Bearing Witness or Bearing Burden in Gaza: Where Moral Theatre Ends and True Sacrifice Begins

By The Insight Circle, 10th October 2025

“Only he who keeps his eyes fixed on the horizon will find the right road.” — Dag Hammarskjöld

History Beyond the Lens of Polemics

At this stage of the Israeli–Palestinian war, now with a fragile ceasefire in place, one truth stands out: the conflict is less a clash of faiths or ideologies than a struggle over land, identity, and the right to self-determination. In envisioning a shared human destiny, we must rightly acknowledge not only the suffering of Palestinians but also that of Israelis — two peoples bound by a common history of trauma, emotion, and psychological burden.

While their present realities appear highly polarized, their similarities lie more in shared victimhood of circumstance than in the scale of suffering endured on either side. History reminds us that both communities have suffered profound vulnerability and loss, each in their own way — suffering that can neither be classified nor misconstrued to suggest the superiority of one people’s pain over another’s. Perhaps, this is the immutable tragedy of the conflict: the persistent framing of us against them, when the true problem lies far beyond such a narrow and myopic lens.

Misery Doesn’t Always Loves Company

Yet much of this pain has been shaped — and at times exacerbated — by global actors whose interventions, whether deliberate or unknowingly, have only deepened the very wounds the world now mourns. The long persecution of the Jewish people, culminating in the unprecedented horror of the Holocaust, stands as constant reminder of how humanity has collectively failed its conscience. Meanwhile, in a distant corner of the world — a land that would only later bear the name Palestine — its inhabitants had already endured centuries of dispossession and subjugation under successive empires: Byzantine, Roman, Greek, and, in later ages, British.

In the aftermath of World War II, the world’s great powers, wavering in their willingness to assume responsibility for that moral catastrophe, effectively outsourced the “Jewish refugee problem” from their own doorstep to another land, carving out a narrow strip of territory whose population had endured its own misfortunes and longed for nationhood and self-governance. To place two deeply wounded, historically disenfranchised peoples within close proximity — each bearing the scars of unhealed trauma — should have been a red flag, recognised as a recipe for permanent conflict.

The consequence of these actions has been the precursor to a cycle of violence on perpetual replay — a reconstitution of conflict born from our attempt to wash away guilt by outsourcing responsibility to a distant land, hoping, in vain, that the problem would somehow resolve itself. But out of sight does not always mean out of mind; crises of conscience have a way of tracing their genesis back to the source of their first incarnation.

Scapegoating of Refugees on A Planetary Scale

Like marionettes on invisible strings, the fate of these two refugee communities — whether they sink or swim — is no longer in their own hands, but in those of distant powers who, knowingly or not, continue to shape their reality. Tossed about like ragdolls, both are propelled toward perpetual conflict, bound by a mutual animosity sustained through a triangular relationship that traps each in a recurring cycle of victimhood. From the very outset, it was a cataclysm in the making — the centre stage for the continuation of atrocities, now cast upon another people in a narrow strip of land.

On one side stand those haunted by historical loss, reacting to every threat as the reopening of unhealed wounds; on the other, a population appalled by what it perceives as foreign intrusion, condemned to endure it without the justice of a fair international consensus on statehood. Beneath it all lies a deeper, invisible rivalry — one that demands, at intervals, bloodletting in the form of diminished conscience or sacrificed lives, whichever comes first, merely to keep the cycle alive. It is a closed circuit with no apparent exit. The Israelis, scarred by a bitter past and hypersensitive to any echo of Auschwitz, react to perceived threats with a ferocity born of survival. The Palestinians, meanwhile, seethe with rage as they watch their young suffer the slow violence of dispossession — maimed, starved, and stripped of land and nationhood.

In this dangerous liaison, it is not hard to see why Israelis respond to acts of war with unrestrained, often disproportionate force, while Palestinians, desperate for salvation and a semblance of normal life, turn to guerrilla defiance — the only language left to the powerless. And all the while, global powers look on from a comfortable distance, trading human conscience for political convenience at home.

Real solidarity is quiet, not theatrical

The culture of scoring quick “brownie points” and chasing easy political mileage continues to prevail over the need for sustained, conscientious effort — and the reverberations of that failure are still felt today. A recent illustration of a moral compass gone awry can be seen in the Global Sumud Flotilla movement. The spiritual essence of sumud — stripped of dogma and blind faith — is rooted in steadfast dignity and endurance. Yet the contemporary world too often mistakes public shaming, performative outrage, and theatrical spectacle for genuine solidarity. Such initiatives, however well-intentioned, often end up harming the very people they claim to defend.

Dag Hammarskjöld — a quieter, more contemplative voice from Greta’s own homeland — would have urged the pursuit of a higher moral ground: one anchored in humility, service, and inner discipline. He would have seen her gestures as standing in sharp contrast to the voyage of the Rainbow Warrior, Greenpeace’s flagship, which set sail not for spectacle but for transformative protest. That mission, and its tragic end, revealed state hypocrisy through an act of state-sanctioned violence — an exposé that serendipitously transformed Greenpeace into a global moral force. The Sumud movement, pales in comparison, reduced to a fleeting symbol without structure or grit. It is this chasm between theatre and transformation that modern activists like Greta Thunberg have yet to cross.

Gaza Burns While Protest Songs Continue

Meanwhile, in Gaza, as the world sings to the tune of protest songs that remain largely performative, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) continue to operate in the quiet spaces that draw neither praise nor headlines — the unseen corridors of true altruism that still hold the moral line. Their work, neutral, disciplined, and often invisible, reminds us that true sumud lies not in spectacle but in service. They bear burden silently, without cameras, impartial yet unwavering in their commitment to ease suffering. The rest of the world, preoccupied with media appearances and online visibility, merely bears witness — loud and reactionary, yet nebulous in action.  

The ICRC and MSF persevere for the long haul through a slow, grinding heroism and, for the most part, letting their work speak for itself. Meanwhile, performative movements, beyond generating a few ephemeral hashtags, often lack the stamina required for a long-drawn-out engagement. In doing so, they risk undermining the painstaking humanitarian negotiations that organisations like the ICRC and MSF fight to preserve. Each act of self-congratulatory moral theatre threatens to close the very corridors of compassion these groups struggle to keep open, prolonging suffering while every actor claims moral victory. Today, as we speak, both MSF and the ICRC brace themselves for renewed uncertainty, preparing once again to operate amid the ruins left in the wake of others’ rhetoric.

We Are Not Here to Stay

In the end, this is what Zygmunt Bauman warned us about — the fragility of contemporary social structures in a fluid modern culture where movements rise and dissolve as swiftly as emotions trend. The Sumud Flotilla movement, built on shifting sands rather than long-term conviction, surfed briefly on waves of sentiment but will likely fade as the mood of society shifts — lacking the discipline and structure required for endurance. By contrast, the foundations of the ICRC, MSF, and Greenpeace were forged in moral clarity and sustained purpose, evolving into institutions that stand as monuments to perseverance. Sumud was never a united front, but a transient convergence of outrage, driven more by star power than by a collective ideal.

The measures of our final days will be judged by the sum of our actions — whether they were merely a contrived collage of instant gratifications and orchestrated gestures, or born from a place of authentic intention, devoid of recognition, seeking only the betterment of humankind. In the end, our moral courage will not be remembered by the decrescendo of memories or the echoes of firebrand speech, but by the quiet tenacity that genuine action leaves behind. The Israeli–Gaza conflict reminds us that bearing witness is never enough; one must also bear burden. Where moral theatre ends and true sacrifice begins, we learn, at last, to confront our own mortality — and perhaps find, in that humility, a glimmer of conscience to guide us back toward redemption.

As the bombs continue to fall over Gaza, the deafening clamour of war has long drowned out the voices of the Sumud Flotilla — reduced to little more than a symbolic prelude to the enduring work of uncelebrated heroes who risk their lives each day on the frontlines to keep hope alive.