social justice issues as they identified with what it is like to feel discrimination and oppression.  All of my Jewish friends are progressives who despise racism and any kind of suppression of rights. I also became involved with the Tibetan community in Chicago and partnered with an Afghan, my friend, Abdul, in a retail store that was gorgeous…..  A few months after we opened, 9/11 happened and we just could not make it. We tried for four years and finally had to close.

I was tired of the big city and its costs and we decided to move to Paducah.  Abdul lives in Chicago but works a bead show route between Chicago and Florida.

I still had not met any Palestinians. And, I was disgusted at comments that insinuated that Israel controlled our government or had any other agenda than protecting itself against Hamas, the PLO and others.

The internet exploded and we got all of those juicy social media sites.  I met Israeli artists online and promoted them.  Wonderful people!  Then, Hamas attacked Israel in a horrific way on October 7, 2023.  I was shocked.  “My God!  Why would Hamas do that?  How can that help the Palestinian plight in any way?”  I could not believe it!  I knew that Israel would retaliate but could not conceive of the televised annihilation of a whole population like this.  Yes, I still feel sorrow for the Israelis who lost their lives or were tortured, but there is nothing that can justify what Netanyahu has done to Palestine.  Beyond the horrors inflicted on the Palestinian people, he has also put a target on the back of every Jew!  The hatred and disgust around the world for what is happening to Palestinians is making Israelis seem Nazis.  It’s so hard to wrap my mind around this!

Palestinians on Instagram

I wanted to understand more and started following various Palestinians on Instagram.  They have captured my heart!  The resilience, the incredible suffering they have endured and yet the dedication they have had to create “normal” experiences for their community is so humbling and yet, hopeful.  Here are a couple of my favorites:

Ahmed Muin is a music teacher who lost everything when Israel started bombing Gaza indiscriminately. He was shattered!  Yet, he picked himself up, was able to get instruments donated and other musicians got involved and now they have a vibrant group called “Gaza Birds Singing”.  His dedication to these children is profound! And, one thing I noticed right away is that girls are included and treated as equals. 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Ahmed Muin (@ahmedmuin_abuamsha)

Another guy I love is Tayseer Obaid.  He is an inventor and is constantly making things for his family and for others to ease their lives.  They live in fragile tents, but he has set up bathrooms, showers, water systems, “washing machines”, and so much more.  He salvages supplies from the destruction and then does have a drill, screws and some things he has bought.  The man is a genius!  He made this swing for his kids…

 

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A post shared by Tayseer Obaid | تيسير عبيد (@tayseerobaid1)

There are many more!  And, then there are the ex-pats who are on the outside and can tell the stories with humor and cleverness.  One of my favorites is Sammy Obeid, a genius in math and wordplay. 

 

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A post shared by Sammy Obeid (@sammyobeid)

Andrew Burt of the Virgin X…  He is a musician and performer and I would not normally be drawn to his style, but somehow he captured me and now I love him…  He befriended two Palestinians and his postings on his platform helped them get out of Gaza and into a university and they actually got to meet!

 

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A post shared by Virgin X // Andrew Burt (@the_virgin_x)

Once I got beyond the glittered mustache, I started listening to Andrew and saw his compassion and empathy.  He has suffered a great deal for feeling so strongly for all of these people who are getting obliterated using our tax dollars…  Here he is with one of the guys he helped leave Gaza:

 

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A post shared by Virgin X // Andrew Burt (@the_virgin_x)

I realize, with all of these testimonies, that I have so many preconceptions to deal with.  I need to grow and keep on learning!  At the same time, I have seen many clips of Israelis spitting on Gazans and saying things like, “All Muslims are cockroaches. Yes, we need to kill them as infants because if they grow up, they will attack us.”  Absolutely sickening….  I still do not understand much about the Palestinian leadership and need to learn more.

Nakba

I did not understand how Israel became a country on this land of Palestine. The Nakba marks the initial displacement of Palestinians by Israeli refugees who had been welcomed into resettlement.  I’ve now seen many videos of Palestinians recounting how they were forced out of their homes by the same people they had welcomed and helped.  This continues today.  Here is a short clip:

Like many, I thought of the movie, Exodus, as an accurate story about the founding of Israel.  Who would not love to have Paul Newman come in and save us all?

Jenny Singer, a writer for Forward, a Jewish independent magazine, wrote a long review about Exodus and how much it shaped the Israeli identity and even policies around the world on how the narration of the creation of the State of Israel happened.  The article is excellent! Do read it.  She says:

I was studying for my bat mitzvah in 2006 when my dad, a Reform rabbi, pressed a battered paperback into my hands. The cover of my copy of Exodus showed what looked like a Swedish Barbie in combat gear, standing next to a Clark Gable-look alike holding an M16.

I experienced the phenomenon for which the book is famous: a longing to live in the righteous, bloody, world Uris created. And with that feeling, the strength of my attachment to that fictional Israel transmuted into an attachment to the real Israel. Except the thing I loved did not quite exist — a fact that united me, I think, with many Jews who care for Israel.

Published in 1958, 10 years after what Israelis call the founding of their country and Palestinians call The Nakba, or the catastrophe, Exodus is one of the stranger artifacts of 20th century literature: a 626-page novel that, in fictionalizing many of the historic events surrounding the formation of the state of Israel — Holocaust narratives, independence battles, sensual encounters in Tiberias — ended up shaping not just generations of American perceptions of Israel, but policy, too.

…

It would be challenging to find an American Jew in the Rothenbergs’ and Zerins’ age group who escaped reading or watching Exodus. The novel was reprinted 87 times. Bradley Burston, writing in Haaretz in 2012, explains that in the wake of the book’s publication, “It was said that it was nearly as common to find a copy of Exodus in American-Jewish households as to find the Bible — and, of the two, not a few Jewish households apparently had only Exodus.”

But there has always been a gulf between the way historians and critics read Exodus — as a piece of nonsense — and the way readers received it — as transcendent. As a 1958 New York Times review put it, “This approach to the story of modern Israel strains credibility.” Commentary magazine called the book “the ultimate crystallization of the Western fantasy about Israel,” noting that Uris paints Israel as “a state whose only problem is the savage, sadistic enemies on its borders.”

 

Twenty years later, Paul Newman takes a stand on how Israel gets away with bad behavior.  Forty years after this speech, there are no controls on what Israel believes it can do and often, cruelty seems to be the point.

Israel

This is very difficult to me to sort out emotionally. Israel is a part of our liturgy, our history as Christians.  The Palestinians are, too, but not in the same way.  I realized that I did not understand the difference between Zionism and Judaism, so understanding that has helped.  Zionism is a political ideology that has nothing to do with religion.  While many Jews may also be Zionists, Zionists can also be atheists.  I now understand that Zionism is the same as White Christian Nationalism, which also has nothing to do with Jesus or his messaging.  Both are about power and about racism.

I have never felt that the United States has some special place in the world where we can call the shots on all other countries.  Even Obama, whom I generally respect, acted like a cowboy in Central Asia, taking out Afghans by drone without due process and violated International laws.  I love Brazil, my adopted country, and I love the United States, the country where I became an adult. But, Brazil disappeared over 20,000 people under its military dictatorship and the US has countless historical conflicts based on racism and unfettered capitalism.  One hand destroys, while the other hand heals. Instead, I think of myself more as a world citizen, where we are all connected and where we need how to figure out how to live in peace with each other. We are facing mass extinctions of many species on this planet, climate change, migrations and now all of the problems that are generated by the tech industry, including AI and surveillance.  Our challenges are immense!

Within all of that, Israel has gone absolutely nuts, funded by our tax dollars. Much of what they do seems to thrive on the enjoyment of inflicting pain on other people, not only on Palestinians, but on other nations and on their own people who “step out of line”.  Three years of doom scrolling has opened my eyes to horrific behavior on Israel’s part, tied closely in to policies that the United States has been implementing, especially through Project 2025.

Things reported that need to be researched:

• The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has invested millions of dollars in buying off our Congress people, including Democrats.
• Palestinian bodies have been returned by Israel without organs and apparent skin harvesting.  Article
• Drones fly around the Gaza camps and pick out victims indiscriminately, including children.
• Israelis use food relief as target practice.
• 235 journalists and media workers killed in Gaza since 2023.
• 1,500 healthcare workers have been killed in Gaza.
• It might take 20 years to clear the rubble in Gaza, according to a UN report.  The debris is full of asbestos, human remains and undetonated bombs.
• Trump’s Gaza plan…

It all goes on and on.  Now there are over 14 countries involved with the war against Iran, countries impacted by the craziness of both the US and Israel bombing away…  It’s absolutely nuts.  The President of Argentina is buddies with Netanyahu and Trump and is supposedly encouraging Israelis to burn Patagonia, one of the most pristine places on the planet, so that they can get land cheaply. This may be debunked, but there is footage of fires being set by Israelis…

What we can do…

I believe that the best way to heal a situation is to meet the people and learn as much as possible about what got us where we are.  There are MANY Jewish/Palestinian efforts out there, trying to bring peace to the region. We can support them and push for peaceful solutions.  We can also vote the crazies out of office and boycott companies that support Israel’s aggressive attacks on its neighbors. Morgan has a boycott list but I could not find it.  I’ll update this when I get it from her. All of this violence is funded by our money. As are all of the big tech projects and environmental degradation we are seeing. So, we need to stop supporting the bad players financially.

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Me with my keffiyeh.