"This time it's all of us or none"
With people all around posting "I stand with", I've been conspicuously absent from social media this week, struggling very deeply with how it's possible to stand with anyone or anything on such shaky ground, how it's possible to respond in any way to such atrocities.
At the risk of making something so huge about me (but isn't that how we humans process things?), as a left-wing Jew, I have never in my life felt so alienated from both my identity communities.
People I love and respect calling for or apologising for genocide and war crimes. It doesn't matter who by or who upon. It is horrifying. How have we come to this? How can we get past it?
And I know this trauma is nothing compared to those under the bombs or in front of the guns. But I cannot stop shaking. There's no steady ground. How can you stand? Let alone stand with?
One thing I want to clearly observe is that it feels like the very idea of nonviolence is taking a horrific battering, as people rush to one side or another, concluding that wiping the other off the face of the Earth is the only solution.
[more to follow]