Many years ago we heard Sean Penn and his young daughter speak at an event in Wash DC. I had a chance to personally meet him and shake his hand afterwards, but I declined.

Chalk it up to nerves.

We've always admired Sean Penn because he fights hard for the underdog, whether its Ukrainians getting slaughtered by the Russians, poor struggling Mexicans in Chiapas State, people in Africa being starved or killed, Haitians being deported wholesale back to that island hell-hole, victims of environmental degradation-- basically soup-to-nuts advocacy of the down-trodden and the weak.

Inexplicably though, in all of these decades, our arch-champion of the underdog has rarely spoken up about Israel's ghastly oppression of the Palestinian people. In one rare instance a year or two back, Mr. Penn likened the terrible Los Angeles wildfires to "Gaza West," for which he was rebuked by some quarters.

Otherwise, my handsome and charismatic champion of the vulnerable is sort of kind of quiet about that huge elephant in the room.

We chalk it up to an occult "blind spot."