you lost.

i was born into comfort the way some people are born into storms—unearned, unasked for, and utterly inescapable. my name is rachel, a daughter of the covenant, a granddaughter of survivors, a woman raised in a world where the word “security” meant a gated driveway, not a bomb shelter. my family’s history is stitched into the fabric of pain—holocaust ghosts whispering through generations, their trauma passed down like heirlooms. and yet here i stand, not with the walls, but with the rubble. not with the flags, but with the forgotten.

i fight for palestine because my soul cannot rest while children are caged behind checkpoints and curfews. i fight because i know what it means to be displaced, even if my own displacement lives in the past tense, in yellowed photographs and hushed shabbat conversations.i fight because the wordnever againshould not be reserved for jews alone.it should be a vow for every people crushed beneath the boots of power.

but there’s a war inside me, too—a quieter one, less photogenic. it rages in the mirror when i brush my teeth with filtered water and step into a car that never runs out of fuel. it lives in the guilt that coils around my throat when i march with signs and slogans, knowing that if the system turned on me, i’d still have lawyers on speed dial and senators who’d return my call.

i am a woman of means, and that is both my privilege and my curse. i have the luxury of activism because i don’t have to worry about eviction, hunger, or silence bought by survival.and still, i ache with the knowledge that my voice—clear, educated, eloquent—might be heard more readily than the cries of those who have nothing left to lose.