Everything has changed since 10/7. No one I know has the same old habits since 10/7. What people carry within them when they go to work or walk to class is no longer the same.
Ever since my friend Hersh was taken hostage and killed after almost a year in captivity, the weight I carry with me is a little heavier.
10/7 has pervaded every aspect of my life – including my work in journalism. I do not usually write opinion pieces, but ever since we find out every week whose special boy or powerful girl was killed in combat, it is hard to remain one-dimensional in my work. Ever since we have found new ways for my people to grieve, it is difficult to stick to sports. Ever since we see more news about the hostages, it is difficult to focus my journalistic work on Maryland athletics.
My work is in sports, but my Judaism is in everything I do.
When I scroll through Instagram every day, it is frustrating to see people not acknowledge or share posts about the hostages. Those same people do recognize pain and share posts of groups of people in horrific conditions, but they ignore the pain of the hostages and those who know them.
Our capacity for empathy does not have to be limited to one side, but hate and ignorance make that a reality. How can you be outraged by human suffering and people losing their homes, but not the Jewish ones taken from theirs? How can you oppose corrupt governments, but not the one that kidnapped and killed Jewish people who were once dancers?
Every kind of suffering is awful, and I – along with almost every Jew I know – want peace for everyone involved. But as you go about your day, you overlook the fact that there are people being held hostage. Right now.
While you were curious how many likes your latest Instagram story had, we were wondering if Ariel and Kfir Bibas got enough to eat today. Before Hamas murdered them.
You are allowed to repost things that push for the peace of Palestinians and a better world for Gaza, AND talk about the hostages. We would have more clarity of where your heart really is. If your heart really is in the right place.
Despite being Jewish and knowing so many Jews, you still neglect our pain. I do not want to change your mind or have an argument with you. I just want you to know that your actions – and lack of actions – have hurt me and so many other people. I am not writing in response to what you post, but what you choose not to post.
Instead, you share things like this.
You would kill over one thousand people in one day? You would hold hostages for over a year? You would publicize psychological torture for the world to see? You would lie to families that their held-captive loved one is dead?
Or this:
You question my religion but use that same religion as a justification for your questioning of what is going on. Dayenu. It’s enough. Enough of the contradiction.
But it’s not just you.
Where are the female right’s activists? Where are the feminists? Where is Oprah Winfrey? Where is Emma Watson?
Where are all of the celebrities that push for women’s rights? Why have they been so silent for the last year and a half while Jewish women have been tortured, raped and killed?
And if you read my writing and ask, “but what about what is going on in…?”
Please stop. Do not waste your energy. We are all angry and sad. But I guess you are not when it comes to the hostages – or Jewish people, for that matter.
As Rachel Goldberg-Polin said, “in a competition of pain, there are no winners.”
