You might want to argue with U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres’ view expressed in November 2023 that the Gaza Strip was even then a “graveyard for children”. An unimaginably small area (365 square kilometres; Greater Sydney is 34 times its size), it is – perhaps was – the most densely populated area on earth. As relevant, half the population of Gaza is under the age of 18.

Othering” is humanity’s original sin. Yet, for the first time in recorded history, we are direct witnesses to what we cause one another in the name of religion, racism and/or political ideology. Witnesses, too, to what we “cause” when from relative safety we respond with boredom, cynicism, indifference, hatred – or the delusion that extreme behaviours “typify” this group or that. But not “us”.

Our responses cannot end there. The most urgent challenge facing our human family is to call out evil wherever we see it, strenuously resisting our conditioned inclinations to excuse or even forgive what “we” do…and to see injustice, evil – and the greatest of wrongdoing – only in what “others” do. The world’s children need saving NOW from the terrors of the past living on in the terrors of the present.

It is not Plato but the historical Buddha who is attributed with the earth-shaking teaching: “We are what we think. With our thoughts, we make the world.” The “making” of our world, of our minds, must change. It must change now. We must change now. There is no Plan B for failure, not in Gaza, not in Israel, not anywhere.

Source: How have we come to this? “Othering” is humanity’s original sin – Pearls and Irritations