I survived the Gaza genocide only to witness firsthand Western complicity
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2025/9/2/i-survived-the-gaza-genocide-only-to-witness-firsthand-western-complicity
I write this from Paris, a city wrapped in blue and yellow. All around me, Ukrainian flags hang like moral badges pinned to French facades.
I arrived in this city just a few weeks ago as a survivor of the genocide in Gaza, leaving my country burning behind me. I had the privilege to be evacuated by the French government as a student admitted to a French university.
France mourns Ukraine loudly. Gaza, on the other hand, must be whispered. The Palestinian flag cannot be seen here. It is hidden, feared, criminalised. If you’re lucky, you find it painted in graffiti, a shy declaration of solidarity hastily sprayed like a secret.
Should I be surprised?
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United Nations experts, all major international human rights organisations, thousands of legal and other scholars, and even former Israeli officials have said that this war has crossed every red line of international law.
And yet, here in France, we are told to lower our voices. We are told that shouting “Free Palestine” might be anti-Semitic. The people who wave Ukrainian flags with pride tell us our grief must be “balanced”. They rage against Russian imperialism but justify Israeli settler colonialism. This isn’t neutrality. This is white supremacy.
Gaza has become their moral exception. Their blind spot. Their expendable other. The news every newsroom twists itself to avoid.
But here is the truth: Palestine has no army, no jets, no ships, no nuclear weapons. What we have is resistance. Hamas is not a state military. It is the outcome of decades of siege, occupation, apartheid, and abandonment. And while European leaders rush to condemn Hamas at every opportunity they get, they refuse to condemn the occupation that birthed it. They erase our right to resist, while glorifying the Ukrainian resistance, heaping on it weapons and praise.
In Ukraine, Molotov cocktails are “heroism”. In Gaza, stones are “terrorism”. That’s hypocrisy. That’s the algorithm of white empathy.
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Do not tell me this is just politics. It is racism. It is hypocrisy. The genocide of my people is being watched from balconies draped with Ukrainian flags.
I don’t want pity. I want accountability. I want justice. I want to see Palestinian flags hanging next to those of Ukraine, not as competition, but as truth. Because if solidarity depends on skin colour, borders, or geopolitical interest, it is not solidarity. It is supremacy.
