The escalating Israeli/Palestinian situation is horrific. Today Addam Yekutieli (aka Know Hope; @thisislimbo) wrote this on Instagram, with images from words he wrote on walls in Europe and Tunisia during the Israel-Gaza war 2014. Words that are tragically still relevant now.

“Revisiting some pieces from the time of the Israel-Gaza war in 2014.

About a week into the fighting, I left for a few months for projects around Europe and Tunisia and throughout this time, witnessed the atrocities taking place from afar.
It was a difficult and extremely surreal experience that brought forth feelings of shame, anger, disorientation and immense heartbreak.

Throughout this time, I wrote these phrases on walls in Austria, Italy, Tunisia and Germany. Like an organic diary of sorts, I used these different spots as moments for reflection. Walls or locations that visually reminded me of a human condition, an emotional situation, places that felt personified by adding thoughts or words onto them that reflected my processing of the events that were going on thousands of kilometers away.

How the barbarity of war reveals the worst of ourselves, collectively and individually, internally and externally.

How people can be hypnotized to believing that there is no other way, how we so easily succumb to the arrogance of war, the self righteousness that indoctrinates and justifies our acts of violence.

How we look to place guilt anywhere besides on ourselves in order to rationalize the unthinkable.

How we’re not willing to admit what a high price we all pay for this.

How we are shortsighted and fail to see that what is happening is a result of generations of dispossession, humiliation and systemic and systematic oppression.

How we are complicit in sustaining, enforcing and perpetuating this reality for the Palestinian people- even if we're not violent people on an individual level, even if we only keep to ourselves and live our small lives.

How stubborn we are to insist on erroneous terminology to describe this reality.
How in any other context, in any other place, with any other narrative, we would understand this and condemn these systems.

How this reality might give us a sense of safety, but at the expense of a vast population of people indigenous to this land. A people that are fighting for their freedom- of movement, of believing in a future and for their dignity to live a full life.

How on one hand we have our own personal histories ingrained in our psyche but on the other hand are not aware that we are using our generational trauma to justify causing new generational trauma to others.
How it's as if we haven't learned anything, so from within our denial our trauma has mutated into a monster that will end up devouring us all, a Golem that is unaware of its own self.

How the Occupation is an ongoing process, how it continues to morph and get more elaborate and its engineering more sophisticated.

How we all so actively make sure that we don't lower our guards and take a moment to reflect what we would do if we were in the same situation, without insisting on resorting to cold pragmatism.

Looking back at this and reliving my thoughts, partially through a more current prisma, I'm not surprised at how little has changed.
It emphasizes how much unlearning needs to take place and how urgent the need for the myths that paralyze our morality and overbear our empathy need to be dispelled.

Realistically, these were just words written with spray paint on a wall. Words that can mean anything to anyone, or nothing at all. That they can be loaded and filled with interpretation or be empty of meaning.

Ultimately, it's our choice to see reality and what's in front of us in the way that we do.”