Gaza: Ground Zero of Empire–A Reckoning with Truth, Grief, and Justice

Unpacking distorted Dharma views justifying silence.

In Gaza now, silence is not peace. It is suffocation.
I am not writing this as a man.
I am writing this as a grave that refuses to close.
If this reaches you, know this:
They are not merely destroying Gaza.
They are un-writing it.
They are dragging it into the void, so that even memory forgets how to mourn.
And if you stay silent,
Then you, too, are placing stones over our mouth.
Dr Ezzideen

Gaza and the Shattering of Silence
This article responds to the recurring questions, critiques, and confusion circulating in sangha spaces regarding the Dharma-based views and perspectives that’ve been used to justify silence on Gaza in many Buddhist institutions. I highlight a few key points I believe are essential to consider. I realize that this terrain is vast, and each point deserves deeper exploration and dialogue. However, for now, my inquiry is not an attempt to represent a definitive or authoritative view, but to unpack the premise we are operating from, particularly now, when so much hangs in the balance.

Empire Unveiled
I want to start by acknowledging the wider vista Gaza has forced open, a view into the nature of empire itself. What has become unmistakably clear is that empire is not simply a political force, but a global architecture of extraction, control, and impunity. The genocide in Gaza and the near-total silence or complicity from ruling elites have revealed the depth of this system: where moral red lines are inverted, where genocide goes unchallenged, and where those who resist are silenced or criminalized. Gaza lays bare the staggering violence and contempt for human rights that sustain today’s empire, an empire animated by late-stage transnational capitalism.

As the architecture of empire becomes more visible, so too does Zionism, as a Eurocentric, settler-colonial project, revealing itself more plainly. Gaza has stripped away the euphemisms and distortions shrouding Palestinian realities. What was once defended as a “complex conflict” is now legible as apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and military occupation. The veil has lifted, and with it, the global mechanisms that have protected this system from accountability are now seen for what they are: tools of empire.

The Reluctance to Name Zionism
I believe that, essentially, it is the protection of Zionism that lies at the heart of the reluctance to talk about Gaza in Buddhist spaces. I do feel for how profound a shift it takes to move out from under the myths of both Zionism and empire, yet, at some point, we will have no choice but to do so. Recent years have shown that if we hope to uphold humane values, or even survive on a planet that is literally burning up, we must undertake the rigorous work of dismantling the empire and its logic. Any Dharma that aspires to liberate beings, or engage climate and environmental breakdown and the destruction of our living systems, must reckon with this reality.

Why? The ruling elite, the 1%, as Oxfam recently reports, now own more than 95% of global wealth. And that’s not enough; they want it all. This isn’t just economic imbalance; it’s the accelerating consolidation and total domination of all global wealth and power. For many among the elite, fascism is simply climate security for the rich and disaster capitalism for everyone else. Increasingly, this elite is turning toward authoritarianism and militarized repression to dismantle the legal structures that once upheld democratic freedoms, human rights, environmental protections, and accountability for crimes against humanity.

Late-Stage Capitalism and the Drift Toward Fascism
The ideals we were raised to believe, the civilizational myths of liberal democracy and the American Dream, have curdled into a stinking, dystopian nightmare. What we now face is a transnational, lawless caste of rulers, unbound by empathy or accountability, determined to drive humanity into a hot, hellish future. They are not just complicit but active in the normalization of atrocity. And nowhere is this more evident than in the world’s first live-streamed, slow-motion genocide, visible to all, and yet still held unaccountable and unpunished. This is not just a regional injustice; it’s a moral breaking point that global citizens are refusing to let stand. That’s why Gaza has become a flashpoint, a trigger for global rebellion heralding the stirrings of revolution.

It’s not my aim here to unpack some of these facets of our global crisis, at least not right now. Instead, I want to address the confusion created by specific Dharma formulations, or “Dharma-speak,” that mutes the more essential inquiry this moment demands. A few more considerations, though, before turning directly to those views. The Buddha taught: “Mind is the forerunner of all things.” View and intention drive action, impact, and outcome. The narratives we weave around our views shape the world we inhabit. So what happens when the inner arenas of Dharma practice collide with outer systems openly devoted to preserving empire in service of a tiny ruling elite? Do we stay silent, batten down the hatches, and avoid conflict? Or do we reorganize ourselves, individually and collectively, questioning why Gaza is ground zero right now, how it has exposed the empire’s machinery, and why it has become the spark for a global revolt?

A Dharma Crossroads: Mind, View, and Responsibility
My overall premise in engaging points of Dharma is grounded within a long-held understanding in the tradition that while certain minor points of Vinaya (monastic observances) can be adapted or relaxed depending on time and context, points of Dharma, especially those related to Right View and Right Action, must remain clear and unambiguous, so that distortion does not take root. This feels like the right place to begin, at least for myself, and perhaps for others who find this helpful.

In the Buddha’s final instructions (DN 16, Mahāparinibbāna Sutta), he says:

“If it occurs to you, ‘The Blessed One’s instruction is ended; we have no Teacher now,’ you should not regard it in this way. Whatever Dharma and Vinaya I have pointed out and laid down for you, that will be your Teacher after I am gone.”

Here, the Buddha places both Dharma and Vinaya as central to the survival of the path, but not on equal footing. Later in the same discourse, he grants the Sangha permission to abolish lesser and minor training rules, showing that Vinaya, while important, can be responsive to conditions.

However, regarding the Dharma, the Buddha suggests that its core principles, especially those concerning view, intention, and the causes of suffering, aren’t to be adjusted to suit comfort or convenience. To misrepresent the Dharma is to risk leading others into confusion, complacency, or wrong view. This, in turn, causes deeper harm than minor lapses in discipline. In times like these, therefore, clarity on what the Dharma affirms and does not warrants our deeper inquiry.

The Moral Test of Gaza
Is right view and right action really compatible with silence in the face of one of the most visible, horrific, and merciless mass atrocities of our time? Since October 7th, 2023, we’ve witnessed the sadistic slaughter, maiming, and torture of families and children; the assassination of journalists, medics, and humanitarian workers; the leveling of homes, mosques, churches, hospitals, schools, and universities; and the systematic starvation and dehumanization of an entire people. If this does not stir Dharma communities to speak and act, we must ask: what exactly do we believe the Dharma is for?

If silence is what is now upheld as a Dharma response, what does this mean for our understanding of Buddhism itself? And if not, if the Dharma cannot and must not condone such silence, should we not openly wrestle with this dissonance, especially as teachers, leaders, and committed practitioners? Wisdom and compassion are not vague ideals; they are the living fruits of the path. They cannot be legislated or standardized, but if they are not applied in the face of mass suffering, what substance do they really have? These are the questions we must grapple with, not to posture, but to protect the heart of the path from erosion.

It is a grave concern if core Dharma principles are subtly distorted to justify silence, neutrality, or even complicity. Why does this matter? Because Gaza is not just a tragedy, it is a moral test. Suppose Dharma practitioners cannot be moved to engage in this moment. How will we respond to the much larger collapses soon coming our way, such as climate catastrophe, mass displacement, ecological collapse, fascism. ?

We cannot face these future crises until we face Gaza. What we are witnessing there is not just another war; it is the violent threshold of empire’s desperation, the extreme edge of racist, imperial capitalism fighting to preserve itself at the cost of our shared humanity. This is not a drill, nor a time for silence. Either we wake up, or we lose something irretrievable. With these considerations in mind, below are some reflections on the most common justifications used for silence and lack of engagement in response to the genocide of Gaza.

On the Misuse of “No Fixed Views”
One of the most commonly invoked Dharma ideas used to shut down difficult conversations is the phrase: “There are no fixed views.” Yes, this is true. The Dharma encourages us to loosen attachment to rigid perspectives because there are many lenses through which we can perceive experience, and each may hold a piece of the truth. But this does not mean that all views are equal, or that discernment is suspended. The Buddha was precise that some views lead to suffering, while others lead to its cessation.

Genocide is not a political disagreement. It is one of the gravest moral crises humanity can face, which is why genocide, war crimes, and ethnic cleansing are named and codified in international law. The Rome Statute, which underwrites both the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice, exists to ensure that such crimes are met with justice, accountability, and appropriate punishment. To flatten all views into a false equivalency, treating the narrative of the oppressed and the oppressor as morally interchangeable, is to abandon our ethical compass. And without that compass, humanity veers into barbarity. This is not a hypothetical statement; it is the actual reality unfolding in Gaza, and beyond, right now.

The Dharma does not support such moral collapse. Right View is the very first step on the Eightfold Path. It is the foundation for seeing clearly the causes and conditions of suffering. No fixed view without a sense of moral consequence is a clear distortion of a Dharma teaching. The most chilling example of this is an Israeli Zen “master” teaching his IDF students to kill without compassion, feeling, ethics, or a sense of karmic consequence. It is as if he equates the killing of a child with the extinguishing of a candle, an utterly unethical distortion that constitutes a grave misrepresentation of the Dharma.

Moral discernment means the ability to distinguish between the machinery of oppression and the experience of those crushed beneath it. There is no moral equivalency between a child sheltering under rubble and a military state deploying AI-guided bombs. No equivalency between unarmed civilians starving under siege and the governments that supply the weapons used to annihilate them. To see this clearly is to say so.

All is Impermanent and Illusion. We’re Neutral and We “Don’t Do Politics”
This familiar triad of Dharma by-pass cards can sound lofty, yet in practice, often serves as a spiritual escape hatch. When unexamined, they license indifference, suppress intellectual rigor, and dull empathy. They assume a false sense of separateness: “I am outside the system; therefore, the system’s violence is none of my concern.” But in truth, we live in profound interconnection with all else. Systems of extraction and oppression touch every life, including our own. This reality of mutual entanglement demands not quietism but a discipline of wise, considered, and consistent inquiry.

Impermanence is not a veto on compassion. Yes, all conditioned things arise and pass. But that insight should amplify urgency, not dissolve it. Because life is fleeting, every life is precious. Reflecting on impermanence helps release the mind from grasping, but this should not be used as a reason to look away from suffering. To use the teaching in that way is a distortion. The Dharma the Buddha embodied was never a private escape. Yes, sometimes, he withdrew to the forest, but then he always returned to the work of samsara. He debated Brahmins, corrected kings, rebuked generals, stood between warring armies, and publicly condemned injustice. Equanimity did not prevent him from speaking truth, it empowered him to do so without hatred.

A purely “politics-free” Dharma is really only half the transmission, because politics is a part of all our lives. As Ajahn Chah warned, hiding in the trenches of samādhi yields a fragile peace. The more durable peace is the peace of wisdom, one that can step out of the cave, meet the world’s fire, and act without fear. So, when the triad of impermanence–illusion, neutrality, and anti-politics is used to justify silence, this is not the Dharma of liberation we need now. Instead, it tends toward a moral laziness dressed in spiritual robes. A more holistic practice opens the heart, sharpens discernment, and summons the courage to confront systemic harm, precisely because all things are impermanent, interconnected, precious, and consequential.

On the Misuse of Equanimity: “Silence as Wisdom”
Another Dharma teaching frequently used to justify inaction is the idea that equanimity means staying silent or detached in the face of injustice. But equanimity is not indifference, nor moral neutrality, or disengagement from suffering. The Buddha didn’t teach equanimity as a way to look away from pain, but as a way to remain present in its midst without hatred or reactivity. True equanimity enables us to see clearly and act wisely, rather than retreat into silence or justify apathy. Silence, in times of profound moral crisis, is not a state of equanimity. It is abdication, and even complicity.

To meet genocide with silence is to protect the status quo. To meet ethnic cleansing with contemplative distance is to spiritualize the abandonment of the oppressed. In such moments, so-called “neutrality” is not neutral at all, as it favors the powerful. Wisely engaging the powerful is a vital task of these times, a task that will, for sure, profoundly disturb us. However, if we want our peace to remain undisturbed, then we haven’t understood that true peace can coexist with the disturbance of working for rights, protections, and justice for all. Otherwise, our peace may be dependent on the suppression of others, and our equanimity may be devoid of compassion. Instead, the task of Dharma practitioners is not to transcend suffering by avoiding conflict, but to meet it as fully as possible with courage, clarity, and compassion. Gaza calls us not to be passive observers, but to be an engaged presence. This understanding is a profound and real test of our practice as we navigate these deeply uncertain and disturbing times.

On the misuse of “It’s Their Karma.”
To claim (as I heard from some Buddhists) that Palestinians are being killed because of their past karma is not only a misreading of the teaching, it is deeply unethical. The Buddha taught that karma is immensely complex and “one of the imponderables.” Its workings are beyond our reckoning. Karma was never offered as a tool for judging others, but as a mirror for transforming our own intentions and actions. Saying “That’s their karma” while refusing to act compassionately is itself a karmic choice, one that plants the seeds of apathy, cruelty, and denial within our own mind-stream.

Karma is not just personal, it’s collective. In reality, there are no discrete separations or final boundaries between self and other. We are in a state of inter-being, where we all interact and are entangled within vast systems, economic, political, and cultural, that perpetuate empire, militarism, and inequality. Even unconsciously, we contribute to collective karma, for example, through our consumption habits that impact a myriad of unseen beings, with whom we share this world. Recognizing this does not mean drowning in guilt or becoming frozen in worry, unable to act; it means taking responsibility, waking up, and choosing a different path–one of compassionate responsibility. Weaponizing the teachings on karma as a way of abdicating any responsibility is a form of spiritual bypassing. To bypass responsibility is not the Buddha’s dispensation, which clearly lays out an engaged path of right speech, action, and livelihood, thereby avoiding indifference and coldness in the face of suffering.

In fact, the fatalism of “it’s their karma” echoes the Brahmanical caste logic the Buddha repudiated. Karma, in the Buddha’s dispensation, is dynamic, meaning we share in the impacts of karma generated within the collective. Karma is also unfathomable, echoing the Buddha’s caution against fatalism. Karma should never be used as a cudgel to blame or harm another. Properly understood, it should galvanize our practice, so we, ourselves, take more care of what we set in motion, considering carefully how we can help alleviate suffering rather than generate it. Used with integrity, karma deepens our care for all beings.

Karma in the Bodhisattva Realms
There is another layer that touches the imponderables of karma, which is less spoken about, though it pulses through many sacred traditions. This is the mystery of sacrificial awakening. In Mahāyāna Buddhism, the bodhisattva willingly takes on suffering, not for glorification, but in service to the awakening of all beings. A similar archetype appears in the figure of the Christ, who walks into the heart of empire, not to affirm it, but to expose it, confront it, and ultimately transform it through his willing sacrifice.

What is the karma unfolding between Israelis and Palestinians? Only a Buddha could fully comprehend it. However, what we can see, what has become impossible to look away from, is that a horrifying archetypal current now runs through both realities. Alongside the world feeling, vicariously, the extreme pain of Gaza is also the rage at the US/Israeli brutal killing machine. Together, all of us, have been plunged into a hellish descent into what empire actually is.

On the Israeli side, we see the descent into unbound hubris, where a nation-state becomes an instrument for something far beyond itself, a portal through which empire reveals its final form: sadistic, merciless, technologically omnipotent, and utterly unrepentant. A people shaped by epigenetic trauma, by stories of annihilation, have fused a narrative of victimhood and supremacy into a dangerous logic, “we have no choice,” “we are above consequence.” What karma is seeded in the hearts of young soldiers who raise rifles, and shoot, again and again, tens of thousands of children? We’ve seen their manic laughter in videos. But in what late-night sweat, what future breakdown, will they awaken to the extreme violence they have done?

On the Palestinian side, the sheer, unfathomable immensity of suffering has cracked open the collective human heart. Their devastation has become a mirror, not by consent, but by sheer visibility. Their homes, bodies, families, lands, their very memories, all crushed beyond recognition. Millions around the world witness, hearts breaking, knowing we could not stop the slaughter. Not because we didn’t care, but because we had no access to the levers of power. This is not just a geopolitical event. It is an existential rupture.

Gaza has ripped away the last veils of imperial civility. What remains is raw: one side backed by empire, shielded from consequence; the other utterly abandoned by it, stripped of protection, and hated for even existing. This confrontation, between steadfast human dignity and brutal mechanized dehumanization, is not just local; it is a global awakening. Gaza has ripped away the veils of empire, and by doing so, the world is being forced to face itself.

We are all implicated and connected to the force of this deeply karmic unfolding. For the sake of all that we love, we must now protect both sides: one, from the hellish karma of perpetrating mass harm; the other, from being annihilated by it. To step into this level of reality is to become a shadow eater, a soul willing to metabolize the poison of this moment and transform it into medicine. The medicine of truth-telling, clarity, and fierce compassion for all.

This is the initiation Gaza is offering the world. It is brutal. It is sacred. And it must not be refused.

A Dharma That Speaks–Or a Dharma that Builds a Bunker?
Genocide must be named. Silence is not neutrality; it is erasure. When Buddhist institutions refuse to speak the word genocide, or to acknowledge a blockade intended to starve 1.8 million people, or name a severe apartheid regime with its U.S.-funded weapons, they cloak a venal use of power in respectability. This leaves the victims unwitnessed. If the Dharma cannot speak clearly now, will it be able to speak truth to the power elite to help save our world?

The cost of silence is immense. It normalizes atrocity, hollows out international law, and punishes those who tell the truth. It makes SWANA practitioners feel unsafe and unseen. It quietly aligns Dharma spaces with empire, eroding the path’s moral compass and replacing courageous inquiry with “polite evasion.”

The Dharma was born for moments like this. It is not a museum relic or a comfort brand; it is a living, radical way of liberation. When institutions cling to neutrality, they trade the sharp edge of awakening for institutional security. We must ask if a Dharma that cannot challenge a genocide can be an authentic vehicle for awakening.

Gaza is ground zero of empire. Here, the machinery of extraction, surveillance, and militarized racism shows itself without disguise. To turn away is to misunderstand the very roots of suffering that the Buddha asked us to confront. Each time has its unique challenge. The challenge we face is immense. It’s a challenge that begins with understanding that there is no path to collective liberation that does not pass through a reckoning with empire.

So the question before every practitioner, teacher, and institution is stark:

Will we let the Dharma be hollowed out by silence, or will we let it speak with the full authority of truth, grief, and justice?

The choice is ours, and the time is now. This is not a drill.