By Dildar Kaya
In Palestine, compassion is policed. Humiliation is weaponized. The dignity of grief is denied. And joy becomes dangerous. At checkpoints, hospitals, and even in private homes, mourning and joy are not only monitored but systematically suppressed.
I recall the testimonies of Palestinian activists sharing stories of doctors in Israeli hospitals, forced into emotional silence - unable to show empathy openly for the Palestinian children they treat, for fear of being accused of bias or complicity. In Palestine, compassion is not neutral. To feel, to care, to express sorrow for your own people is to risk being targeted.
Israelis upholding systems of domination understand that shared emotions - grief, care, joy - can be revolutionary. That it can unify. I heard testimonies of Palestinian families denied the right to celebrate the return of loved ones released from detention. Criminalizing gatherings and joyful moments. Detention, often without charge or trial, is followed by the criminalization of the care and compassion that might help a community heal. As Judith Herman writes in Trauma and Recovery, the most profound injuries of trauma are inflicted in relationships - by people, upon people - and thus, healing must also come through relationship, through care, through community. To criminalize compassion is to attack the very possibility of recovery. It is a psychological assault on the social fabric of Palestinian survival and self-determination.
This systematic attack on care and joy is not incidental - it is deliberate, and it is everywhere. These tactics - humiliation, control, and degradation - are methodically embedded across all layers of daily life. At every checkpoint, humiliation is intentional and normalized. I heard from young Palestinian women who are pulled from their cars, subjected to invasive commands, soldiers hurling inappropriate remarks, wielding the constant threat of sexual and gender-based violence.
Another woman, a former detainee, shared her story: imprisoned without charges and released only after a prolonged period of mistreatment in detention. She undertook an anxious, costly journey, only to be turned back at the border - no adequate reason, no recourse. These are not isolated incidents; they are part of a larger architecture of control. Tactics of psychological warfare - humiliation, uncertainty, silencing, the criminalization of care and joy - are methodically woven into every layer of daily Palestinian life. Psychological humiliation, as scholars like Evelin Lindner have highlighted, is a tool of domination - meant to erode self-worth, fracture dignity, and break the will.
Reflecting on these scenes, I couldn’t help but think of fictional films and novels where audiences are united in their outrage at the suffering of dehumanized characters - characters stripped of agency, dignity, and joy. We cheer for their resistance. Yet many remain unmoved by the daily, real humiliation Palestinians endure. Our empathy flows freely for imagined injustice, but falters in the face of its real-world equivalent. We must ask ourselves: how have we allowed the gaze of power to shape our sense of compassion? What does it reveal about the political conditions of empathy - that we feel so deeply for fictional heroes, but not for real people living under occupation?
And still, I have witnessed how Palestinians continue to care for one another. Despite the surveillance, the punishments, the costs, joy, grief and compassion persist. Shared meals. Protective glances. Collective laughter. Small, but radical acts of community in defiance of efforts to dismantle it. In moments where joy and compassion are punished, where love becomes suspect, Palestinians teach us that the act of holding space for one another becomes revolutionary.
Throughout my visit in Palestine and Jordan, my privilege confronted me constantly. Though I am not from this land, I could move through it. My foreign passport opened doors. I crossed checkpoints, entered cities, and exited borders while the same military systems deny these very basic rights to Palestinians in exile and living under Israeli occupation. One Palestinian activist, invited to travel with us to Jordan, was turned back at the Israeli border. No explanation. No appeal. Just the quiet ache of powerlessness. She, who is indigenous to this land, was denied the right to move freely - while I, a foreign person, was allowed. And she is not alone. Across historic Palestine, countless Palestinians are denied the right to return or move freely across their own land.
Another story lingers: a Palestinian activist recounted meeting a young woman from Gaza who had never seen mountains. Gaza is flat, coastal - entirely enclosed and merely kilometers from Palestine’s lush, mountainous landscapes. For her, they may as well be across an ocean. Confined by walls and checkpoints, her deprivation predates October 7, illustrating how longstanding and normalized Israeli confinement has become.
Stories like hers make it impossible to ignore the disparities in who gets to move, speak, and be heard - and they compel us, as international advocates and institutions, to confront our complicity and our comfort. The risks we navigate - reputational, institutional - are not the same as the risks Palestinians face. They risk their safety to do their work and deliver clear demands, while organizations and institutions tiptoe around explicit positionality - worried about access, funding, and fallout - thereby inadvertently reinforcing the very power imbalances they aim to dismantle.
This is a delicate endeavor, but the line between strategic caution and harmful avoidance is razor-thin. Solidarity means trusting Palestinian expertise, navigating protection concerns without silencing demands, and working hand-in-hand - not ahead, not instead. We must match the bravery of Palestinians - whose very existence under occupation and genocide is an act of resistance - by refusing silence and challenging the limits placed on what can be said and done.
Meaningful advocacy, grounded in informed introspection, must continuously acknowledge and navigate privilege responsibly. We must question how advocacy structures, even well-meaning ones, risk reproducing hierarchies. International activism must not replicate the very hierarchies it seeks to dismantle under the pretext of solidarity. It must instead root itself in relationship, in trust, and in the redistribution of power and voice.
My experience in Palestine and Jordan taught me that our role as international allies is not to speak on behalf of Palestinians, but to respectfully amplify their voices, create space, and prioritize their agency and perspectives. This process isn’t linear and can be uncomfortable, yet such discomfort signals necessary growth and accountability.
We are conditioned to use numbers as the base of our advocacy - statistics, death tolls, demolished homes. But numbers cannot carry the weight of human loss. They flatten what must be felt. Behind each number is a person who was deeply loved, with dreams and hopes. A person who had favorite songs, a favorite fruit, a family waiting for them.
Reducing lives to data points may make advocacy legible - but it risks detaching us from the human urgency that demands principled, embodied response.
In the face of systemic dehumanization, compassion is resistance. In the wake of interpersonal trauma, community care is a reclamation of humanity. Healing is political, and it begins in relationship. And every further act of violence - no matter how small or normalized - must be treated with urgency.
The genocide must end. The occupation must end. The liberation of Palestinians is long overdue.
Dildar Kaya serves as the Advocacy Coordinator at Nobel Women's Initiative.