A couple months ago, I deleted the Twitter app from my phone. The space where the little blue bird-turned-X once sat has been empty since. I’ve used BlueSky (@novicsara.bsky.social) a bit, but I haven’t found a real Twitter replacement. I still haven’t deleted my account, though, in part because I’ve been hoping maybe it will somehow become a useable platform again.
It sounds silly, but Twitter was important to me. It was a place I went to follow breaking news, as many did, but also where I met so many brilliant activists, thinkers and teachers, especially deaf/disabled ones. I am sorry to see that meeting place go, particularly for communities who usually have no physical spaces to call our own.
This past week, as we watched a gruesome and expansive terrorist attack orchestrated by Hamas, and the retaliatory slaughter of stranded Gazans by Israeli bombing campaigns, I turned to social media (Instagram this time) as a place to learn and interact with others. But something had changed. Or I had changed, I’m not sure. There was so much yelling, and so little empathy.
I tried to engage. I reposted information, wrote statements of solidarity with Jewish people in the wake of the attacks and the widespread antisemitism that followed, and expressed fear and sadness over the displacement and killing of Palestinians. I shared my frustration over the endless, looping assertions that murdered children justify more murdered children, that grief should be wielded as a weapon.
I received some nasty messages—people on opposing sides of the conflict were apparently in agreement that I was a horrible person, too right, too left, too outspoken, too cowardly. And that’s just people I know in real life, to say nothing of All. The. Bots.
Some told me that because I’m a writer, I have an obligation to say X or Y; others said because I’m a writer I should shut up and stick to fiction. (Those who have read my first book will probably find both the humor and impossibility in that one.) Bonus ableism surfaced. Etc. etc.
Me being called names isn’t going to change my mind about the horrors of terrorism or of war, particularly the reprehensibility of killing (any! all!) civilians. Me being called names isn’t the point. It’s a distraction from the point, maybe the opposite of the point. The point being: I’d turned to social media to look and reach outward—to support, learn from, and connect with others, and I ended up more isolated and turning back inward on myself.
So I deleted Instagram. And when I did, in the space where social media apps had been, were my son’s faces.
This—they—are who I write for. They, and millions of others like them, are what make me despair so deeply over the war we’re seeing now. They are the reason we must never allow ourselves to lose the ability to despair over the war we’re seeing now.
I still think social media can be an extremely useful tool. I even think there’s value in lamenting into the void. Since I stepped away, we’ve seen a six-year-old Palestinian-American boy murdered and his mother stabbed in an Islamophobic hate crime out of Chicago. We’ve seen the mass murder of Palestinians in Gaza begin in earnest as they are deprived of food, water, and medical care, trapped beneath an Israeli onslaught, and turned away at the Egyptian border.
At the news of both I’ve wanted to return to social media to shout, “no, fuck no, what the hell is wrong with everybody?!” And ultimately I think some shouting—a public recognition of humanity and inhumanity—can be important, which I guess is why I’m doing it here. Certainly, in the face of all this, some shouting is warranted. It can’t be the only thing, though. So today I’m working to find a better, more offline, way to grieve, learn, connect and act. Today, I’m going to sit with my sons. It is a privilege to do so.
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Today I’m donating to the Atfaluna Society for Deaf Children, an NGO working in Gaza City to distribute food, blankets, cooking utensils, hygiene kits, and sanitary products to Palestinian families, with a focus on reaching deaf and hard-of-hearing people.
In times of war and disaster, deaf people are often the first cut off from information and one another. If you could spread the word that deaf and disabled people in Israel and Gaza can get help from the disaster response organization Off the Grid Missions by texting OTGHELP, it would be appreciated.
Other high-impact organizations working in the region:
Doctors Without Borders, French-founded emergency medical aid in conflict zones
Magen David Adom, Israeli first responder and rescue teams, as well as national blood and breastmilk banks
MercyCorps, relief organization with a presence in Gaza and the West Bank since the 1980s
United Nations Relief and Works Agency, providing both longstanding infrastructure and emergency assistance to Palestinian refugees
True Biz is Lower Merion’s “One Book” Township pick. The month of November will include several fun book-related events, and I’ll be at the discussion at the library in-person on 12 November at 2 PM. It’s free and ASL-interpreted, and you can register for that, or any of the month’s events, here.