When I wrote my last op-ed, Stop Arming Israel, just before last year’s election, I used a pseudonym for my online Arabic language tutor in the West Bank. Since then, he has asked me to use his real name: Hamza. “Don’t worry, Elena,” he told me, “there are like twenty Hamzas in my neighborhood.”
I studied Arabic at UC Santa Barbara and later in Cairo; today, I stay connected by relearning it with Hamza. As his situation has become even more desperate, our lessons have become conversations about survival.
“We’re the next Gaza,” he kept repeating.
Hamza’s four children were all supposed to start classes. Instead, school was shut down. According to a recent UN report, nearly 13,000 students across the West Bank are affected by demolition orders against more than 80 schools.
Leaving should be an option, but it rarely is. The Palestinian passport ranks near the bottom of global mobility indexes, and visas are often denied without explanation.
Last month, Hamza tried Hungary, spending $3,300 – money his family could not spare – on nonrefundable fees, documents, and travel for his embassy appointment. He was denied without explanation. Smugglers offered another option: $35,000 to take his family on a dangerous journey into Norway. But with four children, it is financially impossible.
Neighboring countries offer little relief and physically reaching any of them requires Israeli checkpoint permits which are nearly impossible to obtain.
Hamza now lives with his wife and children in two cramped rooms in his parents’ house. Privacy is gone; even peaceful protesters are arrested by a complicit Palestinian Authority.
The West Bank, home to millions of displaced Palestinians and 15 times the size of Gaza, is seeing unprecedented illegal Israeli settlement growth. Roughly 700,000 Israeli settlers now live on occupied West Bank land, further segregating Palestinians into shrinking enclaves.
Hamza’s message is simple: “Give the Palestinian people a chance. Equal rights, a two-state solution, or at least paths to safety.” He knows not every Palestinian agrees with leaving, but at this point, he sees no alternative.
Meanwhile, the U.S. remains a global outlier– violating international law while funding the violence that entraps families like Hamza’s in an apartheid system. For decades, the U.S. has provided hundreds of billions of dollars in military aid to Israel – more than to any other country in modern history. The result has been a failed strategy for both Israeli and Palestinian safety. All while, here at home,1 in 7 American households struggle with hunger. In Santa Barbara County that number is 1 in 3, according to the Foodbank).
Locally, our elected officials perpetuate the same contradictions that fuel this crisis. Congressmember Carbajal supports sending both humanitarian aid and weapons, a “heal and harm” approach that falls short of the principled stance many of us are waiting for. Until Congress advances legislation like the Block the Bombs Act (H.R. 3565, currently pending in the House), U.S.-backed violence will continue with impunity.
Even our progressive state representatives, Senator Limón and Assemblymember Hart – whose values I’ve long appreciated – recently voted for AB 715, a bill that blurs the line between antisemitism and legitimate criticism of Israeli policy. Every major education union and the ACLU opposed it, warning it “undermines genuine understandings of antisemitism.”
As one Jewish educator and CTA member put it: “Imagine a student bringing in an article from Haaretz (a respected Israeli news source) criticizing Israeli policy – under AB 715, a discussion on that could be deemed antisemitic. That’s not protecting, that’s silencing.”
Censoring honest discussions about Israel and Palestine – at a time when the UN, major human rights organizations, and even the International Association of Genocide Scholars have all concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza – is profoundly out of touch. Yet the Governor recently signed AB 715 into law, ensuring Trump-era censorship tactics will now reach California’s K–12 classrooms. As a parent whose daughter will enter public school next year, I find this deeply saddening.
When I shared this draft with Hamza, his response stayed with me: “Thank you for taking the time to do this. It means so much to me and my family. But if this will get you in any kind of trouble, please don’t.”
While our representatives fund his community’s erasure, he worries about our safety. May they find the moral courage to care about his. Also, may they remember that voters, especially the next generation, reward those who stand on the right side of history.
