Not Silence

I read the news today, oh boy
About a lucky man who made the grade
And though the news was rather sad
Well, I just had to laugh
I saw the photograph

He blew his mind out in a car
He didn't notice that the lights had changed
A crowd of people stood and stared
They'd seen his face before

It’s hard for me to look at the news right now. It’s hard for anyone, I know that. Much, much harder for some. I only glance at the headlines because it’s all I can do. My mind is brittle. It snaps at the smallest thing. After a few years of having to look my own personal horrors in the eye every day with an unflinching gaze, I have lost my nerve.

I am at that pitch where self-preservation has to come first. What good am I to anyone if I can’t answer the phone without shaking like a leaf for fear of bad news, the worst news? What good can I do if I am so overwhelmed I can do nothing? What can I give to others if I have nothing left for myself? Right now, my cupboard is bare.

I know that it is a privilege for me to be able to choose whether I look or not. I am warm. I am safe. I have food and clothes and a home and people who love me. I am one of the lucky ones. I know that. I also know that throwing myself into the path of danger is not going to help anyone and will definitely harm me.

But;

I have friends who are in real anguish about the situation in Israel and Palestine right now. Their faith, their families, the place that means so much to them. It is too much. And they are the people who can’t look away, no matter how sad the news. I am so bitterly sorry for their pain, for their loss, for the horrors that are still being heaped upon them.

And it is incredibly hard to know what to say, because as we all know, the situation is complicated. Complicated is a pretty ineffective word for what it is in all honesty. I have been thinking in the last few days about what, if anything I could say that might be of use to anyone who is hurting right now.

Whatever I say, there will be those who are angry about it, no doubt. It is the way of our times. Everything has to be either praised or condemned. And everyone is supposed to have an opinion about everything, even when they might be confused or bewildered or ignorant or frightened of putting their head above the parapet and getting it kicked in. It’s a hornet’s nest.

And who cares what I say, really? In the grand scheme of things I am a nothing and a nobody. There are thousands, if not millions of people out there right now, posting their thoughts and prayers, their hot takes and their legitimate griefs and sorrows. Won’t anything I say just add to all that noise and detract from what is important? Probably.

But I am aware that by my silence, I am saying something already. I don’t for one moment want my friends to think that I don’t care about them and their pain, because these are the people who reach out to me in my pain.

I cannot begin to understand the politics of the region. I cannot begin to understand the long running tensions between Israel and Palestine and all the ugly fanaticism that swills about, muddying the water and giving people excuses to say and do the most hateful things. I am wise enough to know what I don’t know and that I can’t say much except that I am sorry for my ignorance.

What I can say is that as with all these situations, where the beliefs of one set of people are held to be more important than the beliefs of another set of people and those beliefs are used as a righteous excuse to harm people, terrible things happen to innocent people. When ‘this is the way and there is no other’ becomes weaponised it is always to the detriment of those people who just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, no matter where they are born or what religion they are, or what the leaders of their country dictate.

It can never be right to condemn people because of things that are outside of their control. It can never be right to rejoice in slaughter. It can never be ok to excuse inhumanity because of a cause, whatever that cause is. It is never fair to blame people for a regime that they live under, often without choice.

These are my words. They’re too little, too late. They’re clumsy and inelegant. They fail in a thousand ways to address suffering and death and loss and the fear of what is to come, but they are not silence.