I’m a retired registered nurse and a Jew. I’m writing in response to a Sept. 13 op-ed (“Portland’s divestment vote has negative health effects“). It’s really outrageous to blame Portland City Council for causing anxiety among the writer’s patients here in Maine without saying a word about the endless anxiety faced by Palestinians. It’s also outrageous that the Press Herald would dignify the writer’s words by publishing them.

Imagine living in Gaza. Imagine your home bombed, you and your family forced to walk for miles to a so-called “safe zone” where you sleep on the street or, if you’re lucky, in a tent. Imagine no toilet, no sanitation, never enough to eat. Imagine standing in line for hours for a meager allotment of dirty, unsafe water. Imagine having to move multiple times over the year, with no end in sight. No school for the kids. All of life disrupted.

Imagine a 2,000-pound bomb, made in the USA and dropped by Israel, blowing your children, spouse, siblings and grandparents into bits. Imagine watching your baby die from infection and malnutrition. Imagine kids with no arms or legs.

There is no safe place in Gaza, and almost the entire remaining population is crowded into 11 percent of the territory; 2.2 million people crammed into an area about the size of Manhattan.

That is what anxiety looks like. My thanks to the Portland City Council for its courageous vote to support divestment from Israel.

Jamila Levasseur
Waldo