One morning nearly twenty years ago, I stood in my kitchen holding a teacup, frozen not by the heat of the stove but by the fire of a photograph on the front page of a newspaper. A Palestinian mother, dressed in maroon, was seen clutching her bleeding son, running through the smoke of a bombing raid. Her face was not just grief-stricken—it carried the weight of every mother who has ever tried to shield her child from death. My own son was three years old then, and in that moment, the separation between her and me vanished. I wept not only for her pain but for the utter helplessness of the human race.
Today, two decades later, the images are the same—only bloodier, and more frequent. The children are still dying, the mothers still running, but the silence of the world has grown louder. What Israel is doing in Gaza is not just a conflict; it is a slow, relentless genocide—executed with modern weapons and justified with ancient grudges. And behind this tragedy stands the unflinching support of the world’s most powerful state—the United States of America.
We were raised to sympathize with Jewish suffering—whether from Pharaoh’s tyranny or Hitler’s horrors. We watched Schindler’s List, we read about the Holocaust, and we believed, perhaps naively, that those who suffer will become the most empathetic. But what we see today is not empathy. We see a state built from historical trauma that has turned into an agent of trauma for another people. If Hamas is labeled a terrorist group, then what shall we call a nuclear-armed state that bombs refugee camps and hospitals?
The Hypocrisy of Power
The world’s most powerful voices speak of human rights, yet fall silent when the humans in question are Palestinian. Arab leaders who should raise their voices in righteous anger instead bow to diplomacy and trade. Saudi Arabia, custodian of the two holiest sites in Islam, says nothing. Qatar, rich and influential, says little. In private rooms, recognition of Israel is being discussed—not for peace, but for power.
It is claimed that Hamas was a creation of Israel to undermine the PLO and Yasser Arafat’s leadership. If so, then Israel is not merely fighting an enemy it created—it is eliminating the evidence of its own manipulations. This is not a war against Hamas. This is a war against the very existence of a people—a people with no state, no army, no escape.
Scriptures Speak
In these times, we must return to the books that teach us morality—the Torah, the Bible, and the Quran.
In the Torah, Exodus 23:9 says:“Do not oppress a foreigner; you yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners, because you were foreigners in Egypt.”
To the state of Israel, we ask: Have you forgotten the story of your own exile?
In the Bible, Matthew 5:9:“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”
Where is this peace? Where are those who claim to follow Christ but justify carpet bombing civilians?
In the Quran, Surah Al-Ma’idah (5:32) says: “Whoever kills a soul unless for a soul or for corruption [done] in the land—it is as if he had slain mankind entirely. And whoever saves one—it is as if he had saved mankind entirely.”
How many souls have been slain in Gaza? Are we still pretending this is about security and not supremacy?
The Moral Collapse of the World Order
This is not a Muslim problem or a Jewish problem. It is a human problem. The soul of humanity is being tested. Every bomb dropped on a Gaza hospital, every child pulled from the rubble, every mother screaming in grief—is not just a war crime. It is a wound on the conscience of the world.
If this genocide continues, it will not be just Palestine that is destroyed—but the moral credibility of the global order. A world that preaches democracy but funds apartheid, that teaches peace but sells weapons for war, is a world heading toward moral extinction.
Let This Be the Last War
This article is not written out of hate, but out of heartbreak. I do not call for revenge—I call for recognition. Recognition of Palestinian humanity. Recognition of Jewish history, yes—but not at the cost of erasing another people. Recognition of the silent complicity of Muslim leaders who care more for palaces than people.
History does not forget. Holy books do not lie. The oppressors of today may sit on thrones, but like Pharaohs and tyrants before them, they will fall. The blood of the innocent cries out from the ground—and someday, justice will answer.
Let us not be remembered as the generation that watched a genocide live on screen and did nothing. Let this be the last war.
