OPINION | Why South End Parents Are Fasting for Gaza — and What It Means to Care

It's hard to write when you're hungry. It's hard to parent when you're hungry. When you're not eating, the brain fog arrives fast. Last night, I was too tired to do laundry, so my kids had no clean clothes this morning.

I just finished two days of fasting as part of the Parents Fast 4 Gaza campaign, and the experience has been humbling and powerful.

This week, Seattle Families for Palestine launched Seattle's leg of a national "relay fast" that will travel to other cities throughout the country. Participating groups hope to keep the fast going until the end of the year. Seattle organizers, many of them from the South End, say they are heeding the request from Palestinian journalist Bisan Owda, who has called for an international response to what the United Nations (UN) warns is near "catastrophic" hunger in Gaza.

This fast is a symbolic act. Two days without food don't come close to the experience of parents living under a starvation campaign and a two-year siege. My children, 7 and 9, didn't fast (though the youngest wanted to). And with every package of Goldfish crackers, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, or plates of spaghetti they ate, I was washed in the relief of being able to feed them.

The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that nearly 1 in 5 children under 5 years old in Gaza are now acutely malnourished. According to the UN, since the end of May, nearly 1,400 Palestinians have been killed — predominantly by the Israeli military — while seeking food. In the past 48 hours, every time I heard my well-fed children say, "Mama, I'm hungry," I wondered how many of those murdered at food aid sites were parents.

"I just have to do this," said Angela Garbes, a South End writer and activist who is participating in the fast. "And I don't say that to seem righteous or on some sort of moral high ground. I just personally can't not do something." Garbes, a parent who often writes about the intersections of mothering and social justice, says she's participating in the fast because for her, the hunger crisis in Gaza hits close to home.

"My family is from the Philippines, [our lives have] been directly impacted by American colonialism and empire … Palestine is not that far away."

Many of the South Seattle residents participating in the fast connect their activism for Palestine to social justice movements in their community. 

"I'm mixed race and Jewish. As someone of Jewish ancestry, this feels important to me," said Patanjali de la Rocha, a South End parent who has fought for food justice and social justice much of their life.

"As a social worker, I know that hurt people hurt people. And to me this is survivors of one genocide moving forward and committing a genocide against another group of people," said de la Rocha.

A number of those fasting are therapists (myself included). For those of us who work with people who have experienced trauma, watching a two-year campaign of ethnic cleansing has been excruciating.

"There isn't a session where it hasn't come up. For Palestinian and non-Palestinian clients," said Kendra Appe, a South Seattle resident and therapist with a graduate degree in nutrition. "I'm not a therapist who is going to recommend that my clients avoid or turn away."

For me, the connection also extends to my identity as a journalist. Before I was a therapist, I worked as an international journalist. One of my first reporting projects took me to the Middle East and the West Bank.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reports a record number of journalists were killed last year (124), with 70% killed by Israel. Since I started fasting on Sunday, five Al Jazeera journalists were killed by an Israeli airstrike. I can't imagine what it must have been like for those journalists to report on the annihilation of a people for two years. And how often they were hungry and afraid.

On the second, and final day of my fast, I woke up with my stomach grumbling. As I made my children a frozen waffle breakfast, I thought about how much caregiving is about food. You're always procuring, preparing, serving, consuming, or cleaning up after food. It must be agonizing to be a parent in Gaza, deprived of the ability to care for your kids in this way.

One of the most sacred, universal human pacts is that adults must protect children. Over the kitchen counter yesterday, I cried, overwhelmed by living in a world where that pact is being so violently broken.

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Sarah Stuteville is a writer, podcaster, and therapist with a background in international journalism. Her work focuses on feminism, social justice, mental health, media, parenting, and relationships. Sarah has reported from over a dozen countries — including Israel and the West Bank.

Sarah is currently serving on the Emerald's board of directors. 

The Emerald's board of directors does not have editorial oversight over any section of the newsroom, including Voices.