This is excerpted from a longer essay and deeper dive, "Personal and Global Reckoning, and Gaza". You can read it HERE
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In the mirror of Gaza, we do not just see empire’s violence“over there”: we see the faces of those who enable it here in our governments, in our communities and in ourselves.
Gaza is not only a test of conscience, it is an x-ray of ourconditioning and our belief systems.
Some cheer it openly, calling all Palestinians “terrorists", “human animals”, “vermin”, “scum”… just as other peoples have been dehumanised before in every genocide in history.
Some hide behind spiritual mantras: “It’s their karma,”“It’s an illusion,” “I cannot judge.” “It’s an old timeline.”
Others take refuge in “it’s complicated” or “both sides”, waiting for the moment it is safe to speak, long after the killing is done.
This is not neutrality, but rather, complicity dressed up as wisdom, or caution, or pragmatism.
We defend the very systems committing the crimes because to admit their illegitimacy would shatter our comfort, our security, our story of how the world works.
And so we follow orders, spoken or unspoken, whether that means dropping a bomb, pulling a trigger, turning away or saying nothing at all.
History, and in our museums and literature and films of the future… will not mistake retroactive solidarity for resistance, protection and Love. It will not confuse delayed empathy and outrage with courage.
And Gaza will remember. Not just the bombs and bulldozers, but the silence and abandonment by the world.
Breaking this cycle starts with refusing to accept the conditioning that makes mass murder seem normal, inevitable, spiritual or invisible. It starts with naming what is happening, while it is happening.
We do it because it matters in real-time to real people, right now. And because it matters with respect to what we are co-creating in allowing all red lines and all laws and rights to be blown up to support mass murder.
The mirror of Gaza is showing us who we are....
The only question is: will we keep looking away… or will we meet our own gaze, and act?
→ Explore further: [RISE UP: In Times of Great Upheaval, the Awakened Rise] — (HERE) — where we go from disillusionment to awakening with clarity and courage.
(c) Fatima Bacot. All rights reserved.