I know what the normalization of genocide looks like because I once participated in it.

I used to think "never again" was a promise the world owed me. Then I broke one of the ten commandments and realized it was a promise I owe the world.

Before I could see the humanity in Palestinians, I had to reckon with my own. This is what it cost me, and what opened on the other side.

When I started seeing how Palestinians and Zionists received me after I spoke, I learned a self-evident truth about love and connection. It was never about sides. It was always about humanity.

For years I saw Palestinian refusal to accept partition as proof of their violence and extremism. Then I learned to hold another perspective, and the same facts revealed something completely different.

The question wasn't who was willing to compromise, but who was willing to divide what's whole.

Any ideology built on denial runs on projection. What you refuse to face within yourself, you manifest around you. The destruction in Gaza mirrors the internal collapse of Zionism. Eventually denial collapses, and you’re forced to see the real you.

Growing up in a West Bank settlement, I was taught that the Al-Aqsa mosque needed to be destroyed for redemption to come.

Then I learned to deprogram.

This is about what becomes possible when you decolonize your mind and finally see what's been in front of you all along.

I was born and raised in a settlement in the West Bank, where I lived for the first 22 years of my life, deeply embedded in Zionism.

This is my testimony of what I saw, why I left, and what I learned.