This morning we ‘waive our consular rights’

It's breakfast. Our group of 13 is getting ready to go to the US Embassy in Cairo to "waive our consular rights" while we're in Gaza. If we get in. I don't know if it's possible to alienate your consular rights (was Rachel Corrie accorded them in any case?), but we're going to do it.
Rumor is that there are some doctors camped at the border having a hunger strike, denied access to Gaza by the Egyptians. And in a day or so 60 or 60 students are going in, trying. I hung out with four of their leaders yesterday, at the Press Syndicate building, where they intended to have a press conference. All of them are young American women, studying in Cairo. Impressive. With Palestine wristbands, and a little Arabic, they have been fired by Gaza. "Why are there so few men around?" I said to one, and another called out to me, "What do you mean by that– women don't start wars." Everywhere I go people talk about the threat from Israel, and how the Israeli presence has helped to transform this city, and the region, from what it was in the '40s and '50s. "The flag of Israel has the two blue stripes, and one stripe is the Efrat (Euphrates) and the other stripe is the Nile," an Egyptian journalist explained to me. Mearsheimer and Walt's ideas are also very tame in this capital. People here study the Israel lobby as people in New York studied the Bush administration.
I wonder if the female presence, in all the groups, isn't a reflection of the fact that where I'm going is so full of pain and humiliation, and women are better prepared emotionally to deal with these facts. Women have less pride, one of the American students said to me.
I'm fearful of the emotional consequences of going. Before I left Jack Ross told me that he wouldn't go because he fears it would radicalize him, and I understand that. Last night I had a horrifying dream of being in a Jewish place and going outside and a camel had been slaughtered there but its head and neck were still alive, hanging on a bench, twisting around longing to go home. And a second bloody portion of its neck too, was alive and hopping along in the grass, near my feet as I walked, trying to get home. I woke up in a fright, and understood it as a metaphor for the West Bank and Gaza. We're walking with Gaza here…