THIS MOMENT FEELS DIFFERENT. SOMETHING NEW IS in the air.
Of course, everything is always changing. Impermanence is the way of life. Philosophers, theologians, and poets have reminded us for centuries that the only constant is change. As the late, great Nina Simone once put it:
Young becomes old
Mysteries do unfold
’Cause that’s the way of time
Nothing, and no one, remains the same
Still, I think I am not alone in sensing that this year feels different. Something new is in the air.
Some would say it is the stench of death. We can smell it now, almost taste it. Tens of thousands of people have been killed in Gaza in just a few months with our bombs—mass murder funded by our government, aided and abetted by our military, paid for by our tax dollars. We have been told by our government that we are not witnessing genocide.
And yet I, like millions of other people around the world, have watched. I have watched the hearings at the International Court of Justice in The Hague in the case brought by South Africa accusing Israel of committing genocide—hearings that mainstream news outlets refused to air.
But that is not all that I have watched. For more than 150 days, I have watched videos that have traveled around the globe. I have watched as mothers have pulled body parts of their dead children out of rubble, then gathered the pieces—hands, arms, legs—into bags and carried these remains down the street in agony, with grieving relatives wailing and trailing behind them. I have watched as fathers have sprinted to buildings that have just been bombed, arriving in time to learn that their entire family is dead. I have watched as children in hospitals have been told: “Your mother did not survive, and neither did your father, or your sister, or your uncle.” I have seen nurses try to reassure these children, “I am here, little one, I am here for you,” even though the child’s whole family is gone, lost in the rubble. I have
