It was a scene that should have hogged media attention around the world — as a photograph that would have launched a thousand conversations on the very meaning of humanity. But it didn’t. The media chose to ignore it, leading us to wonder if we have created a blind and insensitive social bubble around us.
Let us talk about the scene. On March 24, dozens of women marched hand in hand, barefoot, on the streets of Rome. These were mothers from Gaza and Israel. Their children or relatives were victims of the violence unleashed by Hamas and the revenge extracted by Israel.
Their message was loud and clear: The residents of Israel and Gaza both consider themselves children of Adam and Eve, and all they need is peace. The march was a lesson for those who think every Israeli wants to burn Gaza down.
These women met Pope Leo XIV on March 25. The Pope had already made an appeal for peace. But did he talk to the US or Europe at the behest of these mothers? There has been no news of his reactions since then. When and where would he get a better opportunity to use his influence and the moral authority of his office?
We are living in times of dwarves, not leaders. The global community prior to and just after World War II saw giants such as Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela, whose actions, appeals and arguments carried a lot of weight and found resonance around the world. They kept the world awake and alive through their own awakening.
Inspired by them, ordinary people raised their collective voice against injustice.
Let me share an example. It was June 8, 1972. Children in Vietnam’s Trang Bàng region were running for safety, fleeing America-supported attacks. Nine-year-old Kim Phuc became the embodiment of the horrors visited upon Vietnam by the war, when she was photographed running stark naked after a napalm attack burnt her back.
The whole world was shocked the next day when her photo appeared on the front pages of newspapers. The American public took to the streets denouncing the then-President, Richard Nixon. Under pressure from the public, Nixon was forced to order the end of the war.
Our mental universe seems to have been corrupted beyond repair, in the years since those instances of anti-war activism. The US-Israel bombing of Iran for over a month now has killed, among others, over 170 girls and teachers in the Iranian city of Minab. Tehran released photos of the dead girls. Videos and photos of their grieving parents were shared in media and social media, but how many of us cared to look at them?
The western media may block it out but the deaths will keep haunting humanity for centuries to come. Our deliberate blindness can’t hoodwink history.
The Lidice Massacre offers perspective. On orders from Adolf Hitler, Nazi forces lined up 173 men and boys above 15 years of age in Lidice, a village in the present Czech Republic and shot them point blank, in retaliation for the death of a Nazi official. Women and children were sent to Ravensbruck concentration camp. The majority of them were gassed (nine children were housed with Nazi families to be “Aryanised”). The statues of 82 murdered children of Lidice still stand, underlining the hollow humanity of our civilisation.
Russia’s war on Ukraine is now inching towards its fifth year. There are reports of thousands of schoolchildren, women, and men being trafficked. So far, close to 400,000 people from both nations have been killed in the conflict. A Lancet report from February says, in Gaza, close to 75,000 people have been killed and hundreds of thousands have been displaced.
Flimsy justifications are forwarded by the aggressors for the attacks on Ukraine and Gaza. But the attack on Iran is living testimony of political lies and deceit. After destroying Iran’s nuclear facilities in June 2025, why have US President Donald Trump and Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attacked the country again? They may keep spouting their justifications but they are now caught in their own trap. They forgot Iran is no Gaza. The Persian civilisation is one of the oldest in the world. One can’t just obliterate them from the face of the Earth. Iran isn’t just doggedly fighting back, it has also created a real scare for the global economy. Who has the upper hand in the present conflict? Who’s winning it? What will the winner gain after victory? What fate will the vanquished suffer?
It is disturbing that the rise of the US as the sole superpower since 1991 has become oppressive. Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Afghanistan, Venezuela, and now Iran’s destruction are sad reminders of this fact. The US could wreak such misery because its military and economic might has remained almost unchallenged. The Vietnam War ended in 1973. At the time, the US economy — at $3.5 trillion — was the world’s largest. The erstwhile Soviet Union was second and Japan third. The US economy was more than twice as big as Japan’s. Today, the difference between the two countries is six times. This asymmetry has made several US presidents reckless and arrogant.
This is the reason the death of innocent children and the lament of their mothers don’t move anyone anymore. This barbaric aspect of human civilisation should scare us all.
Shashi Shekhar is editor-in-chief, Hindustan. The views expressed are personal
