When I was glum or sad, and feeling forgotten because I wasn’t in some clique at school, my parents reminded me to count my blessings. Doing gratitude sometimes necessitates understanding the challenges others face. A childhood (and often adult) exercise to recognize how good I have it.

I want to put a face on what we see in the news clips from the Middles East. The focus has been on the horrors in Israel on October 7th and trying to return the hostages. We hear about the devastation in Gaza: some call it genocide. I wanted to scream when I heard Lloyd Austin, Commander in Chief commit yet more weapons from the US. However, the UK and Germany are supporting a ceasefire.

Antisemitism and Islamophobia are both fueled by the current polarization, a failure to recognize the basic humanity in all of us.

Here is a young family doctor from Gaza, Dr. Salam Khashan, with a plea. VIDEO

I celebrate her courage and her commitment as a physician to care for her patients amongst the ruins. We have connected her with NGOs in Gaza who are running mobile units.

The suffering on the West Bank is not terribly well covered in the US. My colleagues are suffering, and any peace arrangement must end the Occupation and the apartheid that exists there.

My colleague I’ll call “S” has a husband and three daughters (ages 3,7, and 11). They live in Tulkarm, a city that has several refugee camps. These refugee camps were established in 1948 when Palestinians were pushed off their land to create Israel, referred to as the Nakba. Now, several generations of Palestinian refugees have spent their entire lives in these camps. Every time an IDF attack occurs in the refugee camp, their city closes down, her husband cannot work at his coffee shop, and the girls cannot got to school. She is unable to drive to the university, 45 minutes away, where she works and sees patients, due to road closures and roadblocks. “What can I do with my girls?” she Whatsapped me in frustration about a month ago. “They are asking me if we can leave Palestine.”

Another colleague lives in Jenin, another West Bank city with a refugee camp, often targeted for terrorist activities by the IDF. “A” is applying for an internal medicine residency in the US. The other day, he bought new earphones for his laptop so the US residency faculty wouldn’t hear the bombs in the background during his interview. Later that day, his father developed abdominal pain that wasn’t getting better and A decided he needed to take his dad to the Emergency Department. Four of the five hospitals in the region were surrounded by the IDF, so he and his mother took his father to the fifth one. While they were there, IDF snipers arrived and surrounded the hospital. During his father’s work up, the pain resolved, and he was allowed to go home. The dilemma: do they stay at the hospital until the IDF leave and risk getting stuck there or caught in a fire fight, or do they leave with snipers standing on the roof. A press person, who had arrived at the scene, offered to walk out with them. But given the recent attacks on the press, A decided it best to go it alone, past the armed soldiers. Luckily, he and his parents reached their home safely.

In addition, the Settlers who have built cities on top of the hills throughout the West Bank against the international agreements, creating a Swiss cheese like map of where Palestinians actually live, are armed and frequently attack their Palestinian neighbors. This fall, colleagues were prevented from harvesting their olives. When I left Palestine a year ago, I had a taste of the threats. The taxi drove a circuitous route to avoid several dozen armed settlers threatening cars and trucks and closing the main road. To date, the IDF allows settlers free reign to hassle and harm Palestinians.

Finally, a UK colleague who has taught in the West Bank and joined me in virtual training efforts shared this video with me. Christmas wishes from Gaza and the West Bank from Ramallah, Palestine. Wishing us all Peace and Justice. VIDEO

Postnote: The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine has a 90 minute virtual panel that provides good background on Gaza and the West Bank, featuring MAP who is on the ground in Gaza and funded the NGO I worked with in the West Bank, and Dr. Yara Asi, a fellow Fulbright colleague.