How to Have Difficult Conversations
Gaslit Nation
Gaslit Nation
4.7 • 4.1K Ratings
🗓️ 14 October 2023
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
If you’re feeling heartbroken over the suffering in Israel and Gaza, consider supporting some of these humanitarian organizations: https://www.npr.org/2023/10/13/1205235922/help-israel-gaza-humanitarian-organizations This is an excerpt of this week's bonus show. To listen to the full episode, get all episodes ad free, invites to exclusive events, submit questions for regular Q&As, and more, subcribe on Patreon by signing up at Patreon.com/Gaslit.
It’s been a week since the Hamas terrorist massacre targeting Israeli civilians, followed by Israel dropping 6,000 bombs on Gaza in a matter of days. The cruel PR spin of Israel calling on civilians to leave Gaza only puts more lives in danger. It was never about helping the civilians, as Israel’s bombing of that so-called “exit route” shows, as reported on by MSNBC.
Many Israelis grieving over the loss of their loved ones call for peace, and protests grow against Netanyahu and his government whose extremist chaos and genocidal political movement left Israeli civilians vulnerable to Hamas’s attack. Netanyahu finally got the genocide and mass displacement of Palestinians that he wanted, but at what cost to him, Israel, and the world?
Our collective grief and anger make conversations about this extraordinarily tragic time, the countless loss of innocent lives on both sides of the war, incredibly difficult. In this conversation, Terrell Starr of the Black Diplomats podcast joins Andrea to discuss how to protect your relationships when talking about global tragedies, including setting and enforcing boundaries when needed. The discussion includes a look at U.S. foreign policy in relation to Russia, ending on a check list of protecting your mental health while engaging online. There’s no video for this bonus show as the discussion was a spontaneous continuation of the emotional public episode, and the video feature had already been turned off. Apologies for that.
If you have children or work with children, below is a list of resources on how to address this news and tragedies in general with young people:
Helping Kids Cope with Frightening News (Child Mind Institute) https://childmind.org/article/helping-children-cope-frightening-news/
Explaining the News to Our Kids (Common Sense Media) https://www.commonsensemedia.org/articles/explaining-the-news-to-our-kids?overridden_route_name=entity.node.canonical&base_route_name=entity.node.canonical&page_manager_page=node_view&page_manager_page_variant=node_view-panels_variant-csm_blog&page_manager_page_variant_weight=-6
Talking to Kids About Violence (National Association of School Psychologists) https://www.nasponline.org/resources-and-publications/resources-and-podcasts/school-safety-and-crisis/school-violence-resources/talking-to-children-about-violence-tips-for-families-and-educators
How to talk to your children about the violence in Israel and Gaza (NPR) https://www.npr.org/2023/10/11/1205017249/how-to-talk-to-children-violence-israeli-palestinian-gaza-hamas
Show Notes:
How to help humanitarian efforts in Israel and Gaza https://www.npr.org/2023/10/13/1205235922/help-israel-gaza-humanitarian-organizations
Israeli Air Force Says It Has Dropped 6,000 Bombs on Gaza https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/israel-hamas-war-gaza-strip/card/israeli-air-force-says-it-has-dropped-6-000-bombs-on-gaza-QK1aSnupiGqytMVO86PU
People in Gaza describe living through bombings with no way to escape https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/people-in-gaza-describe-living-through-bombings-with-no-way-to-escape
MSNBC: 70 killed after Israeli strikes hit three convoys of evacuees trying to leave northern Gaza. https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1712911792106602608
Israel Must Not React Stupidly If this is Israel’s 9/11, it can learn from America’s mistakes. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/10/israeli-government-response-hamas-attack-gaza-9-11-lessons/675622/
Victoria Brownworth @VABVOX: Veteran Israel-Palestine reporter @NTarnopolsky tells @MSNBC calls for Netanyahu to resign are rising, that families of the hostages feel abandoned by the PM and there is a protest of more than 1k people outside the Israeli Defense Ministry. https://twitter.com/VABVOX/status/1713183956097548446
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Terrell and I are back and we are going to do a discussion on how to survive this time |
| 0:12.9 | of heightened fear, collective trauma, and protect your own mental health and protect |
| 0:20.7 | your friendships both online and in real life when everything is as it is where people |
| 0:28.8 | fall on different sides of these issues. This is a real crisis, like this is a real issue. |
| 0:35.6 | This dynamic existed in the 1930s during the rise of Hitler. If you look at Dorothy Thompson, |
| 0:42.3 | who was the extraordinary British American journalist that won the home front against |
| 0:48.4 | the Nazis, against the Elon Musk of the day, the Henry Fords, the Charles Lindberghs, |
| 0:52.8 | calling them out and fighting for advocating in her columns and her radio broadcast for |
| 0:59.5 | Jewish refugees that the world was turning away that no one wanted to save because they did not |
| 1:04.4 | value their lives. She advocated for what do we do with these refugees? How do we protect them |
| 1:08.3 | where a piece of paper is a matter of life or death? She had a massive falling out with a friend, |
| 1:13.9 | a woman that she fought with in the suffragist movement because of Dorothy Thompson's support |
| 1:18.7 | for FDR because FDR was finally going to lead America into the liberation of Europe against an |
| 1:25.2 | isolationist Republican party, same dynamics of today. This friend Helen Reed, who was her boss, |
| 1:31.7 | a powerful woman, basically fired her, refused to renew her contract where she wrote a column |
| 1:36.4 | for the Herald Tribune. This was a falling out between two women who went from being in the |
| 1:40.9 | trenches together to having a messy separation divorce that left Dorothy Thompson on her own, |
| 1:47.5 | having to lose audience, lose financial support, and go down a couple pegs, writing for a smaller |
| 1:55.4 | newspaper where she tried to rebuild, but she cared about what she was saying, she believed in |
| 2:00.5 | what she was saying, and she was willing to lose friendships, willing to lose audience, willing |
| 2:04.8 | to lose money, and that's why she's a hero of mine, where you have to stand in your truth, |
| 2:09.3 | fight for what you believe in, and sometimes you risk your own friendships doing that, |
... |
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