My 5-year-old daughter Nadia and I spent the last part of the summer of 2005 in Israel and Palestine. I documented some of our experiences in a live on-line journal, known as a blog.1 A blog is not a substitute for a per- sonal journal, nor is it a political manifesto. It offers space to fuse what is deemed ‘personal’ with what is ‘political’. That’s probably why I like it, because over the past twenty-six years, the timeless feminist slogan ‘the personal is political’ has been central to my transformation. I think that blogs can make an important contribution to conversations among femi- nists because they can capture complexities and contradictions, as well as document change over time, inspiring original insights that develop into ground-breaking theories.
Blogs, like any other aspect of human communication, reflect the tension between what we reveal and what we conceal. But there is also something quite impersonal about blogs; unlike a personal journal, they are in the public domain. I tried to write my blog with both a general audience and some special people in mind, opting for a clear language that did not require a prior in-depth knowledge of Middle East politics.
In this essay, I critically re-examine some of what I wrote that summer. After explaining what I mean by compassionate resistance, I unpack my relationship with my family, community and country of origin. In the essay’s central section, I draw on my participation at the international conference of Women in Black in East Jerusalem to discuss alliances and solidarity between women. Last but not least, I reflect on the unique and at times unset- tling experience of traveling through a place I used to call home with my daughter.