It is hard to write about Israel and Gaza. Hard because words stumble where pain reigns. Hard because truth, once spoken, too often finds itself drafted into war. Words are weapons. But still, I write. Because silence, too, is a weapon. Sometimes it is the most deadly.
Growing up, we all learned of Christopher Columbus sailing the ocean blue in 1492 and memorized the names of the Niña, Pinta, and Santa Maria. But while we know Columbus and his companions encountered and fought with the indigenous people they found here, we never truly committed to mind the horrors that Columbus and the conquistadors that came afterward inflicted on them. They simply ceased to be—their stories nonexistent and unimportant.
