Day 2: Guest Post About A Guest Post by Maysa Odeh

They wolf said to the children

They should empty their homes

Or he’d huff and he’d puff

And he’d blow them all down

He blew the airport away

So that no planes could fly

Blew the roads away

So that no cars could drive

He turned off the water

And hid all the food

He turned off their lights,

Lit his house white and blue

His friends thought it clever,

So they did the same

And the children blew away

Never to be seen again

In the summer of 2021, like many summers before, I watched in horror as Gaza endured yet another military assault. The only thing new this time, it seemed, was the shock of witnessing it as a mother. Would my daughter grow up with this same spectacle? I wondered how I would explain the occupation of our homeland to her and surprised myself by writing a picture book: A Map for Falasteen. A year later, it was set for publication. I hoped that my book would make the world a softer place and reach people accustomed to perceiving Palestinians merely as numbers.

I was finalizing the manuscript with my editor when a new assault on Gaza began, the scale of which neither of us had witnessed before. We had wanted to add a brief overview of the occupation of Palestine by region: West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza. Both of us broke down in tears when we realized that Gaza might not look the same by our appointed pub date.

When the book was finished, I was not inspired to write anything for a long time. All I could do was track the news of the unfolding genocide, crying to myself at night, checking my phone each morning to make sure the reporters I followed were still alive.

One day, I was approached by a parenting publication to write a guest post about what it felt like to be a Palestinian mother during this time. My words would be presented alongside the words of a Jewish American mom. I was perturbed by the invitation for several reasons. First, I was too psychologically distressed from witnessing the wholesale slaughter of Gaza’s children on my phone: it was almost impossible to get out of bed, much less write. Second, I couldn’t comprehend why my words were only welcome if accompanied by the words of another mother. (This packaging happens often in the US: Palestinians are generally not given a platform to represent themselves, and when they are, it’s with an All Lives Matter approach, framed as a balanced and enlightened survey of two seemingly opposing points of view.) The third reason I declined was that as I tried to interrogate my internal state of affairs, my mind kept drifting to all the other Palestinian mothers whose stories had reached me over the years. I couldn’t fathom that my experience was more important than theirs.

The mother of Ahmad Manasrah, whose childhood and mental health were gradually destroyed in Israeli prison cells.

The mother of Iyad Burnat, the autistic man who was shot in cold blood by occupation soldiers on his way to school.

The mother of Mohammed Abu Khdeir, who was dragged into a forest and burned alive by Israeli settlers.

The mother of Rayan Suleiman, the seven year old boy who was so terrified as he ran from occupation soldiers that his heart simply stopped.

The mothers who give birth unassisted at Israeli military checkpoints as they wait for permission to deliver in their homeland.

My own grandmother who fled Huwara while pregnant in 1967 and lost two of her children as a result.

The mothers in Gaza, whose children are murdered every other year in indiscriminate aerial assaults, what Israeli officials term “mowing the lawn”.

Finally, I thought about my friend, Nadia, who was pregnant at the time. I reached out to her for clarity. She was yet again witnessing the murder of her relatives in Khan Younis. 117 souls gone in the name of Israel’s so-called “right to self-defense.” Nadia advised me to trust my gut and protect my heart. “We are in mourning,” she said. I politely declined to write the guest post.

I’m just a single mom in California, raising her healthy, beautiful Palestinian daughter. My only problem is when I fill her water bottle in the morning and remember that water in Gaza, already unfit for human consumption, has recently been cut off by Israel. Or at bedtime, when I notice her little feet are uncovered and images flash in my mind of Palestinian children crushed under the weight of their leveled homes, their feet jutting out from beneath a blanket of cement and twisted metal.

I suppose I didn’t write that piece because there aren’t enough words or tears to capture how I feel about this ethnic cleansing that’s been taking place for almost eighty years. The death toll in Gaza is now in the hundreds of thousands. Maybe it’s best that the Democratic Convention did not invite a single Palestinian to share the stage. Imagine if someone took the mic and never finished reading the names of the children that have been martyred by American dumb bombs and Israeli snipers.

Despite our words being unwelcome in most mainstream spaces in America, Palestinian Americans have finally learned that the cost of silence is too steep. We may lose deals, have our books banned or our school visits canceled. We may even be physically assaulted for peaceful protest, or simply for wearing our traditional dress. But we must continue to write and speak and scream, on our own terms. I invite everyone with a heart to listen.