Afrasianet - Zainab Barjawi - The Palestinians are not asking us to take up arms for them. They are just asking to be seen. To see them as human beings. To see them as victims. To see their genocide — not as numbers, but as a crime against humanity. 

In moments of major crises, the fragility of the values that societies claim to uphold is clearly revealed. In October 2023, when Gaza's borders were shaken by one of the deadliest waves of violence in modern history, the world was moved not only by the blood spilled, but also by the way the story was told, by the grief for it, and by the omission from the narrative.

In the first hours after the attack, the Western media stood at a conditional humanitarian border. Israeli victims appeared with their names, their faces, their stories, their broken dreams. Their pictures filled the screens, and their stories were told in tearful detail.

The Palestinian victims — those who fell under heavy artillery and aerial bombardment — turned into numbers: "50 dead," "100"Wounded", "Collateral damage". They were not given faces, no names, no broken childhood, no wasted old age. They were just a count in a passing report, as if death does not cry unless it holds a certain travel passport.

If there is one scene that has risen to the ranks of universal symbolism, it is the scene of a dance party in the desert — young people dancing under the stars, then being attacked by "savages" coming from the darkness. It was not just an event, but a "myth": the peaceful, open, joyful West being attacked by  a savage, alien "other" who does not understand music or joy. Here, we are no longer talking about a political or historical conflict, but about the reproduction of an old colonial myth:  We are civilization, and you are the barbarians.

This narrative was not born of the moment. It evoked the ghosts of the past: 9/11, the jihadist attacks in European capitals. All of these are painful collective memories, dragged into the Palestinian scene to be used as an emotional bridge between the Hamas attack and the "Islamic enemy" that the West has long feared. Thus, the Palestinian is no longer just a citizen under occupation, but part of a suspected entity, previously convicted, simply because it shares religion, skin color or geography with the attackers.

Worse, the West's support for Israel is no longer based solely on the memory of the Holocaust and historical guilt toward Jews. It turned into explicit ideological support for a colonial, military, and ethnic state that practices segregation and oppression in the name of security and identity. And here the most dramatic shift occurred: Suddenly, the far-right parties in Europe and America found themselves in an unprecedented alliance with the most ardent supporters of Israel.

The old enemy of Western racism — the Jew — became an ally, while it was replaced by the "new enemy": the Muslim, the Arab, the Palestinian. Not because he had committed a crime, but because he existed, resisting, holding on to his land, refusing to assimilate or disappear.

The Palestinians in Gaza, in particular, embody everything that this rhetoric provokes: their skin is brown, their women wear the hijab, their children are many, and above all – nothing angers the world order more than this – they do not *die in silence**. They do not accept collapse, they do not retreat, they do not disappear. They insist on living despite the blockade, the bombing, the displacement, the starvation. Their existence alone is a challenge. Their steadfastness alone is a revolution. Therefore, they must be erased – physically, in the media and morally. 

In this context, international law is nothing more than a card that is used when needed and neglected when it is most needed. While the strongest sanctions and the fastest measures have been launched against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, and the Ukrainian people have been hailed as "heroes" of their resistance, the Palestinian people – who have resisted an occupation that has been going on for decades – are stigmatized as terrorists and accused of abusing their rights. The International Criminal Court, which rushed to investigate Putin, is stumbling and obstructing when it comes to war crimes in Gaza.

It doesn't stop at the law, it extends to democracy itself. In universities, cultural centers, and even in parliaments, expressing solidarity with Palestine has become a crime. Critics accuse it of anti-Semitism, glorification of terrorism, or of "not understanding the context." Freedom of expression has become conditional: you can criticize everything... Except this. Democracy has become a cover for managing discord, not embracing it.

If there is anything that freezes the Western conscience more than anything, it is the transformation of the memory of the Holocaust from a universal humanitarian lesson into a sacred "civil religion."

The Holocaust is no longer an event that calls us to prevent the recurrence of the massacre wherever it may be, but has become a sword against all who dare to say: the victims can become torturers. It is as if history does not allow it to move, as if Jewish pain cancels out any other pain — especially if it is caused today by the descendants of the victims themselves.

But despite all this — despite the repression, the distortion, the official silence, the racism in disguised racism — the global conscience is not dead. In New York, London, Paris, Brussels, in the university squares from São Paulo to Jakarta, from Stockholm to Rabat, people raise their voices. They chant in stadiums, they organize solidarity concerts, they write, they paint, they study, they demand.

They do not do this out of hatred of Jews, but out of love of justice. They do not call for the demise of Israel, but for the end of injustice. They refuse to let the world be divided between a victim who weeps and a victim who forgets.

What is happening in Gaza is not just a war. It is a moral test for all of humanity. Either we accept that some victims deserve to be mourned and some are not, that the law is applied to the weak and neglected by the strong, and that democracy is practiced only for those who agree with us — or we rebel against this falsehood and rebuild a world in which human beings are not divided into degrees of humanity.

The Palestinians are not asking us to take up arms for them. They are just asking to be seen. To see them as human beings. To see them as victims. To see their genocide — not as numbers, but as a crime against humanity, in every sense of the word.

And if we fail to do so, we are not just betraying them. We are betraying ourselves, and we are betraying every word we have ever written about freedom, justice, and human dignity.