I’m still unsure if I’m doing the right thing by sharing the early writings of the book that is sloooooooowly emerging.
Please know that you are the first to read this. There has been ZERO editing. It’s very likely that the words will change countless times before the chapters become a book.
But I want to share some of the process with you.
(At least these very early days of the genocide that now feel so distant)
Try to be gentle with your responses because it’s a bit like showing someone an ultra sound. Keep any harsh criticism for when I’m feeling more robust.
And yes, I do have a not so secret agenda with sharing my writing. I’m hoping that those of you who have the financial buffer, and who think (or feel) that my book has value, will consider becoming a paid subscriber here on Substack. Because if there are enough $8 a month supporters…I will have the financial freedom to not take as many shifts to cover my rent and instead get more writing done. At the moment it’s such a hectic juggling act attempting to take as many shifts as possible, while also writing a book.
It’s important that I remind you though, that everyone has the same access to my Substack posts. Paid subscribers don’t receive any extra benefits. It’s really important to me that those who can’t afford to financially support, don’t miss out. And I’m well aware that they are supporting me in other ways, by commenting and sharing etc.
Alright…
So first things first.
Here is the opening to the book which I shared a few weeks ago:
Read it here...skip to bottom half of post :)
And now that you have finished reading that, you have permission to read below:
CHAPTER 2:
October 7th, 2023 started out like most of my Saturdays. I did a shift as a support worker in the morning, which meant helping a woman declutter her living-room. I then went home and shared some photos on Facebook and Instagram hoping to sell some handwoven kimonos that had arrived from the women I support in Cambodia. Even in October people start thinking about Christmas presents and weekends are a good time for online shopping. I also baked a cake. Looking back it feels like such an innocent time, because I will never be able to go back to how I saw the world, or more importantly, how I saw my family and friends before October 7.
As I stepped out of the bathroom after a shower, hoping to finally get to bed, my daughter called out and said that something had happened in Israel. Something is always happening in Israel.
No mum, this is big.
She showed me her phone and I couldn’t quite believe what I was seeing. It looked as if hundreds of Palestinians were climbing over a toppled fence and running across the border. A tractor had broken through barbed wire and young men were riding past on motorbikes, waving their fists in the air.
It’s hard to explain. But a surge of energy swept through my body. The most effective way I can describe it is as if I had seen images of the fence around Auschwitz being torn down, and the prisoners breaking free. Finally!!!
Since 2014, when I first understood that I had been brainwashed to believe a lie, I had advocated for Palestinian liberation. I protested online about Israel restricting their access to water. I had also raised awareness about Israel counting how many calories were allowed into Gaza. In fact, it was actually a photo from Gaza that had successfully smashed through my Zionist goggles nine years earlier. It was the image of a destroyed building, and among the rubble was the torso of a toddler. That was my “before and after” moment.
So now to see the Palestinians who had been locked up in a tiny strip of land, with constant surveillance and inhumane restrictions finally break free, was exhilarating.
It was a micro-second of joy.
Oh man, Israel is going to R E T A L I A T E.
I must have said my thoughts out loud because I saw my daughter’s eyes grow big before she stepped back into her bedroom. It was moments like this that I was reminded of how much I had protected my four children from my Israeli experience. My youngest was seventeen, when I was seventeen I was preparing to serve God and my country in the military. Me and my daughter’s lives and our view of ourselves and the world could not be any more different. At her age I was a Jewish supremacist, willing to sacrifice my life for a higher calling.
A photo of a young family flashed up on my phone, interrupting my thoughts. A mother, a father, two daughters and a little boy; I realised they had been killed. Headlines naming kibbutzim infiltrated by terrorists filled the phone screen.
Terrorists.
The word felt uneasy, but I was too engrossed in the news updates to give my discomfort any attention.
There was no way that I could sleep. I just kept staring at my phone as more and more footage flooded in: rows of houses burning, a bus stop with scattered bodies covered in blankets, endless cars with bullet holes abandoned on the side of the desert road.
Ramzy! I realised my friend Ramzy lived in this area.
Then I saw a road sign. I recognised that name. Exactly one year earlier, almost to the day, I had planned to travel down this road to visit my school friend Ramzy.
In the last week of September and the first three weeks of October 2022, I spent a month in Israel. I flew there to be a support worker for an Israeli woman living in Melbourne who wanted to visit her family with her young son. It was one of the craziest experiences of my life, but one of the few positive outcomes of the trip was the possibility of catching up with my friend Ramzy.
We had not spoken in years, but during the lockdowns I set up a WhatsApp group for my classmates. It was incredible to feel such a strong connection after so many years. Not only did we chat in the group, but we also organised a couple of Zoom sessions. We might have been scattered around the globe, but for the first time since being in school together, we were sharing a similar experience. The lockdowns brought us closer and precious friendships were reignited. Out of everyone in the group, I had spent the most time chatting with Ramzy. Reconnecting with him was priceless. He was now married to an Israeli woman and they had moved to a kibbutz together. The way Ramzy described their life, it sounded like he had found utopia. They lived in a beautiful home, their three sons were surrounded by friends and cousins at a neighbouring kibbutz. They had manicured gardens and fields growing vegetables and flowers all around them. Ramzy had shared photos of his idyllic life. One image that stood out to me showed how, during the harvest festival, tractors would slowly drive through the kibbutz showcasing the babies born in the previous year. So adorable!
Organizing a visit to his kibbutz had been too difficult, so Ramzy drove to Jerusalem to meet me instead, and we spent a precious day together. We used to live around the corner from each other, so we even went for a walk past our childhood apartments, reminiscing about the few years our lives overlapped from grade 6 to graduation. Of course back then it felt like forever, but it had only been half a dozen years. Maybe the fact that we experienced the Gulf War together made our connection feel stronger, since most of our classmates had been flown back to their home countries. The war itself might have only lasted for forty days, but the months leading up to the first scud missile streaking across the sky from Iraq painfully went past in slow motion.
Surely Ramzy was safe? It felt impossible to find the words for a WhatsApp message.
At 12:27am on October 8 I wrote:
You’re on my heart. As is your whole family
I then hit send.
I woke up the next morning hoping to find a response. So at 6:37am I sent another message:
Ramzy
A minute later, at 6:38am, I received a notification that there was a response. I clicked on his name and it felt as if all oxygen disappeared from my lungs.
They kidnapped my son.