Amy Jay is a Bay Area writer/artist who was on my delegation to Gaza. I remember her wincing when I would say things like “the hummus has been decimated,” at lunch–she wondered how much of the violence in our surroundings had invaded our speech. She returned to compose a stirring video-poem about the destruction she had witnessed.
This video is notable to me for Jay’s assertion that she had witnessed “genocide” in Israel’s efforts to obliterate the Palestinian spirit (myself I’m not convinced but think that any serious person’s assertions should be considered) — and for the artist’s anguish she expresses on behalf of Palestinians. Jay is herself Jewish, but there is no identification with Israel. “Their apartheid wall.” This demonstrates where youth is going on this issue–identification with the oppressed–unless American policy can be changed. Jay says our greatest tool is justice: “[To] break open and expose the idea that created a state of fear, a state of war, this is the weapon we turn to, justice.”
