I was born in the United States.
And before that, my parents in Azerbaijan.
And my great great great great great grandparents before them in Persia.
So yes, you’re right.
Some of us were not born in Israel.
But that doesn’t mean it’s not where we come from.
All of these other places were not home,
they were merely stops on the way there.
We had no choice in the matter, and we didn’t actually belong in any of these places.
My mother used to tell me a story about their neighbor in Baku,
who would come to their house,
drink their tea,
eat their sweets,
and then tell them
“Jews need to go back to where they came from.”
We didn’t fit in there.
And we didn’t fit in in Europe in the 1930s and 40s – no matter how hard we tried to be Germans, Poles, Russians, etc. – the Nazis saw right through us.
Or in the 40s and 50s in the Middle East, they either wanted us dead or out.
Or in every other pogrom, genocide, expulsion of our people they told us the same thing –
“You Jews don’t belong here.”
So where did we really belong?
Our true home has become the Jew of the nations,
constantly trying to fit in,
to prove her place in the world,
to prove herself worthy of survival.
But somehow,
it has become that even in our home, you say we don’t belong.
I am not here to give you a history lesson. This letter is not intended to be a textbook of 3,000+ years of history.
Because if you actually had an academic bone in your body in place of those constructed by hatred, or the need to fit into somewhere,
you would know that the US, Azerbaijan, Persia and on
were only just the outcomes of being a hated, wandering people that fought to return home,
but never could due to the British (until 1948), Ottomans, Mamluks, Crusaders, Muslims, Byzantines, Romans, Persians, Babylonians, Assyrians who massacred, exiled and barred us from our soil.
I find it strange that I am constantly scrutinized, interrogated about my history and the country I or my grandparents were born in, by you.
By you, who scream about “indigenous rights” and “land back” (while you encamp on soil of Turtle Island that your people stole from its natives).
So if you scream these chants, shouldn’t that mean you understand that the whole premise of these arguments are about wandering people fighting to return to their homeland? That you understand that diaspora is an inevitable consequence of being exiled?
So then why am I always forced to defend the fact that only a small percentage of my people were able to stay in the land all of this time? Why should the fact that I wasn’t allowed to go back for so long, mean that I’ve lost the right to?
If you actually cared for the history, you would take note that the mosque displayed on your poster calling my people colonizers stands on top of our Temple ruins.
If you actually cared for the “who came first” argument, you would pay attention to the historical accounts, the DNA results, the archaeological findings that show the Jews were cultivating this land thousands of years before you even had a name.
You would know that our name, “Jew,” shared among many languages, is “Jew” because we come from Judea – the land you claim we stole.
And those of you who are historically inclined know all of this, but claim we are not the same Jews as those who were displaced.
Tell me your proof. Argue this with the DNA results which point me to the land. Dispute this with the practices we still have that come from our land’s calendar and agriculture. Explain to me why every year since our expulsion, we still say “Next year in Jerusalem.” Tell me why my family for generations has spoken Juhuri, a language influenced by Hebrew and Farsi instead of just Farsi. Why they, like many other Jewish communities, have continued teaching our ancient language of Hebrew, learning our ancient books, following our ancient customs.
Don’t you get caught in the web you spun?
Doesn’t it get harder to keep up with all of your lies?
Or some of you claim we have no right to come home.
To that, I will use no energy in entertaining a response.
I will not defend my right to exist to you, and I will not defend my right to come home.
I understand that if you support indigenous rights, and know my history, but do not want to support me, then maybe your issue is not with my land but instead with my people. That your goal is not liberation, but the death of Jews. I know nothing I say will change your mind. Antisemitism is a vile, ancient disease we have yet to find a cure for.
But no, this letter is not a history lesson.
This letter is to tell you that, despite your protests, harassments, and violence
we are not going anywhere.
That doesn’t mean I think the people you claim to fight for should either.
I think there is room for all of us here.
But the problem is, I don’t think you care about that.
The Jews have been a scapegoat for plenty of years, and our land is no different.
You scramble our story, speak it through guilty teeth and it becomes a projection of your own shame, a rebranded version of your own history, and for a second, you are relieved of your guilt. The spotlight is moved from you to us
and we reflect a shadow of your unspoken realities
and we become the very things you despise
but refuse to admit within yourselves.
You claim we are colonizers,
committing genocides,
perpetuating discrimination,
we become the evil monsters in this new narrative
a distorted mirror of your own faults.
Similar to Nazi times, where we were made out to be the vermin who stole the light of Germany
here, too, we are becoming the monsters at fault for everything wrong in this generation.
I hope you know that the deep, generational guilt you feel will go nowhere.
You pushing your story onto us, or taking the Jewish trauma you allowed or instigated to happen and pretending we are doing the same will not hide you from the blood on your skin. You cannot wipe it on us and hope for it to go away. There are still people bleeding from your hands, and the masks you wear won’t hide you much longer.
You transfer the blood onto our wrists like a handcuff
to rid it from your hands
and lock us into this new narrative you’ve created
and while it may make you look clean to others
we see the stains left on your skin
we know the holiness you claim of yourselves is nothing but a hoax.
I write this letter to say I see right through you.
You are not an actual ally of Palestinians, many of you don’t even know what you are fighting for.
You are a fraud,
a coward hiding behind masks concealing the white saviourism pouring out from your skin, and pushing your guilt onto us in hopes the world will forget your sins. In hopes that the bodies you destroyed will be buried deeper by the stomps of your “liberation” marches.
I write this letter to say
I know your truth,
and I wait until the day your transgressions seek you out, that the trail of blood you’ve left for thousands of years catches up to you, so that you finally have to face your own problems instead of directing the attention elsewhere.
So that you finally repair your own poisoned, abandoned house,
instead of ruining my life for my overgrown grass.
So that you stick to your own land and quit trying to intervene in my home.
I write this letter to say –
You are spilling blood from your computer screens,
your words incite violence you will never understand the severity of.
And we hold you on trial for this reality.
I write this letter to say –
I’m tired of all the blood.
I want my brothers and sisters to come home, and I’m constantly sick with pain.
You will never understand this pain.
You will never even try to.
I write this letter to say –
Despite the pain,
we are not going anywhere. We will fight. We will persevere.
I write this letter to say —
You can only spin a web so large before you get caught in it.
I write this letter to say —
You can only start a fire so destructive before you get consumed by it.
