There are times when I've gone to protests and returned home, relieved to have spoken, potentially been heard, and at least been around like-minded people for awhile.

This is different.

I go to protests and return home angrier. There is a collective anger that the protests allow me to feed on. A righteous anger. An anger that we should feel - - all of us - - but also an anger that keeps me up at night, because the protest eventually ends, and I'm eventually too tired to get any work done, but too riled up to fall asleep.

I think of the Canadian women who took over the Israeli consulate in Toronto.
I'm inspired!
Then, I think of women in Gaza who are struggling to survive and protect their children.
I'm sad again.

I can think of nothing else. I have no desire to think of anything else. I have a pile of books to read, on various topics, some novels, some non-fiction, and I cannot get through more than one or two pages without distraction…some sentence, some word, some idea that was somehow triggered that wasn't even written there makes me think of Gaza. When I read about the history of Palestine, I do so in order to argue more effectively with the Zionists in my life. I take notes. Seriously, I take notes. The other day, I thought about making a quiz, because back when I was in high school, I remember cramming for quizzes fairly successfully.

Awhile ago, I was editing a statement written by an organization I work with. Someone had ended the statement with the phrase, "to resist is to exist," when he intended to use the phrase "to exist is to resist," a popular slogan of the Palestinian resistance.
I am contemplating that statement. The accidental one I mean. "To resist is to exist."
I think it's what I feel right now.
Maybe that's what he felt at the time.
As anti-Zionist Jews, we are spoken for unless we speak (loudly) for ourselves.
If we do not resist, we do not exist.
Maybe this explains the need I have to live, breathe, and be the struggle at every moment.
Or maybe this explains it…

or this...http://english.aljazeera.net/Services/Gallery/Default.aspx?GalleryID=200915125116945651

or maybe it's the fact that Ma'an News, which has been reporting almost hourly on the death count, now says "Gaza death toll approaching 700," like it's finally too many to count.

Sometimes I wish I was a doctor instead of a writer.