When the Guardians Fell Silent: A Dharma Reckoning for Gaza

The soul of humanity lies in the rubble of Gaza:

A personal Dharma reflection on the silence of Buddhist leadership in the face of Gaza’s genocide—and what it means for the future of our shared humanity.

I feel moved to embroider further onto this article just posted on social media and here on Substack: Right View: A Response to Zionist Buddhists. Breaking down the profound harm by justifying Israeli violence with Dharma by Eric Manigian and Alexandra Cain

The timing of Eric and Alexandra’s post is uncanny, as I’ve been thinking about the colossal failure of the larger Buddhist/Dharma community to respond to the horrors unleashed on Gaza. Not only not respond, but also be seemingly unmoved by the sheer unrelenting magnitude of violence perpetuated day and night over the last 18 months. Not only that, but also the failure to grasp the global impact of Zionist “hasbara,” which, as it goes about criminalizing criticism of Israel, has effectively overturned the international justice system’s ability to uphold moral guardrails and any modicum of effective accountability.

Yesterday, going against U.S. 1st Amendment Rights–freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of assembly, the right to petition government– the Trump regime announced its bill to legislate its “Israel-Anti-Boycott-Act,” punishable by $250,000 and a maximum criminal penalty of $1 million and 20 years in prison. The day before, we witnessed the drone bombing, most certainly unleashed by Israel, of the Gaza flotilla “Conscience,” endangering 30 compassionate citizens trying to bring humanitarian aid to over 2 million people who, over the last 60 days, have been deliberately denied food, water, and medical care.

Gaza is a test we failed. The vast consequences of this failure we have yet to grasp fully. But what we can know is that Gaza is ground zero for the much larger battle for what and who controls the final destiny of planetary life. Within this larger political machiavellian landscape of “truth as lies and lies as truth,” we now have legislation that criminalizes and punishes those trying to stop genocide, while rewarding and actively enabling those slaughtering with abandon. While those leaders we look to as moral guardians hardly raise a word of censure.

How can the West claim any moral high ground? And how can any religious body, at the least, fail to actively and openly wrestle with these devastating impacts, and at worst, remain silent?

The moral architecture of the Buddhist conscience is twofold. Hiri is the inner sense of remorse that arises, not from self-hatred or performative guilt, but from clearly recognizing the harm we have done—or allowed. Ottappa is the wise fear of consequences that stops us from committing harm in the first place. Together, these forces are traditionally known as loka-pāla - Guardians of the World or protectors of conscience, preventers of cruelty, motivators of just and compassionate action.

When Hiri-Ottappa is absent, the world slides into moral and social collapse.

The ongoing intention to genocide, ethnically cleanse, and destroy Palestinian life by Zionist Israel has exposed a profound moral failing across world governments, mainstream press, corporations and businesses, venerable institutions, and spiritual communities. But perhaps most heartbreaking is the failure of Buddhist teachers, leaders, and publications to speak out, act, or even name the horror for what it is.

Thousands of children have not just been caught in the crossfire; they have been deliberately targeted, buried under rubble, burned alive, and torn apart by bombs designed to maximize suffering. They have been amputated, filmed, documented, mourned, and yet erased again and again, all in plain sight of the global community. And still it goes on. And still, too many Dharma leaders remain silent.

The failure of the Dharma leadership, which, on the whole, has refused to use its moral voice to help stop this merciless destruction, is a failure of hiri-ottappa. In turn, this failure weakens the strength of moral conviction that guards the world from acts worthy of demons. This failure has helped compound a devastating failure of humanity. Mostly, it is not the failure of global citizens who have been on the streets the whole time, calling, by a large majority, for the end of this appalling horror. It is a failure of leadership, particularly by the most powerful. In our Dharma scene, this failure sometimes feels like the Dharma is dying along with Gaza.

Gaza is the first live-streamed genocide recording extreme acts of sadism and brutality to the world, day in and day out, over the last eighteen months. This has been allowed to continue due to the tentacles of Zionism. Zionism isn’t only an identity and mindset that gave birth to Israel as a supremacist state and occupying-settler colony, but it is also a manufactured, vast, multifaceted architecture of disinformation, violence, and oppression that now spans the world.

The consequences of Zionism’s unfettered power, enabled and driven by the US and all governments in its thrall, have collectively ignored and undermined the Rome Statute enshrined in national and international law within the ICC and ICJ. Governments across most of the world, as of January 2025, 125 in all, signed onto the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which means they are legally bound to condemn apartheid regimes and genocide. Not to aid and abet and normalize their atrocities.

Governments of countries like the UK, Germany, France, Australia, Canada, and many others have been severely undermining their own moral viability through their continued supply of weapons, surveillance, and political and media support for Israel. The UK is currently actively charging citizens, who are actually acting within the law to stop genocide, with terrorism. These governments have betrayed not only the majority of their citizens who do not support this unfettered slaughter but also their own principles. For what? For what the world now clearly sees is a brutal, sadistic, apartheid state.

None of this would be possible without the full support of the U.S. in the last, desperate, gangrenous stages of its fast-failing imperial power. Gaza, therefore, is not only the fulcrum for the battle for the future, but is, in so many ways, the sacrificial lamb for the long-drawn-out battle for complete and full freedom from the vast sins and incalculable oppressions of violent settler-colonial capitalism. Why? Because Gaza has torn away the veil for the whole world to see the utter unrelenting brutality underwriting this white man’s empire we’ve all been programmed into.

Is it not, therefore, if we talk of decolonization, of undoing white supremacy, of diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice, our sacred duty to see what is right before us? The extraordinarily intense fight of the “Global South” to completely dismantle and destroy, for good, the “Masters’ House?” This isn’t only an external battle; it is indeed, at its root, an internal battle for each of us. Even on this level, which is well within the realm of the Dharma, we should be connecting the dots.

We must understand that the soul of humanity is now buried in the rubble of Gaza. That our child-like, innocent hope for the beauty of our higher dreams has been devastatingly, cruelly amputated. That our voices that cry out for the creative potential of our own inner, eternal, child-ancient-spirit have been trampled. The joy of planting nourishing seeds in fertile soil, to nurture with community and family, has been burned and scorched by fire and bombs.

Don’t you see? The beauty, poetry, life-force, joy, hope, and future of humanity lie strewn across the devastation of Gaza, its wastelands of decimated bones of innocents, lost to us all as we too lose ourselves.

Haven’t you felt it? We are falling apart, we are dissolving, not in a good way, but in a psychotic way–shattered–unable to sleep well, feeling no deep peace, awash in the sea of samsara,–the island of refuge ever receding.

There is no inner or outer, no here or there, really, in reality. It is all within this one mind, this one heart. What we do to others, what is done in our name, we do to ourselves.

But, it’s never too late to find that deep nugget of genuine truth and speak it where and when it matters–well, it may be one day too late–so don’t dilly-dally. To renounce false gods and understand that safety will never be found in the destruction of others.

Isn’t this leap beyond the mind of false dreams built on old fears what we practice for? Isn’t it so we can, as we must, die, having completed the task of truly, on all levels and in all ways, truly dissolved the myth of separateness into the blissful, fulfilling love of our true, authentic inter-being within and without? Isn’t it…. ???

Isn’t it, with each breath–Gate gate, paragate, parasamgate, bodhi svaha???

Thanks to Vivian Alsaegh & Kareem Ghandour for your beautiful, powerful artwork.