The real trial of common people is history.
Not courtrooms. Not commissions. Not op-eds. History.
And it's not for grand crimes or ambitious betrayals. It’s for their silence. For their neutrality. For the comfort of not knowing too much. For the everyday choices that grease the gears of cruelty. Because when power consolidates (wealthy, polished, confident in its violence) it doesn’t operate in a vacuum. It needs the quiet nods, the turned backs, the helpful denials, the shrugs. It needs the crowd. Not cheering, necessarily. Just standing there.
You can drag the tyrants to trial. You can dismantle the boardrooms, publish the emails, trace the money. But history keeps looking past the podium and into the seats. Who clapped? Who looked away? Who knew and still kept their hands clean?
Nazi Germany is the most rehearsed case study in this brutal moral mathematics. Everyone points to it because it’s the easiest to understand and the hardest to explain away. It shows us what happens when millions of people decide they don’t want to know more than what the radio tells them. When they find it easier to believe that the neighbors disappeared because they were “troublemakers.” When they start using phrases like just doing my job or we didn’t know the details or it was a different time.
But silence is rarely innocent. It is not blank space. It is a decision. Even when it doesn’t feel like one.
Neutrality is not always forced. More often than not, it is chosen… gently, instinctively because there’s something to be protected. A paycheck. A child’s school. A front lawn. The comfort of not being on the wrong side of a shouting match. People claim they’re sheep, that they didn’t know better, that the herd moved too fast. But you don’t stay silent unless that silence is giving you something.
And history doesn’t forget that. It asks, always: what did you do when you had a choice? Maybe not a dramatic one. Maybe not a gun-to-your-head, trench-digging, prisoner-marching kind of choice. But the kind that comes with everyday decisions. Did you speak when your neighbor was harassed? Did you question the narrative passed around the dinner table? Did you risk losing something to do the right thing?
Comfort kills more morality than any ideology.
And the dangerous part, the part people don’t want to talk about, is that most people prefer not to know. Ignorance isn’t a lack of access to information anymore. It’s a refusal to engage with what might break the illusion of peace. Because to know would mean having to act. To know would mean looking in the mirror and realizing you can’t claim innocence just because you didn’t pull a trigger.
History has always been the cruelest of judges because it doesn’t require confessions. It doesn’t need paperwork or witnesses. It collects the silences. It records what people chose not to say. And it hands down its verdicts long after the trials are over.
The question isn’t “how could they have known?”
It’s “why did they choose not to?”
History will be our trial if we become complicit by facilitating this crime against humanity with our silence, neutrality, and ignorance. The emancipation people of Palestine is the litmus test of us who preach of collective action. So, now is the time.
Donations:
1. Water is Life Gaza - https://lnkd.in/gHzRzh6h
2. Help Families and Children in Palestine. - https://lnkd.in/gaZCqt3B - I found this here: https://lnkd.in/gmGSXhYn.
3. The Sameer Project - https://lnkd.in/gSBdgaiC - Donations based initiative, led by Palestinians in the diaspora, working to supply aid to displaced families in Gaza.
4. Gaza Mutual Aid Collective - https://lnkd.in/gpv6uusC
5. Rammun Foundation - https://lnkd.in/g-Q5FGwu
6. GAZAFUNDS.com - gazafunds.com
7. Grassroots Gaza غــزة الشعبية - https://lnkd.in/g7J8q7m4
Petitions:
1. Lift the blockade on Gaza and stop the genocide.- https://lnkd.in/gUSx5wBB
2. SIGN THE PETITION: SUSPEND THE EU-ISRAEL TRADE AGREEMENT. STOP THE GENOCIDE. Please sign the petition. Share it with others. We don’t have to stay silent: https://lnkd.in/gd-yDSAB
Right now in Gaza, people are being bombed, starved, and killed. Over 54,000 people have died — most of them civilians. Children are dying from hunger. Families are being shot while trying to get food. Hospitals are being destroyed. And while this happens, the EU still has a trade deal with Israel — worth nearly 16 billion euros a year in exports. This deal is supposed to be based on respecting human rights. Clearly, human rights are being broken. But there’s hope. The EU is reviewing if the human rights clause of the agreement is being respected right now. If enough of us raise our voices, we can help suspend the deal, stop supporting this violence and pressure Israel to stop the genocide. Let’s act together and help stop the genocide.