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A few more perspectives:

>> This is Genocide.
>> As Long as there’s Division, my Children—Our Children—will Never Be Safe.
>> Kidnapping Children is a Red Line—it Cannot be Accepted or Tolerated.
>> Powerful Words for Israel, Palestine & Everyone who’s on the Side of Humanity.

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No, I can no longer look at those images.
No, I do not want to know more details of what was done to those children, to those women.
I’ve seen enough.
I already know what humans are capable of.
And no—they are not animals.
It’s too easy to put that distance, to say they are “not like us”
And then bomb them in rage and disgust.

No, they are human.
Humans did this, not animals.
Humans like you and me.

Yes, take that in.
Just like music-loving and poetry-writing Europeans only two generations ago made soap from
human fat and lamp shades from human skin—stories I grew up on…talk about trauma.
Yes, they were humans too.

Human men have always raped women during wars to mark their territory.
Actually, human men don’t need wars to rape women.
Priests abusing children, witch hunts
The Inquisition, slave owners, Ku Klux Klan, genocide, colonialism, racism.

Whom are you calling animals?
Let’s look in the mirror.
Parents beating and violating children in secrecy of their homes,
Men and women sharing the same bed, hating each other, destroying each other.

No, those people you call terrorists and animals—they are just like us,
You and me.
That is what terrifies me more than anything.
They are humans,
And the whole range of humanity is within you and me.
Let’s look at that: what compels us to want to torture another human?

Yeah, makes me nauseous too.
But no, I’m no longer deflecting;
I am feeling it.
Time to decide how we want to human from now on.
And it starts with each one of us.

A lot of my work is founded on un-shaming humanness.
This week forced me to look at parts of what that means that I never wanted to see.
I do not condone the horrors we are capable of.
I have been in agony this whole week—owning my part in choosing ignorance.
But when we dare to face the darkness within, and see it, and own it,
we free ourselves to actually choose:

Who do I want to be?
How do I want to human?

Change begins with each one of us.

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