This photo fills me with disgust.

It’s not hard to understand why so many people have such a problem with the western world when I see things like this.
We who are so privileged and so detached from what is happening elsewhere on the globe.
We who live in countries run by companies whose only interest is profit and will stop at nothing to guarantee their wealth.
We who get twisted and manipulated reports of what is really going on but are too lazy or too scared to look into what the truth might be.
For fear it may inconvenience our lives. Shake the flimsy version of “truth” we tell ourselves to stay comfortable.

How can they not loath us?

We say we’re sorry for the atrocities we’ve committed in the past, that we have learned from our ways and changed. We pull down statues and put up new national holidays with moments of silence sprinkled here and there, as a token of our remorse, and “lest we forget”.

But it seems we have forgotten.
For what have we actually learned? How have we changed?

The majority of us sit silently by while atrocities happen.
Silent for fear that speaking up may affect how our privileged peers see us.
Or that “the algorithm” may throttle our views and thus diminishing our own income or popularity.
We show no support to those who suffer pain we could never even imagine, when all they ask is that we speak up for them. That we share their story when they cannot.
It doesn’t even require us to leave our couch, and yet we seem incapable as a society to show any type of solidarity.

I read a caption from a journalist on the ground in Gaza the other day stating:
“How cinematic it is! A lot of what is going on in front of my eyes I saw it before through movies! Our lives here is a big movie and you all watch and whenever you want you switch the channel. Thank you for doing nothing to stop killing us.” (- @Motaz_azaiza on instagram)

And it’s true. When we feel too overwhelmed by the state of the world we do a “digital detox” or stay off social media for a while. We step away from it because otherwise it may be ‘too much’.
We get warnings on content that might be “too graphic” for fear we may see grossness of which we are complicit to in our silence.

But those on the ground don’t get to just turn it off when it becomes too much. They don’t have the option take a break from it all because it’s a little overwhelming.

How do we justify being a so called ‘sophisticated society’ or a ‘spiritual community’ when we sit idly by while children die.
This isn’t just going to magically “go away” because we in the west find it uncomfortable.

It’s time to speak up.
This is not ok.

#ceasefire