Here's what I know

If I am quiet it doesn’t mean I am not listening. There are also times that silence = complicity.

Here’s what I know.

There’s a lot I don’t know.

Geopolitics are complex.

Wars are complex.

I am choosing my words extraordinarily carefully; maybe too carefully.

If I am quiet it doesn’t mean I am not listening, reading, learning.

There are also times that silence = complicity.

Here’s what I know:

People are not their authoritarian governments.

People are not the terrorist organizations who act in their names.

Support for innocent Israeli victims does not mean support for Israel’s government, currently run by an ultra-nationalistic, far right, unconscionably discriminatory and viciously oppressive pro-apartheid leader.

Support for innocent Palestinian victims does not mean support for Hamas, a hard-line extremist, viciously anti-Semitic terrorist group, whose stated goals including obliterating Israel and killing all Jews.

Support for your Jewish friends, family and neighbors who are scared, who are upset, who have been living with a terrifying rise in anti-Semitism and targeted terrorist threats here and around the world does not mean you are supporting any government’s policies.

Here’s what I know:

Terrorism is never a justifiable response to anything. Ever.

Rape, kidnapping, indiscriminate murder of civilians, suicide bombings are never something to celebrate. For any reason. Ever.

If you see a teenage girl being raped, an elderly person being abused, a civilian being tortured, a kidnapped toddler paraded around as a trophy, nearly 300 young people shot in cold blood at a concert — in Israel, in Palestine, in Syria, in Ukraine, in Ethiopia, in Myanmar, in Sudan, in Afghanistan, in Haiti, in the United States of America — and you cannot condemn it without equivocation, you really need to think hard about what it is that is preventing you from seeing that person’s humanity.

It’s not “payback.” It’s not a path to freedom or liberation. It’s amoral. It’s psychopathy.

We can seek justice without losing our compassion or our moral compass.
- Drew Dixon

Here’s what my mom wrote to me this weekend:

“I stand with all men, women, and children whose lives have been impacted by the greed of other, the suffering they are forced to endure, and the fascistic tendencies of false leaders. We will light candles for them tonight.”

Photo: Mike Labrum

Here’s what I know:

Geopolitics are complex.

Our humanity doesn’t have to be.

Please be thoughtful and be kind. If you don’t know what to say, it’s okay to say—here or anywhere—that you don’t know what to say but that you’re listening.

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