‘We need to do what we can to make this stop.’ Anna Weiss ’20, Chevruta, Jerusalem

We started the year with Corona, and we finally just passed that, and it’s really scary. From a very shallow point of view, it sucks that during our last few weeks here we can’t go out and we can’t be with our friends. And yeah, it sucks, but someone has to live through it, there’s always something happening here. It’s not something that seems totally out of the realm of possibility.

What’s sadder is that I have friends who are Israeli and this is just their life. So, it’s sad that it’s not such a bizarre, shocking, terrible thing that’s happening. On an hourly basis I know the things that are happening and the things that have been building up over the last month or two, and this is not shocking to me. It’s unfortunate, but it’s not so totally out of the realm of possibilities.

I don’t want to make a massive political thing, and people keep focusing a lot on the politics of it, and focusing on, “Oh, Israel did this, but Gaza did that thing, but Israel is defending its people,” I think it’s taking away from the fact that people are suffering, and people are dying, and people are getting hurt.

Instead of focusing on arguing and posting, we need to do what we can to make this stop, so people are not suffering, and people wherever they live, wherever they’re from, whatever they’re ethnicity — a lot of families have been living in bomb shelters for the past few days, and that’s horrible. Nobody should have to go through that.

So instead of focusing on it from a political standpoint and focusing on fighting for a group of people, we should focus on fighting for all the people.

Interviewed by Caroline Kboudi for the Boiling Point.