sunburn

I envy the Israeli left. Not their politics. Their freedom. They march through Tel Aviv calling their own country an apartheid state. They go on CNN and call the IDF war criminals. They write op-eds in Haaretz comparing Israel to the worst regimes in history. They join NGOs funded by hostile governments to produce reports designed to delegitimize the Jewish state. And then they go home. Sleep in their beds. Send their kids to school the next morning. No one threatens their family. No one disappears them in the night. No one drags them from their home. Zero consequences. Now imagine, just imagine, if Iranians had 1% of that freedom. If an Egyptian columnist could criticize Sisi the way Gideon Levy criticizes Netanyahu. If a Palestinian in Ramallah could call Abbas corrupt on live TV and walk home safely. If someone in Gaza could have held a sign saying "Hamas does not speak for me" without being executed. The Middle East would be unrecognizable. The great irony is that the people who enjoy more political freedom than virtually anyone else in the region use that freedom to paint Israel as a tyranny while the actual tyrannies they're silent about would imprison or kill them for doing the same. You're not brave. You're spoiled. You mistake comfort for conscience. You scream "genocide" into a microphone the state itself protects, then sleep soundly in a democracy you spend your days trying to destroy, while millions across this region would trade everything they have for five minutes of the freedom you use to spit on your own country.