The unbearable silence: Gaza’s suffering and the global hypocrisy on Palestinian lives
Nco Dube, a political economist, businessman and social commentator
Image: Supplied
For over seven decades, the Palestinian people have endured relentless dispossession, occupation, and cycles of brutal violence. In the current moment of crisis, few places on earth provide a starker indictment of our global failures than Gaza.
This 42km strip of coastal land, a narrow corridor home to two million people, half of them children, has become an open-air prison under siege. Starved of freedom, water, food, and medicine, battered by warplanes and shells, and left without functioning hospitals or schools, Gaza is a crucible of suffering.
Yet, beyond the shock of the images of children pulled lifeless from ruins, hospitals without electricity, and parents wailing in grief, lies an unbearable truth. This is not merely a conflict. It is a massacre enabled by sustained global indifference and hypocrisy.
Palestinian lives have come to be treated as expendable variables in a cold geopolitical calculus. As Martin Luther King Jr foresaw, “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” The injustice unfolding in Gaza is not isolated. It shatters the very foundations of justice worldwide.
The Historical Roots of Gaza’s Nightmare
The pain endured by Palestinians today is the consequence of a deep and protracted history of systemic oppression. The 1948 Nakba, or “catastrophe”, remains the foundational wound. Over 700,000 Palestinians were violently expelled in the birth pangs of the state of Israel, stripped from their homes, and scattered into refugee camps. Entire villages ceased to exist overnight, erased from the map.
Since then, Israel has pursued policies of enforced displacement and gradual ethnic cleansing. The West Bank is marred by sprawling illegal settlements, supported by the world’s most powerful militaries and protected from consequences by an international diplomatic shield. Gaza has borne the brunt of the punishment: since 2007, it has lived under a grim siege. Movement is all but impossible, medical supplies are inadequate, clean water is a rarity, and reconstruction after successive bombardments is impossible.
The Oslo Accords of the 1990s promised peace but institutionalised fragmentation instead. Palestinian lands became isolated cantons, shackled by checkpoints and walls, hemmed in from economic development or political unity. Gaza’s mediaeval siege, repeatedly condemned by the United Nations, has left it on track to become “uninhabitable” in the near future.
The Human Catastrophe Unfolding
Since the escalation of violence in late 2023 and throughout 2024 into 2025, the scale of human suffering in Gaza has been staggering. Estimates indicate over 60,000 Palestinians killed, including thousands of children, unimaginable in any modern conflict. Many more wounded and traumatised.
The devastation includes the displacement of more than 90% of its population; entire families forced to flee repeatedly under a relentless pounding. By mid-2025, approximately 75% of Gaza’s buildings lay in ruins, with hospitals and sanitation infrastructure bombed beyond repair.
Food shortages are dire. Diseases linked to contaminated water and malnutrition have surged. Starvation deaths are reported among children, with hundreds of thousands living at the precipice of death. The United Nations warns of a “humanitarian catastrophe of epic proportions.” How can any society claiming to value human dignity stand idly by?
The Role of Western Powers and the Machinery of Impunity
This catastrophe is neither random nor accidental. It persists, and indeed grows worse, because of the shielding afforded by global powers, chiefly the United States, Britain, and Germany. The US, alone, provides $3.8 billion annually in military aid to Israel, facilitating ongoing bombings and occupation. Over 50 UN Security Council resolutions critical of Israel’s conduct have been vetoed by the US since Israel’s founding.
When South Africa sought to hold Israel accountable for alleged genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), Western powers rushed to dismiss and undermine these proceedings, revealing the profound double standard in international justice. Israel is treated not as a country subject to international law but as an exception permitted violations without penalty. Journalists like Shireen Abu Akleh have been assassinated with scant investigation, refugee camps like Jabalia have been subjected to indiscriminate bombardment, all without repercussion.
Meanwhile, Palestinians are routinely labelled “terrorists” simply for resisting dispossession and occupation. The very existence of Palestinians is framed as a threat to global security, obscuring their legitimate aspirations for freedom and self-determination.
The Global Hierarchy of Human Suffering
The silence toward Gaza cannot be divorced from a global racialised hierarchy of whose lives matter. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Western nations immediately mobilised sanctions, arms shipments, diplomatic support, and refugee programmes. Ukrainian refugees were welcomed widely in Europe, Australia, and North America.
By contrast, Palestinians who are Arab, Muslim, brown people face erasure in the international discourse. The language shifts to cautious “both sides,” “complex issues,” and narratives framing Israel’s brutal occupation as self-defence. This reveals the entrenched racism underpinning global power relations. Palestinian lives are deemed less worthy.
The same Western powers that champion “rules-based international order” simultaneously fund dictatorships, bomb civilians in the Global South, and close borders to refugees fleeing Western-made wars. The message is chillingly clear: some lives matter more.
Palestinian Resilience: A Beacon Amid Ruins
Despite overwhelming odds, the Palestinian people endure. They bury their dead, treat the wounded, educate their children, and sustain their culture and dignity amid the rubble. Their resilience is a profound rebuke to the world’s indifference and complicity.
Solidarity is awakening across continents, from the streets of Johannesburg and Cape Town to Latin America, Asia, and Europe. Millions in the Global South identify this struggle as a continuation of colonial resistance.
American political activist and philosopher Angela Davies once said, “Palestine is the moral litmus test for the world.” Injustice inflicted here is not isolated; it speaks to the conscience of humanity. Let the test not end in failure.
What Genuine Justice Demands Now
Words alone are not enough. The moment demands bold action:
Lift the Siege on Gaza: The blockade is a collective punishment and must end immediately to enable the flow of food, water, medicine, and rebuilding materials.
Stop Arming Israel: Military aid and arms sales empowering ongoing destruction must cease, in the same way that Russia faces sanctions.
Impose Targeted Sanctions: Individuals responsible for war crimes ought to face sanctions comparable to those levied against other accused wilful violators.
Recognise Palestinian Statehood: Immediate recognition of Palestinian statehood and sovereignty rights must be granted without preconditions.
Boycott and Divest: Economic pressure against corporations profiting from the occupation is a proven tactic—South Africa’s apartheid boycott history serves as a poignant example.
Guarantee Unhindered Humanitarian Aid: International agencies must be afforded full and uninterrupted access to manage the growing humanitarian crisis.
Gaza Is Our Mirror
Gaza’s suffering is not an isolated event. It is a fault line running through the heart of the 21st century, exposing every fault of a global order built on platitudes, hypocrisy, colour-coded compassion, and ultimately, indifference.
Allowing this slaughter to continue makes a mockery of every human rights declaration, every Holocaust memorial, and every pious speech in Parliament or the United Nations. If Palestinian lives do not matter, then the international order is a farce, and we are all participants in the lie. The world has arrived at a moral crossroads: to remain silent is to be complicit.
Gaza will not vanish. The Palestinian people’s rights to dignity, justice, and self-determination are indelible. The siege, bombings, and hunger cannot erase a history, a culture, or a will to live.
The world stands at a crossroads. History will judge those who stood silent as complicit in one of the greatest injustices of our time.
It is time to break the unbearable silence.
Enough is enough. Justice cannot wait.
(Dube is a political economist, businessman, and social commentator on Ukhozi FM. His views don't necessarily reflect those of the Sunday Tribune or IOL)