(Immigrant) Parents, It’s Time to Talk to Your Kids about Israel and Hamas

Gabe Zichermann
6 min readNov 6, 2023
Image from Depositphotos

Immigrants to the US and Canada don’t have a ton in common beyond a desire for a better life away from their home countries. Sometimes we move just for economic opportunity, other times it’s for environmental, social, political or justice reasons. Regardless, we have had one mostly ironclad agreement — even if it’s just tacit:

We don’t bring our old world conflicts here.

This compact has enabled groups with tremendous, longstanding enmity to live side-by-side in North America with nary more than a protest or a few deranged incidents over generations. Jews and Muslims, Ukranians and Russians, Iraqis and Iranians, Azeris and Armenians, Ethiopians and Eritreans, Chinese and Indians — the list goes on. Every possible permutation of global conflict has its diaspora in the 400+ million residents of North America. And while there are always problems and sporadic violence, they rarely rise to a level beyond suspicion, some peaceful marches, flag waving or avoidance.

We came here for peace and prosperity. We left the old world behind for a reason.

Immigrant groups in the new world have also tended to be more aligned politically rather than less. With some exceptions, the modern Republican party has been generally anti-immigrant, and the Democrats more…

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Gabe Zichermann

Author and Public Speaker on Gamification, The 4th Industrial Revolution, the Future of Work and Failure. More about me: https://gabezichermann.com