World Reflections
On Starvation
I guess this post is to my fellow man. I don’t undersand how you justify or rationalize what is going on in our world. How do you say nothing? Express nothing?
In a call back to 9th or 10th grade, I did a project for English class on the Holocaust. I distinctly remember the photos taken of the dead and the survivors from the various concentration camps by the American military that rescued them. The corpses and the emaciated bodies of the living looked so similar, you weren’t questioning the inhumane treatment the Jews and other groups suffered. My short essay was an attempt to convey coming to grips with the fact that fellow humans allowed that atrocity to happen. Looking at it in 2004/2005, there was no denying the evil of it, and a universal vow to be better was understood.
Yet just this yesterday morning, I saw another picture of an emaciated 2 year-old Palestinian boy in his mother’s arms, with their whole family behind them, starving to death. That 2 year-old boy, and so many others are beginning to look like those Holocaust survivors and the dead. What do you see?
I’m at a loss for how few people are realizing, or expressing the realization that these people in Gaza are on the precipice of being ethnically cleansed. Not just bombs here, there, everywhere or firing at starving refugees approaching for food. Not just EMTs and other personnel being targeted by the IDF in an attack, or bombing the clearly marked World Central Kitchen vehicles, everyone in Gaza is in the same boat, including the press.
A lot is made about Israel vs. Palestine and antisemitism. Yet here we are, seeing the visible signs of a slow and painful killing of another group of people, with no signs of rescue for the Palestinians. And America does nothing. Who are we to let this happen, with full knowledge of the history of fascism? Cutting off aid across the world? Incarcerating immigrants and soon people with disablilites or institutionalizing the unhoused.
It’s important to know your values, and speak up for the people that can’t. Express support. Push back. Because too many in power, including the US, is actively supporting and enabling evil, and we will have to reckon with that for our lifetime.
