I respect your lived experience, and acknowledge that the suffering imposed on your community was completely indefensible. The fact that systemic racism continues to this day is a shameful condemnation of our society.

I suggest that, while feeling pain for the suffering of other innocents anywhere shows your humanity, one must account for Israel's right and even duty to defend herself and her citizens.

Is Israel completely innocent of all wrongdoing? Of course not. It is a pluralistic society with various groups vying for power, just as we are here. Unfortunately, the insane evil of Hamas and its ilk have pushed Israel's society fast enough to the hawkish right that Netanyahu was able to regain power with a messianic extreme right wing government at just the wrong moment in time to embolden Hamas into the horrific inhuman actions of Oct 7, and to launch into a now-justified war against it that can do nothing other than cause massive loss of innocent life.

I truly wish there was another way, but until Hamas is destroyed as a functioning organization, it will continue to exact a hard-to-bear cost in innocent lives on both sides.