I Expected to Hear the Explosion

I expected to hear the explosion when the missiles struck Gaza Thursday morning. I expected my grief to be as a mighty wave whose undertow dragged me through the depths of despair. I expected to know when a life was lost.

Instead, less than fifty miles from the Gaza Strip, I had no idea that Israel’s “Iron Dome” missile system had been used or that the Israeli apartheid forces had struck multiple sites in the world's largest open air prison using fighter jets.

I was so grateful to come to Jerusalem with Eyewitness Palestine to learn from human rights groups and see a land at once so beautiful and terrible. What I didn't expect to see was how Israel diverts the eyes of tourists and Zionists through the Disneyfication of the occupation: by running trolley trains through East Jerusalem to the amusement-park-esque City of David settlement; by selling shirts with American sports teams' names in Hebrew to the same tourists who pay exorbitant entrance fees to enter that settlement; by systematically inhibiting travelers’ contact with Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza; by putting its ongoing Nakba behind closed doors and throwing away the keys.

But the Palestinians still have their keys - the keys to their homes, their histories, their liberation - and it is our duty to peer into the heart of the Zionist colonial project before putting it to an end.