Empathy and solidarity are essential pillars of any movement fighting for the oppressed. Responding to the calls of those demanding visibility is not only just, it is necessary for sustaining any struggle. For decades, Palestinians have not resisted occupation alone; global solidarity has illuminated the realities on the ground and strengthened the push for Palestinian liberation.
Yet it is equally clear that not all struggles receive the same level of global mobilisation. The genocide in Sudan, now years into its devastation, remains comparatively neglected.
The reasons for this disparity are varied. Some are structural: the Palestinian diaspora is larger than the population within Palestine itself, creating an extensive international network capable of sustaining attention. Other reasons are more stark: entrenched racism and anti-Blackness shape who is recognised as a victim of injustice and who is rendered invisible. Palestinians are increasingly seen as human and worthy of solidarity, while Black Africans are too often viewed as somehow “accustomed” to violence or instability.
A recent video on X crystallised this disparity for me. In it, a man speaks to displaced Sudanese children, children who have fled hunger, violence, and the destruction of their homes, and tries to tell them what is happening in Palestine. “Keep praying for them,” he urges. The children nod quietly, their own suffering left unacknowledged in that moment.
There is an inherent asymmetry in this. These displaced children, living through their own horrors and genocide, unable to understand what they did to deserve such violence, are being encouraged to direct their prayers outward toward a struggle the world has learned to see, while the world still does not know how to see them.
I do not believe the man in the video was indifferent to their suffering. On the contrary, he likely imagined himself invoking empathy and solidarity. But when we centre Palestine while attempting to advocate for Sudan and Darfur, we risk reinforcing what writers Sinthujan Varathas and Moshtari Hilal call “hierarchies of solidarity.”
Exploiting hierarchies
Racists and Zionists often exploit these hierarchies in bad faith, accusing pro-Palestinian activists of caring about injustice only when the oppressor is Jewish. These arguments are disingenuous and conveniently dodge accountability for the atrocities committed by the Zionist entity in Palestine.
Still, we must confront the deeper question: How does it feel to belong to an oppressed group with little global visibility and watch mass mobilisation erupt for another genocide?
Some might argue that Gaza is “the first televised genocide,” but this framing is simply false. Across the 21st century, humanitarian catastrophes and genocides have been documented, archived, and narrated by those living through them. The real issue lies in how information from oppressed groups reaches, or fails to reach, our screens. Social media platforms reward content that fits existing frames of understanding. Algorithms amplify what confirms people’s worldviews. Visibility is not always organic.
We cannot wait for atrocities to be algorithmically delivered to us (we have seen a massive decrease in visibility in what is going on in Gaza post-ceasefire for example). We have a responsibility to seek out that information ourselves and take active steps to understand people’s struggles.
Reactive solidarity
After the so-called Gaza ceasefire coincided with the occupation of the Sudanese city of El Fasher, it was the first time I saw widespread posts about Sudan on my Instagram feed, almost as if it filled a void that the carpet bombing of Gaza once filled. Many people were asking, for the first time, what was happening there.
This moment solidified for me a fear about how we engage with global struggles: our solidarity is becoming reactive, not intentional.
Palestine has become legible to many activists and ordinary people. More now understand Israel as a colonial entity committing genocide against an indigenous population, and they feel equipped to articulate this in their everyday lives. This clarity emerged because people actively sought understanding, they did not wait for it to reach them.
As a Palestinian, and as someone committed to the liberation of my people, I believe it is imperative that we reach outward with that same intentionality. We must learn about the Sudanese struggle, stand with Sudanese communities, and resist the temptation to make Palestine the central reference point for every injustice.
True solidarity demands that we refuse these hierarchies.
Too often, when we try to understand the horrors taking place in North and South Sudan through the lens of Palestine, we simply replace “Israel” with another foreign power responsible for Sudanese suffering, today, the United Arab Emirates. And yes, the UAE is deeply complicit: it has armed and financed the RSF terrorists, and it must be opposed and boycotted for its role in enabling genocide.
But in this rush to substitute Israel with the UAE, we obscure the full reality. Both the Sudanese Armed Forces and the RSF have committed atrocities against ordinary Sudanese and Darfurian people. Our language becomes muddled when we frame what’s taking place as merely an occupation, rather than what it truly is: a counterrevolutionary war in which multiple Sudanese factions and external imperial powers all have stakes.
This is not “over-complicating” the situation. In fact, it ties it closer to home when we learn it is not only the UAE, but many other Western imperial states that gain from Sudan’s suffering, thus making us all who live in these lands complicit in the process.
Most importantly however, this gives the Sudanese struggle the nuance and attention it deserves, so that our solidarity is informed, accurate, and worthy of the people we claim to support.
Comparisons are of course central to how we express solidarity. Finding similarities in struggles is how we connect and think internationally. But solidarity must be horizontal. It must be intentional and evoke real empathy, not only in how it relates to you, but also simply because it is just.
Hebh Jamal is a Palestinian American journalist based in Germany.
Follow Hebh on X and Instagram: @hebh_jamal
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Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.