Thanks to university-driven activism over the Israel-Palestine conflict, the war in Gaza has politically sidelined the West’s commitment to global security in other regions of the world.
Israel-Palestine is one of the few conflicts that inspires activism in the West, inciting rallies, petitions, and political conversation on college campuses and social media in ways that crises in Yemen, Tigray, Kashmir, or Myanmar rarely do. Yet, by catering to the victim-oppressor dichotomy that motivates campus uprisings, policymakers may neglect other global security risks.
There is no siloed operation of security risks. Conflicts throughout the world are fueled by the same elements that drive bloodshed in Israel and Palestine: terrorist networks, proxy conflicts, and intelligence lapses. But as many of these conflicts don’t align with the chosen moral frameworks of Western activism, they don’t have the same hashtags, celebrity endorsements, or viral marches as the Israel-Palestine movement has garnered. This selective anger affects which crises politicians prioritise and which they overlook, in addition to warping public opinion.
For instance, the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in the Red Sea have escalated their attacks on military and commercial ships, posing a direct threat to international trade and raising tensions between Western and regional countries. International military alliances, notably the United States and the United Kingdom, have been compelled to step in as a result of these strikes, putting the region at risk of a wider conflict. The Houthi menace, however, only gets a small portion of the attention that the Israel-Palestine conflict receives in Western media, despite its significant ramifications for both global security and economic stability.
The worst humanitarian displacement disaster of our time is occurring in Sudan, where over 8 million people have been displaced by a bloody civil conflict between the Rapid Support Forces and the Sudanese Armed Forces. Western activists continue to be mainly disengaged despite reports of ethnic cleansing in Darfur that mimic crimes from previous conflicts. Despite its pressing need for international attention, Sudan is a less “marketable” subject than Israel-Palestine as it lacks the ideological dichotomies that characterise university discourse.
Consider Yemen where over 377,000 people have died in one of the biggest humanitarian catastrophes in history as a result of the catastrophic proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Western governments, including the United States and the United Kingdom, continue to provide Riyadh with intelligence and weapons despite Saudi-led bombings that murder people. Why does Yemen, where foreign powers exacerbate widespread suffering, get so little attention if Western activity is focused on opposing colonialism and foreign intervention? The complexity of the solution is the reason it deviates from the victim-oppressor dichotomy that predominates in academic discourse.
Or consider Ethiopia’s conflict with the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), which led to widespread murders, ethnic cleansing, and conditions akin to famine. After first denouncing Ethiopia, Western nations prioritised strategic interests over human rights and subsequently restored trade links. Despite the scope of these crimes, Tigray lost prominence in Western discourse because it doesn’t fit the oversimplified ideological narratives that motivate activism.
There are actual repercussions for activists’ selective fury. Public opinion influences Western governments to base their foreign policy decisions more on visibility than strategic need. Because of this imbalance, diplomatic capital, information, and resources are being redirected toward the most politically sensitive dangers rather than the most urgent ones.
Take the focus on Israel-Palestine over the expanding threat in the Sahel region of Africa, where jihadist insurgencies linked to ISIS and al-Qaeda are rapidly growing. Global security is now directly threatened by terrorist organisations that have taken over nations like Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger. Western administrations, however, have minimized the situation’s urgency, despite the fact that military takeovers in the area have fostered extremism. Despite its close connections to international counterterrorism initiatives, the Sahel gets little attention.
Western leaders have also been discussing how to respond to Israel’s military activities in Gaza for months, but their replies to Azerbaijan’s ethnic cleansing of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh have been largely passive. Despite the forced displacement of more than 100,000 ethnic Armenians in 2023, there were no significant demonstrations, no trending hashtags, and no global mobilisation such as that for Palestine. Because the issue lacks the political connotation that draws activists’ attention, politicians are less likely to engage in the crisis.
Global security is made more difficult by the emergence of performative activism, in which political participation is gauged by social media posts rather than thoughtful discussion. Despite their strength, online movements can simplify complicated disputes into morally dogmatic absolutes. However, state security and counterterrorism demand subtlety. Activists ignore the strategic challenges of contemporary warfare when they call for “immediate ceasefires” without addressing the ways in which terrorist organizations infiltrate civilian communities.
Think about how counterterrorism policy is affected by internet speech: The way organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah function, where they get their funding and the regional ramifications of their actions are frequently overlooked by mainstream media, online activists, and even some policymakers. The participation of non-state actors that often abuse human rights is frequently obscured by the same internet activity that mobilizes support for such rights. This is not a mere oversight but a critical knowledge gap on asymmetric warfare.
Crises should be assessed according to their true security significance — not their ideological expediency. Western policymakers jeopardize counterterrorism measures, military strategy, and diplomatic influence when they let social media movements and student demonstrations determine security priorities. Attention must be paid to equally pressing issues, which include state-sponsored ethnic cleansing, proxy conflicts in the Middle East, and growing jihadist insurgencies in the Sahel. The excessive emphasis on Israel-Palestine at the cost of other, urgent issues runs the risk of skewing not just public opinion but also global stability.
Reet Desai is a contributor to Young Voices pursuing an MA in International Relations at King’s College London, specializing in international security and geopolitical conflicts. She owns a blog Global Lafde on Wordpress, analyzing global affairs, security dynamics, and political discourse.
