I highlighted with approval much of your post. But I'm sorry Aaron Bushnell was not brave and he likely was mentally ill from years of various forms of abuse. Moreover, I cannot and will not sit by and watch you describe the human rights violations as genocide on the part of the Israelis (with whose policies I do not agree). Where is your plea for Jews' right to life? Where is your acknowledgment that Hamas's charter is based on genocide? Are you blindly ignorant of this fact or do you just choose to ignore it? Moreover, equating Israel's actions with genocide renders the word meaningless.

I agree with this NYT column for which I provide all a gift link, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/16/opinion/israel-hamas-war-genocide.html?unlocked_article_code=1.ZE0.uzdA.7KvcVw1g0W8k&smid=url-share

"It’s obscene because it politicizes our understanding of genocide, fatally eroding the moral power of the term. The war between Israel and Hamas is terrible — as is every war. But if this is genocide, what word do we have for the killing fields in Cambodia, Stalin’s Holodomor in Ukraine, the Holocaust itself?

Words that come to mean much more than originally intended eventually come to mean almost nothing at all — a victory for future génocidaires who’d like the world to think there’s no moral or legal difference between one kind of killing and another."

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At first, I was conflicted, https://medium.com/illumination-curated/an-ambivalent-essay-no-a-multivalent-essay-on-the-israel-hamas-conflict-11d067aaff12, subtitled Ambivalence doesn’t mean not caring — it means having mixed feelings about something — I stand with Israel but also pray for peace for all, but having to choose and under the early circumstances, I chose Israel. I wanted Hamas eliminated. I have come to realize that will not happen, and thus arrived at a place of an opportunity for lasting change has to be seized, including a mindset change within Israel. Thomas Friedman wrote a great column proposing an elegant solution (another gift link). https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/31/opinion/biden-iran-israel.html?unlocked_article_code=1.SE0.xRGs.I75GKD_RUHbJ&smid=url-share

Instead of challenging us to look within and examine our positions and declare your false moral supremacy, ask yourself why you are taking sides in this post instead of purely praying for peaceful solutions to thousands of years of politically, ethnically, and religiously motivated conflict. You claim to come from a place of we are all one human race, a position I share.

Here's a poem I wrote back in August:

Men

Women

Human race

All God’s children

Superconsciousness

Connecting all our souls

Black white brown yellow and red

So many colors form rainbow

Incarnate across species spectrum

Spirits gain full human experience

Villains, victims, lovers, haters, and saints

Life’s plays need actors for all these roles

Not judged for good and evil deeds

Juried for how well played parts

What we learned from process

What work still remains

Eat the apple

As Adam

or Eve

Live

I've said enough for now, which I said with much restraint.