Why did Gaza genocide not spur a global crisis of consciousness?

“Life always takes the side of life, and somehow the victims are blamed. But it wasn't the BEST people who survived, nor did the best ones died. It was RANDOM... Look at how many books have already been written about the Holocaust. What's the point? People haven't changed… Maybe they need a newer, bigger Holocaust.” ― Art Spiegelman, “Maus: A Survivor's Tale”

The first Nakba in 1947-1948 committed by Zionist forces in Palestine set off shockwaves throughout the region and beyond, unsettling systems and norms, that reverberate nearly a century later.

This ‘new’ Nakba, which started in October 2023—the third instance of an active form of genocide inflicted against Palestinians since 1947—has been objectively worse.

These past two years have been a nightmare for any human being with an iota of empathy and decency. What tremors are set to come? Brace yourselves, for the 21st century will be significantly horrific, and I think many do not realise the calamity and ramifications that lie ahead.

How to take stock of a trauma that’s been live-streamed 24/7 to our tiny screens? How do I, the ‘expert writer’, explain, analyse, and dissect a genocide that has already snuffed tens of thousands of Palestinians (and apparently up to hundreds of thousands if we take into account indirect deaths), and thousands of Lebanese, Syrians, Iranians, Yemenis, and more?

And the deaths continue even after the so-called 'ceasefire'. As I write this, Israel has already killed nearly 100 and wounded over 300 Palestinians since 'peace' was declared on 11 October, and 'all is well'...

It's already so late, so very late. And it seems we’ve learned nothing.

So what to do? On my humble part, I write, record, witness, reflect, remember, and think. Maybe the words on this screen will have an impact, like the butterfly that bats its wings and a typhoon appears across the globe. Perhaps this is all futile. Maybe not. Only the dead and the generations to come will know.

When I think of how those before us had to navigate moments of great disaster, I imagine the bitterness and pain within indigenous communities, from the shores of the Americas to the islands of Asia. I think about how they faced the barbarities of colonialism and conquest, yet still resist after hundreds of years.

I think of Congo, notably the hands that were cut off for daring to fight the Belgians. I think of the (continued) plundering of Africa. I think of grotesque ‘human zoos’ that peppered the civilised world. I think of how two Jewish immigrants responded to the beginnings of the Holocaust by creating Superman, a fictional character to save and represent the best of us.

I also think of my Palestinian colleague, who lost more than 150 members of her family in Gaza. I think of an acquaintance in Beirut whose parents were killed by an Israeli rocket. I think of the traumas my relatives re-live over and over again with each Israeli strike on Damascus.

I think of Iraq, Rwanda, Bosnia, East Timor, Haiti, Tibet, and so many moments and examples across time and space.

Our world is littered with genocides, injustices, brute force, and persistent affronts to humanity.

I emphasise, my sympathies lie with the Palestinians, not because I’m an Arab or due to geographical proximity. It is because I am in solidarity with all, and my support for Palestine is no less than that of Syrians, the Sudanese, the Venezuelans, the Ukrainians, and all the peoples trying to live in dignity and freedom.

What more can be written and said that hasn’t been articulated time and time again?

Let me be blunt, particularly to those in the West: I do not condemn October 7 because so much was already happening before that day. I cannot condemn October 7, like I cannot condemn Nat Turner’s slave revolt, the Warsaw Uprising, or Luke Skywalker blowing up the Death Star.

I do not, cannot, would not condemn because I have not grown up in a concentration camp, nor have I been a slave, nor have I been so dehumanised and oppressed to an extent that only a gun seems the way forward.

But I do weep over the loss of dignity and humanity as a consequence of these acts. While I can understand the why and how regarding the atrocities before October 7, during, and after, I feel that in the end, it falls on all of us for failing to achieve justice time and time again.

To quote Gandhi, the West’s favourite ‘non-violent’ figure, who wrote on the Great Arab Revolt:  “I am not defending the Arab excesses. I wish they had chosen the way of non-violence in resisting what they rightly regarded as an unwarrantable encroachment on their country. But according to the accepted canons of right and wrong, nothing can be said against the Arab resistance in the face of overwhelming odds.”

Oh humanity, where are we heading as we enter the end of the post-WWII order, with the illusions of liberalism and ‘human rights’ vaporised and pulverised, hypocrisy and brutishness reigning supreme?

And the complicity, oh my stars the complicity, for this particular genocide oozes all over, white and brown and black hands all blood-stained red…

Is that light at the end of the tunnel the flash of an explosion, or the glitter of utopia?

If I dare call a spade a spade, we’re all caught between a nuclear-powered genocidal fanatic whose many acts of terroristic cruelty, including forcing babies to rot in incubators, are applauded as ‘audacious’ and ‘ingenious’ by self-proclaimed modernity; an ‘axis of resistance’ that oscillates between incompetence, arrogance, and filled to the brim with moral and political compromises and tainted by totalitarian slaughterhouses; and an international community so pathetically useless and deluded with self-exultance over ‘solutions’ that offer nothing to victims and ensures more horrors to come.

These solutions, whether one and a half states, two or three states, are simply trying to skirt past what is so glaringly the obvious way forward for everyone and do not compromise over apartheid and ethno-nationalist supremacy: a single shared state with equal rights for all.

I reaffirm that injustice and oppression have no red lines. I implore that justice and dignity are never granted from above; instead, it is taken by those below. I insist that power seeks to silence into depression and apathy via an avalanche of atrocities. And I beseech you, oh fellow mortals living and struggling upon this ball of molten rock, floating alone in dark, cold space, to arrive at this ultimate point: Don’t we, the dead and the living, deserve better than all of this?

However, despite all of this doom and horror, I still desperately cling on to the idea that most people are ‘good’. Perhaps this is out of delusional spite. Perhaps. Nevertheless, I’ll whisper Shelley’s “The Mask of Anarchy” and Alareer’s “If I Must Die” as if they were prayers to some just divine being out there or a mantra for sanity and survival.

There is another world. There is a better world…I’d like to dream and scream so… For how else can one persist to exist in a reality in which it seems we must endure newer and bigger holocausts to finally wake up and shake off the dew from our eyes, minds, and souls?

Yazan Al-Saadi is the International Editor for The New Arab. He is an analyst, writer, editor, and researcher with over 10 years of experience in social research alongside communications and reporting. He also recently published his book, Lebanon Is Burning and Other Dispatches (2025), a collection of political comics.

Join the conversation: @The_NewArab

Have questions or comments? Email us at: editorial-english@alaraby.co.uk

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.