TFF board member
If we’re being honest, with few exceptions, most of us have stopped counting the days since the genocide in Gaza began. We’ve also lost track of the death toll—especially the number of children. We can offer excuses: being overwhelmed with our personal and professional lives, the sheer intensity and frequency of global crises (Ukraine, trade wars, or the unbearable ease with which Trump is reshaping the world in his own image). But the truth is, sporadic mass protests in some Western cities, citizen petitions, intellectuals’ appeals, and podcast appearances do little to change the reality—or rather, the nightmare—of the people in Palestine. You’ll often read a post saying that eight billion people condemn the genocide that keeps going and going, seemingly with no end in sight. We blame ourselves for our helplessness, our despair, and our rage—at least those of us who refuse to forget the images that should haunt us all if we are truly human.
It’s true that in many countries, including my own, protests are virtually nonexistent. Mainstream media coverage is dry, and therefore inhumane. There are no televised debates, and even podcasts are more popular when they deal with party quarrels and everyday political gossip. The military-industrial complex metastasized long ago—encompassing education, media, and even entertainment. We still don’t know whether we’re trapped in Orwell’s 1984 or Huxley’s Brave New World. People retreat into forgetfulness, unwilling or unable to face the fact that this is worse than the Holocaust—because now we can livestream the screams of children, the amputations, the deaths from hunger and thirst. No one is stopping us from watching—we just choose to preserve our personal peace and moral self-image by liking a post or a podcast.
Where do we even begin? How can we help the Palestinians? I listen to Vijay Prashad speak passionately about the Palestinians’ “stubbornness” as a sign of their defiance and love for the little that remains unseized by the occupier. I have seen him trying to bring the topic of Gaza and genocide into a Chinese media outlet, calling for the world’s other powers to stand more firmly against the terror carried out by a small state like Israel (of course backed by the U.S. and the EU—but that too is just an excuse). The world we wish to see—anti-hegemonic, just, and multipolar—feels more distant with each death by bomb or starvation in Gaza.
What am I trying to say? That we already live with Orwellian doublethink: we believe a new and just world is being born, while at the same time mourning dead children and helpless civilians, accepting that no one—not even Trump, that moron—can or will stop it. I believe most people around the world oppose child killing and ethnic cleansing through forced displacement. And yet, that same majority is powerless—not just against Israel and its genocide, but also against their own governments. We are all hostages, prisoners of inhuman leaders posing as statesmen. We can’t even change our own backyards—how are we to change the world?
Let me confess: after one kakistocracy was replaced by another in our elections, and the new prime minister pledged loyalty to both Trump and now Starmer (who, mind you, promised £5 billion?!), it became clear to everyone that we are a Western colony with a broken compass. Nothing functions in this country—not the judiciary, not the healthcare system, not public services or education. A state that can’t put its own house in order cannot possibly be virtuous or capable enough to help the people of Gaza. And in the end, everyone mourns only their own dead, worries only about their own “national interest.” Everyone feels like an island, not part of humanity. There is no solidarity. Even less internationalism. As for justice—what was that again?
And when I write here, or anywhere else, I do it for myself. To keep my sanity, to stop myself from dying of shame, rage, and sorrow. I follow many people here, and some follow me—so what? We console ourselves that we are not alone. I belong to a few peace networks and activist groups, but we’re still powerless. Perhaps we’ll need to wake up and organize a resistance—not just against genocide but against our own mental and physical captivity. But it must begin at home. The Palestinians must forgive us, but our governments don’t vote at the UN, don’t declare boycotts against Israel, don’t support lawsuits at international courts—even though they are obliged to. In my country, international law is enshrined as a fundamental value of the constitutional order. So what? We’re best friends with Israel, with the U.S., with the UK, and we adore the EU—even though it treats us worse than orphans, like an amorphous mass without identity. I’m sure it’s the same in many countries. That’s why this is a collective sin of all UN member states—against one of the most long-suffering peoples in the history of humankind. Shame on all of us. A deep and unforgettable shame.
I write this not out of a belief that it will change the world — but to keep a piece of myself from going silent. To hold onto something human in a time that punishes empathy, that rewards distance, that teaches us to scroll past suffering as though it were scenery.
Perhaps this is all that remains to us: to witness. To refuse the comfort of forgetting. To let the cries of the wounded settle where they belong — not just on our screens, but beneath our ribs.
Once, Maxim Gorky said: Man — how proud that sounds.
But today, the word rings hollow, as if spat from the mouth of a ghost.
What is pride in a species that watches genocide in real time and turns away?
And yet — and yet.
In a world grown quiet with resignation, perhaps the most subversive act is to still be haunted. To still be ashamed.
To still believe that somewhere, even in this bruised and broken condition we call humanity, a different future might take root — if only we remember how to feel.
