Dear Martha, I want you to know that I took the advice which you gave me that evening seriously.
Dear Martha, I want you to know that I asked my Mother, the question you instructed me to ask her, I asked her if she knew what Dachau was.
I know you thought that she would yell at me, because I didn't know what it was, but she didn't know what it was either; even after I looked it up, and spelled it out for her in Cyrillic,
She didn't know what it was. She didn't care that I didn't know either.
Dear Martha, you were wrong.
Dear Martha, I knew what a concentration camp was.
I’m glad that, now thanks to your help, I knew the name of one that I didn't know before, But I knew what happened in them, I knew what they looked like.
I knew how to spot them.
Dear Martha, it's been about 15 years since we had this conversation and my Father is a Genocide Denier, and a Holocaust Denier.
Not of Dachau, but of Gaza.
I send him pictures and articles and he thinks that they're faked and fabricated.
Dear Martha, it doesn't really matter if you know what Dachau was, if you can't recognize what Gaza IS.
How important is a name?
How important is a name?
When you don't believe your eyes and see reality for what it is.
Is a name enough to make it real? To make it true? To make you act?
Dear Martha, you write about demons and piety and faith.
You question the reason for their existence, and whether they're present and in what form they're present.
But do you ever ask yourself if Hell deserves to exist, just because demons do?
What if they just like that desert heat?
Does the presence of demons, justify the existence of Hell?
What if it's hell for one people and a haven for others?
If the demons like the fire that Burns, should it be allowed to burn
It Burns the innocent peoples, it burns children alive, LITERALLY.
What do you do if the demons are your relatives?
What if the demons who created this Hell were your relatives?
What if it was always meant to be Hell
Would you have condoned them?
When would you stop it?
Will you help stop it now?
Will you speak?
Will you call it by its name?
When does one speak?
When do you name something?
When do you say nothing?
Dear Martha, your silence is deafening.
More deafening than any ancestral story or name, my mother didn't tell me.
More deafening; than any lapse of knowledge, or lapse of name; that I or my mother,
Who you asked me to ask, ever could have had.
YOU KNOW,
You and people like you know, what's happening.
You see it. In name and in form.
And yet, you say nothing.
Dear Martha, I sent my father some links about what's happening, and he doesn't believe it.
Because he will only believe it when SOMEONE LIKE YOU sends it to him and you refuse to do so.
I have always been the ignored crazy black sheep.
You are complicit in your silence,
Especially because, YOU might actually be believed, and not ignored.
Dear Martha, every day I get told by our “Tribal” Contemporaries, that my grandparents, are looking up or down at me with shame.
Fuck our contemporaries, dear Martha,
Fuck them. Fuck their allies, Fuck our tribe,
Fuck the elders silencing you.
Fuck the inner voice silencing you.
Or if you do not see what’s happening, fuck the splinter in thy eye blinding you.
Dear Martha, I want you to know that back then,
When we were sitting in your apartment building drinking coffee and you were profoundly upset that I didn't know what Dachau was, 15 years ago.
I was not upset that you were angry with me.
I accept that I had limitations to my knowledge that perhaps I should have addressed.
I was ruffled, that I do admit,
But my limitations were not the source for me being downcast.
I was not hurt or angered by you, not the knowledge you shared, nor the conversation we had, nor even the partial moment of judgment.
But there's a reason that I still remember this dear Martha.
I remember this because I always knew.
I always knew, I always suspected, even back then.
That just knowing the name of Dachau, Didn't change anything.
And I always resented that you implied, THAT IT DID.
Not that you implied, that I was dumb for not knowing it.
I don't think you did such a thing.
But that the name….
That knowing the name would somehow make me understand or see something clearer.
It didn't. It doesn’t.
I now know the name of Dachau.
And I know the name of Gaza!
My father knows the name of Gaza!
And yet he still rejects that it’s a genocide.
Still, he rejects that it's a Holocaust.
In fact sometimes I question if he possibly thinks that they deserve it.
So dear Martha, what's in a name?
Dear Martha, what's in your silence?
Dear Martha, what would the people of Dachau, say if they could witness Gaza right now? What would they say to you?
What would they Name it?
Would it matter to them?
Would they be terrified? Would they be surprised?
Was not that, the original question, Dear Martha?
What they would say?
I don't even remember now.
Somehow, a conversation we were having,
A pleasant one at that,
Led to someone saying something offhanded,
And then you asked what would the people of Dachau say?
And I asked, thinking it was some Czech city, what's Dachau?
And then you and my friend looked at me like I was some kind of alien, a mutant,
Which is forgivable and understandable.
And then you told me “ask your mother what Dachau is.”
After which you did explain what Dachau was.
Well. I did ask her, and it was no help.
I try to tell her what Gaza is.
I try to ask her what Gaza is.
Nowadays, all those years later, when my mother calls me, and we talk.
She insists that I call more often and ask how she's doing, and that she gets to ask how I'm doing. How is the food? Am I hungry, How’s my work?, Call your Grandmom, Am I keeping healthy? I'm getting too fat.
Me, Me, Me.
You, You, You
Her Her Her
Us Us Us.
Here, in Suburbia and in the outer city.
Clothed, Warm, Quenched, Housed,
And in between 4 Russian Supermarket chains, not Hungry.
But still its us us us!
As if we are suffering.
She never wants to talk about it.
It just IS.
Its sad sure…
But there's nothing to talk about.
There is nothing to say.
There is only something to name.
Something to name and to label, and then to store,
Out of sight and mind.
It's just something that’s happening.
Something that always happens.
And always happened.
It is background noise.
Its become background noise.
Excusable holocaust.
Named and permitted.
Named and present and forgotten at the same time.
Now that's NOT on you, Dear Martha.
That's not on you.
This isn't only addressed to you,
This is NOT even mainly addressed to you.
Yours is just a name that came to mind, when I was thinking, of current events and what led up to them.
That conversation, that learning opportunity and memory are just one of the many relative ones I now know and have.
Your name and your silence are very partial.
There are far worse people than you.
There are the people who pull the triggers on guns and fire the bullets.
Who drop the bombs and level cities.
The people who cheer as buildings burn, and
The people who cut off water, food, internet, electricity, supplies and medicine.
They will never, ever, ever be forgiven.
There are not enough Yom Kippurs in eternity.
I will never make tribe with them.
There are many many sorted levels between them and people like you, Dear Martha.
You are practically innocent.
Slightly more innocent then my Barber (More like barbaric) Aunt from Haifa,
Who cheers as European protesters get half beat to death and posts “Pallywood videos. At lease she doesn’t do “Ma Kashur”
Shes better then that,
And you are better then her.
But where are you?
There is a Great book.
And in it our names.
Names known and unknown.
Names learned and remembered and forgotten.
Names and voices behind them.
Names and people to speak them.
We all know what the name Dachau means now.
I know where to place it, and where to place the name of Gaza.
I am not here to place or displace YOUR NAME.
But where will your Name be?
Where will your voice be?
Where will your name be?
And who will remember it?
