November 6th 2026

Never Again, for Anyone

Never Again, for Anyone

Do you know what you would do if someone, or some state, supported the extermination of Jewish people?

Or the Roma?

Or the disabled?

Or LGBTQ?

Would you speak out, protest, write?

Would you happily sit in a restaurant and eat a meal while the people doing the extermination sat at a table or so away from yours?

Is there a line where you are OK with some form of extermination? Perhaps it is black or brown people, or Muslims? Maybe it is Palestinians. My government is OK with the extermination of Palestinians.

Two years ago, when we spent two weeks in Arugam Bay in Sri Lanka, we faced this dilemma. It was unavoidable. The little town was mostly populated by Israeli tourists, the majority of them young people, quite possibly fresh out of the IDF. Arugam Bay is a Sri Lankan Muslim community. We had a conversation with our neighbour, a man in his mid-forties with three children, about the situation in Israel. He was complaining about going back and having to deal with bomb shelters. The conversation came to an awful halt when he said maybe 40,000 dead Palestinians is not enough. (At that time, that was the number of dead. It has nearly doubled since.) Thinking we may have misheard him, we asked him to repeat himself. He obliged, casually, as if talking about some irrelevant statistic.

My mind, body, being simply could not compute his words or their meaning, let alone the emotionless way he said them.

How could anyone speak of such evil with such matter-of-fact carelessness?

For hours, my partner and I discussed this situation. Every moment we spent, whether surfing or in town, we had to respond to and confront this reality. I felt helpless. It made our stay disturbing. To the point that we would not go back.

A survey by J Street, just released, shows that 80% of American Jewish voters believe Israel’s military actions in Gaza and the West Bank are contributing to a rise in antisemitism in the United States. 72% of Jewish voters backed democrats. Many Jews around the world do not support the actions of Israel.

People who support what the government of Israel is doing to the Palestinians, be they Jewish or non-Jewish, should not be allowed to go about their lives, to travel, with any degree of ease.

There is no justification for the willful extermination or slow breaking by starvation and humiliation of any group of people.

That, to me, is what never again means. Never again for anyone.

Published November 6th 2026. Photo taken November 6th 2025