How can I sleep?  When I close my eyes, there is fire everywhere.  The doctors who go among the wounded and dead in Gaza say they believe the Israeli military is using DIME weapons, Dense Inert Metal Explosives.  These bombs explode into clouds of micro-shrapnel, fill the flesh of those within range with tiny particles of tungsten and nickel, heavy metals contaminating the injured, so that those who are not killed outright, who survive, perhaps with severed limbs, are infested with microscopic time bombs of cancer--of the connective tissue.  They are shredding the webs of people's bodies.

I am a Puerto Rican Jew, born of Ukrainian Jews fleeing war and repression to become sweatshop organizers in 1910s New York, and landed gentry from Naranjito, turned working class migrants in 1930s Harlem and the Bronx, landing in the same garment shops a generation later. I'm also a lifelong activist historian who embraces complexity and has spent decades building alliances between people who misunderstand each other.