A Curious Case of Selective Outrage Syndrome
It’s never really been about helping Palestinians; it’s about blaming Jews. Let's not get it twisted.
Please consider supporting our mission to help everyone better understand and become smarter about the Jewish world. A gift of any amount helps keep our platform free of advertising and accessible to all.
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
“I’m in the mall the other day. I went by that store, Lululemon. I walk by and in the window of every Lululemon, there’s a sign that says, ‘We don’t support racism, sexism, discrimination, or hate.’ And I’m like, ‘Who gives a f*ck?’ You’re just selling yoga pants. I don’t need your yoga pants politics.”
That’s comedian Chris Rock, from his recent Netflix special. And while he was aiming for laughs, he stumbled into a far more serious truth: Everyone’s a social justice warrior when it costs them nothing.
“I’m all for marginalized people getting their rights,” added Rock. “The thing I have a problem with is the selective outrage.”
That phrase — selective outrage — perfectly sums up the world’s current obsession with Gaza and its equally impressive silence on basically every other humanitarian disaster happening at the same time.
Yemen? Where more than 10 million children are starving due to a brutal civil war that’s killed hundreds of thousands? Silence. India? A U.S. government commission has recommended placing it alongside China, North Korea, and Iran for religious freedom violations. Not one Western protest. Iraq, Lebanon, Sudan, Nigeria, Afghanistan? Shrugs all around.
Even in terms of media coverage, the bias is glaring. One 2014 New Yorker article about global conflict gave Nigeria and Ukraine a sentence each. ISIS got four. Israel and Gaza? Thirty. That’s selective outrage at work — where Jews, and only Jews, must explain themselves not just for defending themselves, but for existing at all.
And into this moral circus sails Greta Thunberg.
Yes, Greta’s back — this time not just as the anti-capitalist mascot of Gen Z, but as a passenger aboard the Gaza-bound Madleen, a ship intercepted by Israeli forces earlier this week. Despite repeated warnings, Greta and 11 other self-proclaimed activists tried to break a legal maritime blockade intended to prevent weapons from reaching Hamas — the same group that murdered, raped, and kidnapped Israeli civilians on October 7th.
Apparently, Greta and Co. thought a “symbolic amount of aid” would justify a literal act of provocation. You can’t make this stuff up. This isn’t activism; it’s moral cosplay.
Greta, who only recently got her high school diploma at age 20 after years of skipping class to yell at adults, now believes she’s qualified to dictate foreign policy in a war zone she clearly doesn’t understand. And why not? In the age of social media, emotion is expertise, and hashtags are credentials.
But this isn’t just about Greta. She’s a symptom of a much larger problem.
It’s about how the West (its media, its protest culture, its influencers) has developed a pathological obsession with Israel. In the words of Yemeni activist Luai Ahmed:
“Everyone is silent about Yemen, yet everyone is a human rights activist about Gaza.”
There’s a reason for that. And it has nothing to do with actual concern for Palestinians.
Let’s start with identity politics: the bizarre impulse to collapse all global conflicts into one giant game of Oppressor versus Oppressed, with no regard for history, context, or common sense.
To some in the “progressive” West, Palestinians have become the go-to projection screen for every grievance: colonialism, capitalism, racism, even climate change. (Yes, Greta literally said “there’s no climate justice without Gaza.”)
It’s pure narcissism masquerading as solidarity.
So-called “pro-Palestinian” activists aren’t supporting Palestinian society; they’re ignoring it. They’re silent on the honor killings, child soldier indoctrination, LGBT persecution, and the total lack of democracy or women’s rights in Gaza. Because none of those facts fit their Instagrammable story of “resistance.”
Even worse, they outsource their morality to terrorists. The same people who beheaded babies on October 7th are now being defended as “freedom fighters” by TikTok stars and Ivy League students.
And that’s not an exaggeration. According to a recent Palestinian poll, more than 70 percent of Palestinians support terrorism against Israel. The numbers are obvious. But numbers don’t trend. Outrage does. The selectivity here is the key.
In Nice, France, a terrorist killed 84 people in 2016. Twitter trended with #PrayForNice. But when a twin bombing killed almost 300 in Baghdad the same year? Crickets. Not even a trending hashtag. Facebook let people in Paris mark themselves “safe.” When Beirut was bombed? Nothing.
And then there’s the United Nations, which condemned Israel more than every other country on Earth combined, including North Korea, Iran, Russia, and China. American politician John Kerry, no Zionist, called it an “obsession.” He was being diplomatic.
Let’s also address the Palestinian leadership problem. The greatest oppressor of Palestinians is often their own leadership. Hamas violently took over Gaza in 2007 from the Palestinian Authority in a bloody coup. Since then, it has diverted billions in aid to build terror tunnels instead of schools and hospitals. It indoctrinates children in hate, censors dissent, and jails or murders critics.
If you truly stood with Palestinians, you’d demand elections in Gaza. You’d call out Hamas for crushing dissent, jailing journalists, and turning Gaza into an open-air prison of its own making. You’d see that the cage isn’t built by Israel; it’s built by Hamas.
Meanwhile, Western activists infantilize Palestinians, stripping them of all agency and responsibility. In their narrative, Palestinians are always acted upon, never actors. They’re not moral beings capable of choice, only eternal victims. That’s not justice. That’s condescension.
Let’s do a thought experiment: Imagine for a moment if Jewish terrorists broke into Palestinian homes, filmed themselves beheading children and raping women, then broadcast it proudly. Imagine Israel putting children in front of tanks, then crying victim. Would the outrage be “selective” then — or universal? Would Greta still be sailing in to “stand in solidarity”?
And what about civilian deaths? The West holds Israel to a moral standard it applies to no one else. In Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan, U.S. and coalition forces killed far more civilians than Israel has in Gaza. But there were no protests. No boycotts. No international outrage. Apparently, civilian deaths only count when Jews are involved.
When Hamas fires rockets from hospitals and schools, hoping Israel fires back, that’s not resistance. That’s a war crime. But when civilians die as a result, you blame Israel, not the terrorists who used them as shields. Even in the realm of empathy, Jews are the exception.
During the Holocaust, the New York Times buried stories about Jewish genocide. Today, it buries the Jewish perspective behind euphemisms like “violent settlers” or “occupied territories” and refuses to name antisemitism unless it can be paired with Islamophobia in the same breath.
Social media is worse. Its algorithms reward outrage, not accuracy. That’s why you see rubble in Gaza but not footage of Israeli families slaughtered in their homes. Why you see posters of dead children but not Hamas operatives using UN clinics as rocket depots.
There’s even algorithmic antisemitism: Jewish suffering simply doesn’t perform.
Let’s talk about Israel’s diversity, a reality the outrage machine ignores. The IDF includes Druze, Bedouins, Ethiopian Jews, and Arab Muslim citizens. Israeli Arabs serve in parliament, work as doctors and judges, and enjoy full legal rights. Yet none of this matters to people shouting “apartheid” — because they’ve already chosen their villain.
And what about the rest of the Arab world? Jordan doesn’t want Gaza’s refugees. Egypt keeps its border with Gaza shut. Lebanon segregates Palestinians in refugee camps. But no one boycotts them. No one screams “occupation” at Cairo or Amman. Why? Because it’s never really been about helping Palestinians; it’s about blaming Jews.
“Pro-Palestinian” protests in the West have gone from inconvenient to dangerous. Ceasefire chants now routinely shut down bridges, storm synagogues, and harass Jewish students on campus. And they do it all with self-righteous fury.
Hence where we are: moral nuance replaced by mob antics. Empathy isn’t real unless it’s loud, performative, and exclusive.
Chris Rock wasn’t joking when he said the world is full of “people pretending to care.” The outrage isn’t consistent. It’s curated. And it’s almost always aimed at Jews. Hayder Alasadi, an Iraqi ex-Muslim and founder of the Iraqi-Israeli Association for Peace, said it best:
“Don’t tell me you give a damn about civilians. What you are doing is simply Jew-hating and Israel-hating, using ‘innocent Palestinians’ as a card to demote Israel... You are not protesters. You are hate-filled, uneducated, and uncivilized.”
And let’s be clear: “Pro-Palestinian” doesn’t mean pro-peace, pro-democracy, or even pro-Palestinian. It means anti-Israel, and too often, anti-Jewish. If you truly cared about Palestinian lives, you’d fight to free them from Hamas. You’d fight for elections, free speech, and dignity in Palestinian society. You’d acknowledge that Hamas isn’t “resisting”; it’s ruling through fear.
But that takes courage. And courage, like consistency, is in short supply.
So, stop pretending. Stop chanting what you don’t understand. Stop performing your pain. And above all, stop telling Jews to die quietly.
You scream “Free Palestine!” while Jews are intimidated and harassed from displaying their identity. You cry “genocide” while Hamas livestreams executions. You don’t want peace; you want to feel righteous while the world burns.
Chris Rock said it best: “I’m all for justice. I just can’t stand the selective outrage.”
Neither can we. Because, when it’s only the Jews you scream about, it’s not outrage; it’s obsession, and a curious case of Selective Outrage Syndrome.
Selective outrage is clearly the mode of anti Semitism of this century
Excellently written!