Sometimes, when you get so much bad news you struggle to sort through it. What should be prioritized, what’s the point? Do I choose to report on the lady whose brains were blown out getting bread or the infant who died from hypothermia? Or maybe the shaking shell-shocked traumatized orphaned kids on the examination table? Or the cackling soldier enthusiastically blowing up a neighborhood as tribute to his wife, imagining himself a Hollywood action hero?
Perhaps I should share the video depicting a mass of men corralled under live fire, trampling over one another to escape to safety. Maybe it’s best to share the bereaved mother or sister crying over their murdered loved ones.
What news to share, what aspect of the nightmare to highlight, what scene to stir the consciousness of the world to end the slaughter.
Sometimes, I just need to sit down for a moment, a moment of deathly silence, a moment to take it all in and let it pass through me, To let it loosen its grip over my throat, to let me speak coherently again.
This is human depravity on full display. It tells us we learned absolutely nothing over all these years of human history!
I don’t want the death of these people to be your wake-up call, or for their extermination to be a lesson for the future generations, or whatever else people want to romantically imagine about what will be derived from this appalling episode of brutality. I want it to stop now, immediately.
I want to stop the violence against them. Stop it now. Stop. Stop. Stop. We don’t want to lament later, we want no further reasons for additional lamentation.
We need this to stop now.
I am Mohammed Cherri, an American Arab living in the United States. I’m witnessing the demonization, dehumanization, and subsequent slaughter of my people being shared on the internet in a cloak of deadly international silence. This is the unabashed complicity by the powerful actors in the international community who have the power to stop the murder but choose not to. I’m trying to share the voices who are underrepresented in the mainstream media to put pressure on those in power to stop the onslaught and to find other peaceful means to achieve a resolution.
I am a survivor of war and its long-lasting effects. I am a child of at least three generations of trauma. Son of survivors and refugees. Much of our trauma is buried, wounds carried within us. I aspire to live a good life. I am a stay-at-home father raising three children. I am an instructor at a local beekeeping school. When I am not busy with attending to the needs of my children, I like to devote myself to helping my community, local and global, to make the world a better place for all of us and our future generations.
My dream is that peace, love and felicity reigns upon all of us someday.
