I’ve noticed I’m having very different conversations with my white friends to the ones I’m having with my non white friends about #Gaza. I can’t do thought experiments and academic debates on Gaza anymore. Notice that when you talk to your Black, Brown and non white friends, they may be struggling to talk about Palestine in the same way that we might talk about other political issues. It is because we are in pain. It’s because what’s happening has reminded all of us that everything we’ve been taught about equality and justice for all - all of it is a lie.. we aren’t equally human in the eyes of the people that rule us. We never were. In the UK, we grew up with the myth that there was some acknowledgement of the crimes of colonialism in the world, some repentance - but the state and power structures around us cannot possibly have any shame for the crimes of the past when they continue to commit them in the present day in real time, to the extent of a live streamed genocide. What is happening in Palestine has opened up generational colonial wounds. Many of us are as close to the ethnic cleansing, murder of half our families, and mass displacement of our people - as a Jewish person to the Holocaust, and Palestinian to the Nakba (that has never ended). Colonialism ripped our parents, and grandparents worlds apart and we grew up with the scars. Colonialism never ended. We are all Palestinian right now.. it’s deeply personal and painful - and I cannot imagine the suffering of Palestinian friends and colleagues to carry not only the weight of history, but of love and loss with no justice in sight. These dispassionate debates are painful to me, I can only imagine what it must be like for my Palestinian friends to have the existence of your people discussed so coldly, as collective governments gaslight, lie and profit from genocide… Remember it is - or should be - personal to us all. #freegaza #EndTheGenocide #ceasefirenow