We Are All the Children of Gaza

By Wael Frikha

This past Saturday, I stood shoulder to shoulder with more than 10,000 people in the streets of Geneva. The air was sharp with the first signs of autumn, and yet the energy was warm, electric. Somewhere in the middle of the crowd, a small child, barely ten years old, was handed a megaphone. His voice cracked as he shouted, “Nous sommes tous les enfants de Gaza!” And the crowd, thousands strong, roared back in unison. I felt my throat tighten, my eyes sting. I cried, not out of despair this time, but out of the overwhelming reminder that our humanity, despite everything, is still alive.

I am Tunisian, Arab, Muslim. Living in Switzerland, I often feel my identity pressed against the glass of Western narratives about my people, narratives that seem to reduce us to either victims to be pitied or threats to be feared. In the past year, the dehumanization of Palestinians has been so absolute, so relentless, that one could be forgiven for forgetting they are human at all, until you see them in the faces of the crowd next to you, hear them in the voice of a child with a megaphone, feel them in your own heartbeat.

And yet, in the halls of power, the story is told differently. Just days ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stood at the United Nations with his signature cartoonish props and grand gestures and declared that the war in Gaza was a war of “civilization against barbarism.” The framing was not accidental; it was centuries old. It was the same colonial logic that justified conquest and slaughter by calling the conquered “savages.” Today, it has been repackaged to mean: the civilized world versus Muslims, versus Arabs, versus anyone who refuses to bow to a system that sees their lives as expendable.

When I hear words like “civilized” and “barbarian,” I do not just hear geopolitics. I hear the quiet microaggressions that pepper my daily life in Europe. I hear the questions about whether my name is “too complicated,” the raised eyebrows when I fast during Ramadan, the subtle suggestion that my politics are too “radical” when I say Palestinians deserve to live. These words, “civilized” and “barbarian,” are weapons. They are used to draw a line between whose humanity counts and whose doesn’t.

And yet, here I am, living in a Western city, watching its streets flood with white, brown, Black, Arab, Jewish, and Muslim bodies, all shouting the same thing: enough. There is something profoundly symbolic about this solidarity. For centuries, whiteness has been the center of power, the lens through which morality has been defined. To see white people, Europeans, Swiss, marching not just in sympathy but in defiance, defiance of their own governments, of their own media, is powerful. It chips away at the lie that this is a clash of civilizations. It reminds me that solidarity is not charity; it is a choice to take risks, to link one’s fate to the oppressed, to reject the comfort of silence.

The recent wave of recognition of the State of Palestine by Western governments gives me complicated feelings. On one hand, it is historic, overdue, a testament to the unrelenting work of activists and the unbreakable resistance of the Palestinian people themselves. On the other, it feels too little, too late, recognition after the rubble has been piled high, after entire families have been erased, after the word “genocide” has been shouted into the void for nearly a year. Recognition is symbolic, yes. But what Gaza needs is not symbols. Gaza needs the bombs to stop.

I have come to believe that solidarity is not just about showing up at protests or holding the right opinions, though those things matter. Solidarity is about reclaiming our shared humanity in a world that is invested in keeping us divided. It is about refusing to accept that some deaths are inevitable while others are tragedies. It is about listening to the child with the megaphone and understanding that their words are not just a chant; they are a demand.

When we say, “Nous sommes tous les enfants de Gaza,” we are not only affirming the humanity of Gazans. We are reclaiming our own.