7 October, 2025 marks two years of a live-streamed genocide in Gaza. While Gaza is being completely annihilated, the same nations that drafted the Geneva Conventions are now funding its destruction. The world's silence is not neutral, its complicity. Each moment we turn away, each moment we choose to disengage, each time we choose comfort over conscience, we inflict violence and choose to contribute to the machinery of genocide. We dehumanize not only the oppressed but also our very own selves.
For two years, the world has watched Gaza burn, through live streams, headlines and endless social media scrolls. Children pulled from rubble, families erased overnight, hospitals bombed, journalists, doctors, teachers targeted and silenced. It is a genocide unfolding in real time, one that has been documented frame by frame, pixel by pixel. And yet, the Palestinians face a deafening silence, as if some screams are heard more easily than others and some lives matter more than others.
What does it say about us when we can witness such horror and still go about our lives unchanged? The screens that once promised to connect us have become mirrors reflecting our desensitization. We repost, we rage and then we return to comfort. Empathy has been replaced by exhaustion and outrage by algorithmic numbness. The digital age, it seems, has birthed not an age of cognizance, but an age of apathy.
The genocide in Gaza is not happening in the shadows, it is live-streamed, dissected and debated. Yet, governments that preach human rights turn their faces away, complicit through silence or active support. The same nations that drafted the Geneva Conventions now fund their violation. This silence is not neutrality, it is complicity.
Gaza is not merely a political crisis, it is a moral mirror. It reflects the decay of global conscience, the hypocrisy of governments and the apathy of societies that claim to value human rights. The death of human consciousness is not sudden, it is gradual, disguised as distraction. Each moment we turn away, each time we choose comfort over conscience, we contribute to that decay.
Since 2023, more than 168,938 Palestinians have been injured, and 65,000, mostly women and children, have been killed by Israel. More than 1,670 healthcare workers and 270 journalists and media workers have been killed. More than 13,000 are missing under the rubble or mass graves. Entire neighborhoods lie in ruins, over 1.8 million people displaced, hospitals flattened, and food and aid deliberately withheld for months. All 38 hospitals and 157 primary care centers attacked. 1.98 million out of Gaza's 2.1 million population is facing severe food insecurity resulting in starvation, destitution and death.
Meanwhile, the people of Gaza continue to resist with dignity that shames the indifference surrounding them. Amid rubble, they bid goodbye to children who no longer wake. They teach in tents, heal with empty hands, and mourn with the world watching but not acting. Their survival, their persistence, is a reminder of what true faith and resilience looks like.
The world’s silence is not neutral, it is participation. Each unchallenged lie, each indifferent shrug, each delayed outcry contributes to the machinery of genocide. We are witnessing not only the destruction of people, but the collapse of a moral order. If the live stream of a genocide cannot awaken humanity, what will? What remains of our collective consciousness when a genocide becomes background noise?
Perhaps the question is no longer “How could this happen?” but rather, “How are we letting this happen and what have we become?
Habeeba Haneef Mohammad is a student pursuing Sociology from Jamia Millia Islamia
Edited by: Arslaan Beg
