‘A Part of You Will Die with Us’

Just today, I received an e-mail from my friend Lorrie Goldensohn*, who had received an e-mail from her friend, the playwright Naomi Wallace**, who received an e-mail from her friend Rawand Gawad Abo Ghanem***, a Palestinian living in Gaza. “I hope you’ll post this letter,” Lorrie writes, “in as many places as you think would be interested in this heartfelt cry from someone still lucky enough to be alive in the hell that we are all constructing in Gaza.”

You will find the letter below, but first here is information you ought to know about the writer of the letter Lorrie is urging me to put into the public domain:

“My name is Rawand Gawad Abo Ghanem and I am from the Sheik Ejleen neighborhood of Gaza City, in Palestine. If you are a surfer or followed the history of surfing in Gaza, you may recognize me as the first girl in the Gaza Surf Club. I have been lucky enough to tell my story to the media on several occasions, and I am so proud that my story has been able to inspire others, including the American playwright, Naomi Wallace, who wrote the play Barrel Wave based on my story.

“A lot has happened since those beautiful years: I became the first person in my family to graduate from University, with a degree in English Literature. I met my wonderful husband Ibrahim Abu Afifa and we now have a beautiful son named Yamen. I have dreamed of a world where I can teach my son everything about the sea that my father taught me and share with him this beautiful place that we call home.

“But since October 7, 2023, our lives have been turned upside down by the terrible war in Gaza. My family and I are struggling to survive, like refugees inside Gaza. Our home was severely damaged soon after the war began and we moved in with my parents and siblings. Their neighborhood then became the location of fierce fighting and we were forced to flee again, this time to the south. My parents’ home was also destroyed soon after we left.

”We spent 15 months in the south of Gaza, living in tents and moving several times with only what we could carry on our backs as the violence shifted all around us. After the ceasefire began in January we were able to return to our home neighborhood, which was almost completely destroyed. Almost everyone here are living in tents, placed on the street in front of the ruins of their homes. We are doing our best to shelter our son from the horrors surrounding us, but life’s essentials have been eradicated. Hospitals, schools, homes and infrastructure have all been bombed, and basic needs must be scavenged or bought on the black market for huge costs.”

On May 15th, in response to an e-mail from Naomi asking how she is, Rawand replied: “‘I am in Gaza’ and if you follow the news of Gaza, you will realize what this sentence means. If not, let me tell you. Please put your emotions aside if our suffering frightens you. But because you ask me, ‘How are you?’ I must speak.

“And yet it seems not only impossible for me to put into words what we are living, but I think it is almost unimaginable for you to understand. We are two million people who have been, one by one, torn apart by missiles, run over by tanks, shot at by snipers, bombed over and over until we are in pieces. But they do not only kill us with weapons, but also with food: by making sure we get none of it. And no water to drink. You ask me, ‘How are you?’ and all I can think of in this moment is sweet water. And not having enough of it for my five-year-old son, my husband, myself. I dream of apples and bananas and fish so fresh from the water you can taste the sea. And I have always loved the sea, where our home once stood, because those waves move inside me, even now. This is one thing the occupation cannot take from me: how I feel the sea move inside me.

“There is no food in the market… or maybe a little, a little, a little. Maybe a potato. Once a potato was a half shekel or less. Now it costs 20 shekels or more, if you can even find it. ‘How am I?’, well, I am not very good, my friend. In fact, I am crying as I write to you, and for a moment, the world has closed in front of my mind. As has the house, the food, the sky.

“I pray that everything that we are going through, that it will lead somewhere better. I pray that we are the ones that are short-sighted and cannot see the good that Allah has in store for us and that that day is coming.

“What we have lived through will always be inside us. It will not pass through us.

“But know this: we are not the only ones who die. All those who are silent in this genocide, a part of you will die with us.

“Please stop this war.”

I know that many of those who will read this do not support the policies of the Israel in Gaza and the West Bank, or the death and destruction caused by the Israeli Defense Forces, or the political and material support of the United States government for what the Netanyahu government and the IDF have been doing for the past twenty months, and continue to do day in and day out. We know that opposition to murderous revenge on hundreds of thousands of innocent people in retaliation for the murderous actions of a small minority is not anti-semitism, regardless of what the narrowminded supporters of official Israel say and perhaps believe.

But we must also acknowledge that we—you and I—are complicit in helping to construct the hell that is Gaza because it is being done in our names and with our tax dollars.

I am not going to argue that we should all refuse to pay our taxes because a lot of people actually did that during the Vietnam War, and it stopped nothing, and eventually the IRS caught up with pretty much every last tax resister (my brother-in-law was one of them) and collected every penny with interest.

I am not going to argue that we should all go out and commit civil disobedience because nothing frightens me more than a man with a gun except a man with a gun and a badge, and ending up behind bars at the mercy of those with guns and badges is not something I’m willing voluntarily to subject myself to. And if I’m not willing to do that, I can’t in good conscience argue that the rest of you should be doing it.

But you can—if you haven’t—get out in the streets and march with the thousands of your fellow citizens who did so at the People’s March in January, and the Hands Off! March in April, and who will be out again at the No Kings March on June 14th. If nothing else, I have found it energizing and uplifting to be among so many like-minded folks who are as pissed off as I am, and the vast array of signs people make and carry are often creative, entertaining, and downright hilarious.

Moreover, I can and do urge you to confront your elected officials at every level with letters, e-mails, and phone calls. And when you get the chance to do it face-to-face such as at town meetings, take the opportunity. Pay attention to the primaries, not just the general elections. Make your vote count.

This can get very, very local. Where I live—and I think this is going on in many communities nationwide—there is fierce competition for seats on our local school board. Many of the candidates in my community are running on the argument that there is too much anti-semitism in the schools, and the schools are doing too little to address it.

Go back and re-read what Rawand has to say about conditions she is living with in Gaza. School children in Gaza are having 2,000-pound bombs dropped on them, and their schools are in ruins and unusable. And folks in suburban America where I live are going to complain that their children feel unsafe at school? Who’s going to get elected to your local school board?

Let me leave you with the closing words of Rawand Gawad Abo Ghanem: “We are not the only ones who die. All those who are silent in this genocide, a part of you will die with us. Please stop this war.”

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*Lorrie Goldensohn is author of Dismantling Glory: 20th Century War Poetry.

**Naomi Wallace’s plays include In the Heart of America.

***Rawand Gawad Abo Ghanem is featured in the documentary Gaza Surf Club.