Recently, the parent of a former CCP client shared with me their heartfelt email response to their child's school around the topic of elementary school classroom Veterans Day celebrations, and I felt compelled to share it here with our community.

Their message directly highlights important issues in relation to how the expectation of uncritically “thanking” active duty military service members—through avenues such as “Project Gratitude”—can negatively impact young Middle Eastern children and families currently enrolled in American schools.

I especially appreciated their highlighting of alternate “celebration” possibilities, including writing thank you letters to members of the organization Veterans for Peace, a global organization comprised of Military Veterans and their allies whose collective efforts are to build a culture of peace by using their lived experiences to increase public awareness of the causes and costs of war.

I hope that you’ll take a moment to read their words, feel the urgency, and be inspired by basic human decency to contribute to positive change.

I know that I was.

With the parent’s permission, I'm reposting the email below:

*Palestinian children playing in Gaza, from:* https://www.unicef.org/sop/stories-state-palestine

Good morning,

We are writing to respectfully ask you to consider finding another way to celebrate Veterans Day this year that does not provoke the immense pain and trauma of community betrayal for our family by asking our child and our child's friends and classmates to thank those who may have weapons pointed at our own family. I am sure you did not realize nor consider that one of those thank you letters you are asking our child and/or their classmates to write today could end up going to one of the 43,000 service members stationed in the Middle East who are actively abetting Israel's illegal ge/no/cide in Gaza and its extension into the West Bank and Lebanon.

Lebanon is the country where my partner, and our child’s mother, grew up and survived decades of US-backed occupation and several wars, both as a child and an adult, and where our child has spent significant time with close family who are still there under imminent threat by those same destroyers pointed at Lebanon or by one of the US’s F-15s or B-2 Spirit bombers that are already warmed up from their recent bombing campaign in Yemen, one of which could be used to drop the bomb that kills our child’s grandfather or destroys their auntie's house.

“If ever there were a year to skip writing thank you letters to service members as part of Operation Gratitude, 2024 is it.”

There is a particular kind of violence embedded in the act of both our school and our child's teacher, whom our child admires, respects, and looks (up) to (and whom we also respect and view ourselves in partnership with) undermining us by normalizing uncritical gratitude to the military and pitting our child against their parents and family on the one hand and their school, teachers, and peers on the other—especially at an age where peer conformity matters existentially. We also do not want to be in a position to have to contradict or undermine our children's respected teachers and school leaders.

I can't imagine you think it's fair or appropriate to ask our child and our community to thank those who are poised to murder their/our family. It's like asking a child and their friends to not just forgive their mother's rapist but to actually take the time to send them a thank you letter for doing it. I know that is a very hard line to read, and I wish I didn't have to write it, but I think it's important to point out that this is what this feels like to us.

*A memorial for Aaron Bushnell, the 25-year-old active-duty member of the U.S. Air Force, who died after setting himself on fire outside of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., from:* https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-commentary/aaron-bushnell-self-immolation-protest-hard-important-story-journalist-1234978325/

If ever there were a year to skip writing thank you letters to service members as part of Operation Gratitude, 2024 is it. I think the fact that this is a year in which a service member (Aaron Bushnell) self-immolated on the streets of DC outside the Israeli embassy rather than be asked to continue to serve the US military engaging in genocide and immoral imperial wars is the year to reconsider how we might honor veterans differently this year.

For example, we could instead choose to applaud those who are honoring all service members’ sacrifices by fighting to ensure that they and their families aren't making those sacrifices in service of murderous imperialism rather than actual self-defense, a distinction that Operation Gratitude does not recognize.

Last night, shortly before receiving your letter, we received news that Israel would yet again be expanding its ground invasion further into Lebanon, where it has already indiscriminately already killed over 3,000 Lebanese people and injured nearly 14,000, the vast majority of whom are civilians, and many of whom are children who look just like ours. Then, this morning we woke up to the news—as we do every day—of another several dozen Palestinian people, so many of them children, having been indiscriminately slaughtered while we slept, in addition to the more than 44,000 (though estimates place it closer to 200,000) who have already been killed and the ten children a day in Gaza who lose their limbs.

If you had one of those children in your classroom, or one of the 17,000 whose parents have been murdered, would it give you pause about the best way to honor veterans this year? Would you ask their classmates to write a righteous thank you letter?

“Remember, it is right to resist unjust wars and illegal orders. And when you do, you will have the support of Veterans For Peace.”

— Veterans for Peace

Our niece—our child’s baby cousin—had to flee southern Lebanon during her first year of life, not knowing if she will ever be able to return. We also do not know if our child will ever see their grandfather again, a man in his 80s who refuses to leave his home even as US-made bombs fall within a mile of his house; where our child has spent a significant amount of time; and where just two months ago, their mom left Lebanon where she was visiting our family on the heels of Israel’s coordinated attack on communication devices, killing and maiming all kinds of people in the streets, grocery stores, and in their homes. It could so easily have been at the sweet’s shop where our child’s mom was stocking up on all their favorite Lebanese treats—all while our child sat at their desk at school, a dangerous place to be if they were in Gaza, where Israel has bombed more than 85% of the schools.

None of this is possible without the diplomatic cover and financial and tactical support of the US military, including the 43,000 troops stationed in the region and the whole apparatus that supports them who are enabling what international experts agree is a genocide, the International Court of Justice among them. If our child and their peers are asked to write them letters, the message is not thank you. It is, to quote Veterans for Peace: “Remember, it is right to resist unjust wars and illegal orders. And when you do, you will have the support of Veterans For Peace.”

*From*: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/About_Face:_Veterans_Against_the_War

Perhaps, the kids can instead write thank you letters today to the courageous members of Veterans for Peace, who refer to this day as Armistice Day, and who are calling on service members of conscience to refuse to service genocide, connecting them to Congress to present their concerns via the Appeal for Redress (v.2), or helping those who are thinking about becoming Conscientious Objectors connect to the appropriate resources to support them.

Or the kids could learn about About Face, an organization of post-9/11 veterans who are organizing to end US imperial wars, or write them thank you letters for their work to end war as veterans. Or you could invite someone from About Face to talk to the class (they have a speaker's bureau) or even invite your own student’s mother to talk to the class about what it's like to grow up under occupation and war. I'm certain Veterans for Peace would be happy to arrange for someone to talk to the class about their service and their work to support veterans who refuse to fight in a genocide.

Any of these options would both honor veterans and create an environment in which our own school and community does not feel weaponized against its Arab and Muslim students and families, including our own family.