This is what I found the most shocking and disheartening in the first days after the October 7th massacre and the start of indiscriminate bombing of Gaza - the reaction and inaction of the West.

At the moment of the Russian invasion, so many countries banded together in supporting Ukraine, both in materiel and moral support. Russia became a pariah overnight. It was an awful situation but it was uplifting to see how we all cared about sovereignty, peace, self-determination and the well-being of civilians.

Then civilians in Gaza started getting slaughtered and... nothing, or worse - full support of it. The exact same freedom-loving world leaders had become mute.

I consider myself more cynical than the average person, but this still caught me off guard. Two horrible situations, two suffering peoples and such different outcomes.

As a father of a young child, it was a gut punch to see what we were suddenly trying to justify and it left me numb for days until I adjusted to the actual reality. The reaction to the Russian invasion had little to do with the welfare of Ukrainians; it was more about political affiliations.