This first special report from Palestine is available to all subscribers, but the next ones won't be. Upgrade to paid here for as little as $3 a month.

LISTENING: to my scratchy throat
FEELING: freaked out
SEEING: all the gifts I brought from Palestine

The first friendly face I met during my nearly 10 days away in the Middle East was Hanna Homestead's. She's a research analyst with the National Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, where she focuses on the climate and environmental costs of U.S. militarism.

We clicked right away. Probably because we were roommates, but also because Homestead is easy. She's kind. She knows when to joke and when to drill in. I needed her company my first night away. I was homesick and nervous, but she consoled me as I cried. She reminded me we all had a purpose during this trip. Mine was to bring stories home to write. Hers was to connect the dots between the U.S. war machine and Palestine's compounding environmental crises.

Last week, Homestead's team published its annual Tax Day report to help the public understand where our tax dollars are going. I owed something like $20,000 in income taxes this year. Every payment bummed me out. I'd prefer to spend that money elsewhere: on a local fruits-and-veggie CSA, on more Palestinian-made almond pesto and olive oil (which I prepared and devoured last night), on student loan payments, on my mom's retirement dreams, on vacations (because, fuuuck, I need one).

Hell, I'd at least like to see my government make better use of my dollars. I wouldn't mind handing over so much if it meant free universal healthcare. I'd be happy to contribute to social benefits like paid family leave or free childcare. Instead, I'm back to spending $300 a month on crappy public health insurance and stressing about my dreams of becoming a mom before the world goes to shit.

You know where my money is going instead? Weapons and war. Federal prisons. Deportations and border patrol. Foreign military aid. Israel's genocide.

In 2024, the average taxpayer contributed $2,929 to the Pentagon, the U.S. HQ for war and destruction. Meanwhile, only $29 of our tax dollars went toward substance abuse and mental health problems. Even less — $26 — was spent on refugee assistance.

If you want to zoom in on environmental concerns, the government isn't using our dollars wisely there, either. In 2024, the average taxpayer paid only $127 toward the Environmental Protection Agency, $39 for the Forest Service, and $14 for the National Park Service. So while our leaders ignore the urgent needs at home, they send billions to Israel.

"The U.S. budget is already extremely militarized, and the Trump administration and his allies in Congress are making things even worse," Homestead told me via text Wednesday. "Members of Congress are literally working to take food and healthcare away from children across the country in order to line the pockets of billionaires and war profiteers — including Elon Musk — and to provide more weapons for Israel’s genocide of Palestinians. All of this is a huge disaster for the planet and working people everywhere."

I arrived in Palestine April 3 to meet botanists, refugee camp organizers, and activists. I walked over rocky, red soil with farmers who grow green, fuzzy almonds and juicy olives. I was there to learn about the land and the people who tend to it, but also to uncover the people who torment the earth and its inhabitants.

One thing became clear over the course of my visit: The Palestinian people are not poor. They are oppressed. Wealth surrounds them, but checkpoints and AI-controlled weaponry restrict them. Settlers rob them of their livelihoods by burning olive trees and closing road gates.

One 24-year-old Bedouin farmer I met, who had just graduated from law school, had $2 million worth of goats snatched in the dead of night by settlers who have moved into their land. His family spent generations raising these goats. The animals are not very far away — he sees them grazing sometimes — but he can't retrieve them. Not without risking death. The Israeli government has been arming settlers to form "security squads." The settlers and military are allowed to kill without consequence, but if Palestinians defend themselves, they're labeled terrorists.

This is where our tax dollars go.

The U.N. Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner flagged in March the alarming increase of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which is Occupied Palestinian Territory. Since Israel's genocide in Gaza began October 2023, over 20,000 illegal Israeli housing units have been built in East Jerusalem. Over 10,300 housing units are in progress.

“Israel’s settlement policy, its acts of annexation, and related discriminatory legislation and measures are in breach of international law, as the International Court of Justice has confirmed, and violate Palestinians’ right to self-determination,” said U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk in a statement.

Palestinians, on the other hand, are seeing their homes in the West Bank demolished. Once-thriving villages are becoming ghost towns. We visited the community of Bir Nabala, just northwest of Jerusalem. The road used to be full of traffic, but we saw only a dozen pass by during our time there. Buildings lay vacant. Stray dogs looked starved.

The wall was covered in messages.

"No More Fear!" "PERSPECTIVE" "Free Palestine"

We left through tunnels dug by the Palestinian people beneath the settlements to reach Qalandia, which used to house an airport. There, we saw how Israeli bulldozers reduced homes, once two to three stories high, to white-stone rubble.

We, Americans, are quite literally paying for this violence. Not just there — but here at home, too.

As I returned to the U.S. April 11, Mahmoud Khalil stood before an immigration court judge who ruled that President Donald Trump can move forward to deport the pro-Palestinian graduate of Columbia University who helped organize rallies calling for an end to the genocide in Gaza. On Monday, the federal government detained yet another Palestinian student of Columbia University: Mohsen Mahdawi.

Meanwhile, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele sat in the Oval Office with Trump, doubling down on his hopes to convert my ancestral lands into a place where innocents are disappeared into prisons known for their gruesome conditions. Trump shared his desire to remove U.S. citizens to El Salvador, too.

"From Harlem to Hebron, we are seeing the impact of militarization with students being arrested and deported for speaking up for Palestine and West Bank families being terrorized by illegal Israeli settlers armed with U.S.-made weapons," Homestead shared.

How long until the rest of us are encaged by 30-foot walls and sniper-manned watchtowers? How long until the planet can't take the heat anymore?

Banks are quietly preparing for catastrophic climate conditions — a world that is 3 degrees Celsius warmer than pre-industrial times.

At least the air conditioning sector will profit, though, right? At least we had our war planes and walls. At least we paid our damn taxes. 🌀

DID YOU MISS MY POSSIBILITIES PLAYLIST? SAVE IT & LISTEN. xx

The below extras are visible to paid subscribers only.