They fly to save trees, but let children burn. In late April 2025, Israel called for help: wildfires threatened its forests. Europe responded instantly. Cyprus, Greece, Croatia, Italy, and Bulgaria sent firefighting aircraft. The logistical chain was ready, planes took off. Meanwhile in Gaza, children burned alive under bombs, others starved to death for lack of milk, medicine, or drinking water. No plane arrived. No international alert was issued. No head of state intervened. Some lives matter. Others are left to burn in silence.
Israel calls SOS: planes dispatched
Israel didn’t have to insist. As soon as the flames appeared near Jerusalem, the call for solidarity was launched. Within hours, the European Union activated its network. On 30 April, firefighting aircraft were dispatched from several countries. TV channels expressed concern: “nature is in danger”, “solidarity with Israel”, “environmental humanitarian emergency”.
No protest. No condition. No debate. Planes are sent for pine trees, but not for Palestinian babies burned with white phosphorus.
Climate indignation has its limits: it ends where the smell of charred flesh in Gaza begins.
Europe was thanked, uniforms were embraced, efficiency was praised. Israel’s foreign minister spoke of a “European family” in action. The press headlined “solidarity at work”.
But what kind of solidarity? For whom? For what?
What the West demonstrated once again was not its ability to help — but its ability to choose who deserves saving.
In Gaza, bodies pile up amid complicit silence
The numbers are known. The images circulate. The screams pierce the walls. But the world remains frozen.
Since October 2023, more than 52,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza. The vast majority: women, children, civilians. Entire families erased by a single missile. Newborns dying of hunger. Mothers giving birth on hospital floors without electricity. Babies fading away from dehydration, without even a sheet to wrap them in.
NGOs raise the alarm. Reports pile up: widespread famine, collapsed hospitals, war crimes. Nothing changes. Nothing moves. Humanitarian aid is blocked, convoys are bombed, doctors are murdered.
Gaza dies in general contempt, and the West has decided it’s not its concern.
Double standards: compassion on demand
When Israeli pine trees burn, tears are shed for nature. When Gaza’s children burn under bombs, we hear of “collateral damage”. Vocabulary alone reveals the hierarchy of deaths.
Western media reserves its emotion for forest ash. Gaza only gets the conditional tense, the passive voice, linguistic contortions. People “die” without a perpetrator, they “suffer” without an oppressor. Language kills a second time.
The UN calls for help, the EU expresses concern, NGOs plead. Governments look away, politicians stay silent. Hypocrisy peaks when the same states that send planes to stop fires refuse a ceasefire, block peace resolutions, and arm Israel to the teeth.
A deliberate policy of dehumanisation
This is no mistake. No accident. It’s a strategy.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said: “Not a grain of wheat for Gaza”. Defence Minister Yoav Gallant: “We are fighting human animals”. These are not slip-ups. They are the foundations of a policy: extermination.
Gaza is treated as a zone to be cleansed, a war laboratory where civilians are the target. Israel’s “Dahiya Doctrine”, which advocates striking civilian infrastructure to crush resistance, is fully implemented.
This is not war. It is erasure.
Reclaiming our humanity
No one can say they didn’t know. No one can pretend ignorance. The dead speak, the images scream, the numbers indict.
What Gaza suffers today is the moral failure of our time. The collapse of the so-called international community. The active complicity of so-called civilised democracies.
Only we remain. Our voices. Our refusal. Our boycotts. Our actions. Our capacity to say no, to resist. To remind the world that solidarity is not optional, nor a favour. It is a requirement of humanity.
It is not Gaza that lies in ruins. It is our conscience...
G.S.
