I’m no less ignorant than you are, but “returning home” isn’t as easy as it sounds when your leaders and neighbors were at best complicit and at worst eager conspirators (excepting those who rebelled either openly or secretly) in your extermination. Jews have a rather long history of being…mistreated, for lack of a more appropriate term within reach, so the abstract idea of having a self-governed homeland where you can feel safe as a Jew seems to make some degree of sense in context.

But because Zionism is generally practiced by nationalists and religious zealots, and because colonialism was (and evidently is) still considered a-ok by the global power brokers when all this started, the tone of the occupation became “we’re taking your space because we deserve it and you don’t” rather than “may we please share your space in mutual benefit for our safe refuge.”

I think that’s a neat idea, but we could instead, collectively, just do better at following other cars at a safe distance. I know it’s impractical to expect all drivers on the road everywhere to change their behavior, but it’s also persistently frustrating as someone who has for years frequently been stuck in traffic to see 95% of drivers insist on following less than a car-length behind. Following too closely to enable decision-making or accommodate other drivers is the cause of like 98% of both traffic accidents and congestion, according to my completely anecdotal and made up research.

Many noted a striking similarity to the case of Savita Halappavanar, a 31-year-old woman who died of septic shock in 2012 after providers in Ireland refused to empty her uterus while she was miscarrying at 17 weeks. When she begged for care, a midwife told her, “This is a Catholic country.” The resulting investigation and public outcry galvanized the country to change its strict ban on abortion.

But in the wake of deaths related to abortion access in the United States, leaders who support restricting the right have not called for any reforms.

My country’s aptitude for remaining entirely unmoved by preventable tragedies that utterly upend political trajectories in other nations has become one of our most globally defining traits.