Human lives aren’t political
Empathy shouldn’t depend on who you vote for
So, at what point exactly do you stop seeing human lives politically?
Is it when you hear that a country is being attacked and civilians are dying? Is it when you hear of a 5-year-old girl being fired upon 335 times? Or is it when an ambulance has been bombed? Or how about a hospital being obliterated?
That’s the question haunting me as people have no hesitation to say, “Oh, I’m not getting involved” when talking about Filasṭīn.
When I talk about Palestine, I’m not talking about who the land belongs to, or who was there first, or which side of the political spectrum you’re on. I’m talking about innocent civilians who are treated as collateral damage due to governmental greed.
There is no reason to be indifferent to the fact that human beings should not be killed. Do you feel less guilty for your inaction when you ignore them? Does it reassure your ignorant belief that “there’s nothing you can do”? It’s easy for you to say you don’t have an opinion when the bombs aren’t dropping on you.
Far-left, centrist, far-right; they’re dividing labels that make us forget what they all have in common: Humanity. If attempting to be right on a certain statement about land equates to being neutral about people dying, that is proof that your moral compass is compromised.
Taking a political stance doesn’t cancel out taking a human stance. If you can defend the dividing line of politics and humanity, you have been stripped of your empathy and compassion.
Most of us have the privilege of not worrying about having only minutes to flee our apartment building before a drone air strike. Relish in the fact that you walk to school or take the bus to work without accidentally passing into a “kill zone” and being met with bullets.
Displacement, starvation and death have taken over Gaza, leading civilians to a manmade Phase 5 famine. Borders closed, hospitals bombed, medical workers targeted while caring for patients and digging bodies from under the rubble. Is this enough for you to unblur the line between politics and humanity?
The world’s dehumanizing language, its minimizing of Israel’s ongoing assault, shows people’s alliance with the silencing of the Palestinians. The media use words like “war” and “Israel-Hamas conflict” instead of labelling it as a genocide. Ethnic cleansing.
There is hypocrisy in expressing outrage and providing funding for Ukraine while being comfortable turning a blind eye to the loss of Palestinian lives. The same world that teaches us about diplomacy and human rights forgets those standards when the victims aren’t inconvenient.
The demonization of Palestinians as a whole because of Oct. 7, 2023, has fuelled the global support for the immoral rampage of a state, neglecting that Palestinians have suffered for decades under the Israeli occupation.
The Western world labels them “barbarians” and “savages” for resisting the occupation and siege placed upon them, while actively funding and supporting the occupying force in control. There exists televised evidence, testimonials from Israel Defense Forces soldiers in courts and on social media, and testimonials from Palestinian and international doctors exposing the truth of Israel’s famine. Yet the world denied their pain and reality.
Do you still have it in you to say it’s complicated?
Acknowledging carnage doesn’t mean going above and beyond to fix what you’re not in control of. But ignoring it does mean you’re walking away from the morality that society fought and died to give you. Decisions say a lot about who we are, about what we care about and how we see the world.
Are you deciding to be OK with the suffering of other people if that means you being safe? Can you sleep at night knowing you’ve tucked in your brother or your daughter at night, while across the world, you’ve decided to forget the dead children and families under concrete?
I can’t call myself an activist if I stay silent about humans being deprived of their basic rights. Policies and how a country should be run do not matter more than innocent lives being taken. Your political stance should not get in the way of whether people should live or die. I don’t care about borders or parties. I care about people. Because when we start debating who has the right to live, we’ve lost our critical thinking.
So, I ask again: at what point do you stop seeing human lives politically?
Is this what it takes to remind us of where politics ends, and humanity begins?
This article originally appeared in Volume 46, Issue 5, published November 4, 2025.
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