every single child is ours

I’ve thought about you every day for the last ten days.

I’ve started typing, and then deleted about 300 versions of what I am writing to you this morning, and it will probably still be wrong, or hurt someone in our community, so I want to apologize in advance. Not because I think there’s no moral high ground in this conflict, but because I know that us hating each other, only gives more fuel to the wrong side of it.

Like you, I’ve been witnessing the unfathomable violence and watched some of my closest friends and family members say things that I have found heartbreaking and unconscionable. I’ve struggled with feelings of anger, hurt and confusion and it’s made me avoid spending time with certain people that I otherwise care about and love. I’ve felt betrayed by celebrities that I’ve never met, for polluting my timeline with war propaganda and unsubstantiated claims from those openly carrying out ethnical cleansing. I found myself yelling at my screen: “the idealized version of you in my head would have never said that!”

I’ve wanted to scream so many times, but I’ve decided that shunning or rejecting people that I love and know to be good, is exactly what war mongers need to justify their crimes. I’m of course not telling you to stay in toxic relationships with people who deny the basic humanity of innocent civilians being slaughtered. But I do think that even those who are on the wrong side of history in this conflict, are victims too. In many cases, their deepest fears have been weaponized against them. Those who have a vested interest in this war, are extremely sophisticated in the way that they use people both as human shields and props in their war on information. People get killed by war, but they also get used by it. When I see us angrily pointing at each other, I can’t help but see the bad guys watch and rejoice. Turning us against each other, only helps them continue with impunity, while trying to understand one another is the most significant threat to their reign.

The biggest obstacle to war is not revenge— it is solidarity. When we create a movement that can hold two truths, that no Israeli deserves to die, and that no Palestinian deserves to be killed, we become unstoppable in the face of hate. It’s the beginning of a conversation rather than the end of a debate. Love isn’t just a feeling, if done well, it always has the power to change us.

“Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.” -James Baldwin

And while I recognize the need for civil discourse, there’s simply no debate when children get killed. They are ours, and they have been harmed under our watch. We brought them into this world, and it’s our job to keep them safe. Our inability to do so is our failure, not theirs. Instead of shouting at each other over their miniature caskets, let’s be the adults we claim we are, and promise them a plan for peace. As James Baldwin once wrote, “the children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe; and I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of morality. Or, I am saying, in other words, that we, the elders, are the only models children have.”

Be please be wary of those in power who believe that dead babies are just a natural casualty. And if you find yourself agreeing or even amplifying the words of those who are openly starving and bombing families, take a minute and ask yourself if what they’ve been telling you is true. If they can lie about war crimes, what else have they lied to you about?

Children will believe everything they’re told, but you don’t have to. “What we see in the children is what they have seen in us–or, more accurately perhaps, what they see in us,” Baldwin wrote. How do you want these children to remember you?