Trigger warning: Politics, War, S.A. Sensitive topics will be discussed, which may be distressing for some audiences. Please read with care. Viewer discretion is advised.
Don't get me started on politics. Like. Too late. Okay.
Politics
Some people might choose to distance themselves from me for laying all of this out. I am at a point where I have to accept that reality, even if the loss hurts deeply. It is a strange, isolating place to inhabit.
Recently, I’ve had friends completely walk away from me simply because I refuse to support militant terrorist groups, cheer for the destruction of any nation, or turn a blind eye to the genocide of any group of people.
It has been incredibly painful to watch members of my own progressive political circles dump me over these baseline humanitarian views, simply because holding a consistent, unyielding stance against violence conflicts with a rigid internet narrative.
To me, selective empathy feels like a fundamental betrayal of the very values we claim to stand for. You shouldn't have to compromise your humanity to belong to a community. These are my honest thoughts and reflections right now.
Like anyone, my understanding is always evolving as I learn more, but my starting line will always remain the same: standing firmly with everyday civilians, no matter what flag flies over their heads.
I originally came up here to write a regular, lighthearted blog post about my day. But instead, the words just poured out. These are the thoughts that have completely plagued my consciousness every single day since the warfare in the Middle East intensified. It is heavy, it is overwhelming, and sometimes you just have to speak the truth to clear your head.
Holding Multiple Truths in a Fractured World
It breaks my heart to see how polarized the world has become. It feels like we are forced to pick a team, treat geopolitics like a sports match, and ignore the nuances of real human suffering. Lately, my consciousness has been plagued by the ongoing violence in the Middle East and across the globe.
I want to be clear: I stand firmly with civilians, always.
It terrifies me to see antisemitism hitting historic, terrifying highs globally, with massive surges in hate crimes reported right here in North America, with an average of 18 antisemetic incidents reported a day in Canada. (Source: 1, 2, 3) The swastikas plaguing New York City are unacceptable. (Source: 1, 2, 3) No group should live in fear because of their ethnicity or faith. At the same time, it deeply troubles me how extremist elements and literal neo-nazis try to co-opt legitimate human rights movements to spread ancient, hateful blood libels against Jewish people. (Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4) Calling out antisemitism shouldn't be controversial.
True humanitarianism means holding space for multiple realities at once:
- We must completely condemn the horrific, unconscionable terror attacks, sexual violence, and hostage-taking committed by Hamas on October 7th, which devastated so many families. Even my Jewish friend from highschool lost loved ones that day. It was not a hoax... that terrible event really happened.
- At the very same time, we must condemn the systemic injustice faced by Palestinians, including the unlawful occupation of territories, illegal land seizures, and the devastating dual legal system in the West Bank that human rights organizations recognize as apartheid.
Pushing for total destruction or the erasure of either nation is not the vibe. Advocating for one group to completely overtake the other only ensures endless civilian casualties. Every ethnic group has a fundamental right to exist in peace.
While it is entirely understandable that people feel immense grief and bitterness over the devastating Israeli/Palestinian conflict, I am deeply troubled by how that pain is being weaponized online. Over the last few years, I’ve watched a terrifying trend unfold where everyday digital spaces have turned into radicalization funnels. Shockingly, several of my own friends have slipped down alt-right and neo-nazi pipelines, rapidly adopting ancient blood libels and racist conspiracy theories. What makes this digital phenomenon so insidious is how it actively harms other marginalized groups. When Iranian activists speak out online about the structural violence of the Islamic Republic, or when Muslim Uyghurs try to raise awareness about the systemic oppression they face in China, their comment sections are instantly flooded with antisemitic harassment. Instead of receiving solidarity, these communities are routinely targeted and accused of being "Mossad agents" or being "paid off by Israel" simply for sharing their lived experiences. Even people who simply show these creators basic kindness get harassed with bizarre accusations.
It is an incredibly exhausting distortion of reality, and we need to say it clearly:
- No, Jewish people do not run the world.
- No, Jewish people do not own the U.S.A.
- No, Jewish people do not eat babies.
Amplifying Voices from Gaza
I've been trying to listen directly to the people who lived through these realities rather than just Western pundits. I have been following a Palestinian refugee named Lama, who does not support Hamas. She blames Hamas for the war and wants Palestine to co-exist with Israel. She gives me hope - she's such an innocent soul. She's an activist who's active on Tiktok and Instagram but I won't link her at this time because sometimes when she speaks out, her family in Gaza is targeted, and I don't want to make it any easier for her ops to track her down. You can Google her. My blog provides plausible deniability.
The reality is that Hamas is a designated terrorist group (Source: 1, 2, 3) that has been oppressing the Palestinian people of Gaza since 2007. There has not been an open election there ever since; as of 2026, they haven't had a vote in about 20 years. Palestinians are routinely kidnapped, tortured, and murdered by Hamas. (Sources: 1, 2, 3) They basically force everybody to act like they agree with them and they murder them if they don't. Gaza and Hamas were subsidized by Israel thru Qatar. With that money, Gaza could have been the next Dubai, but instead, Hamas spent the money on a massive tunnel system with military bases directly under hospitals and mosques, built with zero bomb shelters for civilians.
Recently, a Palestinian man has rose up to sue Hamas for human rights abuses. This man has lost his wife, children, and family members during the war in Gaza, and he claims that if Hamas had not committed war crimes against him and the Palestinian people, then his family and countless other Palestinians would still be alive today. Hamas is accused of using civilians as human meat shields - a common accusation against terrorist groups. Under international law (specifically the Geneva Conventions), using civilians as shields is a war crime. Legally, whenever an area is used by a military, it loses its absolute civilian immunity, which changes the legal framework of attacks under international law.
Furthermore, recent reports from within Gaza allege that Hamas members and officials have been accused of sexually exploiting Palestinian women by demanding sexual favors in exchange for food, aid, and medicine. (Sources: 1, 2, 3) Abusing civilians is a war crime. It is internationally illegal for a governing body to abuse civilians, period. It is internationally illegal for a governing body to treat its people this way.
Free Palestine From The Injustice in the West Bank
At the exact same time, we have to look objectively at the systemic violence and legal double standards happening in the West Bank.
There is Israeli-on-Palestinian settler violence in the West Bank. The country of Israel beat the country of Palestine in one of the last wars and then never annexed the Palestinian West Bank territory (in other words, Isreal never made that part of Palestine become a part of Israel officially). Because of International law (specifically the 4th Geneva Convention), an occupying power is not allowed to let people on military-occupied lands use their civil court system, because doing so would be a legal step toward illegal annexation. Instead, international law technically requires everyone on militarized lands to follow military law and go through military courts. The core problem - and where the blatent, systemic injustice lies - is that while Palestinians are subjected to this harsh military court system, Israeli settlers living on that exact same militarized land are routinely allowed to use Israel's civil court system instead. This dual legal track based on ethnicity/nationality is exactly what creates a system of apartheid.
Furthermore, under international law, the seizure of Palestinian land for Israeli settlements is considered illegal. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued a landmark advisory opinion in July 2024 stating that Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories is unlawful and must end immediately.
The Weight of History and Language
When people use slogans like "globalize the intifada," it’s vital to understand the severe trauma that language carries. For Israelis and Jewish people, the Second Intifada isn't an abstract political concept - it was a period of near-daily suicide bombings and attacks targeting civilians, with 18 major attacks recorded in March 2002 alone (historically known as "Black March").
Under international law, deliberately targeting civilians in this manner is a war crime, and invoking that era causes deep, valid fear. To truly understand the intensity of the Israeli response, you have to look at the collective generational trauma driving it. The Israeli population, and by extension its military, is largely comprised of the descendants of Holocaust survivors - an event that systematically wiped out European Jewry. This historical memory creates a profound existential survival instinct, especially when facing a group like Hamas. In Hamas's foundational 1988 Charter, Hamas explicitly stated its goal to kill Jewish people globally. When an organization explicitly promises your annihilation, people take it as a literal, existential threat. This trauma is deeply tied to historical precedents. For instance, Hajj Amin al-Husayni, an early leader of the Palestinian nationalist movement in the 1930s and 40s, actively met with Adolf Hitler during World War II to seek Nazi support. While that history doesn't represent everyday Palestinians today, it remains a terrifying historical parallel for Jewish people. It triggers a deep-seated realization that the threats against their existence are historically documented and real.
Global Insecurity and the Fight Against Extremism
Beyond the headlines that dominate Western media, I can't help but feel a deep sense of care and curiosity for the people of the world. We are all humans, and there is community in that. We genuinely need each other to survive, and I want the world to be at peace so that we can all live in harmony.
While we are looking at global human rights, we need to extend that solidarity to the people of Iran, Nigeria, Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, who are dealing with the devastating effects of radical, violent religious extremism and colonization.
I mention these regions because people from these countries speak online about feeling entirely forgotten and uncared for by the global community, and that breaks my heart. I want anyone reading this to know that your lives matter, and people do care.
Free Nigeria
For years, Nigeria has been experiencing a massive, underreported crisis of systemic violence against its Christian communities, with an average of 1,000 to 7,100 Nigerian Christians murdered annually by radical Islamist extremist groups. (Sources: 1, 2) While some try to downplay this as a simple economic or resource clash, international bodies like the ICC track this violence closely.
In a comprehensive report on the humanitarian crisis, researchers argue that the state's narrative of purely economic clashes is heavily manipulated. The data highlights a staggering reality: since 2009, an estimated 128,750 Christians have been killed because of their faith, and at least 19,500 Christian churches have been burned or destroyed. There is a clear, systematic pattern of targeting Christian clerics, villages, and strategic lands, which aligns directly with known models of religious cleansing (Joseph, 2026).
This is why organizations like the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) and Open Doors International consistently label Nigeria as one of the most dangerous places in the world for Christians, tracking thousands of targeted deaths every single year.
Scholars evaluating these datasets argue that when measured against the UN Genocide Convention of 1948, the deliberate destruction of Christian settlements and strategic displacement exhibit explicit genocidal intent. As argued in the landmark study Nigeria and the “Genocide by Another Name”, the country's widespread, generalized insecurity unfortunately masks a historical, systematic pattern of targeted violence against specific communities (Nwaneri, 2025).
Free Sudan
In Sudan, decades of enforced, state-mandated, religiously extreme policies under past dictatorships directly fueled the genocide in Darfur and the eventual split of South Sudan. Today, the region has been further shattered by a brutal, ongoing civil war that leaves millions displaced and starved, yet it receives a fraction of the global attention it desperately needs.
Free Congo
Similarly, in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), local communities are being terrorized by the "Allied Democratic Forces", also known as the ADF. This Ugandan-origin rebel group pledged allegiance to ISIS (the terrorist group known to torture, rape, behead, and kill), and detailed reports from the International Crisis Group highlight a horrific surge of violence in provinces like Ituri and North Kivu. The ADF utilizes massacres, forced conversions, and systematic sexual violence as deliberate terror tactics to carve out operational strongholds, effectively forcing a foreign jihadist/extremist ideology onto local Congolese populations through sheer brutality. (Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4)
Free Iran
When the leadership of the Islamic Republic in Iran was disrupted recently, I didn't know how to feel at first as an American. My immediate instinct was one of caution, rooted in a deep wariness of my country's historical track record with intervention, imperialism, and wrongful regime change. But as I watched online, I saw an overwhelming wave of everyday Iranians explicitly celebrating the collapse of their oppressors. I felt it in my heart and soul to celebrate with them... only to watch Western onlookers instantly sweep in, minimize their joy, and shut them down. It was infuriating to see their pain and anger dismissed by people who don't have to live under that boot.
For a long time, I carried a lot of collective guilt over the history between our nations. In 1953, the U.S. and the U.K. orchestrated the overthrow of Iran's democratically elected and beloved Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, after he stood up for Iranian sovereignty over their own resources.
President Truman had initially refused to greenlight that coup, standing on the principle that Iran shouldn't be exploited by foreign colonial interests. But when the Eisenhower administration took office, the U.K. reframed the entire conflict around the threat of authoritarian communism, essentially maneuvering the U.S. into executing the regime change anyway.
Following the coup, the Shah was reinstated with Western backing. While his regime was undeniably brutal and authoritarian, it was secular and progressive compared to the totalitarian system that followed.
During the 1979 Iranian Revolution, a coalition of leftists and Islamists overthrew the Shah - and the Islamists ultimately consolidated power, installing the Islamic Republic, a regime proven far more oppressive than what the nation had previously seen.
Knowing that my country was essentially manipulated into that initial 1953 disruption altered my perspective; it clarified the historical narrative, though the heavy legacy of that mistake remains.
The Islamic Republic is occupying Iran, and they run a "church-state" of sorts, or rather, a mosque-state, with enforced Sharia law. However, the Islamic Republic's specific interpretations of Sharia law are rejected by other factions of Islam, and they DO NOT represent Islam or Muslims as a whole.
Today, the conversation is shifting. Many Iranians online are openly saying that the global community has a responsibility to help undo the damage of past interventions - not through further imperialism, but by standing back and actively supporting the Iranian people's own internal fight to reclaim their country. True solidarity means putting our own historical anxieties aside long enough to actually listen to what the people of Iran are asking for right now: a chance at a genuinely free future.
Through the connections I’ve made with ordinary Iranians online, I’ve come to understand the deep, structural trauma inflicted by the Islamic Republic. It is a totalitarian regime that operates a rigid, state-enforced religious monopoly. Many secular and dissenting Iranians have openly shared that they suffer from deep religious trauma - or what some inside the community describe as "Islamotrauma" - due to the extreme violence they’ve witnessed or experienced. I refuse to minimize or dismiss their normal human stress responses, and I will never silence or label someone "Islamophobic" simply for processing the legitimate trauma inflicted on them by a political regime.
The structural violence of this state is codified into law. Under the regime’s "Law on Protecting the Family through the Promotion of the Culture of Chastity and Hijab," a draconian mandatory dress code is enforced on women. Defiance can result in state-sanctioned beatings, sexual violence, and murder. Yet, countless incredibly brave Iranian women risk their lives every single day by stepping out into public without a hijab, fully aware of the dire consequences.
We saw the devastating reality of this on September 16, 2022, when 22-year-old Mahsa (Jina) Amini died in a Tehran hospital after being violently detained by the regime's "morality police" for an alleged hijab violation. While eyewitnesses reported she was brutally beaten to death, state officials desperately tried to spin the tragedy as a spontaneous heart attack.
The systemic cruelty inside the regime's prison system runs unimaginably deep. Multiple human rights organizations and testimonies from survivors have documented a horrific practice targeting young women facing death sentences. When a virgin in Iran is out to death, she is raped first. Under certain traditional interpretations weaponized by the state, a woman who dies a virgin is believed to be guaranteed entry into heaven (Jannah). Because the regime brands these young female dissidents as "apostates" or "enemies of God" (Mohareb), prison authorities actively seek to deny them this religious passage. in other words, they are raped so that they can no longer be virgins, so that they cannot go to heaven. To bypass the spiritual hurdle, guards subject these young women to forced "temporary marriages" (sigheh or mut'ah) the night before their execution. Through the regime's sick state logic, the subsequent sexual assault is framed as a "consummation of marriage" rather than the brutal rape it actually is - deliberately stripping them of their virginity before sending them to the gallows.(Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
Iranians have been rising up against the Islamic Republic of Iran through protests and revolts. The government has been killing them. Estimates from human rights organizations, leaked documents, and international officials suggest that between 30,000 and 40,000 individuals were systematically detailed, killed, or targeted in January alone during the widespread anti-government protests in Iran. (Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4)
The geopolitical landscape has shifted wildly, too. When external military strikes disrupted the regime’s leadership and took out top figureheads, the Islamic Republic temporarily paused its domestic executions. However, since the subsequent ceasefire agreements, the regime has terrifyingly ramped up its executions against its own citizens to re-establish total control. Every day, the names and faces of the regime's victims flood my timeline. Seeing a constant stream of innocent people being systematically executed is completely overwhelming. For weeks, I would just scroll and cry, and I’ve recently had to force myself to step back purely for my own mental health and stability.
Perhaps the most heartbreaking aspect of the Islamic Republic’s history is its institutionalized exploitation of children. Documented reports track how the regime has actively weaponized child soldiers - completely abusing the innocence of children by placing weapons in their hands. (Sources: 1, 2, 3,4) Historically, during the devastating Iran-Iraq War, the regime famously sent waves of young children into active minefields to detonate explosives with their own bodies just to clear a safe path for military tanks to roll through. Witnessing the historical and ongoing documentation of this state-sanctioned child abuse is nauseating. Forcing children to participate in warfare is a profound violation of humanity, an unspeakable form of child abuse, and a flagrant war crime under the Geneva Conventions.
I have made many friends with Iranians online recently. I just want what the majority of them want for their country, whatever that may be, and now it seems to be that they want a FREE IRAN. I think that we, as progressives, should empower the people to take their country back.
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