People complain about the UN doing nothing, but it’s also important to remember it was literally designed to not be able to do anything if one of the security council nations – USA, UK, France, Russia, or China – vetoes it. And USA always vetoes anything against the Israeli government.
Considering the UN’s hands are tied, I’m very glad they’re at least using their figurative microphone and international influence to call attention to how fucked up the treatment of Palestinians is.
I don’t know for others, but growing up American, Israel and its friends in Washington had done a terrific job of conflating any criticism of Israel with anti-semitism. What finally got me to re-evaluate my stance on the Israeli government a few years back was when well-known, respectable organizations like the Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International started using the word “apartheid” to describe the situation of Palestinians.
Hearing sources like the UN Office for Human Rights, the UN Secretary General, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International calling out the Israeli government’s actions in strong, unequivocal terms like “war crime” and “apartheid” is a start. I wish they could do more, and I sure as heck am angry with US foreign policy in this, but I’m just glad the UN has the balls to actually call this a war crime.
I moved from California to Montreal a few years back to study, and now I’m staying for good. I tried duolingo on and off for far too long, but I found it super uninteresting and hard to remain committed to.
Best strategy I’ve found is called comprehensible input. The idea is to find books or other reading material that you can get the basic gist of when reading, despite not understanding every single word and phrase and grammatical construction. The more you read, the more you’ll find yourself able to understand, which is also very motivsting!
Also, make sure it’s material that actually interests you. The idea is it’s better to read extensively, reading things that actually interest you to some degree and keep you mentally engaged, than to just really intensively study a much smaller amount of (less interesting) material.
This actually mirrors how we acquire languge. The idea is to intuitively understand French by having seen a lot of it rather than to basically memorize French. You ultimately want to be able to glance at a sign, for instance, and just know what it means without having to translate in your head.
Some resources I found useful were these French illustrated books in Dollarama, but even better is a series of books designed to be comprehensible input by Olly Richards. He’s a native English speaker and polyglot who has written a bunch of graded readers that gradually increase in vocabulary and difficulty. He has several books for French, including beginner short stories, intermediate short stories, beginner conversations, intermediate conversations, climate change, WW2, and philosophy. The nice thing is he actually does a good job of making the stories and content interesting to an adult learner, unlike the children’s books at Dollarama.
Even his beginner books might be a little too advanced for your level so far, though, from what you say. If they are, it’d be best to find some material at a lower level that you can understand a little better. After all, if it’s too hard for you, it will make the process much slower and less enjoyable, which will make it much more likely that you quit. You could even simply try googling “french comprehensible input” to try to find material suitable for your level.
One last resource is the government of Quebec offers free in-person courses for immigrants and many French learners. They are part-time, and they offer multiple options for hours per week, so you could pick what works best for you. It would be worth checking to see if you might qualify for those courses once you move here.