The administration has

It requires a response since silence often translates – consciously or by neglect – into consent and complicity.Each of us who shares this sense of obligation and duty responds in our own way.

Some make speeches in parliaments. Some lock arms in demonstrations. Some go to Gaza and the occupied West Bank to ease, as best they can, the pervasive misery and despair.Writing in defence of Palestinians – of their humanity, dignity, and rights – is not meant, nor can it be dismissed, as a polemical provocation.For me, it is an act of conscience.

I do not write to mollify. I refuse to qualify what has happened and is happening to Palestinians as “complex” to provide readers with a convenient and comfortable ethical exit ramp.Occupation is not complex. Oppression is not complex. Apartheid is not complex. Genocide is not complex. It is cruel. It is wrong. It must yield to decency.

Writing about Palestinians in this blunt, uncompromising way invites all sorts of replies from all sorts of quarters.

Some readers praise your “courage”. Some thank you for “speaking” for them, for not flinching, for naming names. Some readers urge you to continue to write, despite the risks and recriminations.Trumpism thrives on spectacle, and few understand the potency of spectacle better than celebrities.

bidding America adieu did so defiantly, wielding a righteous pulpit from foreign shores. Even so, symbolism without substance is hollow.Returning means tackling – head-on – the mess, the contradictions, the tarnished ideals of a battered nation still worth the imagination and effort.

Public figures ought to leverage their popular platforms not just to condemn, but to galvanise, to convey resistance not as elitist scorn but as shared obligation. That would impress more than a pointed opinion column in the New York Times or a thread of disparaging tweets ever could.Zelenskyy knows that hard work is always done on the ground. This is where returnees can make a tangible difference – not as saviours parachuting in, but instead as allies to like-minded collaborators who do that hard work without notice or applause.