Happy Thanksgiving Letter to My Kids

Happy Thanksgiving
Letter to My Kids
From Mary Sparrowdancer
11-27-08


Dear John and Emily,

For most of your lives, we have shared "Thanksgiving" together every November. We didn't celebrate anything when John was in jail during his senior year in high school for "crimes" he was accused of on technicalities, (crimes that he never committed). Emily and I held a silent vigil that year.

Today, there is another reason that I will not be celebrating Thanksgiving. I will be holding another silent vigil. Today, the horrifying and inhumane Israeli military is continuing to block off all of Gaza. The 1.5 million Gaza civilians being caged within the Israeli military fences and walls have no food, no clean water, no oil, no sanitation, no medicine, no fuel and no electricity. To put it bluntly, the Israeli military is once again collectively torturing the Gaza civilians being held captive within Israeli walls. These Gaza people are innocent Palestinian children, babies, women, teenagers, men and elderly civilians who are being held in captivity and forced to endure starvation and deprivation. This is nothing new. The Palestinians have been enduring the brutal Israeli military forces ever since Zionists declared a "state of Israel" within biblical Palestine, and then carved out vacation resorts and homes for themselves from the Palestinian ancestral homelands.

Today I learned that the Palestinian civilians in Gaza are now burning their clothes in order to boil water so they can give safe, boiled drinking water to their families. They are grinding cattle feed in order to make some sort of bread to feed to their hungry children.

So, on this "Thanksgiving," my two beautiful children, I will spend my time in another fast. Please don't come over here. I will not have anything on this day to eat here and to share with you in celebration, as I will be remembering this day as another day when the innocent are being collectively punished for crimes they never committed. Don't come over unless you want to spend the day hungry like our brothers and sisters in Palestine.

I love you.

Mommie