Selective Empathy

In Selective Empathy: The West Through the Gaze of Gaza, Roberto De Vogli takes you deep into the greatest moral crisis of our time: the Gaza genocide.

Blending sharp political critique with psychological insight, and filled with haunting testimonies, suppressed facts, and fearless indictments of Western leaders, journalists, and intellectuals, this book reveals a civilization that reserves compassion for some while ignoring others. Gaza has become the West’s mirror - and our moral litmus test. Will humanity survive its own indifference? De Vogli challenges prevailing assumptions and calls for a new global solidarity grounded in universal empathy, justice, and emotional decolonization.

Preface ix
Introduction 1
Prologue 3
1 The Gaze of Gaza 7
1 A Denied Genocide 9
2 A Genocide Foretold 11
3 “Nowhere Is Safe” 13
4 The War on Children 15
4.1 “We Are All Complicit” 16
4.2 The Highest Number of Child Amputees Per Capita
in the World 17
5 History as if It Began on October 7 18
6 The West’s Heart of Darkness 20
2 Selectively Empathic 22
1 Empathy and Its Discontents 22
1.1 Crimes of Solidarity 25
1.2 The Dark Sides of Empathy 28
2 Compassion for Some 30
3 35 Minutes and 300 Hours of Silence 34
3 Why We Fail to Feel 37
1 State of Collective Psychopathology? 38
1.1 “The Most Moral Army in the World” 40
1.2 The Cabinet 44
1.3 The Public 48
2 Selectively Indifferent 51
2.1 Our Brain on Nationalism 52
2.2 The Long Shadow of the Holocaust 53
3 The Banality of Complicity 55
4 When the West Incites Genocide 57
4 The West and the Rest 59
1 Partners in War Crimes 59
2 Western Civiliesation 62
2.1 Genocidal Legacies 64
2.2 Year 533: the Conquest Continues 69
2.3 Superiority Complex 71
3 When the Perpetrator Plays the Victim 73
4 Emotional Decolonization 75
4.1 Pedagogy of the Oppressors 77
5 Manufacturing Exclusive Compassion 80
1 Israel’s 9/11: Hamas’s Crimes against Humanity 80
2 “Lied Into Genocide” 83
3 “Have You Condemned Hamas?” 84
4 The Engineering of Selective Indignation 85
4.1 Hostages and Prisoners 89
4.2 “They Look So Much Like Us” 92
4.3 The More You Read, the Less You Feel 92
5 When Will the Night End? 94
6 The Herd of Free Thinkers 97
1 “Inescapably Genocidal” 99
1.1 As if There Were No Humans 101
2 Believing the Unbelievable 103
2.1 Algorithmic Gaslighting 104
2.2 “Anti-Semitic” Evidence 106
3 Jewish Voices for Truth and Justice 107
4 Stenographers of Power 109
4.1 Selective Silence 111
5 When Your Enemy Is the Truth 112
7 The World’s Conscience 115
1 Conscientious Protesters 116
1.1 Not in My Name 117
1.2 US Elections 2024: “I Can’t Vote for Genocide” 119
2 Medics in Gaza’s Last Hospitals 121
3 “Stop the Genocide!” 125
3.1 Students Teaching the World a Lesson 125
3.2 The Academic Witch-Hunt 127
4 Just for a Cause 131
4.1 Poetic Injustice 133
8 On the Brink 135
1 A Crisis of Selective Humanitarianism 135
2 Vital Crossroads 137
2.1 89 Seconds to Midnight 137
2.2 No Environmentalism without Pacifism 140
2.3 War and Peace: Cooperation or Annihilation? 142
3 Between Good and Evil 143
3.1 Born To Be Selective 143
3.2 Fair Instincts 145
4 Imagine There Is No Other Land 148
4.1 We Are the World 150
4.2 Just Epiphanies 152
References 155
Index 195