Gaza

There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people. – Howard Zinn

Love the most powerful force we have. Many of us love deeply (which is good) but we don’t love widely. Loving deep but not wide can blinds us: we excuse the cruelty of those close to us and those that look like us. We ignore their wrongdoing.

True peace means expanding love even to those who have wronged us. Without that, history collapses into a cycle of vengeance. The Jewish people went through the gravest horror in the Holocaust. That wound should have ended the logic of vengeance. But it didn't. Most people don’t notice wrongdoing until it’s too late (when it happens in a mob, it happens in a fog), a kind of crowd psychology. That's why your average German great-grandparents were silent about the Holocaust. And when awareness finally kicks in, it often turns into guilt because it's too late to do anything. Overcome with shame for our passivity, we overcorrect. Instead of vigilance, we turn victims into untouchable figures, closing our eyes to their capacity for harm. That blindness paves the way for the next tragedy.

And that’s why many of us are silent today when the IDF repeats crimes in Gaza. Many people I love and adore and know to be sensitive souls have been ignorant of Gaza, not because they’re cruel, but because they’ve learned to treat this as “too complicated,” or because they fear being wrong, or because silence feels safer than risking their social world.

What’s needed is an honest observation and reliable memory. To notice wrongdoing when it happens. To stop it when it happens. To stop victims from becoming the new satan in town.

If you are alive with us now, then you are here. We are floating in this planet together. James Baldwin said: “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.” Love your child deeply (obviously). But love all children, too. Love wide.

Don’t wait for history to decide who was right and who was wrong. History often decides that very, very late. Are you literally going to wait this genocide out and read about it in 10 years, and then assess whether you were for or against that, and you will cry about it then? We retreat into history because history feels clean; the present feels messy, gray, hot to touch. But guess what, that messy, gooey present is what we actually can change. We can't change history. So don't wait for history and don't be silent. “Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”

I recognize that I'm not doing enough. However, for our second fund, we turned down all investors that are below the humanity threshold. We are intentionally staying away from the carnage in Silicon Valley. It is difficult to turn down money (trust me). I respect the ethical and moral standards of my partners. I look up to them, and I'm so grateful I'm not among people who are cruel, quiet, or indifferent. That's because.....

Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers – Susan Sontag

The moment we see cruelty, we must stand against it. Take even a small step today. "Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance."

I don't know you to be a coward, my dear and fellow human. But I know you to be brave.

“I have always felt that a human being could only be saved by another human being. I am aware that we do not save each other very often. But I am also aware that we save each other some of the time.” – James Baldwin