How will we explain to our grandchildren that for 19 months we watched the world’s first livestreamed genocide? We saw the causalities mount, hospitals bombed, homes and apartments leveled, children’s limbs torn apart, entire families massacred, journalists gunned down and doctors abducted and tortured. Atrocity after atrocity and we did nothing.

While some took to the streets in protest, many more ignored the genocide, as if it were an inconvenience, interfering with their daily lives. When our grandchildren ask, “But what about those who protested? Couldn’t they have stopped the genocide?” We will have to explain that students who protested were frequently expelled from their universities. Some were even jailed. Professors who spoke out for Palestine were frequently fired.

When our grandchildren take all this in and ask, “I still don’t understand. How could the world let this happen?” we pause before delivering a painful truth, “We lost our humanity. We lost our humanity because we ignored the genocide and allowed it to continue until Gaza was no more.”

Pat Taub
Portland