I wrote the other day about humility and uncertainty. The images of and debate over the explosion at the Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City offers a fresh example of this. We know far less than we think we know about the specific incident, though we do know it occurred within the context of a brutal offensive into Gaza by Israel in response to the Oct. 7 attack on Israeli soil by Hamas, which in turn is part of a larger war over identity and history, and Israel’s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank.
Langston Hughes wrote in the 1940s about a “dream deferred,” meaning the dream of equal rights and treatment for Black Americans. What happens to that dream, he asked.
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?