More than 18 months into Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, the world has grown increasingly numb to Palestinian misery.
No longer do the images of beheaded children, shattered bodies in the streets, or entire neighborhoods reduced to rubble provoke global outrage. How did we become so desensitized to the systematic annihilation of a people? How is the erasure of Palestinian lives and futures met with such chilling numbness?
This reaction is instinctively linked with the normalization of the Zionist settler-colonial regime over the past century.
So deep is this normalization that the existence of a 21st-century apartheid system and the longest belligerent occupation in modern history are met with mere condemnations, flawed peace-building interventions, and biased media coverage.
Even the Gaza genocide, one of the most brutal chapters in Palestinian history, has failed to provoke a transformative shift in the international response.
This phenomenon is also driven by entrenched racism and dehumanization of Palestinians, whose deaths are reduced to mere statistics, their daily oppression and humiliation treated as routine.
Contrast this with the public response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, as western media remarked upon the “civilized”, blue-eyed refugees. Such racist commentary reflects how the normalization of violence is not unique to Palestinians, but extends to all people of color.
Normalizing horror
This racism aims to condition the world, including those subjected to oppression, into believing that such violence is normal. It suggests that Palestinians are “used to it” – that we know how to endure wars, violence and misery; how to rebuild, survive and resist. But when such horrors greet those who are “not used to it”, it suddenly demands outrage and action.
During the May 2021 Palestinian uprising, the New York Times ran the headline: “After Years of Quiet, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Exploded. Why Now?” This encapsulates the political and media establishment’s complicity in normalizing Israeli violence and Palestinian suffering, showing how attention to the Palestinian struggle is acknowledged only under certain conditions, such as when Israeli violence is so extreme that it momentarily breaks through global apathy.
Even that threshold has collapsed amid the Gaza genocide. The horrors are broadcast in real time; the world watches, desensitized.
Genocide is manifested not only in mass graves and burning homes. It is also in the slow, subtle violence that has shaped the Palestinian experience for generations. It is in the millions of refugees denied their right of return, some stateless and trapped in poverty, and all enduring the crushing weight of exile.
It is in the daily coercion that pushes Palestinians towards displacement, like the families who are forced to rotate shifts to sleep, never knowing when the next attack from armed settlers will come.
It is in the countless hours Palestinians spend at checkpoints, while Israeli soldiers relish their humiliation; in the fear of taking the long road home, constantly aware of the risk of being shot; in the disintegration of families under the weight of systemic fragmentation and incarceration; and in the families denied dignified burials of their slain loved ones, whose bodies are withheld in the colonizer’s freezers and “cemeteries of numbers” – stripped of humanity even in death.
To accept these realities as routine – part of a “cyclical conflict” – is to normalize such dehumanization. This conditions the public to see Palestinian oppression as unremarkable, inevitable, unworthy of action. This might be the most dangerous violence of all.
The normalization of Palestinian suffering feeds into another phenomenon: the constant rise and fall of global solidarity.
While international solidarity has played a crucial role in challenging Zionism, it has been marked by sporadic and episodic outbursts, often tied to visible bloodshed. Of course, this is not to neglect the systemic suppression of the global solidarity movement, which has been key to its inconsistency.
Taking a stand
But something even more dangerous is at play here. Even now, as we wake up to news of dozens more Palestinian children killed, many simply scroll past it, seeing the slaughter as just another headline. This is what scholars call “compassion fatigue” – a psychological response that diminishes emotional reactions amid prolonged exposure to suffering.
Researchers have also examined the phenomena of “news fatigue”, where people are overwhelmed by the constant flow of distressing information, and “psychic numbing”, where large numbers of deaths paradoxically evoke less emotional engagement.
As Palestinians continue to endure unimaginable horrors, their reality does not pause – not even for grief and mourning. Even if our psychological numbness is a natural defense mechanism and not reflective of moral failure, we must strive to find a balance between maintaining our own wellbeing and recognizing the suffering of others.
Remember the moment that shook you: the image, the voice, the story that disrupted your sleep, fueled your anger into action. Hold onto it. Remember that it was not an anomaly, but one of hundreds of thousands of moments, each as devastating and urgent. Let it be your compass, pushing you beyond fleeting empathy and into relentless mobilization.
Palestinian suffering is not inevitable; it is a deliberate construct that can – and must – be dismantled. Our activism must go far beyond calls for a ceasefire. Whether truces are respected or violated, they have never tackled the root causes of colonial aggression. Our fight must focus on dismantling Zionist settler-colonialism and the systems that uphold its brutality.
To grow numb is to abandon Palestinians to their suffering. But to act means to take a stand for our shared humanity, refusing to let systems of colonialism, imperialism and capitalism go unchallenged. In defending Palestine, we are defending a world where no one’s freedom is expendable.
During nearly four decades in Israeli captivity, marked by systemic torture and medical neglect, leading to his death last year, Palestinian Walid Daqqa aptly noted: “Numbness in the face of horrors is like a nightmare for me. To feel people, to feel the pain of humanity – this is the essence of civilization.”
-Aseel AlBajeh is an advocacy and campaigns officer at the Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy (PIPD), an independent Palestinian focusing on international advocacy and campaigning for the liberation of the Palestinian people. From 2018 to 2023, she worked as a senior legal researcher and advocacy officer at Al-Haq. She holds an LL.M. in international human rights law at the University of Galway, Ireland. Her article appeared in the Middle East Eye.
