Last night, Maren Morris took to social media to speak out against the current war in the Middle East.
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The longstanding dispute over the Gaza region boiled over into violence early last month. Hamas—a terrorist organization within Palestine—attacked Israel. They fired rockets and sent insurgents into Israeli towns.
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Later that day, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared war on Hamas. However, the assault has not been a laser-focused ordeal. Instead, Israeli troops and bombs have taken thousands of innocent lives. Many of those innocents were children. For those who wholeheartedly throw their support behind Israel, those innocent lives can be viewed as “collateral damage.”
Last night, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spoke in favor of a ceasefire in Gaza. She posted a portion of her speech to TikTok. In the video, AOC said, “I think about the language that is being used in this moment. Over 4,000 children have been killed, over 10,000 people have died in addition to the horror of the 1,400 … lives taken on October 7 as well.” The representative once again mentioned the number of children and innocents lost before addressing the language used to describe it. “The attempts for people to call this ‘collateral damage.’ How unconscionable a term ‘collateral damage’ to sanitize an atrocity. To make it more palpable for mass consumption. Collateral damage. We can never accept such a term. The killing of children, the killing of innocent people will never be collateral damage. It is the damage.”
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Morris shared a clip of Ocasio-Cortez’s speech. In the caption, she wrote, “I heard someone I respect so highly use the term ‘collateral damage’ to me this week and it emphasized how much war dehumanizes the best of us.” She added, “Fight your cognitive dissonance and realize that we aren’t free until we are all free.”
Morris ended her post with a watermelon emoji. The fruit has been a symbol of Palestinian solidarity since the 1960s. After the Israeli government made public displays of the Palestinian flag a crime, the people of the region started using the watermelon instead. The fruit bears the same colors—green, red, and black—as the flag.
Photo by Catherine Powell/Getty Images for CMT
