Resilience is an extraordinary thing.
We don't share many videos here of everyday citizens in Gaza. Many of us see them elsewhere, but here there's a deep fear of aiding and abetting simply for the audacity of keeping humans human in war.
It makes this space a bit more siloed than some.
This is a gentle video about urban gardening in wartime Gaza. Its lesson? Wherever we are, whatever hardships exist, there is always good we can do for one another. That is all.
https://youtu.be/dCh1huJCb8w
@MLClark it’s difficult to see the destruction and I understand how important hope and resilience are but I would not endanger my children when safety is teen y miles down the road. I hope the innocents will be alright and they can rebuild after the war.
I know you think there are any truly "safe" places in the Gaza Strip, such that a solution to suffering seems so obvious and easy. I remember when the first mass evac from the north was ordered on very short notice, you expressed similar comments judging locals for how they gauged risk.
This is a point on which we disagree, but the safety *to* disagree is one of the benefits of a healthy democracy.
I'm glad that you still hope for a better future for civilians in this hurting world.
@MLClark I hate to see any suffering and I’m solution oriented. I know if I had to crawl out of there, that is what I’d do. I’ve had friends from Vietnam who left and returned to nothing and I worked with refugees from all over, early on. I understand it’s not simple. I know people are in shock but I’ve also been working in relief situations where I had to help people get to safety & have lived in a part of the world where terrorism took hold. That’s why I take a hard stance against Hamas.
We all have reasons for our POVs, and different beliefs about how terrorism is fuelled and defeated.
People in Gaza have been internally displaced many times, or killed in transit, "safe" areas, and while waiting for visas out of the strip.
For perspective: ~6 million Ukrainians became refugees in 2022. Do we judge the ones who stayed? Men who weren't allowed to leave, elders who couldn't?
Or are they spared that judgment because they didn't live under a gov't we despise to start?
Agreed, Tacitus.
After 9/11, the Jingoist thing to do was depict everyone in Afghanistan as cave-dwelling primitives who all wanted to exterminate the West.
After Feb 24, 2022, the net was flooded with rhetoric about how all Russians were born and bred sociopaths, rotten to the core.
After Oct 7, same deal in two directions. All Palestinians are X, all Israelis are Y.
At every Jingoist turn, we dehumanize and set blame on civilians for living in war-deranged times.
@MLClark @Museek This is only one aspect of our society that keeps me up at night trying to figure out a way to solve this problem. In fact, just discussing it here raises my anxiety because there's so much I want to say. But what are the words? You can't force people to be empathetic, compassionate or unbiased.
🫂 Raising anxiety isn't optimal. We're all witnesses through screens, and easy prey to news cycles that want to leverage our distress for everything from diplomatic and military goals, to electoral gains and the almighty dollar.
The original video was shared because it showed people leaning into what they can do *for their local communities*.
Trying to change the world in its entirety will only yield despair.
What you, Museek, and I can do where we are *is the way*.
@MLClark @Museek It's time we realize that circumstance makes all the difference. We are too easily led by our biases and misconceptions. There isn't always two sides to a story. Sometimes the plot offers a spectrum of circumstances.