There’s a photo circulating of the Zionist army rounding up doctors, nurses, and patients from a hospital in northern Gaza. The detainees are blindfolded, stripped of their clothes, their hands zip-tied. One of them leans on crutches. Western media and Israel's allies want you to believe these soldiers are both victims and heroes, while the Palestinian doctors and nurses—who remained in their hospitals for over a year, healing the wounded, treating the sick, and saving lives—are cast as villains. For many in the West, the lives of these Palestinians are neither celebrated in life nor mourned in death. Their deaths are not condemned, their suffering barely deemed newsworthy. These are people who were born as refugees, lived under curfews, endured entire lifetimes under blockade, moving from one war to another, cut off from the outside world. They have lived without rights, without privileges, and without access to even the most basic freedoms. Yet, despite this crushing reality, they pursued education, built families and careers, and dedicated their lives to helping others. And yet, we are conditioned to disregard their deaths, their torture, their humiliation—to overlook their suffering and ignore their plight. This is the brutal dynamic that has been normalized for more than a century: that one people’s lives, narratives, and aspirations are deemed inherently more valuable than another’s. There will be no peace, no quiet, no justice in our region until that dynamic is dismantled. Period.