Shabeer Ahmad Lone
“No Atlas lifted a heavier load
than you , O Palestine
I only see that yours
is the invincible spine.”
Palestine you are the earth itself;
What you have not borne, seen and suffered,
And like the earth’s, the victory will be yours”.
– “Stout and Tender”, poetry collection -Prof. Badri Raina
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”, “Peace cannot be postponed to the end of victory.Peace begins when justice walks into the heart of power, and memory transforms into moral resolve.It begins when the future of children outweighs the pride of flags.”-Uknown
The tragedy of Palestine, and most urgently the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, is not merely a localized or regional crisis-it is a seismic moral and philosophical rupture that reverberates across the global conscience. It transcends the confines of politics and territorial disputes, compelling the world to confront the raw truths it often prefers to ignore. At its core, the Palestinian struggle is not just a quest for land, sovereignty, or statehood; it is a piercing indictment of the world’s moral architecture, a haunting echo that questions the credibility of the values that modern civilization, especially Western democracies, claim to hold sacred-liberty, justice, equality, dignity, and the sanctity of life. Palestine compels us to examine the distance between our professed ideals and our practiced indifference. It exposes how principles like international law and human rights are invoked selectively, their application often shaped less by universal ethics than by geopolitical expediency. Far from being one crisis among many, Palestine functions as a revelatory mirror: it reflects the failures of international systems, the collapse of ethical neutrality, and the complicity embedded in silence. To understand Palestine is to engage in an existential interrogation of the world’s collective soul-and to ignore it is to acquiesce in a world order where power eclipses principle, and suffering is permitted when it is politically convenient.
Historically, the Palestinian question is deeply entangled with colonial legacies and postcolonial state formations. The dispossession, occupation, and systematic marginalization of Palestinians have unfolded within a geopolitical framework shaped by Western intervention and interests. Despite numerous United Nations resolutions affirming Palestinian rights, international legal frameworks have frequently been disregarded or selectively applied, revealing a fracture between stated principles and enacted policies. The unequal treatment of similar conflicts, such as Ukraine etc, highlights a troubling double standard that undermines the credibility of international law and institutions.Israel eyes Gaza as a front of control-of land, people, narrative, and resources. Its siege blocks not just resistance but Gaza’s right to thrive, especially over its untapped offshore gas. Yet Gaza endures, a wounded but unbroken symbol defying the logic of occupation and exposing the moral crisis of power.
The failure of global governance bodies such as the United Nations and the International Criminal Court to effectively address violations in Palestine underscores a broader crisis of moral authority. The West’s dominant role in the ongoing occupation and blockade points to a contradiction in liberal democracies’ professed dedication to justice and human rights. Actions such as collective punishment, targeting of civilian infrastructure, and forced displacement raise critical questions about adherence to humanitarian law and the prevention of war crimes.
One of the most insidious aspects of the Palestinian issue is the global ethics of indifference. Psychological, sociopolitical, and media mechanisms have cultivated widespread apathy and selective empathy. The normalization of violence and suffering in Palestine has numbed many in the global public, allowing complicity to thrive through silence or partial engagement. This ethical failure, rooted in biases and geopolitical interests, exacts a profound moral cost and fractures the social contract that underpins global solidarity.
Religious and philosophical traditions across cultures provide crucial insights into the justice of the Palestinian cause. Islamic principles advocating for justice, dignity, and protection of the oppressed resonate deeply with Palestinian realities. Similarly, Jewish and Christian ethical teachings call for compassion and fairness, challenging narratives that justify dispossession. Voices like Edward Said, Mahmoud Darwish, Desmond Tutu, Martin Luther King Jr., and Hannah Arendt illuminate the universal quest for human dignity and the dangers of oppression. Drawing from Qur’anic injunctions on justice (5:8), truth (4:135), and peaceable conduct (2:190), Rules set by the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH):No killing of non-combatants, children, women, elders, or religious figures.Do not destroy crops, homes, or places of worship.Honor treaties and show mercy.This discourse affirms that the Palestinian plight is a call for the reaffirmation of timeless ethical values.
Environmental dimensions of the occupation reveal an often overlooked aspect of the conflict. Ecological degradation through water scarcity, destruction of olive groves, and denial of environmental rights exemplify an ecocide that exacerbates human suffering. Protecting the biosphere and ensuring the right to live with dignity are inseparable from the quest for justice in Palestine, highlighting the interconnection between environmental ethics and human rights.
The relentless bombings and the use of chemical agents as instruments of war have not only devastated Gaza’s present but have also sown long-lasting harm into its soil, air, and memory-rendering the land/environment inhospitable and the future deeply wounded for generations yet unborn.
Most harrowing is the mass killing of innocent children-each life a world of possibility extinguished, each death a silent indictment of a world that watches. Their laughter silenced, their dreams buried beneath rubble, these atrocities stain the conscience of humanity far beyond the battlefield.
The role of media and narrative control is central to understanding global perceptions of the conflict. Orientalist tropes and Islamophobic undercurrents have skewed coverage, often framing Palestinian resistance as terrorism while obscuring systemic violence. However, emerging new media platforms have begun to challenge these dominant narratives, providing spaces for marginalized voices and fostering global awareness. This struggle over narrative is itself a battlefield that shapes international opinion and policy.
Karbala was not merely a historical battlefield-it was, and remains, the sacred theatre of moral clarity where truth stood unarmed before an empire of deceit, and still triumphed. Imam Hussain (A.S) did not merely die; he taught the world how to live with honour, resist with faith, and sacrifice for a cause greater than life itself. Today, Gaza-wounded yet unbroken-inhabits that same moral horizon. It breathes Karbala daily: children bearing witness, mothers burying dreams, and elders walking through fire with prayer on their lips. Karbala was a moment of divine revolt against tyranny; Gaza is its echo through time. One was the martyrdom of a family for truth; the other, the endurance of a people for justice. Yet both speak the same language: that oppression may wound the body, but it cannot extinguish the soul that rises for truth. To stand with Karbala is to hear Gaza’s cry. To remember Hussain is to refuse silence in the face of today’s Yazids. Together, they form a single, sacred wound-a wound that bleeds not despair, but dignity, defiance, and divine remembrance. In every epoch where injustice reigns, Karbala awakens-and Gaza reminds us that Hussain never died.
Solidarity with Palestine is also rooted in a global South and decolonial perspective. Across Latin America, Africa, and South Asia, Palestine symbolizes the broader struggle against colonialism, imperialism, and racial injustice.Postcolonial theorists see Palestine as a metaphor for their own experiences of dispossession and resistance, reinforcing its significance as a global justice issue.
The deliberate blockade of food, water, and aid, and the bombing of hospitals, schools, mosques, and homes in Gaza constitute not just a humanitarian disaster, but a collapse of moral and legal norms. Children die of thirst; surgeries are done without anesthesia; schools become rubble; mosques fall in prayer. These are not collateral damages-they are the architecture of collective punishment.
Such actions destroy healthcare, education, and hope itself. Trauma, starvation, and cultural erasure are shaping a future disfigured by grief and injustice. This is not just Gaza’s tragedy-it is a litmus test for our shared humanity. If we accept this, we unmake the very values-justice, dignity, and law-we claim to defend.To bomb the wounded and starve the trapped is to wound us all. What is at stake is not only Palestine’s survival, but the soul of the global conscience.
Across ages and civilizations, war-though tragic-has never stood beyond the reach of ethics. From Just War Theory in Western thought to Adab al-Harb in Islam, from Dharma Yuddha in Hinduism to Buddhist pacifism, diverse traditions converge on enduring principles: justice in cause, restraint in conduct, protection of innocents, and war only as a last resort.
Philosophers like Cicero, Augustine, Aquinas, and later Grotius helped translate these moral imperatives into secular codes, now echoed in international law and the Geneva Conventions. Whether rooted in scripture or reason, ancient wisdom or modern jurisprudence, war ethics demand conscience amidst conflict, limits amidst power, and humanity amidst horror.
As thinkers like Judith Butler and Noam Chomsky have noted, when moral asymmetry meets political impunity, the result is not only strategic disaster but moral collapse.In Islamic tradition Al-Ghazali and others articulated moral limitations on warfare rooted in divine justice and human dignity.Ibn Khaldun etc. offered nuanced insights-while affirming the necessity of justice and ethics in political and military engagement, Ibn Khaldun critically examined how power, group solidarity (‘asabiyyah), and civilizational decay shape the dynamics of conflict. Kautilya in ancient India, despite his realism, cautioned against cruelty and emphasized ethics even in statecraft. Ashoka, the Buddhist emperor, renounced conquest altogether after witnessing its horrors.
Philosophers and historians-from Ibn Khaldun to Tolstoy, Thucydides to Gandhi-remind us that wars waged without ethical restraint corrode the soul of civilizations. As Martin Luther King Jr. said, “The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral… returning violence for violence multiplies violence.”
The Israel-Palestine conflict, particularly the suffering of Gaza, has inspired a profound body of literature and scholarship that reveals the moral, historical, existential, and human dimensions of the crisis. Edward Said, in The Question of Palestine, laid the intellectual foundation by exposing the colonial logic behind Zionism and advocating for the recognition of Palestinian identity. Ilan Pappé, in The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, documented the deliberate displacement of Palestinians in 1948, while Rashid Khalidi’s The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine traced a century-long anti-colonial resistance with global implications. Norman Finkelstein and Sara Roy rigorously analyzed the systematic siege and de-development of Gaza as acts of collective punishment. Meanwhile, memoirs like Mourid Barghouti’s I Saw Ramallah and Suad Amiry’s Sharon and My Mother-in-Law evoke the intimate, poetic, and absurdly tragic fabric of everyday Palestinian life under occupation. In poetry, Mahmoud Darwish stands as the voice of exile and eternal hope, while Najwan Darwish and Remi Kanazi channel a more contemporary, raw, and defiant cry for dignity and justice. Fictional masterpieces by Ghassan Kanafani, Susan Abulhawa, Elias Khoury, and Adania Shibli reimagine loss, trauma, and resistance across generations, refusing to let the Palestinian narrative be silenced. Legal and political critiques by Noura Erakat, Noam Chomsky, and Marc Lamont Hill expose the structural hypocrisy and moral failure of international politics, urging a consistent application of justice. Together, these voices form a collective testament: Gaza is not only a place of suffering, but a symbol of unwavering resistance, echoing the deepest truths of dignity under oppression and the spiritual refusal to forget.
In the light of the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict-marked by historical injustice, disproportionate force, and immense civilian suffering on all levels-the absence of ethical restraint is especially haunting. Ethics is not a luxury in war; it is its last measure of humanity. It remains the soul’s quiet resistance-even in the shadow of violence.
History teaches that lasting peace is never won through domination, but through justice, empathy, and the recognition of shared humanity. From South Africa’s reconciliation to Northern Ireland’s peace accord, healing began when memory was honored, dignity restored, and civilians protected. The Israel-Palestine conflict, too, demands moral courage: True Understanding, mutual convivencia, Unity, Harmony, Mutual illumination,eduation for co-existence, mutual tolerance and acceptance, international mediation , an end to occupation, recognition of mutual humanity, safeguarding of innocents, restructuring of UNO, and diplomacy anchored in justice for Global Development. When the pain of children matters more than the pride of flags, true peace becomes possible-for justice is not the aftermath of war, but the only path that can truly end it.
In essence, these acts are not isolated violations; they represent an assault on human dignity, law, civilization, and hope itself. What is unfolding in Gaza is not only a Palestinian tragedy-it is a global one, testing whether our civilization still believes in the sanctity of life and the universality of human rights.
Most fundamentally, Palestine is not merely a nation in distress-it is the living conscience of our age, a sacred wound in the body of humanity that refuses to be anesthetized. It stands as the ultimate crucible in which the authenticity of our moral convictions is tested. The enduring dispossession, resistance, and resilience of the Palestinian people cast a harsh light on the fractures in our global civilization: between rhetoric and reality, between law and enforcement, between the human and the dehumanized. The question Palestine poses is urgent and unsettling: can we claim to believe in justice while justifying or ignoring injustice? Can we speak of universal human rights while allowing their suspension for some? To stand with Palestine is not an act of ideological alignment-it is an affirmation of the indivisibility of human dignity, the universality of moral law, and the necessity of collective conscience. It is a call to reject a world order built on selective empathy and sanctioned silences. The response to Palestine will determine not only the fate of a long-persecuted people but also the trajectory of our shared ethical evolution. For if the cry for justice in Gaza goes unanswered, it is not only the Palestinian future that stands in peril, but the very soul of humanity. What is at stake is nothing less than the integrity of global civilization, the coherence of our moral universe, and the hope for a world where every life is truly regarded as sacred. How we respond in this moment will echo through generations, not merely as political memory, but as moral legacy.
Author can be mailed af shabirahmed.lone003@gmail.com