IN a land far away, we witness a genocide unfold. Every day on our phones, a plethora of narratives are shared on the countless social media sites we engage with and we see image after image, graphic, gory, and unsettling showing human bodies young and old, alike – if lucky wounded and hurt but still intact and in one piece. We witness the entirety of generations wiped out and we live through a time when the State of Israel transforms what has been the Gaza concentration camp for over seven decades into what has now become an extermination facility. We also witness firsthand the cloak of hypocrisy worn by Western leaders and the unjust treatment by the media of the global north.
It now seems like the value of human life and the loss of it on either side of the border called The Erez Crossing has taken different meanings. While those civilians residing on the Israeli side are termed as innocent and rightfully so, the ones dying within the Gaza Strip, be it a 2-year-old baby or a 75-year-old woman on crutches, are viewed as terrorists and their killing is thereby justified. What is now seeming even worse in this “life-long murderous project” by Israel is the backing of the entire Western bloc. The US, UK, France, Germany, and most others have put out their unwavering support for Israel. The United States of America not only sent a carrier force to protect its longtime ally but is also oozing with diplomatic support. If that did not seem enough, the President of the United States, Mr Joe Biden himself stepped foot on Israeli soil to show solidary. The UK followed suit with financial promises and support and a promise of solidarity with British PM Rishi Sunak on Israeli land. France and Germany have made similar promises and even gone on to ban pro-Palestine protests. What seemed like countries that prioritize human rights, liberty, and freedom and lecture the entire globe on what is just treatment have turned their backs on the people of Gaza… the irony!
Beyond this, it seems as if there now exists a virtual censorship. With sites like Instagram and Facebook shadow-banning accounts that are speaking out in favour of those in Gaza, the situation is far worse on electronic media. The West is on what seems like a mission to continue the justification of Israeli brutality. nothing could ever be more unappealing than the defence of an apartheid regime. Nothing could be more hypocritical!
While all of the above is going on in real-time, there also happens to be a silver lining developing for the People of Palestine and especially for those residing (read: surviving) in the Gaza Strip. The last two lines may take you aback as you may wonder what could ever be any silver lining when over five thousand Gazans have been killed. So here goes: across the Western world many thousands of outspoken protesters are showing the world that while on a state level, the consensus is to stand with Israel, on a people-to-people level the support is for those who hang on to dear life in Palestine. The Western narrative and the media stand exposed. The bigwig media giants are dragged across, especially on the internet, and fact-checked by ordinary people armed only with keyboards and a conscience … the latter that many important people in the world seem to be lacking.
The loss of innocent civilian life will always be condemnable. Then it does not matter whether it takes place in Gaza, Tel Aviv, Kyiv, or Moscow. However, global hypocrisy, too, will always be condemnable. As of now, it seems like we are unable to feel the pain of others, of those who perhaps do not look like and/or do not speak like us. It seems as if some civilians are deserving of violence while others we view as innocent. It seems as if the grief of some is real, of others irrelevant … and for this I see through the hypocrisy, the brutality, the selectivity, and for this my heart breaks for those who fight for life while I sit and write in an air-conditioned room.
—The writer is Assistant Editor, daily Pakistan Observer, Islamabad.
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