Why Palestine? On Being Blind, Deaf, and Finally Waking Up

I have always been a nomad.

My life has been a collection of boarding passes and temporary addresses, a story that began in Romania but was written across the globe. I moved from one country to another, a willing drifter, collecting cultures, flavors, and languages. In this constant, beautiful blur of motion, the world’s problems often felt distant, like static from a radio in another room.

Of course, I had heard of Palestine.

I had heard the name, just as I had heard of a dozen other global conflicts. It was a word on a news ticker, a brief mention in a broadcast, a headline skimmed over coffee. It was tragic, yes, but it was abstract. It was something that happened "over there" to "other people." It was just wind—a sound that passed by but never truly touched me, never demanded my attention. I was busy moving, busy building my own life.

Then, several years ago, I stopped moving. I came to Indonesia.

And it was here, in a nation thousands of miles away from the epicenter, that the wind became a storm I could no longer ignore.

In Indonesia, Palestine is not an abstract concept. It is not background noise. It is a raw, present, and persistent heartbeat.

It began on my social media feeds. It wasn't just activists; it was my neighbors, the chef at a local warung, the musicians I’d just met. Their posts were passionate, educated, and filled with a profound sense of solidarity. Then, it was on the local news—not as a detached geopolitical report, but as a story of human suffering that demanded compassion.

Then, I saw it with my own eyes. I would be on my way to the market or the beach, and I would see them: demonstrations. People from every walk of life, students and parents, men and women, walking with a unified purpose, holding the Palestinian flag. The flag wasn't just a symbol; it was a promise. It was everywhere.

In all my travels, I had never witnessed such a deep, collective, and unwavering empathy for a people so far away.

It forced me to ask the question: Why? Why do they care so much? What am I missing? What part of this story did my nomadic life allow me to so conveniently ignore?

The question was a key. It unlocked a door, and behind it was a history I was deeply, profoundly ignorant of.

I began to read. I started to listen. I sought out the stories I had always skimmed past. The more I learned, the more a cold, horrifying clarity settled in. The "issue" I had dismissed as wind was, in fact, a suffocating, decades-long siege on a people's right to exist.

The realization was a punch to the gut. All this time, I had not just been ignorant. I had been blind, and I had been deaf. Not because I lacked the faculties, but because I had chosen comfort over curiosity. It took moving to Indonesia, a country that refuses to look away, to finally force me to open my eyes.