Thread by @javeedsukhera

I never imagined that wishing and hoping and speaking up for peaceful coexistence in the midst of perennial conflict would become taboo. Yet, that is the state of our angry world.

I have a Muslim faith background. The events of 2001 shattered my sense of identity. In 2003, made a deliberate decision to move outside my comfortable existence and do something completely unexpected for someone like me: I moved to Israel.

I studied medicine at Ben-Gurion University in a unique program that focused on global health. I learned Hebrew and some broken Arabic. I volunteered in migrant clinics and with mobile clinics in Palestine with Physicians for Human Rights. This is me in Seida, near Tulkarm.

In August 2004 I was studying for my anatomy exam when 2 suicide bombers murdered 14 innocent people. The youngest victim was a 3 year old boy sitting on his mother’s lap. I watched everything. I smelled everything. I heard everything.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beersheba…

The bombing took place on the route that I walked to school on each day. The next morning I walked with tiny bits of glass crunching beneath my feet. We were in the anatomy lab a few days later when I held a human heart in my hands for the first time.
journals.lww.com/academicmedici…

My experiences were too complex to fit into a tweet thread. I thought long and hard about sharing this story at this particular time in the arc of history, but I feel like the world needs to know that not everything is as simple as a social media post.

In the midst of dispossession, exile, and trauma, there is more to a story than what can be seen from a keyboard behind a screen. Zero sum framing helps no-one but those who seek to exploit, and magnify their own power at the expense of innocents.

As a non-Jew, I don’t get to decide what is antisemitic and what is not. I know I must speak up against the forces that amplify hatred and dehumanize others. I must speak up so that no one is told that their trauma should be ignored or forgotten.

As a non-Palestinian, I don’t get to impose my narrative on the violence and bloodshed that is taking place. I know I must speak up against the disproportionate violence being inflicted on them. I must speak up so that no child lives with the threat of fire falling from the sky.

We all project into the spaces that war and conflict creates. We project our fears and insecurities, but I want to ask you all to do something for me: Can we project our aspirations too? Can we project a hope for something better than a constant cycle of hurt and pain?

Death and destruction should be something we unite against. Peaceful coexistence should be something we all are fighting for. If we cannot seek to recognize one another’s humanity and elevate and dignify each other what hope do we have?

I wrote extensively about becoming a physician in the midst of what I experienced. I witnessed Arafat’s death, Hamas’ election, and the Israeli disengagement from Gaza. I delivered Jewish and Muslim babies. I cried with Jewish and Muslim families.

I returned in 2017 with my family to show them the places I lived. We pressed our foreheads to the carpet in Al-Aqsa, we floated in the Dead Sea, and I told them story upon story of the steps their father had taken and the meaningful life he tries to live.
msih.bgu.ac.il/well-intention…

I wrote these words in September 2005 and want to share them with you today:

“What the world sees is so much more than what it seems. Both peoples’ are displaced and looking for a home. Both betrayed by the people they expect to lead them into the future. Both know that the only way to survive is to share the same home.”

“When I reflect on the chapters of my life that unfold here I find reasons to both mourn and celebrate. There are times when I feel suffocated, gasping for breath by all that surrounds me and others where air is plentiful but I feel like it is poisoning my lungs.”

“When you can fill in the blanks of your life and add meaning to the variables of place and time you realize that what you think you know means nothing and what you hope to learn means everything.”