My friend from Rwanda has been a teacher to me. I listen to his beautiful voice: his words, exquisitely chosen, percolate unto my being. In those moments I am in harmony with my friend and with my essential self.

My friend from Rwanda lived through war in his homeland. He lost a brother in war. He watches TV images from Gaza. Children climb through the rubble.

I was one of those children, he says.

My friend from Rwanda watches TV and he sees children dying.

He cannot see Hamas putting the children in the way of harm. 

My friend does not see self-defense. He does not see intent. He only sees genocide, where I am convinced of the opposite intent.

When my friend from Rwanda sends us footage that uses language of ethnic cleansing, of colonialism, he hurls me into a distance that neither of us wants. He cannot hear my words. Drenched in blood memories, clad hard in his own pain, he cannot know mine.

Distance, silence, alienation.

And yet we love each other.