It's November 3rd, 2023. I am sitting here in Portland Oregon, the 'bubble within a bubble' as my friend from Jerusalem calls it. And I know that this is true - that this city is a bubble within a bubble - because somehow there seem to be two realities that are somehow coexisting, and I cannot reconcile that in my head or in my heart.
For the past three weeks, my life has consisted of a constant stream of horror from Gaza - from morning until night, I scroll through images of burned and mutilated bodies, mothers screaming, fathers breaking down and crying as they hold the lifeless bodies of their kids. Another day, another massacre, this time in Jabalia refugee camp - and the videos show the before and after: kids and adults gathered in a circle in an open square. Then someone pointing to the sky and everyone running. Six missiles hit, all in a row, killing 400 people. Screams of horror, gray ash everywhere, a giant crater in the ground, bodies being pulled from the rubble, some in pieces ... the scene has become commonplace, every few minutes there is a new, similar scene out of Gaza. Over 8,000 killed by the ongoing Israeli onslaught since October 7th.
My friend from Gaza (who now lives in Portland) told me the other day about talking to his family in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza. The day before this thing started, his niece had gotten engaged. And then it started, and the family of the future in-laws were stuck in Khan Younis. And then their homes in central Gaza were bombed, and then they were really stuck. Homeless. Displaced. So now his sister has 35 people in her house. A few days ago, his sister's next door neighbor's house was bombed, and his cousin's kid lost his hand and part of his arm in the blast. The neighbors were all killed, except for one six year old child, the only survivor.
My friend's family (and their many, many houseguests) have to boil contaminated water to drink. And they are now out of cooking gas, and in order to boil the water to drink, and to cook the very little food they have, they are now resorting to going around to the ruins of homes that have been bombed, finding broken furniture and taking the pieces home to make a cooking fire.
So that's one reality. People bombed to smithereens, the survivors desperate for drinking water, unable to sleep and under constant bombardment.
But in the other reality, none of that seems to exist. In this bubble-within-a-bubble here in the USA, most people have no idea that this is even happening. They may watch the news, but it includes nothing about Gaza, except an occasional headline that Israel is 'bombing Hamas tunnels'. Nothing about civilian casualties, about the 45% of homes that have now been demolished, about the amount of bombs that have been dropped on Gaza - an amount that is quickly approaching the equivalent tonnage of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
In the Portland 'bubble within a bubble' -- and in the many other 'bubbles within bubbles' across the United States, there are people that live in soundproof shelters where the cries of the Gazan mothers can't make it through the soundproofing. They've been closed off in these shelters for many, many years. Generations, in fact. In their shelters, their 'bubbles within bubbles' no one is suffering, there's no cost for their actions, no price to pay for the 'American way of life' that the elder George Bush said was 'non-negotiable' as he justified the destruction of rainforests and wars for oil in which hundreds of thousands were killed. In these bubbles, the people are deaf to the cries of those suffering - even those suffering on their own street or block, who have been sucked into the economic abyss that chews people up and spits them out.
In the reality of those who live in the bubble, the genocide that is currently being carried out by Israel in Gaza just doesn't exist. They aren't watching the feeds of images that most of the world is seeing, the carnage, the pain, the brutality. In their world, there is no carnage or brutality, there are no deaths or slavery or genocides propping up their colonial settler lifestyle. Just walks in the park and an illusion of prosperity.
But their reality is not reality. It is an illusion. A lie, propped up by violence. And it's time to open up that shelter door and wake up to the actual reality. It is hard, it is painful. There is blood. And when they look down, they will find the blood is on their hands. But opening one's eyes, painful though that might be, is better than continuing to live within a lie.