THIS WEEK, THE UN reported that Israel had killed over 400 Palestinians as they attempted to access aid from the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Though such a death toll is worthy of headlines and universal condemnation, it seems that Israel successfully diverted the world’s attention.

Benjamin Netanyahu, who has become the Middle East’s disrupter in chief, dived headlong into a fresh war with Iran, bringing misery and death to Iranian and Israeli civilians. This provided the type of global distraction that only he could dream up.

While Gazans starve and the West Bank faces unthinkable settler violence and erasure, I am struck by Israel’s representatives and supporters’ avoidance of meaningful dialogue, as they artfully skirt around facts, data and the moral implications of their actions. It seems that the concept of dialogue itself has been all but discarded in the recent chaos.

As the granddaughter of a Holocaust escapee whose family perished in Auschwitz, I was raised with the generational trauma that comes with profound loss and displacement. Growing up in the midst of Dublin’s tight-knit Jewish community, I learned early on about the threats of fascism, ethnic supremacy, systemic oppression and genocide. I learned about prejudice, exile and the miracle of Jewish statehood.

I never dreamed I would see the day that Israel would perpetrate such crimes against another group of people. I couldn’t have imagined it, because there were gaping holes in my education. Palestine was not mentioned in Hebrew school, unmarked on our map of Israel. The Nakba never featured in history class, and the nature of Israeli occupation was never explained. To dream of justice, one first needs to acknowledge injustice, something Zionist Israel has always been hell-bent on denying.

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Each time I hear someone defend Israel’s ongoing bombardment of Gaza, I am incredulous at their inability to answer the questions they are being asked with anything resembling sincerity. State the number of Palestinian deaths, and you are told that Hamas Ministry figures are unverifiable. Demand answers as to why Israel has denied Gazans food and medical supplies for nearly three months in an unjustifiable 

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