The Selective Empathy Tour
FIRST INSTANCE: Dignifying Grief, Strategically Historically, high-profile visits to victims of terror attacks serve dual purposes: to convey solidarity and to frame the perpetrators as existential threats. When Benjamin Netanyahu visited victims of an attack in Jerusalem in 2017, the focus was singular: the condemnation of 'Palestinian extremism.' The narrative carefully avoided any broader
context of casualties sustained during ongoing conflicts, such as the 2014 Gaza conflict where over 2,200 Palestinians, including 1,462 civilians (UN Human Rights Council, 2015), were killed by Israeli forces. REPETITIONS: The Echo Chamber of Concern This selective empathy played out again in 2023. Following an attack in Sderot in October, international leaders condemned the violence, amplifying
the immediate shock. Yet, within weeks, reports from Gaza documented a massive escalation of fatalities. By December 2023, independent monitoring groups, using Lancet methodologies, estimated over 20,000 deaths in Gaza, including thousands of children (Euro-Med Monitor, 2023), a scale incomparably larger than the initial events that triggered global outrage. The focus of official visits and
diplomatic statements, however, remained disproportionately on the initial aggressions, effectively 'othering' the subsequent, more extensive suffering. OUTCOMES: Shaping Public Perception Each time, the outcome is consistent: public discourse is steered towards a narrow definition of victimhood and aggression. The perpetrators of the 'terror attack' are universally condemned, while the broader,