Gaza: When The World’s Silence Becomes Complicity
It is impossible to witness what is unfolding in Gaza without trembling at the state of our shared humanity. This is no ordinary conflict it is the calculated starvation and slaughter of an entire population. Children are wasting away, their ribs visible through paper-thin skin. Mothers go hungry so their babies might live another day. Fathers cradle their lifeless infants, weeping in despair. This is not war. This is barbarism. And history will not forgive those who justify it, those who condone it, or those who remain silent.
When Humanity Fail Again and Again We have been here before. The world swore “Never Again” after the Holocaust. Yet, in Rwanda (1994), nearly 800,000 people were butchered in 100 days while the world debated semantics. In Bosnia, the Srebrenica massacre claimed the lives of 8,000 Muslim men and boys a genocide in plain sight. And during Nigeria’s own civil war, over 3 million civilians starved to death while the world looked away. These atrocities share a common thread: silence. As Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel warned: “The opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference.” Today, Gaza is testing whether the world has learned anything from its bloody past.
Selective Morality is Hypocrisy It is a bitter irony that some who once demanded justice for their own historical suffering now defend or excuse Gaza’s torment. Those who cried “Never Forget” must remember that justice is not selective. The same moral law applies to all peoples, in every age, in every land. As Martin Luther King Jr. said: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Those who defend the indefensible today should remember: the wheel of history turns, and what is good for the goose is good for the gander.
The Moral Reckoning This is bigger than politics or religion; this is about the soul of humanity. Nelson Mandela, who endured decades of oppression, declared: “We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.” To every Christian, Muslim, Jew, and person of conscience: this is not a time for silence. Silence is consent. Silence is complicity.
The Call of Conscience We must rise. Speak out. Write. Protest. Give. Demand that the siege ends. For every day we delay, another child dies with the world watching. As Edmund Burke warned, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
Gaza is the test of our generation. Will history remember that we watched a famine of children and shrugged? Or will it remember that good people of all faiths and nations stood up and said: ENOUGH.
Dr. Gidado Abdulkarim Salimon writes from No 1b Halal Street Daudu Islamic Village, Ilorin kwara state.
Contact Information: Email: abdulkarimgidado9@gmail.com