Imagine it was your grandmother kidnapped, your father gunned down, your sister violated, or your baby massacred. And then a shockingly large swath of people started celebrating, throwing pep rallies, and posting praiseful comments about it. Can you imagine?
Perhaps you consider yourself an activist. Well, consider what you are activating: Harmony or hatred? Peace or punishment? Civilization or barbarism?
Yes, compassion should go both ways. We should grieve for the dead innocents on both sides. It is all heartbreaking.
You can hold two thoughts at once. You can condemn both the treatment of the Palestinian people by the Israeli government and the brutality unleashed by Hamas. Stop falling for the cheap pleasure of simplistic tribalism and embrace the hard nuance of truth.
There is time ahead for political statements and ideology. But for a few days at least, consider showing some common decency. Be a f*cking human being. Ask someone in pain if they’re doing okay. If you do, they’ll likely remember it forever. Be the kind of person you wish there were more of in the world.
The flow of trauma is vicious. You can be a conductor who passes it along or you can be a circuit breaker.
Also, tell jokes. It’s never too soon. No one is more humorless than religious fanatics. Be the antidote.
It’s pretty crazy that Hamas can get thousands of guys to show up on a Saturday morning at 5am to shoot Jews but I can’t even get three other dudes together to shoot hoops.
“Where the hell were our space lasers!? The Elders of Zion owe us a refund.”
-Jews
Peace.✌️
-Matt
[Posted a version of this to Instagram and The Artist Formerly Known as Twitter too.]
P.S. The level of ignorance coming out this week is astounding. Here’s a superb writeup from Isaac Saul that gets at the complexity of the situation in a non-partisan way (via my buddy Vivek). And here’s a good (and long) explainer video on the history of the conflict. Consume those and you’ll be ahead of 99% of the dolts spouting off about it.
Peace back at ya. And everyone else.
Superbly put, and on point. I’ve always enjoyed your posts, Matt, but this one is really special. That anyone would try to justify or rationalize this level of barbarity is simply astonishing.
At least the silver lining is that, like the right did at Charlottesville, the left has now shown its true antisemitic colors for the world to see. And that there has been backlash—in a better world, it wouldn’t have taken beheaded babies to finally generate some pushback... but alas we’re stuck in this one, so we take what we can, I suppose.
And yes, people seem to have forgotten that more than one thing can be true at a time. Even first graders understand that! Sigh.