I have a teacher of Hebrew in Tel Aviv named Matan, a teacher of Arabic in occupied East Jerusalem named Yazan, and a friend in Gaza City named Safaa.

I think of them often. Between them, they have taught me something more important than vocabulary: what it costs to love countries that will not love you back or that have stopped loving themselves.

Alan Paton wrote “Cry, the Beloved Country” in 1948, the same year Israel was born and the Nakba — the dislocation of 600,000 Palestinians from their homes — began. He was writing about South Africa, a land of heartbreaking beauty and moral catastrophe, a place where an entire society had organized itself around the degradation of its own people.

He called it a beloved country. The grief in that phrase is unbearable. You do not weep for what you hate. You weep for what you love and cannot save.

I spent this Fourth of July in Israel and Palestine, nine time zones from the country whose birthday it was. There were no fireworks, no flags on porches, no parades — just the ordinary weight of a place that has never had the luxury of taking a day off from its own history. I found myself trying to explain the holiday to friends here, and stalling halfway through, unsure anymore what exactly I was asking them to celebrate on my behalf.

I weep now for two countries at once.

I am an American Jew descended from Tsarist Russia, a grandson of immigrants who fled the old darkness of Europe and arrived at Ellis Island with nothing but hope. I was raised to believe America was the place where hope had been institutionalized — where law constrained power, where the vulnerable had standing, where government drew its authority from the consent of the governed.

I believed those words. I still want to. But it is becoming very hard.

What I see instead is a country abandoning its commitments with barely a blush — a government that dismantles oversight, rewards loyalty over competence, weaponizes the machinery of state against its critics, and tells the poor their suffering is their own fault.

I see billionaires celebrated as philosopher-kings and immigrants treated as vermin. I see a press corps that has spent years learning to normalize the abnormal, a Democratic opposition often brave but rarely unified, and a Republican Party that has traded its soul for a pose.

I see my neighbors in Utah — good, earnest people — told that their public lands are impediments to profit and their water rights are bargaining chips for the well-connected.

This is not a partisan lament. It is older and sadder than that, a lament for a country that had, for all its terrible flaws, a kind of moral seriousness: a belief that the arc of history ought to bend, that each generation owed the next something better than it had received. I no longer recognize that country in the mirror.

And then there is Israel.

After a youth of Jewish education, I came to Hebrew late, as an act of love and curiosity and solidarity — not with a government, but with a people, a language, a civilization of extraordinary richness and grief.

I study with teachers who use theater and poetry, the words of Amos Oz and Hanoch Levin, to ask what it means to live on contested land. I have Israeli friends who ache for something better, who did not vote for this, who march in the streets and are called naïve for it.

And then there is Gaza. What is happening there is not something I can launder into abstraction. Safaa and her family are there among the millions displaced, besieged, bereaved.

I cannot call what is being done in Israel’s name, with American weapons and American diplomatic cover, anything other than what it is: a catastrophe, moral and strategic and human, that will take generations to reckon with. A democracy that makes collective punishment into policy, that silences its own dissenters under the banner of wartime necessity, that lets settlers terrorize the West Bank while the world watches.

That country has also lost something it may not get back.

I know Israel was born in genuine trauma. I know Oct. 7 was a horror without mitigation. I carry those truths with me.

But grief does not exempt a nation from conscience, and trauma does not suspend ethics. The silence of so many American Jews — people who would quote Paton, and Desmond Tutu, and Martin Luther King in any other context — is a silence that shames us.

Matan, Yazan, and Safaa. Tel Aviv, East Jerusalem, and Gaza City. Oakley, Utah, and Washington, D.C. The distance between what these places promised and what they have become is the distance I am asked to live in every day.

Cry for thy beloved countries — not because we hate them, but because we love them and cannot look away, and because love without truthfulness is just another form of abandonment. We owe them, and each other, more than that.

Rick Shapiro is a retired lawyer and public affairs executive who lives in Oakley.

The post Cry, thy beloved countries appeared first on Park Record.

In a recent appeal to the residents of Summit County, local Republican leadership framed support for their party in 2026 as an act of “principled conservatism.” Today’s Republican Party is neither principled nor conservative.

This isn’t just a mischaracterization. It is a calculated deception. This rhetoric is a polished relic designed to evoke the ghost of a party that no longer exists to mask the radicalism of the one that does.

True conservatism is not a license for disruption. It is a philosophy of preservation. It is rooted in a reverence for established institutions, the stability of the rule of law, and a profound skepticism of radical, untested change. At its heart, it respects the Burkean (Edmund Burke) partnership: the fundamental understanding that society is a compact not just among the living, but between those who are dead, those who are living, and those who are yet to be born. It demands that we act as stewards, not as liquidators, of our shared inheritance.

The modern Republican brand — from the Wasatch to the halls of Congress — has become a vessel for institutional arson. To call this principled is a lie. To call it conservative is a delusion. It is, quite simply, a total breach of our intergenerational trust.

This breach is nowhere more visible than in our wondrous surroundings. For a Summit County resident, identity is inextricably tied to the stewardship of our public spaces. Yet, the 2026 national Republican platform has moved aggressively toward the mass privatization of federal lands.

By using the Congressional Review Act to strip protections from millions of acres, the party is prioritizing short-term industrial exploitation over the great outdoors that defines our county. From the Boundary Waters to our own backyard, they are attempting to bypass decades of expert management to allow mining and fossil fuel development on land that belongs to every American.

This is the antithesis of stewardship. It is generational theft.

Beyond the liquidation of our physical heritage, the party has engaged in a sustained, systematic assault on our shared reality. A democracy cannot function without truth. When a party institutionalizes disinformation as a weapon, they are dismantling the very foundation of honest governance required by our social contract.

By rehabilitating the architects of election subversion and mounting a scorched-earth campaign against the neutrality of our judicial systems, the party has signaled that the rule of law is merely a suggestion.

We see this most dangerously in the national push for the SAVE America Act and the president’s March 31 executive order establishing a federalized state citizenship list. These measures represent a radical departure from the conservative principle of federalism, weaponizing the Department of Homeland Security to override state election authorities. There is no conservative principle — none — that justifies a federal takeover of state elections to ensure a partisan outcome.

This disregard for established boundaries is not confined to our borders. It extends to the very power to wage war.

Traditional conservatism long held that war was a tragic last resort, requiring clear legal authorization. In 2026, the Republican-led federal government has discarded this restraint for the sake of raw executive overreach. By blocking resolutions to curb executive war powers and championing unilateral military campaigns — including the unauthorized and immoral conflict in Iran initiated on Feb. 28 — the GOP has decoupled American force from both the Constitution and international ethics.

By bypassing the congressional requirement to declare war, the party has handed the executive branch enormous discretion to risk American lives without a vote from the people’s representatives.

Many in our county maintain their registration in the Republican Party because they “grew up in the party” or prefer old-school fiscal policy (now the party of ballooning deficits and tariffs). But in the current political landscape, that distinction is a myth. You cannot purchase the illusion of conservatism without also paying for the assault on truth and the pursuit of illegal conflict.

There is no longer a middle ground where one can support a bygone economic platform while ignoring the systemic destruction of our democratic foundations.

To vote Republican in 2026 is to provide a silent sanction to a movement that views the U.S. Constitution as a suggestion, truth as an annoyance, and the environment as a clearance rack. You cannot claim to value the rule of law while supporting a party that celebrates those who break it. You cannot claim to value the beauty of our mountains while supporting a party that views them merely as assets to be liquidated.

The claim by Summit County GOP leaders that their party represents “principled conservatism” is an insult to our community’s intelligence. In 2026, the Republican identity is a moral liability.

If you believe in the rule of law, the sanctity of the public square, and the idea that our shared resources belong to all citizens, the Republican Party has no place for you. The only moral, principled act left is to recognize that the party has moved beyond redemption and to walk away. The time for nuance has passed. This is a clarion call to conscience.

Rick Shapiro is a retired public affairs executive and lawyer who lives in Oakley.

The post Today’s GOP is neither principled nor conservative appeared first on Park Record.

I have observed, with growing curiosity and deepening concern, the concerted efforts of Utah Gov. Spencer Cox and his legislative leadership to cast Utah as a national model for civil discourse.

Through high-profile media tours and initiatives, they attempt to pretty up the reality of their governance, effectively gaslighting the nation about the state of our democracy.

While they polish the veneer of the “Utah Way,” they are simultaneously ignoring — or actively engineering — the systemic dismantling of representation, environmental stewardship, and basic inclusivity.

Gov. Cox frequently evangelizes the concept of “disagreeing better,” rhetorically urging Americans toward greater virtue and mutual respect.

However, a closer examination of the last five years reveals that these sentiments are merely performative. In Utah, there is no genuine ability to disagree because the mechanisms for dissent are being systematically destroyed.

Cox and his legislative posse have guaranteed absolute control through extreme gerrymandering and an almost eight-year delay in implementing the people’s initiative for an independent redistricting commission (Prop 4).

Recently, the hypocrisy culminated when Cox signed a bill allowing the Legislature to effectively pack the Utah Supreme Court with their allies, removing the final check on their power. They do not want better disagreement. They want total capitulation.

If the rest of the country is tempted to look to the “Utah Way,” they must first examine the destructive “accomplishments” of this administration:

Erosion of Representation

The governor and his Legislature have engaged in the obscene gerrymandering of federal and state districts, stripping hundreds of thousands of Utahns of a meaningful democratic voice.

This theft of influence is most glaring in Summit County, with a population of only 42,000. The state has chopped and divided us in every conceivable way to dilute our influence.

We are currently split among three representatives in the Utah House, two state senators in the Utah State Senate, and two of Utah’s four U.S representatives in Congress.

None of these districts are coterminous, and crucially, no Summit County resident represents Summit County in the Utah House, Senate, or U.S. House. We have been cracked into voiceless, irrelevant pieces to ensure our distinct local concerns are swallowed by larger, ideologically distinct voting blocks.

Furthermore, in a devious move last year, the Legislature abolished the at-large election of Summit County councilors under the guise of “fairness.” Against the clear preference of the county, they imposed a geographic election process in which voters have only one vote every four years. Under our former process, every voter could vote for two or three councilors every two years — totaling five votes every four years. This was a targeted suppression of local voter agency.

Poisoning of Wasatch Front

On policy crises, Gov. Cox leans heavily on performative theology rather than science. Regarding the disappearing Great Salt Lake, he has solicited prayers for rain while failing to enact the difficult policies required to save the ecosystem.

On this point, I first find myself questioning a theology that assumes God would prioritize a plea for water in Utah when the prayers of Mormons repeatedly expelled from their homes by hate-filled violence and the desperate pleas of six million Jews perishing during the Holocaust went unanswered. Faith is personal, but governance requires stewardship.

While Cox prays and on occasion he and the Legislature take tepid steps, the lakebed dries, slowly but surely, transforming into a toxic dust bowl laced with arsenic and heavy metals. Scientists warn that millions of downwind residents face a public health catastrophe comparable to an “environmental nuclear bomb.”

Yet, leadership continues to prioritize unchecked development and water diversion, effectively gambling with the long-term survival of the state’s population for short-term profit.

Marginalization

The administration has also engaged in persistent efforts to demonize the LGBTQ+ community, specifically targeting the roughly 20,000 transgender individuals in our state. These relentless attacks continue unabated, using state power to punch down at a marginalized group rather than lift them up.

By also banning Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs across government and education (HB 261), they have effectively criminalized the effort to create welcoming environments, signaling that Utah is closed to those who do not fit a specific mold.

There is a tangible economic cost to this cruelty. The Sundance Film Festival recently departed Utah for the last time, taking with it an economic impact of $200 million and $14 million in tax revenue. Creative industries and diverse businesses recoil from environments where intolerance is legislated.

Censorship, Hypocrisy

Simultaneously, the state has empowered the grievances of a tiny minority to ban books in public schools.

The recent statewide banning of “Wicked” is particularly ironic. A story centered on empathy for the misunderstood is deemed “dangerous” by a state government that claims to champion dignity.

Perhaps the most damning evidence of this hypocrisy is the governor’s political alignment. While Cox travels the country preaching “dignity” and “respect,” he has lashed his political fortunes to Donald Trump — the most divisive and undignified figure in modern history.

This is not merely a difference of opinion. It is profound moral rot and abdication. By normalizing a leader who traffics in hate and cruelty, and explicitly rejects the virtues Utah claims to prize, state leadership proves their values are discarded the moment political power is at stake.

These actions are not virtuous. They do not earn their proponents the right to lecture the nation on civil discourse.

Rather than adopting the “Utah Way,” I urge the rest of the country to run quickly from our example. While I cannot know the private hearts of Gov. Cox and his leadership, I can judge their public fruit — and I urge rejection.

As a citizen, it is my obligation to bear witness, to speak out, and to vote. Forgiveness is not mine to give. I believe these men know exactly how to change course and seek absolution for what they have done to betray the state of Utah and its residents.

Richard Shapiro is a retired public affairs executive and attorney who lives in Oakley.

The post The hollow virtue of the ‘Utah Way’ appeared first on Park Record.

Dear Safaa, Mustafa, and Lana:

First, I want to thank the three of you for allowing me into your lives, as much as the miles, war, and other obstacles have allowed. Equally as important, I want to thank you, Safaa, for continuing to impart the gift of the Arabic language to me against all odds over the past year. What I have learned in our year together, and in our continuing journey, extends far beyond mere letters and words.

This letter to all of you will act as my fourth and final guest column in the Park Record about our journey together. The stories I have tried to put to words over the past months have been, at their essence, about your family’s journey of survival and perseverance against the landscape of a war of annihilation that has been perpetrated by Israel on Gaza and your people and that continues to this day, albeit at a simmer rather than a boil.

As I, a Jew, and you, Safaa, and your family, as Palestinians, we have both learned that our common humanity transcends the deep chasm of suspicion and hatred that has separated our peoples for generations. We are humans first and foremost, and as fellow humans, we have an overarching obligation to love one another and to treat all of humanity with dignity and respect.

My faith experience has always been grounded in a strong sense of social justice and a core belief that from love, dignity and respect, hope and reconciliation can emerge. The state of Israel and many of my people, both in Israel and in the diaspora, have forgotten these values and, in their so-called “strength” of might and arms, they have chosen occupation, supremacy, cruelty, and even genocide.

Many of my people now can see only their own suffering and have chosen to look away from the pain that we have inflicted a hundred-fold on our neighbors, the Palestinians, for decades, seemingly intensifying the cruelty and violence at every turn of events. I am deeply sorry this is the world we live in today and that you, Mustafa, and Lana must live through the worst that humanity and my people have to offer.

The Jewish people have been an extraordinary people through the millennia in our accomplishments, our suffering, and in our sheer survival as a distinct people. My once-boundless pride in my Jewish background is grounded in this history and in the values I have briefly described here.

Safaa, now, I no longer possess the ability to reconcile this sense of pride with the reality of the destruction Israel has inflicted on the small slice of land that Gaza is and with the enabling power of the United States through its unmitigated support of Israel’s war of annihilation.

The horrors of Oct. 7 are not a justification for the destruction of your homes and your land, much less 58 years of occupation and apartheid throughout the occupied territories. These are not the actions that would flow from the Jewishness that I believe in.

I understand that as humans, we Jews are capable of the best and the worst of human behavior. I cannot put into words my sense of heartbreak to know and understand that we have done the very worst to you, your family, and your people.

These behaviors cannot be allowed to stand without a reckoning and full accountability within Israel and the larger global Jewish community. Only then will we be able to begin to find our way back to the core and immutable Jewish values of justice, love and an undying belief that all people are entitled to live lives of dignity and peace. “Never again” can never be just about us.

I know that Lana is just a 1 year old, but I want to address this last part of my letter to her.

Lana, I am grateful that your memories of the past year will be limited because of your age. Soon, however, you will begin to understand the physical destruction of your land and the physical and psychic destruction of your people. I hope that you will begin to see a more peaceful and just world emerge in your land or wherever life takes you.

Even at the age of 67, I yearn to see the emergence of such a world in your land and beyond. I pray that anger and hate, which can so naturally flow from what has occurred to your people, do not permeate every fiber of your being and that you instead choose to be a beacon of hope and love.

I have heard you play and laugh and cry dozens of times in my Arabic lessons with your mom. I ask about you always and love when your mom shares pictures of your pure joy.

Perhaps your mother and father will one day tell you about and introduce you to the American Jewish man who found your mother in the maelstrom of war, who learned a bit of Arabic, who undertook a journey together that produced the unlikeliest of friendships, and who gained a greater ability to understand that our mutual humanity can prevail, even amidst the ruins of Gaza. Finally, I pray your life is filled with much beauty and love.  

Rick Shapiro is a retired public affairs professional who lives in Oakley. To help Safaa, Mustafa, and Lana: https://chuffed.org/iframe/137712/25aae1

The post A Letter to Safaa, Mustafa and Lana appeared first on Park Record.

I didn’t plan on writing a third guest piece on my Palestinian Arabic teacher, Safaa, her husband, Mustafa, who now works for Doctors Without Borders, and their 10-month-old daughter, Lana, all of whom “live” in Gaza City.

I didn’t think I could find any more words to express my sorrow, anger, rage and sense of shame at what Israel is doing to Gaza in the name of my people, the Jewish people. This war of annihilation upon the people of Gaza. But Safaa asked me to share an update on their story.

She made this request of me on Thursday, Sept. 11. My last words to Safaa that day were merely “just survive, please,” a plea. The last two text messages I received from her were sent the morning of Friday, Sept.12.

In both of those messages, the fear and terror in her voice were palpable, she not knowing whether to stay in her in-laws’ home in the center of Gaza City (a single-family home now housing 60 people, mostly extended family, including her parents and younger sister) or to move south.

In those last messages, she rhetorically posed to me many questions: Safaa asked where to go. It costs $2,000 to 3,000 to have someone with transportation move them to an unknown location in the south of Gaza with tents costing a minimum of $1,500. She also asked out loud whether the locations in the south, which are also being bombed daily, would be any safer than her current situation.

She was, perhaps, most terrified that her very young daughter would not be able to get the necessary food and nutrition that she needs in the south. Yet, even on the verge of losing all hope of survival, Safaa closed her last message to me by expressing her hopes for a better day.

Safaa then became unreachable. I did not know why, but I tried to avoid thinking the worst.

I also tried to reach out to both individuals and organizations to locate her, but without success. Because of the generosity of many who responded to my earlier guest pieces, I was hopeful that Safaa and her family, unlike many in Gaza, would have the resources necessary to be able to move her goods and to buy a tent, if needed.

At 3:15 a.m. this past Friday, Sept. 19, I finally received several text messages from Safaa. She and her family had left their home and were able to make it to the south of Gaza, more specifically to Deir Al Balah, just north of Khan Yunis. They were able to buy a tent and rent some land upon which to place a tent.

Amid this absolute nightmare, she told me that she hopes to find a good enough internet network soon to be able to resume classes Thursday. For the moment, I felt a deep sense of relief.

I don’t know what else to say, except that Safaa and her family are in my thoughts constantly. The carnage in Gaza needs to end today but likely won’t be due to the indefensible and inhuman policies of both Israel and America.

Someday, this will all end. I just hope Safaa and her family can survive until then. I am determined to help them, whether they stay in Gaza or are forced to relocate elsewhere.

I end not with my words, but those of Elie Wiesel, the late writer and Romanian Jewish survivor of the Holocaust: “I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”

Please help Safaa and her family: https://chuffed.org/project/137712-please-help-safaa-and-her-family-in-gaza

Rick Shapiro is a retired public affairs professional who lives in Oakley.

The post Dear Safaa: ‘Just survive, please’ appeared first on Park Record.

The words in the title are those of my Arabic teacher, Safaa Almadhoun, who I introduced here in June. She is still alive with her husband, Mustafa, and now 7-month-old daughter, Lana, in the manmade hellscape that is Gaza City, Gaza.

Safaa is still teaching me Arabic three times a week. Her grace under the conditions she is experiencing has continued to touch my heart in a profound way.

Having been asked by many to provide an update on her situation, this is my continuing attempt to share with others in our community and beyond the stark reality and humanity of a young, proud Palestinian woman who is living in conditions no human being should have to endure.

For 22-plus months, no running water, no sewer, no electricity, no heat, surrounded by chaos, hunger and death.

Safaa and her family, if they are fortunate, have one inadequate meal per day, usually just lentil soup. No meats, almost no fruit and vegetables, nothing nutritious. What is available is largely beyond reach from a cost perspective. A small bag of flour (one kilo), $30-$50; a single tomato or cucumber, $20 or more.

The limited and completely inadequate amounts of food coming into Gaza are often stolen, usually not by Hamas, as the Israeli and American governments have falsely asserted. Rather it’s rogue gangs and individuals who then proceed to profit at the expense of others in the black food markets.

Safaa and her family wisely stay away from the killing fields that the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), supported by Israel and the United States, have created at their distribution sites. In their foolish attempt to discredit the very effective UN humanitarian organizations with the creation of the GHF, the governments of the United States and Israel are responsible for the murder of over 1,500 Palestinians at these so-called “humanitarian” sites.

These individuals were murdered while desperately trying to obtain food for their starving families.

Amid pervasive hunger and famine, Safaa has been somewhat fortunate to be able to breastfeed her daughter, Lana, until recently. I can only imagine the adverse impact Safaa’s inadequate food intake has had on her daughter.

Lana was recently in one of the two remaining hospitals in Gaza (there were 35 prior to the destruction of Gaza) with a 104-degree temperature and boils all over her body. She is better now.

As Lana has begun to transition to formula and solid foods, she is, however, becoming more exposed to the acute hunger that Safaa and Mustafa are experiencing. Gaza children, the most vulnerable of all Gazans, are now dying daily due to starvation. In what kind of world can this be allowed to happen?

In the last few days, food has temporarily become more plentiful in certain places, but Safaa’s home, Gaza City, or what’s left of it, is now being threatened with total occupation by the Israeli military, and perhaps complete destruction. The result would be forced relocation to a tent in the  south of Gaza, and even greater food deprivation.

The Oct. 7 attack on Israel was horrific, as is the continued holding of hostages by Hamas, but how can the destruction of Gaza and its people possibly be the answer to the question of how we can achieve a peaceful future for all who live in the region?

As for my learning of Arabic, it is progressing slowly, thanks to Safaa’s continuing patience with me. One of the exercises Safaa uses to teach me is to ask me, at the beginning of each class, what I did yesterday or what I am planning to do in the week ahead. Simple questions, one would think. But they are anything but.

Am I supposed to share with Safaa my trip to a grocery store overflowing with food or my visit to a world-class restaurant in Park City? The eggs and fruit I had for breakfast, the chicken and steak I had for dinner? Is it OK to talk about the vacation we just took?Should I mention that a few of our six goats are somewhat overweight since they are too well fed?

Every word I utter goes through a mental filter of whether those words will hurt Safaa by accentuating the surplus of my life compared to the scarcity and hunger and destruction that haunt her every moment.

In my original guest piece in The Park Record in June, I tried to stay away from the politics of the situation in Gaza. That is no longer possible.

In the months that have ensued, the destruction of Gaza has been recently and correctly characterized as genocidal in nature by both a leading Israeli academic and a leading Israeli human rights organization. The endless bombing and starvation campaigns being perpetrated by Israel, and fully supported by the United States, violate every conceivable norm of international law and meet the legal and moral definitions of genocide.

As a Jew who constantly has the memory of the persecution of our people and the Holocaust foremost on his mind, I am despondent at the notion that the countries that I am most connected to (and my people) are now responsible, complicit and/or largely silent in a genocidal campaign inflicted upon another group of human beings. “Never again” was never meant to apply to just us.

Where then are the voices of condemnation and rage among the rabbis and mainstream Jewish organizations here in Utah, and around the world, at this moment in history when our words would most matter?  

As we approach the Jewish high holidays of Rosh Hashanah (New Years) and Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement), it is, I believe, a moral imperative for every Jewish faith leader, as well as every individual Jew, Christian and Muslim, etc., to cry out and condemn this horrific campaign of genocide and starvation in Gaza.

All of us will someday be called to account for what we say and do in this moment of complete horror, this stain on our collective history.

In my last writing, I noted that at the end of each class, Safaa says to me in Arabic: See you next time, God willing (inshallah). What once were reassuring words now seem to me to be a prayer for survival. So, if you pray, please pray for Safaa and her family.

Safaa has asked me to share the following words with each of you: Alsalam alikom (Peace to all) everyone, thank you all for asking about me and my current situation in Gaza. Currently, I am living through difficult times, me, my daughter and my husband, as everything is difficult and expensive to live here. Even my 7-month-old daughter, I cannot find diapers for her at a reasonable cost, as one diaper costs $5 and a full pack costs $100. There are no baby food types available for her in our difficult situation here in Gaza. It is difficult to obtain food and good food, as we do not eat nutritious and healthy food, but we are still patient, hoping that the war will end, and God is always with us. I hope from you all to help support me and my family. Thank you very much for your support. I really appreciate everyone who supports me and my family.

Please help Safaa and her family by contributing what you can through the Chuffed account that we have set up on her and her family’s behalf (we moved from GoFundMe due to their bias against Palestinian fundraisers). All additional contributions will be used for food, baby formula and diapers.

Rick Shapiro is a retired public affairs professional who lives in Oakley.

The post The only thing cheap in Gaza is life appeared first on Park Record.

I am a Jewish-American who is deeply connected to the lands of Israel and Palestine and the people who reside there.

I dream of a world in which Palestinian and Israeli (Jew and Arab) alike can live in dignity and peace, but that world sadly remains beyond reach. The words on this page, however, are about a young Palestinian woman from Gaza City who entered my life recently as an Arabic teacher.

I have studied conversational Hebrew for the past three and a half years and conversational Arabic for the past six months. Several months ago, in my search for an Arabic teacher, I utilized an app that matches students and teachers from around the world to study just about any language.

I found an Arabic teacher named Safaa Al Madhoun. Safaa is a 24-year-old woman who graduated with a degree in English from a university in Gaza during the summer of 2023. She is married, lives in Gaza City with her family, and has a husband, Mustafa, and a 4-month-old daughter named Lana.

Since October 2023, they have been without water and electricity due to the conflict between Hamas and Israel that began on Oct. 7, 2023. The homes of her birth family have been reduced to rubble. Food is scarce, nutritous food even scarcer. Hunger abounds.

I generally don’t get to see Safaa on our Zoom lessons. I only hear her voice. She has told me that is due to bandwidth issues, but Safaa is a proud young woman, and I suspect she does not wish to share her surroundings. I do not actually know if the house of her in-laws, with whom she now lives, is fully intact or the extent of the damage to their home.

During our thrice weekly classes, I often hear her young daughter crying or playing in the background, along with street noise, and the always present sound of Israeli military drones overhead. Those sounds stay with me well after my sessions with Safaa. They haunt me.

Safaa is a patient and kind young woman and an excellent Arabic teacher who tolerates my frequent mistakes and encourages my periodic successes. We laugh at my errors and, on occasion, Safaa shows a little frustration with my lack of focus. Justifiably, I should add.

We aim for and achieve normalcy in the most unusual of circumstances. My choice of Safaa as a teacher was admittedly influenced by her location in Gaza, thinking it might have a beneficial impact on her life. And she was highly rated as a teacher. I was also, quite candidly, curious and intrigued.

My Arabic learning journey with Safaa has turned out to be about far more than just learning a language. It has become as much, if not more, about developing a human, mutually respectful connection with a young woman who is living under unimaginable conditions.

I continue to learn Arabic with Safaa. And our connection deepens, class by class. Safaa has on occasion missed several classes unexpectedly, often (I find out later) due to internet loss. Each absence worries me, especially considering the ever-present violence and death in Gaza, often involving civilian women and children. These absences trigger complex emotions in me each time.

Safaa and her family are flesh and blood, like my own. Yet, her suffering and the suffering of over 2 million humans in Gaza are not supposed to be my concern. I’m not supposed to look at the pictures of the innocent dead women and children in Gaza.

For most, Safaa and her family are either invisible or deserving of whatever fate befalls them. I refuse the emotional safety of not knowing. I reject the notion that Palestinians like Safaa and her family, and the 2 million plus Gazans that I do not know are any less human than my own family and those of my friends, Jewish and non-Jewish.

Yet, the unconscionable carnage that is being inflicted on the people of Gaza continues.

There is so little I can do to help. Safaa and her family are beyond my reach, except for what she gets in return for my Arabic lessons. Weeks have passed since I first put these words to paper. The killing continues unabated, the food situation grows worse, the world on occasion raises a tepid voice, condemnation too slowly grows, but all to what end for Safaa and those she loves? Death and hunger are the only guarantees in her present.

This moment in Israel/Palestine is arguably the least hopeful in my lifetime. It is difficult to envision a hopeful future for Safaa and her family. Still. I am determined to continue my learning with her and, perhaps to even find a way to make a small positive difference in the life of Safaa and her family. Hopelessness need not be an insurmountable obstacle to hope.

As Safaa says at the end of each class, inshallah (God willing), until next time. So I pray there is a next time.

And now I respectfully ask for your help for Safaa and her family by asking you to contribute what you can through the GoFundMe account I have set up on her and her family’s behalf. Here is the link: https://gofund.me/2458e947

I also want to share the words of Safaa who wanted to speak to each of you regarding her current existence. (Pictures of Safaa and her family are contained in the GoFundMe account.)

Alsalam Alikom everyone. my name is Safaa Al Madhoun, an Arabic language teacher from Gaza City. My student Rick, who is 66 years old, is American and has been living there since we met. He is helping me by publishing my story to you and my difficult situation that I live with my family in the Gaza Strip from bombing and war for more than a year and a half of painful conditions with a lack of food, drink, basic necessities of life and electricity. We are suffering a lot here, me, my little daughter and my husband, Mustafa, from these conditions and the widespread hunger in the last period with the high prices and the high commission, as a bag of flour for baking costs us over $300 and many other expensive things. We are still living a difficult life full of terror, hunger and lack of peace. During my lessons with Rick, he always asked me about my condition and my difficult situation when he heard the sound of planes around me and ambulances, as how can I study Arabic despite the unstable conditions here in Gaza, but what I answered him was that we must live and move forward despite the pain we are living and I hope that everyone will help me so that I and my family can live despite the difficult circumstances and high prices. Thank you for supporting me and my family … Safaa

Rick Shapiro is a retired public affairs professional who lives in Oakley.

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