Our Struggle Is Sacred. What About Our Solutions?

I want you to know, before I say anything else, that I am not standing across from you. I am standing beside you, looking at the same thing, feeling what you feel. The anger, I understand. The helplessness that turns into fury when you have watched injustice unfold, time and again. The heartbreaking reaction of a world that seems to turn away. You do not need to defend the cause to me. Our hearts beat to the same pain.

That is why I am writing.

Has it worked?

Not in intention. Not in courage. Not even in sacrifice, which the whole world has witnessed and which history will not forget. But in its actual results, in what has changed on the ground, in the lives of the people.

And I will be fair. There have been moments where the pressure held. Where those oppressing have pulled back. Where a family was able to stay in their home, where a community was able to hold its ground. Where the oppressed felt seen, felt less alone, felt that the world had not entirely abandoned them. And that moment is no small thing. Sometimes, it is the only thing that keeps a people standing.

No one can erase that. It is written in the hearts of millions around the world.

But then hold that next to this.

A whole generation of children who have grown up inside emergency, who have learned to read the sky for drones before they have learned anything else, who keep hoping and hoping, but whose hope only remains that. A hope. Hundreds of thousands dead. Millions displaced. And the emergency is still here.

There are months where victory feels within reach, where the news is briefly good and something rises in the chest that feels like vindication, like finally, we were right to keep going, because look, it is working.

And then it collapses. More killed. More displaced. More lost.

And we grieve and we regroup and we hold on because the movement says we are closer than we think. And then victory feels within reach again. Again something rises, and again, it collapses. Pride and then collapse. Hope and then devastation. Round after round after round.

And somewhere inside all of this, without noticing, we have drifted from reality. Not out of dishonesty. Out of necessity, or perhaps what felt like it.

The cause needed defending. The people needed reassurance. The morale needed protecting. And so we explained. We always explained. Every loss became a lesson, every setback a strategy, every broken promise a sign of flexibility and wisdom. And who could blame us? The cause demanded it.

We found ways to hold it all together with words. Questions from within became suspect. Doubts became disloyalty. It was never the time. And our own mistakes were set aside quietly, not examined, not learned from.

Go back and read what we wrote a year ago. Two years ago. See the predictions. See the promises. Read the lines we swore would never be crossed. And then look at where we are today. What we called betrayal then, we call victory now. What we said would never happen, happened. And we explained why it was actually good.

I am not saying this to shame anyone. I say it because this is what it looks like when a people slowly lose the thread back to themselves.

I am not here to question the purity of what we have given. I am not here to diminish the greatness of those we have lost.

But I want to ask something genuinely, between us: are we infallible?

Is there truly nothing to examine, nothing to improve, no door left unopened? I know how that question lands. It can feel like ingratitude toward the people who gave us everything. Our heroes. Our friends. Those who left their children behind, those who sacrificed their lives. Their light is real. Their legacy is alive.

Nothing of what they gave will ever be wasted. It is written in the hearts of millions around the world.

They loved the cause. They gave everything for it.

But true loyalty to them is not the loyalty of the closed eye. It is to make sure the cause wins. So that they smile from heaven. So that we are free.

The numbers do not lie. The faces do not lie. The children born in the emergency do not lie. Our people are still dying. And if there is a truth to be added, a mistake to be mended, something we must revisit, that is not betrayal. That is the most faithful thing we can do with what they left us.

I am not saying what we have done does not matter.

I am saying that it is not enough. And you know that it is not. How many more years before we are allowed to say that out loud? How many more must die before the question is permitted in the room? The cause is sacred. But are the strategies, too?

If you disagree, then give me another solution. But do not tell me more of the same. Because more of the same is clearly not enough!