NEVER AGAIN FOR WHOM? A RECKONING IN GAZA

Rafah is burning. Gaza is dying. And the world, once again, is failing the test of its own humanity.

Let’s start with the numbers. As of March 29, 2025:

• Over 50,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 7.

• More than 15,000 of them were children.

• Over 113,000 people have been wounded, many with life-altering injuries.

• 1,060 healthcare workers, 399 aid workers, and 173 journalists have been killed.

• Entire families have been erased.

• Whole neighborhoods leveled.

• And just days ago, nine paramedics responding to an emergency in Rafah vanished. The latest reports accuse the Israeli military of executing them, destroying their vehicles, and burying the evidence.

Meanwhile, the Israeli army confirms that at least 49 of its own soldiers have died due to friendly fire—a quiet irony in a war waged with such presumed precision.

And the bombs keep falling.

And the U.S. keeps sending more.

THE JUSTIFICATION

October 7th.

A date that lives in horror. On that day, Hamas launched a brutal assault on Israeli civilians—massacres, kidnappings, rapes, and terror in its rawest form. No one should minimize what happened. No one should forget the images of burning homes, of terrified families, of bodies pulled from wreckage.

It was evil.

But evil does not give you a blank check for atrocity.

What followed has not been a “response.” It has been a siege. An unrelenting campaign of collective punishment carried out in broad daylight and defended in carefully scripted press briefings.

It is not self-defense to kill tens of thousands of civilians. It is not self-defense to bomb hospitals, to starve children, to deny water, fuel, and medical supplies to an entire population. That is not defense.

That is eradication.

NEVER AGAIN?

For months, defenders of this war have pointed to October 7 as the moral foundation of everything that followed. They invoke the Holocaust, the pogroms, the ghettos. They say: Never again. They say: We know what it’s like to be hunted.

But somewhere in that inherited trauma, they have lost the thread.

Because if you truly remembered what it was like to be hunted, you would not become the hunter.

If Never Again only applies to your own people, it is not a moral principle. It is a slogan. A shield. A weapon.

It is one thing to grieve ancestral trauma. It is another to use it to rationalize dropping U.S.-made bombs on displaced children.

The grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Holocaust survivors did not crawl out of cattle cars. They did not hide in cellars. They did not climb over barbed wire with numbers burned into their arms. They inherited pain—but also power. And now, some of them use that power not to build peace, but to bury their enemies.

Never Again has become Never Again for us. Silence for everyone else.

AND THE UNITED STATES?

Let’s not pretend we’re innocent bystanders.

The U.S. has funded this war to the tune of billions. We veto ceasefires. We supply the weapons. We offer PR cover while bodies pile up in makeshift morgues.

We claim the moral high ground while standing ankle-deep in blood.

This country has no authority left—not after Vietnam, not after Iraq, not after Fallujah, Abu Ghraib, My Lai, drone strikes, torture sites, and a century of propping up authoritarian regimes.

We dropped napalm on children. We bombed weddings. We turned Guantánamo Bay into a legal black hole and called it justice. We weaponized democracy, colonized with diplomacy, and now we pretend to be shocked when Israel does the same with American backing.

Our hands are not just dirty—they’re red.

So when our officials say they support a “rules-based international order,” the world laughs. Or screams.

Because there is no moral order when you can flatten a city and call it policy.

THE LIES

They say it’s complicated. It’s not.

They say they only target militants. But the death toll says otherwise.

They say Hamas uses civilians as shields. As if that absolves them from killing civilians anyway.

They say journalists are biased. Then they kill 173 of them.

They say medics are hiding terrorists. Then they execute nine and bomb the hospitals.

They say the children are tragic—but never say their names. Never show their photos. Never let them interrupt the narrative.

They say “ceasefire” is too simplistic. They say “genocide” is too strong. They say “proportionality” as if they’re balancing a scale and not incinerating a people.

THE CHOICE

What we are witnessing is not just a humanitarian crisis.

It is a moral collapse.

It is the erasure of a people in real time—with the full knowledge of the world.

And that means you—right now—have a choice:

You can sit in your discomfort and call it neutrality.

You can scroll past the images and call it balance.

You can stay quiet and call it “complicated.”

Or you can tell the truth. Even if your voice shakes. Even if it costs you. Even if it means saying what you were taught never to say.

Because Never Again means nothing if it doesn’t mean right now.

Not for some.

For everyone.

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