“You will not speak Arabic here. Get out of our country.” These were the words that sparked a violent attack on three young Arab men at a nightclub in Tel Aviv yesterday. All three are Israeli citizens. The confrontation continued outside the club, where one of them was stabbed and rushed to the hospital with serious injuries. I keep thinking about these young men. I keep thinking about what must happen to a society before the language a person speaks becomes a reason to reach for a knife. Such a moment does not create itself. Years of nationalist incitement and racism have helped make it possible. When Palestinians and Arabs are continually portrayed as threats, no one should imagine that the consequences will remain confined to Gaza or the West Bank. In Gaza, we have endured years of bombardment, displacement, starvation, and the destruction of our hospitals. I have witnessed firsthand what political and military decisions mean for the people who must live with them: dead bodies, wounded children, entire families wiped out. In the West Bank, settlements continue to expand, settler violence persists, and Palestinian lives become increasingly restricted as more of their land is taken over. And now, in Tel Aviv, three young men are attacked for speaking their mother tongue. I cannot regard these events as disconnected. Nor can I believe that replacing a single government will, by itself, undo what decades of political decisions and incitement have created. In three days, Israelis will go to the polls. For everyone who feels ashamed or outraged by what Israel’s political and social landscape has become, this moment demands an honest examination of what those feelings require of you. You may condemn racism in a conversation. You may condemn incitement in a post. But what does that condemnation accomplish if the policies that continue to fuel them remain unchanged? I have no illusions that a single election will end extremism. But political change does not begin with silence. And outrage that never moves beyond our phone screens leaves the people who suffer its causes exactly where they were. The question is no longer simply whether you oppose what is happening. It is what you are prepared to do to prevent it from continuing. The consequences of political decisions do not end at the ballot box. They enter people’s homes. They shape the futures of their children. For many, they determine whether there will be a future at all. What you decide today will shape more than your own future. Its consequences will reach millions of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, people who have had no voice in those decisions but who may nevertheless be made to pay for them with their homes, their freedom, and their lives. #Israel