Where Do I Stand??

It has been four months and twelve agonizing days of relentless genocide on Palestine. The images and videos making rounds on Social media haunt me. Children who are innocent and pure are now victims of a never-ending violence. Their hungry cries cut through the chaos while their tiny bodies bears the scars of a war they never chose.

Thousands of children have died, while thousands more are enduring an unimaginable pain and suffering, their childhoods stolen by the brutality of war. In the Gaza Strip, a land once filled with laughter and hope, now a plain of ruins and desperation with families torn apart, homes reduced to rubble, and futures shattered.

Yet amidst this horror, someone has the audacity to ask, “Where do you stand? With Israel or with Palestine?” The question itself is a sharp reminder of the grayness of our  Morality. But how is it a question of sides when the very essence of humanity is at stake?

We preach about justice, about compassion, about ensuring that no child should ever endure the terror of war, that no child should grow up in pain, fear and hunger and Yet, when confronted with the harsh reality, we falter. We stumble over political divides and ideological differences, forgetting that at the core of it all, we are bound by our shared humanity.

So where do I stand?

Do I stand with those whose lives are shattered by the cruelest of terrors, or do I stand with those who wield and use the instruments of destruction? Do I stand with the echoing cries of innocent children, or do I stand with the deafening roar of bombs raining down upon them? Where does my morality find its foothold? Where does my heart extend its deepest sympathies? 

You ask me to be neutral because, as they say, the situation in Palestine and Israel is complicated. I hear the arguments, the geopolitical complexities, the historical grievances. But in the middle of the tangled web of politics and power, there remains a simple truth: children are dying. Innocent lives are being torn apart by violence they did not choose, by conflicts they cannot comprehend.

So in the face of such suffering, how can I be neutral? How can I ignore the heartbreaking image of abandoned souls struggling to survive in a world gone mad, or the agonized cries of children? When futures are destroyed in an instant, when families are shattered, and when innocence is slaughtered, how can I possibly claim to be neutral when being neutral means being complicit?

It is easy to say, “I am neutral,” so as to retreat into the comfort of detachment when confronted with the horrors of war. But in the depths of my soul I know there is no neutrality in the face of such immeasurable suffering. There is no justification for standing idly by as children are robbed of their very existence, as their cries echo through the rubble of what was once their home.

So, where do I stand? I stand with the children of Palestine. I stand with their tears, their pain, and their longing for a world free from the horrors of war. I stand with the unwavering belief that in the face of such darkness, the light of compassion must shine brightest. I stand with a world where children play and roam free, a world that doesn’t hunt its own offspring. I stand with the desperate calls of mothers, fathers and children to stop the persecution.

And though the path forward may be distressed with uncertainty, I refuse to be neutral in the face of injustice and despair.