Why would I cry about a table?

or even write about a table???

It's just a table.

Why would I write about a table?

Last night while awake with a stomach ache (hello anxiety) a photo was shared to the whatsapp group I have with my friends from Jerusalem.

The photo dates back to New Year's 2000.

So I had already moved to Australia five years earlier.

But it's a snapshot I've been part of hundreds of times. A kitchen full of my favourite people.

I call it the centre of the Universe.

At least my universe.

What catches my attention though, is not the faces of my friends. But the table.

You see, that's my table.

Or more precisely, that's my family's table.

The story goes that when we left Sweden in 1985, we had given away all our belongings. I was ten years old, and the only piece of furniture I remember feeling the absence of, was our big wooden kitchen table. When that left our apartment, it was the first time it hit me that we were ACTUALLY moving.

Up until then I had been able to pretend it wasn't real.

But yes, my parents, and my three brothers and two sisters were all moving to Israel.

Our dad promised us watermelons, giant avocados and a camel trek through the desert.

We arrived to the hills outside Jerusalem with only a few suitcases.

Many long months later, half a shipping container arrived. Our Swedish friends had collected some much needed furniture for us to help with our move to the Holy Land. This was a practical way for them to participate in fulfilling Biblical prophecy.

It wasn't our own, but we now had a big wooden IKEA table again. At least something in my world felt "normal".

The big wooden table would follow us to every rental we had. Up three flights of stone stairs when we moved in. And down three flights of stairs when we moved out.

I very clearly remember my dad heading off early in the morning to Damascus Gate. The "arab" gate. Apparently that's where he could find men waiting around hoping to be hired for labour.

It was one of the rare times I questioned what I now very clearly see as apartheid.

But yes, it was curious to me as a now young teenage girl that those "arabs" that I was told were dangerous and probably terrorists...

Were allowed into our home when it suited us.

Their strength and ability to carry fridges on their backs outweighing the risk to our family.

I remember feeling uncomfortable. But unable to attach words to the discomfort.

Of course now, as a 51 year old woman in the comforts of Melbourne, far away from the hills of Jerusalem I burn with shame at the image of a young blonde Swedish girl, in a cold stairwell, watching Palestinian men carrying a big wooden IKEA table into a home that a Palestinian family were removed from.

My Brooklyn born dad was obviously promised this Palestinian home 3000 years ago.

In 1994, while I was on an Airforce base somewhere near the Gaza border, our table went into storage while my parents moved to the States for a year.

That year stretched into many more years and the table was gifted to our friends. Along with all our other belongings.

And that's why it was in the photograph in my friends' kitchen at New Year's 2000.

And now in 2026, the IKEA table is still in Jerusalem, being used by some other friends.

The big wooden table will outlive all of us.

And when I shift my focus from the table to the faces in the kitchen, I have to wonder, how many of my friends have been able to admit that we participated in an apartheid.

Some of us simply by living in Jerusalem and not using our privilege to speak up.

Some of us by serving in the IDF.

Or by sending our children to serve in the IDF.

And now of course...remaining silent during a genocide.

It makes me cry writing this, but I will not return to the centre of my universe until Palestine is free.