Member-only story
Featured
I Was Raised to Fight for Justice — Then I Learned It Was All Fake
The Girl Who Became a Symbol of Resistance — And the Lie That Built Her
Beth was born from catastrophe. A father who disappeared the moment the joyous news of life reached him. A mother who substituted fact with whatever sensationalist tabloid headline best suited her mood. When she wasn’t discovering new food allergies or decrying capitalism while sipping oat-milk lattes, she aligned herself with self-styled revolutionaries — an advocacy group for peace that spouted vitriol under the banner of freedom.
Beth never stood a chance.
On her tenth birthday, her mother decided to honor the suffering of the oppressed and renamed her child “Bedlam.” She believed, with the unshakable confidence of the willfully ignorant, that Bedlam was short for Bethlehem1 — the birthplace of the righteous Palestinian, Jesus Christ. To onlookers, she wove an intricate tale of how her daughter was named in honor of the ancient city. The details changed depending on the audience, but the core message remained: she was a champion of justice, and so was her daughter.
Beth accepted this without hesitation. What was one more revision in a life constantly rewritten? She embraced her new name, pledging herself to the cause of a people whose…
