A boy sits in the ruins of a UNRWA school in Nuseirat, Middle Areas, Gaza — one of hundreds damaged in Israeli strikes, leaving thousands of children without access to education. (Photo: UNRWA)
If peace is the goal, war cannot be the solution. And yet, war is what the world continues to embrace – in the name of peace, in the name of justice, in the name of security. But who speaks for the children buried in rubble? For the mothers clutching fragments of a home that no longer exists? For the region of West Asia now teetering on the brink of irreversible collapse?
What began as a long-standing Israel-Palestine conflict has now morphed into a regional firestorm. Israel’s recent military strikes on Iran mark a dangerous new chapter, threatening to drag multiple nations into the war. Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, under pressure at home and emboldened by a distracted world, has made what appears to be a grave miscalculation. His campaign, ostensibly aimed at dismantling Hamas and freeing hostages, has grown into something far more sinister – a war with no moral compass and no clear end.
Gaza is no longer a war zone. It is a place where humanity itself has been bombed into silence. Civilian infrastructure – hospitals, schools, refugee camps – lie in ruins. Over 50,000 Palestinian lives have been lost, and the count rises by the hour. These are not militants or combatants. They are civilians – exhausted, dehydrated, and terrified. In Gaza today, famine walks alongside fear. Those standing in line for a bag of flour, a bottle of water are being bombed. Israel explains it away as a ‘mistake’ or ‘security concerns’. Their only crime being born in the wrong place, at the wrong time
The United Nations has become a bystander, holding late-night sessions and issuing pleas that are promptly ignored. The Security Council, the supposed guardian of global peace, has turned into a chamber of impasse and impotence. Once again, it fiddles while a region burns. In fact these institutions have become modern-day Neros.
And now, Iran bleeds too. Israel’s unprovoked aggression has plunged the region into a deeper spiral of violence. The airstrikes in Tehran are justified as pre-emptive security measures. But what about the civilian casualties and collateral damages.
If the war in Gaza was already a humanitarian catastrophe, this new front with Iran threatens to unstitch the fragile seams holding the region together. It is not just bombs that are falling – it is trust, law, and any hope of regional stability.
The world’s major powers have failed. Failed to stop the bloodshed. Failed to apply meaningful pressure. Failed to care. Weapons continue to be shipped. Military aid continues to flow. And diplomatic statements continue to arrive – hollow, formulaic, and painfully detached from reality on the ground. Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.
The tragedy in Gaza and the escalation with Iran have not only laid bare the horrors of war – they’ve exposed something deeper and more insidious: the level of global brainwashing, the hypocrisy of world powers, and the entrenched racism that underpins it all.
The tragedy has gone beyond numbers, beyond body counts and rubble, there is something more haunting: the erasure of a people’s right to exist with dignity. Gaza is not a battlefield – —it has turned into a graveyard of dreams, hopes, and aspirations. And Tehran may soon join it.
Where is the outrage? Where is the conscience of the international community that once spoke loftily of human rights and moral responsibility? Silence, in the face of such suffering, is not neutrality but complicity.
As the smoke thickens and the bodies pile up, we must ask ourselves: How many more lives must be sacrificed before we understand that war cannot build peace? How many more cities must fall before diplomacy reclaims its rightful place?
History will not forget Gaza. Nor Tehran. Nor the leaders who unleashed this carnage. But it will also remember those who stood by, eyes open, hearts closed.
Let’s not mince words. If the images emerging from Gaza were happening anywhere else, the outcry would shake the foundations of the United Nations. There would be emergency summits, sanctions, travel bans, and military interventions. But because the victims are Palestinian, because the injured have Arabic names, and because the dead come wrapped in keffiyehs, the world chooses silence – or worse, justification. No wonder every Israeli life is a tragedy and every Palestinian death a mere statistic.
There is no diplomacy. Only selective humanity. Countries that lecture the world about human rights are arming the aggressors. Governments that proudly host Holocaust memorials are turning a blind eye to modern-day massacres. Leaders who claim to stand against terrorism are funding regimes that bury children under rubble in the name of ‘security.’
Western audiences are fed a curated narrative: that Israel is defending itself against hordes of barbarians; that Iran is the eternal threat; that Palestinians are somehow to blame for being killed. It’s a narrative so deeply embedded that even when the truth is visible in every burned-out ambulance and every grieving mother, it is met with a hypocritical stance.
What we are witnessing is not just a geopolitical conflict – it’s a hierarchy of grief. Some lives are deemed more valuable than others. Some tears are televised; others are ignored. Some victims are called heroes; others are labeled as “human shields.”
What we are witnessing is not mere diplomatic breakdown but moral bankruptcy.
This post was last modified on June 23, 2025 5:31 pm