palestine

And not really that long, except maybe by modern-internet-induced-tiny-concentration-span standards.

It’s pretty heavy, but it – as the author explains – needs to be said.

My Personal Struggle In A Time Of Global Pain – Branko Brkic

Difficult to read in parts, and clearly deeply personal, but with many seemingly obvious, yet hugely important messages:

Such a divisive conflict was bound to offer rich pickings to horrible people everywhere.

Angry people conflated the violent actions of a small group of people with entire nations and religions, sparking hateful rhetoric and physical threats.

For all of us to have a future together, this has to stop. Anti-Semitic, anti-Palestinian and anti-Islamic attacks cannot be explained away.
The tragedy of the Palestinian and Israeli people is that they are led by “leaders” who have a “greater mission” on their minds, one that does not concern itself with civilian deaths.

Sadly, he is, of course, absolutely right.

It’s been a weekend filled with local violence, the occasional threat against Cape Town schoolchildren, more of the usual disinformation and misinformation and more of the usual hyperbole and histrionics.

Unsurprisingly, social media has been a particularly unpleasant place to be, with a complete lack of tolerance throughout, and no willingness or effort to listen to anything that anyone on “the other side” has to say.
Ebola has nothing on the replies and threads that follow just about any article of comment on the situation in Israel and Gaza.

If there were such a thing as Biohazard Level 5, this would be it.

Reasonably, I wanted away from real life for a few minutes. I thought that I would find solace in the Daily Challenge on Geoguessr. And indeed, I seemed to have found it when I was unceremoniously – but happily – dumped in some semi-rural backwater in Pennsylvania. Peace. Tranquility. Half a world away from all those problems.

And then I turned myself around and found a glorious metaphor for the world at the moment:

Could it have been put any better? Sadly not.

Anyway, once we were done with that, I was popped into a forest in South East Latvia, which was much less telling about the general worldwide state of things.

And thus, much nicer.

Tag: palestine

Your long read (not by me)

Hopeless