​When failure is inevitable, politicians, policy-makers, executives, and leaders of organizations try to belittle their efforts so as not to appear a failure. That what they have done is a soft launch, an experiment, pilot, a test-case, so on and so forth.

This happens in so many situations where the first few efforts are being calibrated based on  a possibility of failure, not of success. De-risking becomes the favorite word these days.

But in the broader sense, de-risking is the other side of courageous work.

If you hedge against failure, you will instinctively become protective of what you have, therefore you will play not to lose. 

But if you play to win, derisking increases its value to you and what you're trying to accomplish. It creates more success conditions because you're aware of the possible traps and pitfalls but yet, moving forward with greater resolve. 

Derisking shouldn't be used if trying is not even an option.

If you want to derisk, why not just hide under the covers and wait for a better day, which is in my book, you may have to wait for a long time. 

When you talk about allyship or being an effective ally, it really starts with understanding the  contexts that surround the issues that you want to support with. There is no excuse for this and am appalled by the the hostility and unrestrained anger directed against a particular group or entity because they think they hold the moral high ground on the issue. 

Here are some of the things that are not allyship:

1. Taking sides and making comments without understanding and knowledge of the issues, e.g. companies doing Black hiring, promotions, or donating as part of 'looking and feeling good' without the benefit of embedding these principles as areas for action. 

2. Being supportive doesn't mean taking a blind eye on excesses. If your partner or the party you're siding with has committed a grave error of judgement or seemed too morally superior and doesn't receive constructive comments from the other parties,  it's better to point that out early on before the real crisis starts. 

3. Don't mouth word salads that seemed to be the flavor of the month and be gone in the new few months. It becomes pathetic when you sound like a parrot talking about decolonialization, white supremacy, apartheid, and other concepts that pit people against one another as a zero-sum game. Chants like from the river to the sea is a nice slogan but totally stupid. It calls for the total annihilation of a state. Regardless of where you stand in the Israel-Palestine conflict, it's like putting coal in already burning situation. It masked the real issues at hand, and in practically, these word salads do not make sense in real-time cessation of hostilities much less the deep-seated anger, hatred, and trauma experienced by many parties.

Being an ally should be informed by reason and not by zealotry based on misinformation and fake news. Check your facts and know that there is definitely a more peaceful and less confrontational method of getting into solutions. The biggest obstacle is the mindset that the world needs to change because a few people said so. 

Are you an ally or a complicit part of the web of agitation for the sake of stirring more conflict and paranoia? If you're not part of the solution, then you are part of the problem. 

With the world on Gaza these days, there's a call for ceasefire but not a call for peace.

Peace is surely underrated, underexplored, underinvested, and under-committed in this specific conflict. Revenge in this situation is overemphasized, as in the use of military might. 

Aside from Israeli and Palestinian deaths, Hamas as a terrorist organization is not vilified as much as the Israel-Arab animosities more aroused than ever. Pitch forks on both sides including the mainstream media showing its partiality on the issue.

Peace whether in the form of multilateral diplomacy, Qatari-based leadership, or an Arab League-UN combination should be explored to the maximum. Israel should be restrained from exacting more harm on civilian population in pursuit of Hamas' leaders and Hamas must be pressured by its allies and friends to release the hostages. A ceasefire doesn't mean that Hamas had won or giving Hamas a congratulations. They can always continue to fight to get their aims but the Palestinians have been bombed enough. 

If the lessons of the Oslo Peace Accords can come alive again, they need people from the Israeli side who can broker long-term peace and not just the sure military victory from a terrorist organization. The Palestinians need better leadership too. The Palestinians deserve a better deal post-Hamas and that they should govern better than what their leaders did a decade ago. 

Let's not let history repeat itself.