Notes from the Transition

Hind Rajab Khoudary, 6 The fourth month of Israel's ongoing invasion and bombardment of Gaza has begun, and they have started bombing Rafah - with a threat of a full-on ground invasion.  Rafah, the town on the southernmost border of Gaza, where 1.5 million Palestinians have fled to, leaving behind everything but the clothes on their backs as they fled in terror from the Israeli bombardment of homes, schools, hospitals, mosques, churches, universities, colleges, buses, cars, barns and even horses. This is a city that usually is home to 200,000 people. The town has been overwhelmed with internally displaced refugees. The threat of a ground invasion of Rafah is not an empty threat - it is a threat that has echoes of the attack on al-Shujaeyya in 2016 -- the images of that night still seared into the mind of anyone above ten years old in Gaza - the relentless Israeli bombardment that went on an on and on until the people of al-Shujaeyya (in eastern Gaza City) fled for their lives. It e

Israeli is a microcosm of the USA. It's like a little miniature version of the settler-colonial state that took over the entirety of turtle island from "sea to shining sea" between the 1600s and the 1800s, and which continues its viral, foul spread through today.  We vaporized the coal mines - turned all that dust and soot - the pit where generations of coughing miners lived and died underground, into our atmosphere - creating a massive hole in our ozone layer, a layer of protection made of O3 molecules that keeps the sun warm but not too hot, keeps us all warm and cozy inside. Without it, we have extreme weather patterns, like those we have started to see across the globe - higher oceans, bigger, wilder storms. Droughts last for years and form deserts, dustbowls, in what had a generation ago been fields and fertile land. And still we drive these cars around, in circles and circles and circles, hunted and hunter, again and again and again until we hit a Wall, and realize