Yes, I agree. But what about the situation that already existed??? Or the people who are actually dropping the current situation on their heads??

Sometimes, I have these conversations, and I'm like, "what did you all talk about before October 7th happened?" How did you justify Gaza and the West Bank and the racist policies of the Netanyahu government then? Did you think everything was fine because Palestinians weren't making. such a big fuss about their conditions? And so now, after this undeniably horrific attack, you're wondering where all this discontent came from?

The conditions in Gaza were exactly as terrible on October 7th as they were on October 6th. The peeple there were just as marginalised, just as oppressed, just as disenfranchised. The backlash was inevitable. And the longer a situation like that continues, the more barbaric that backlash will inevitably be.

With everything I've had the opportunity to learn about the world, with all of the freedoms and options I enjoy, it's impossible for me to fully relate to what the Palestinian people have been through. I can't feel anything but disgust for October 7th. But it's just incredibly easy for me to understand that if I or you were actually in their situation, if we'd been unlucky enough to be born there and had known nothing else, our take would not merely be, "I would like to return to my home."

We would be, totally justifiably, filled with rage at the injustice we and our parents and possibly their parents had endured. We would hate the regime that had killed likely dozens of our loved ones with impunity for decades. We would likely believe that there was no way to reason with these evil, barbaric oppressors. We would see the West, the people who have funded, armed, and provided unconditional political cover for this barbarity against us for decades, as the real terrorists, not Iran or probably even, in most cases, Hamas. And we would not, for example, joke about being a penguin while we talked about this stuff.

I'm not saying that last one to be mean or judgemental, I think you're great, I think I get why you do it, but I'm trying to impress upon you the vast difference between your (and my) default worldview and the experiences that have formed it, and the experiences and the worldview of the people we're talking about.

Without sincerely trying to bridge that divide, without learning about the Palestinians' experience (I am constantly shocked by how few people really know anything about what they've been through), without thinking as deeply as we can about what they're going through and how unjust it must feel to them (and, in my opinion, how unjust it just objectively is), it's impossible to understand even a fraction of their situation. And it becomes frighteningly easy to treat the deaths of tens of thousands of people, and an out of control regime that may yet drag us all into WWIII, as a fun, philosophical exercise.

So yes, I'm very focused on the wider political machinations. The potential consequences are horrifying. Even if not for myself, for the innocent people of Palestine and Israel and the entire region. But I'm also horrified by the specific injustices in Gaza and the West Bank. And more horrified still to see how many in the West are struggling to extend any genuine empathy to these people.