My name is Samia and I am Palestinian. I was asked to say some words tonight as part of this community vigil. I have been struggling this week to articulate with words the immensity of grief that I’m feeling in my body. I feel and witness all the grief that is present, all of your grief here tonight. Palestinian grief. Israeli grief. I grieve all the civilian lives that have been taken over these weeks, all the Palestinian lives lost in the occupation, and I honor all of that grief as equal. I hold this equality of grief to be true, with the same strength and the same breath that I resist and stand up against apartheid, oppression, and the genocide of my people. I refuse to allow those things to exclude each other because to do so it would be to deny humanity.

I thought for today, I will lift up the voice of one of the Gazan youth who was killed by IDF bombs. More than a dozen journalists have been killed so far since October 7 in Israel, Palestine and Lebanon, and the Committee to Protect Journalists is investigating his death and others. Yousef was being mentored by my mom through the nonprofit, We Are Not Numbers, which connects young Gazan writers with experienced mentors. He was studying psychology and what he wanted most was to tell the west about his life under occupation. I offer up his words to you all tonight as we grieve together.

—

Who will pay for the 20 years we lost?

Yousef Maher Dawas

Gaza Strip

January 14, 2023

People hate awkward silences — the moment a conversation stalls and a gap fills the space uncomfortably. So naturally they do whatever they can to avoid them. However, this isn’t the case in Gaza. We enjoy silence — because it means a break from death and destruction. At least until it is rudely broken by the sound of missiles again, which make our houses sway and our hearts dance with fear.

It is the first day of the Eid al-Fitr celebration, in May 2022, and I’m in my family home which I share with my parents, brothers and sister. It’s early evening, and the sky is a dusty pink color from the setting sun.

The evening’s stillness is broken by some heavy bombing. The noise of explosions shatters the silence and pierces my ears, while flashes of light burn my eyes. I’m in shock. A missile draws light on the walls, accompanied by a soundtrack of furious thunder. There is a delay as the noise of the explosion catches up with the light of impact. I jump with fright and grit my teeth as it makes impact.

That evening we were all in our bedrooms, but as the bombardment grew fiercer and more frequent, we came together for comfort in a communal room in the middle of the house. This provided a false sense of safety. Of course, we knew that we were not safe, but we’d rather die together than alone.

We did our best to distract ourselves from the terrifying situation by continuing with our Eid celebrations — playing music, eating chocolates, and drinking coffee. That night, nobody slept until the sun was in the sky.

In the morning, my father received a phone call. “One moment and I’ll be right there,” he added, and without a moment’s hesitation leapt up and ran out of the house. I wanted to ask him what had happened, but he was too fast and was gone. The rest of my family remained in their bedrooms trying to get some rest.

My father was a brave man and he always looked out for us. I knew that when he went out into danger he would always come back, no matter who was around the corner or what was flying overhead. He had previously been arrested and detained for defending his land with stones against the tanks and guns of our enemy. He grew up as a farmer on land that had been in our family for several generations, right back to my great-grandfather nearly a century ago, in 1925.

After a few hours, he came back. I was relieved to see him walking into the house again. But something wasn’t right. His body was hunched and he was walking like an old man. I could see dry tears in his sorry eyes.

“Our trees in the fields have been turned to ash.” His words were heavy and they fell from his mouth. An awkward silence gripped the house before he added, “I planted those trees, I nurtured them and watered them with my own hands. Week by week. Month by month. Year by year. I saw those leaves and branches grow.” He took a heavy breath and continued in a lower tone while trying to hold back his tears. “These trees were older than you, Yousef.”

I went to my room to escape from the shocking reality that our family’s farmland, which had been passed down for generations, had been destroyed. I opened my laptop and put on my headphones and defiantly played the loudest video game I could find. This helped block out the sound of my father’s cries and the rocket fire.

A few nights passed and the war was eventually paused. A ceasefire had been agreed upon and rockets no longer fell from the sky. But the destruction had left something dead within the hearts of my family — a significant part of our history had been destroyed. I knew that many other Gazans had suffered for more greatly, as they always do. The missiles killed many civilians, orphaning children and shattering families. Some people were buried under their own homes, while others were killed in the streets. Some were maimed and lost body parts, while many of us who were left behind had lost a piece of our soul.

I didn’t want to go and see the damaged farmland. I really wasn’t curious to see my memories burned into ashes. The last time I was there I had sat beneath olive trees with my friends eating za’atar, bread, and olive oil. We drank tea, roasted corn, and picked fruit. I can still taste those flavors and smell the air.

But now, three rocket holes plagued these memories. They had left dark grey sand and the scorched remains of trunks and branches from trees that used to bear the fruit of olives, oranges, clementines, loquat, guavas, lemons and pomegranates. I put my hands on my heart to catch it from falling, and I felt the three holes there in my heart.

This latest attack on Gaza had successfully destroyed an important piece of our past. Our family’s history. Our heritage. “But who are we without a past or history,” I asked myself.

I tried to reassure my father by saying the land would recover and we could work with the support of the United Nations to replant the trees that we lost. “Even if somebody helps us repair the damage and plants new trees, who will give me those years back that I spent nurturing them and supporting them to grow?” he snapped back at me. “Who will pay for the 20 years we have lost?”

An awkward silence fell between us as we both pondered the symbolic nature of our loss.

My name is Naomi, I’m an herbalist and artist living in Dummerston, Vermont, by the West River, on the land of the Abenaki people.

My grandparents met at a Hanukkah party in Basel, having escaped Kristallnacht and the Anschluss, the nazi annexation of Austria. In Switzerland no one attacked them, but neither were they allowed to work or to make a life. They came here, eventually, after a decade in limbo. My grandfather was a pediatrician, my grandmother worked as a docent at the art museum. Their pain was enormous, my entire life.

The artist’s tasks are many, including to tell a truth. One truth: my grandparents did not survive extermination for me to export their pain onto other marginalized people. Their trauma is mine to metabolize, and I will never consent for it to be leveraged to justify the terror of another. What was done to us should end with us and never be reproduced. In olam haba, in the world to come, there will be artists; may the artists tell stories of justice.

May Palestine live long and make art, and may we Jews in diaspora support Palestinian freedom and flourishing. We all deserve to live to see the world to come.

Perhaps I can be even more explicit: I see all around me a large gathering of Vermonters, Jews and Palestinians and allies, and we demand an immediate ceasefire, a halt to all US military aid to Israel, and an end to the occupation. Palestine will be free.

Shabbat Shalom. Hello my name is Alex Fischer and I’m a queer Sicilian Ashkenazi Jew, currently living on Abenaki land in Brattleboro Vermont. The bombing of Palestine does nothing to make me feel safe as a Jew. I am here to say, for as long as it needs to be said: End the Occupation of Palestine.

I was raised in a household that didn’t speak of Palestine. The Zionism in my Jewish community was not one of hatred, but of erasure. When I learned about Israel’s Occupation of Palestine in my early 20s, I was so heartbroken by the atrocities done in my name that I left Judaism.

What brought me back to myself, and my ancestors, was learning that I could be Anti-Zionist and Jewish. That I could be among other Jews who practiced traditions thousands of years old, including the practices of solidarity with others being persecuted.

According to the Jewish calendar, we are in the year 5784. Zionism was started less than 200 years ago, and Israel is only 75 years old. Ldor Vdor, “From Generation to Generation,'' means that we as anti Zionist Jews are not breaking with our tradition but carrying forward the work of Tikkun Olam, the fight for a just and healed world. We can see that the power of the Zionist narrative is waning globally, and I am so proud to be a Jew fighting for a Free Palestine and an end to the Occupation.