And We're Expected to Bring Our Children Into This World

What future can we offer our children when we stood by as an entire population was systematically destroyed?

The main target of the Western-backed Israeli genocide: an innocent Palestinian child labeled "terrorist" by Western media.

The final destruction of Gaza unfolds before us. What we witness is not merely a humanitarian crisis; it is the culmination of a genocide meticulously executed with Western funding, Western weapons, and Western diplomatic cover.

Ibrahim, a computer engineering student in Gaza, described the relentless bombing as "unbearable." In his words:

"They are continuing to exterminate us until the last soul. Yet it has become normal, as if it is necessary to exterminate us to maintain the ecological balance. My mind has collapsed. Is it normal for all of this to happen?"

Look at the images of Rafah—once the least destroyed city in Gaza, now reduced to rubble as far as the eye can see. Total annihilation. Shades of gravel and brown. Total lifelessness.

Schools housing the displaced have been bombed. Desalination plants—the only source of clean water for entire neighborhoods—deliberately destroyed. These aren't military targets. Destroying water infrastructure is not collateral damage; it is a calculated genocidal act, designed to deprive civilians of life's most basic necessity.

What is more obscene: the genocide itself or the deafening silence that surrounds it?

While Gaza burns, classes continue. Corporate meetings proceed uninterrupted. People shop, dine out, post vacation photos. The machinery of Western life hums along, undisturbed by the screams of Palestinian children being tortured in Israeli detention camps. Western politicians express "concern" while signing arms deals. Media outlets publish hand-wringing editorials while avoiding the word "genocide." Not a single Western nation has cut its ties with Israel.

The Western Race-based Order

The Economist—that bastion of respectable centrism—frames Israel's actions not as moral atrocities but as strategic missteps that might harm Israel's interests. "Israel seems to have drawn the conclusion that cruel tactics work," they write, turning objective war crimes into mere tactical choices. They worry about Israel's tech sector possibly relocating abroad while tens of thousands of Palestinians lie dead.

This is the racism at the core of Western institutions—the belief, so deeply ingrained it need not be stated explicitly, that Palestinian lives simply matter less. That Arab suffering is unfortunate but ultimately acceptable. That Israeli security justifies any measure, no matter how brutal or disproportionate.

I increasingly feel a visceral hatred toward this Western order that has created a world where human worth is determined by skin color, name, or religion. Where a brown child dying merits a statistic, while a white or Israeli child's suffering commands front-page coverage and international outrage. Where Muslim mothers burying multiple children receive less attention than Israeli tech workers contemplating relocation.

Consider the cases of Mahmud Khalil and Rumeysa Öztürk. Khalil, a Columbia University student and green card holder with an American wife about to give birth, was kidnapped from his apartment building and disappeared into America's immigration detention system. Similarly, Turkish international student Rumeysa Öztürk was seized on the streets of Massachusetts by ICE agents, vanishing into America's shadowy detention apparatus without warning or formal charges. Their crime? Holding the wrong opinions combined with names that sound Muslim.

Meanwhile, children get shot in the chest by Israeli forces in the West Bank. Or they are starved to death in Israeli custody, autopsies revealing extreme body muscle and fat wasting, scabies, abrasions, and evidence of repeated anal penetrations and beatings. Imagine for one moment if these were Israeli or white children. The outrage would be deafening.

And I recoil with disgust at having to make that comparison repeatedly. The repulsive reality that we live in a world where I must humanize beautiful Palestinian or Arab children by comparing them to those classified as white or Jewish. Absolutely sickening. This is the appalling world the West created—and we're expected to bring our children into it.

The most powerful empire in human history, commanding the most formidable military apparatus the world has ever witnessed, supports Israel as it systematically destroys the poorest territory in the Mediterranean. American politicians insist Israel has the "right to defend itself" while Palestinian children are denied the right to clean water, medicine, shelter, or life itself.

As Benjamin Netanyahu—a man wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes—openly speaks of emptying Gaza of its population, Palestinians are issued endless "evacuation orders," forced to flee to ever-smaller areas. As Khalil Sayegh, a Palestinian analyst from Gaza, notes:

This is the international order the West has created: one where some lives are deemed sacred and others disposable. Where genocide can occur in plain sight with complete impunity. Where Western media frames crimes against humanity as regrettable necessities or strategic choices rather than moral abominations.

Again, is this the world we're expected to bring children into?

A world where a Palestinian child might be born into circumstances where their home can be demolished, their water supply destroyed, their school bombed, their bodily autonomy violated, their medical care denied—all while the "civilized world" shrugs or actively funds their oppressors?

A world where children with brown skin or Muslim names learn early that their lives are valued less, that their suffering will be ignored or justified, that they may disappear into detention without trial or due process?

Total Collapse into Barbarism

As the Palestinian people face this unimaginable brutality, we must bear witness. We must recognize that Gaza is not merely a humanitarian crisis but a moral test for humanity itself. If this crime is normalized, our species will collapse into violent barbarism, and Gaza simply foreshadows the future awaiting much of humanity.

The reckoning that must come isn't just about Gaza or Palestine, as crucially important as that is. It's about the future of humanity itself. It's about whether we accept a world order built on racial hierarchy, where some lives matter infinitely more than others. Where genocide can be committed with impunity if the victims belong to the wrong ethnic group.

No one is coming to rescue the people of Gaza. But we must not let their suffering be in vain. We must name this crime for what it is. We must hold accountable all who are complicit. And we must reject the racist world order that made it possible.

Because if we don't, what future can we offer our children? What moral standing will we have to tell them to be kind, to respect human dignity, to value justice, when we stood by as an entire population was systematically destroyed?

This is the world the West has built. A world of unimaginable cruelty for some and comfortable indifference for others. A world where the most egregious crimes are recast as complex geopolitical dilemmas rather than straightforward moral failures.

Is this truly the world we're expected to bring children into?

- Karim

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