Heading to Israel/Palestine on 5 January 2026

Hi everyone. It's been a long time. I stopped social media after 10/7/23 because I couldn't stand what people said on all sides. I haven't really missed social media at all but I've missed you all.

Right this moment, I am in JFK airport about to board a flight soon nonstop to Tel Aviv. It’s the first time I’ll see my Israeli family in three years. Last time was January 2023. Yehuda is dead. He died in early 2024 and I never got to say goodbye to him although I sent him lots of cards and spoke to him on the phone while he was dying of cancer at age 88, but I didn’t get to say goodbye. Since the last time I was there, I have become very close with two of my cousins, especially my cousin Ofer. He and I text every single day, we do Wordle together every day, and even though English is his second language, he often does better than me.

I feel so overwhelmed and moved by the fact that I’m finally going to see my family again I want to cry. Just thinking about it. Yehuda is dead and I won’t see him and that’s going to be really really hard.

I am going to the West Bank in Palestine for the day on January 15. I got in touch with one of the PhD students in my program at my job. She’s a 70-year-old white, lovely woman, a therapist and Buddhist who lives in Vermont. She’s been to the West Bank many times working to help Palestinians during the olive harvest. So I got in touch with her after having conversations with dear friends who have been to Palestine and done activism, about finally doing some work in Palestine because I can’t bear to go there now and not do something longstanding and meaningful for Palestinian environmental justice. So in the morning of January 15 Israel time, I will meet this person in Jerusalem.

https://www.upaya.org/person/aviv-tatarsky/

He will take me across the checkpoints on the border of Jerusalem to area C of the West Bank, where Israelis and some tourists are allowed. We will spend some time with his Palestinian colleagues and comrades. He works with two small villages on the West Bank where he does agricultural environmental justice work. I’m really excited and I hope to have a long-standing collaboration with him. Then his friend Ibrahim, who lives in Bethlehem and is Palestinian, is going to drive from Bethlehem, which is area A and pick me up in area C. The reason for this is that area A where Bethlehem is is run by the Palestinian Authority and they don’t let Israelis in. But I can go. So Aviv can take me from Jerusalem to West Bank area C, but he can’t go to Bethlehem So his friend will pick me up and take me to the university of Bethlehem to meet this man, who was nominated this year for a Nobel peace prize. I’m a little bit terrified to meet him because I’m intimidated, but he’s going to be wonderful.

https://www.bethlehem.edu/employees/mazin-qumsiyeh/

It took me a long time to try to find an arrangement where I would be travelling at all times on that day with somebody known to someone I know, because my cousins are concerned and worried and don’t really want me to go to the West Bank at all and my girlfriend was also worried. But I need to do this and I found a way so that everyone I’ll be with the whole time is known to someone I know.

The picture here is of a dachshund who I think it might be on my flight. I love these dogs, and this dog was adorable.

If you don’t want to hear about my trip or hear anything about Israel then please unfollow me. I did think a lot of you might want to know about this trip and see how it is. I understand if you don’t.

I love you all and will keep you posted and post pictures and all kinds of things here.