Silence is the Oxygen that Genocide Breathes

This is not about sides. This is about souls. And one simple question: will we stand for life, before it is too late?

This is not just another essay.

This is a response to the question I have been asked over and over again: what can I do?

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“It’s complicated.”

“There are two sides.”

“Both are to blame.”

I have used these phrases myself for a long time. I understand the desire to resist the polarities of blame. I understand the spiritual and psychological impulse to hold nuance and complexity, to avoid taking a hardened position.

But at this moment in history—when Israel is openly, and almost proudly, on the verge of ethnically cleansing Gaza in its entirety—I can’t help but feel these lines have become the lullabies of moral distraction: comfortable, neutral-sounding incantations that allow people to avoid responsibility while pretending they care.

But genocide does not happen in a vacuum.

It requires precisely this kind of moral ambiguity to survive.

Let’s be clear: this is not a war between two sides.

When one side controls the borders, the airspace, the water, the electricity, the population registry…

When one side has the tanks, the missiles, the surveillance drones, and the nuclear weapons…

When one side has illegally occupied the other for 57 years, in clear violation of international law…

When one side has explicitly stated its intent to prevent—at all costs—what is, in my view, the only real hope for peace: a two-state solution. And when it can be shown that this same side propped up Hamas strategically, precisely to sabotage that possibility…

When one side has dropped the explosive equivalent of 2–3 Hiroshima bombs on Gaza—and is still bombing…

When one side is now speaking openly and unapologetically about its intention to completely eradicate the other from the land…

And when the other side is starving, displaced, homeless, and dying at a rate of 250 people per day—while begging the world for the most basic human rights…

Then I put it to you that the mere suggestion that this is a conflict between “two sides” borders on insanity.

And yet, somehow, this is still the dominant narrative.

But this is not a conflict.

This is not a war.

This is a one-sided campaign of annihilation that began a long time before October 7.

This is genocide.

This is a slow, creeping campaign of ethnic cleansing—unfolding over decades—that is now reaching its sudden, complete, and horrifying crescendo.

To name these truths is not to erase Israeli suffering. It does not deny the trauma of October 7, the grief of Jewish families, nor the long history of Jewish suffering—mainly at the hands of Europeans by the way...

It is simply to inhabit the reality of what is happening—right now.

“Both sides” has become the shield behind which genocidal power hides.

It creates the illusion of parity, even as the bombs fall almost exclusively on one side of the wall.

It invites us to intellectualise the slaughter of children—to turn starvation into a debate about balance.

But there is no both sides to bombing hospitals.

There is no both sides to snipers and drones killing children.

There is no both sides to blocking food, water, and medicine from a trapped and traumatised civilian population.

There is no both sides dropping 2,000-pound bombs on refugee camps.

And there is no both sides searching desperately for its babies beneath the rubble.

Neutrality in the face of injustice is not virtue.

It is complicity dressed up as reason.

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This Is What Genocide Looks Like

Not in theory. Not in textbooks. Not in the shadows of history.

But here. Now. Live-streamed into our homes.

When children starve to death while food trucks are turned away…

When journalists are assassinated, alongside their families, for simply telling the truth…

When 70% of the dead are women and children…

When over 60,000 people have been killed, and entire family lines erased from the registry…

When mass graves are found in hospital courtyards, hands bound, heads crushed…

When the infrastructure of life—schools, homes, mosques, bakeries, water tanks—is systematically dismantled…

That’s not “self-defence.”

That’s not a military campaign.

That’s not unfortunate collateral damage.

That is genocide.

And it’s not just happening—it’s being filmed, funded, justified, and denied in real time.

This is what it looks like when empire drops its mask.

This is what it looks like when the machinery of death is no longer ashamed.

The question is no longer: Is this genocide?

The question is: How many more need to die before we stop pretending it isn’t?

And perhaps more importantly: How is this ok?

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It’s Silence That Keeps It Going

“The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.”

—Albert Einstein

Genocide doesn’t just require bombs.

It requires silence.

The silence of journalists who know, but won’t say.

The silence of politicians who whisper concern, but keep sending weapons.

The silence of artists, analysts, and influencers who fear losing followers.

The silence of liberal institutions that pride themselves on nuance, but collapse under moral weight.

And then there’s the most dangerous silence of all: the silence of the masses. The silence within each of us.

The silence that says:

“I can’t do anything.”

“It’s too complicated.”

“It’s not my place.”

“I’m not informed enough.”

“I might offend someone.”

But here’s the truth: You don’t need to be an “expert” to know that starving children is wrong.

You don’t need to be perfect to stand with humanity, you only need to be human.

If I could scream only one thing from every rooftop it would be this: YOUR SILENCE IS NOT NEUTRAL!

This silence—our silence—is the oxygen that genocide breathes.

Silence is what turns crimes into policy, and policy into normalcy.

Because genocide doesn’t need your approval, it only requires your indifference.

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Why I Choose to Speak

Because I can’t sleep.

Because every time I close my eyes, I see children, starving, screaming, buried beneath rubble, their names erased with their bodies, as if they never breathed a breath.

Because it’s the only way I can support myself to continue to feel—without collapsing.

Because I have a son.

Because I know what it means to love a child so much your whole world reorients around their breath.

So when I see a father holding the lifeless body of his child in his arms…

So when I see a mother screaming over a bundle on a hospital floor…

I don’t see politics. I don’t see semantics. I don’t see two sides.

I see incomprehensible pain and suffering being normalised.

I choose to speak because it’s how I hold onto my humanity.

I choose to speak because I know that if I stay silent—if I let fear or politeness or spiritual bypassing keep me neutral—then some part of me must die.

Perhaps the most important part of me.

So I speak.

Not to be righteous.

Not to be loud.

Not to shame or blame.

But because I cannot betray the truth of my own heart.

Because I would rather be shunned for speaking than broken for staying silent.

And when my son asks me, one day, what I did during this time?

I want to be able to look him in the eyes and say:

I stood on the side of empathy.

I stood on the side of life.