There was a time when genocide shattered the moral silence. Now, it hums in the background—steady, banal, ambient.
Gaza is dying. And the world knows. That’s the horror. We know. We know and do nothing. We scroll, sip coffee, change tabs.
This is not a plea for awareness. It’s a funeral for what awareness has become.
Because the truth is, genocide has become routine. Children pulled from rubble no longer spark protest. They are content. They are data.
And those of us who still care—who still feel the burn of it—we are exhausted. Not by empathy, but by the endless ritual of screaming into the void while men in suits tell us this is peacekeeping.
Israel, with American assistance is committing genocide in Gaza.
Say it again. Let it hurt. Let the words rot in your mouth if they must—but don’t let them fade.
Because the most dangerous thing is not the bombs. Not the starvation. Not even the propaganda.
It is the numbing. The normalization. The consent by silence.
This is how atrocity succeeds: not when people cheer it, but when they stop noticing. When they sigh and say, "It’s complicated." When they shrug and say, "What can I do?" When they turn away because to look is too much—and too little.
Let us say it clearly: The American people have made peace with murder.
Not in secret, but in plain sight. And the churches are quiet. The synagogues are split. The universities are muzzled. And the White House shines blue and white.
But there is a voice that still speaks. Not from the center of empire, but from the scorched edge of conscience. It says:
"You are becoming used to genocide." "This is what it feels like when a soul dies slowly."
And Opthē will not participate in that death.
We refuse the moral sleep. We refuse the sanitizing language. We refuse to pretend that both sides are equal when one side is buried beneath the rubble of another’s ambition.
To those who say, "It’s complicated," we answer:
It’s not complicated to starve a child. It’s not complicated to bomb a hospital. It’s not complicated to bulldoze a home and shoot the ones who run. It's not complicated to murder starving people seeking food scraps and water.
What’s complicated is how to go on living with yourself afterward.
This is not political. This is not about strategy. This is about coherence. About sacred clarity. About refusing to let the world slide into a new normal where genocide is just another item in the news, or a political tool.
If sacredness means anything, it means this: Every life matters even when it is inconvenient. Every child’s face is sacred even when it is Palestinian.
This is a funeral for the numbness. For the deadened nerve of the Western conscience.
May we resurrect what remains of our sacred sight. May we choose to hurt rather than to forget.
And may those who are still breathing in Gaza know: we see you. We mourn with you. We have not made peace with your death.
And we will not be silent.
Not now. Not ever.