AS a Pakistani, my heart bleeds for Gaza.
The horrors unfolding in the besieged land are not just distant headlines — they are wounds to our collective conscience.
We grieve deeply for our Palestinian brothers and sisters, for the young children buried under rubble, the mothers clutching lifeless bodies and the fathers unable to protect their families from a merciless rain of bombs.
Gaza today has become the world’s largest open-air prison.
Under an inhumane Israeli siege, over four Palestinians live per square meter — a statistic that not only reflects overcrowding but human suffering in its most concentrated form.
And into this tightly packed strip of earth, Israeli F-16s have dropped thousands of tons of explosives, reducing homes, hospitals, schools and entire neighbourhoods to dust.
More than 41,000 lives have been lost in just 11 months.
The numbers keep rising, yet the world watches in deafening silence.
This is not a new tragedy — it is a century-old tale of occupation, betrayal and double standards.
From the Balfour Declaration to the forced partition plan of 1947, the West has repeatedly enabled the creation and expansion of a settler-colonial state at the cost of the indigenous Palestinians.
Even today, Israel’s war crimes — illegal settlements, mass displacement, destruction of infrastructure and targeting of civilians — violate numerous UN Security Council resolutions, the 1949 Geneva Conventions and the January 2024 ruling of the International Court of Justice, which acknowledged the real risk of genocide.
Our national heroes foresaw the danger.
Allama Iqbal and Quaid-e-Azam both stood firmly with the Palestinian cause.
Iqbal’s verses still resonate, capturing the pain and fire of a people betrayed: “The life-vein of the West is gripped by the Jews; your cure lies neither in Geneva nor in London.”
Today, while some Latin American countries and conscientious voices in the West demand sanctions and severing of diplomatic ties with Israel, the Muslim world remains disturbingly fragmented.
The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has become a silent bystander, its potential drowned by division and passivity.
This is not merely a political issue; it is a humanitarian catastrophe and a moral imperative.
Every Muslim, every human being with a beating heart, must rise — through protests, boycotts and advocacy.
It is also time for introspection.
Why do our demonstrations barely echo beyond our borders?
Why are we not leaders in education, media and technology — tools that shape global narratives and policies?
As Sudan’s Ambassador rightly noted, it is not enough to react with anger; we must act with strategy, unity and vision.
The siege of Gaza must end.
The occupation must be dismantled.
Humanitarian aid must flow freely.
And most importantly, the Palestinian people must be given their inalienable right to self-determination.
In the words of Martin Luther King Jr.
, “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
” Let not history remember us as silent spectators to genocide.
Let the voice of Pakistan and the Muslim world, rise in unison — not in anger alone, but in justice, solidarity and unwavering resolve.
—The writer works with a civil society organization based at Islamabad. (ashfaq@alternativemedia.org.pk)
