There’s so much more to say and nothing left to say at the same time, which is exactly what people say when they’re on the verge of a mental breakdown and also still somehow scrolling the internet for answers. So yeah.
It’s been 600 days since Hamas carried out the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, and that sentence still doesn’t feel real—even after typing it a hundred times and hearing it in speeches and press releases.
AND YET.
Here we are.
I have these number seared into my brain:
1,200 Israelis murdered.
Over 360 slaughtered at a music festival—a peace festival, by the way.
250 taken hostage.
58 still held in Hamas captivity. Less than half of whom are believed to be alive.
These numbers should have shattered the world’s conscience. Instead, they kicked off the world’s grossest pissing contest of who has it worse.
Somehow, the world’s reaction went from “This is horrific!” to “Actually this was anti-colonial liberation, you Zionist pigs.”
Like, what?! Blink twice if you’ve been radicalized by an infographic.
Some of y’all really read the news of women being raped beside the corpses of their best friends and thought, “But let’s talk about the IDF checkpoints.” That’s like walking past a burning building and asking what they charge for rent.
Look, I get it. The history of Israel and Palestine is complicated.
So are my taxes, but I don’t go around burning IRS agents and their families over it.
What happened on Oct 7 isn’t complicated.
It was mass murder. It was rape. It was terror.
These guys literally live-streamed their horrors and bragged about it.
F*ck those guys.
Where we stand 600 days later, though, unfortunately is complicated.
How do we get the remaining 58 hostages released from Hamas captivity?
Neither Hamas nor Bibi seem particularly interested in ending the war, because why solve something when you can just prolong human suffering forever and stay in power?
Also how do you even end a war that leaves Hamas in power? There’s really no good answers.
600 days ago I was naively optimistic that the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust (said it again) would inspire the world’s leaders to take action and help Israelis and Palestinians remove Hamas from power. That didn’t happen. And now I am more cynical that things are just in a perpetual stand-still.
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