I've spent the last 24 hours watching news coverage, scrolling through X, and reading Reddit threads about Trump’s comments on Gaza. And in all that time, not once, not one single time, have I seen anyone suggest the most basic thing: maybe ask the people of Gaza what they want.
Why? Because Palestinians have been reduced to a concept. In the eyes of the Western left, they’re not real people with real agency. They’re essentially props, symbols of oppression, vessels for outrage, a way for privileged activists to feel like they’re standing up against "injustice" without ever doing anything meaningful and for politicians to score easy political points for being "empathetic".
Do they want to keep living in a warzone, under Hamas, with no future? Do they want to leave and build a life somewhere else? Who cares? Their supposed “defenders” don’t actually care about their well-being. If they did, they’d be advocating for solutions instead of screaming “ethnic cleansing” at the mere suggestion that they might be better off elsewhere.
This is not how real refugees are treated anywhere else in the world. When refugees flee war in Syria, Ukraine, or Sudan, the world doesn’t demand they stay put and suffer for the sake of "resistance." Nobody calls it “genocide” or “ethnic cleansing” when people are given a chance to escape a living hell and build a future somewhere else. But somehow, Palestinians are the one group that’s expected to remain trapped in the rubble forever, as if their suffering is a sacred institution that must never be disturbed.
And we all know why. Because the second you acknowledge that Palestinians can leave, that they have agency, that they can make choices about their future, the whole house of cards collapses. The entire narrative, the whole "open-air prison" and "genocide" and "apartheid" schtick, falls apart if you admit that Palestinians aren't hostages of Israel, but hostages of a movement that treats their misery as a political necessity.
Because what happens if you ask the people of Gaza? What if they actually want to leave? What if they don’t want to live under Hamas, surrounded by bombed-out buildings, with no infrastructure and no future? What if they would rather go somewhere else where they can rebuild their lives? The very idea is so threatening to the activists, journalists, and politicians who have spent decades using them as pawns that they can’t even entertain the thought.
So instead, they do what they always do. They scream "ethnic cleansing" at the idea of relocation while simultaneously calling Gaza a "prison camp" and a "mass grave." They say every single building is destroyed but insist the people living there must never leave. They rant about "occupation" but pretend not to notice that Arab nations like Egypt and Jordan, who could easily take them in, refuse to do so.
To be clear, this isn’t about absolving Palestinians of responsibility for their actions. They voted for Hamas. Many celebrated October 7th. They are responsible for the choices they made. But that doesn’t change the blatant hypocrisy of refusing to even give them a choice.
The Palestinians are not being offered death marches. They’re being offered a way out of the ruins of war. But the same people who spent 20 years calling Gaza a “prison” are now demanding that the prisoners stay locked inside, because without their suffering, the outrage machine grinds to a halt and the money stops flowing.
It also goes without saying that none of this destruction would have happened if Hamas hadn’t launched a full-scale massacre against Israel. Gaza would still be standing, intact, if Hamas hadn’t embedded itself inside hospitals, schools, and homes, using civilians as shields. Every bombed-out building, every collapsed neighborhood, every single death in Gaza exists because Hamas wanted a war. And now, their Western apologists want to keep their victims trapped in the wreckage.
And that’s the truth nobody wants to say out loud.
Yesterday was Doron’s 31st birthday.
How many more of the hostages are going to celebrate their birthday while in captivity?
#BringThemHome
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada Community submission via @JustJash
The Smiths saw the cruelty of life and found the humor in it.
The Cure saw the cruelty of life and found the beauty in it.
Depeche Mode saw the cruelty of life and found themselves strangely aroused.
Kate Bush and Metallica are sharing the top of the charts, Top Gun is #1 at the box office, and there's no Interac or internet.
This is as close to 1986 as I'm ever gonna get. #rogersoutage
Mass shooting today that killed 5 and injured 16 at July 4th parade took place in Highland Park - an area with a major Jewish community. Klezmer music was playing as the shooting took place.
🚨🚨🚨 BREAKING :: EXCLUSIVE 🚨🚨🚨
THREAD: Enrique Tarrio used photographer & girlfriend Amy Harris' phone while he and Stewart Rhodes were meeting with others, including Amy, in the Phoenix Park Hotel parking garage the night of January 5th, according to sources familiar. 1/