All of Luzia's Comments + Replies
I have definitely spent a lot of time thinking about the situation since the 7th October and have felt the urge to do something. The one thing I actually ended up doing is email a German MP from the Green Party who is the main person responsible for foreign affairs to ask what the German government is doing to improve the situation for civilians in Gaza.
I generally think that not everything I do has to be effective and that there are lots of things I care about besides EA motivations. I also think political action can be effective and I've been to some cli...
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Thank you so much for your thoughtful and honest response, Luzia. I appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts.
Did you get a response from the German MP you emailed?
I have felt much the same in terms of feeling the urge to do something, but not being sure of the best course of action. The footage and information from the ground in Gaza seems to get more and more horrific each day, making me feel more and more helpless. But at the same time, makes the urge for me to do something even stronger. My main reason for reaching out to MPs to call for a ceasefire and sanctions on the Israeli government is that I don’t think the way in which the Israeli government is conducting itself is acceptable.
There is absolutely no justification for what happened on October 7th. It was truly horrific and should never happen again. It should not be condoned. It makes me sad to see the number of people who are justifying what happened. The presence of reasons for acting in a certain way doesn’t automatically make it acceptable to act in that way.
There is also no justification for the killing of innocent civilians in Gaza, and it bothers me that there doesn’t seem to be this parallel drawn for the Israeli government’s actions (at least to the same extent in mainstream media). I have heard a lot about Israel having the right to defend itself. While that may be true, I think the way in which it chooses to do so is paramount. Perhaps this won’t be accomplished by an outright ceasefire, but by sanctions on the IDF (which have also been part of my emails to MPs). I have also read that the IDF has highly sophisticated intelligence capabilities, which makes me wonder why indiscriminate killing is even necessary (let alone morally permissible)?
I have also felt similarly in terms of the protests and will be completely honest and say that I have not yet attended one. Perhaps people like us, who think along the lines you have mentioned (supporting civilians in Gaza and critic
Kat, I appreciate you responding in detail to Ben's post. I haven't had time yet to look at all the evidence but will hopefully do that in more detail later. One thing that stood out to me from the appendix:
... (read more)Hi Luzia. We did acknowledge that we're no longer living with employees for exactly the reasons you expressed. You can see our "lessons learned" section here. And it's not going to show up as much in the post, but I have probably spent a full month of full-time work analyzing what happened and what I can do better in the future.
I think we had reason to believe that living and working together would be fine. I've done it with many employees in the past and me and Emerson had been doing it for years. However, I do think it's risky and it's not worth th... (read more)