Blood in the Sand, Oil in the Gears: Who Profits When Humanity Dies?

The world doesn’t need another political analyst right now. It needs a witness.

A child in Gaza doesn’t care if their house was bombed by the IDF or Hamas. A father in Tel Aviv doesn’t care if his daughter’s life was stolen by a terrorist or a retaliatory drone gone awry. A young protester in Tehran, crushed under the heel of the regime, does not cheer when Iranian proxies launch rockets in the name of “resistance.” Nor does a Yemeni mother whose baby dies from an American-backed blockade bless democracy for the airstrike that killed her neighbors.

They all want the same thing: To live. To love. To eat. To bury their dead in peace. But they are caught in a machinery of war that does not care for names or nations, only for power.

Let’s Be Honest About Who’s Dying

Since October 7, 2023, when Hamas launched a brutal surprise attack that killed over 1,200 Israeli civilians, the floodgates of hell have opened. In the months that followed, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), armed and backed with U.S. military aid, launched an unprecedented bombardment on Gaza. As of June 2025, more than 38,000 Palestinians are dead, two-thirds of them women and children, according to the UN and Palestinian health officials.

That’s 38,000 people — not statistics. People with poems and songs and stories that will now never be told. In Rafah, the ground drinks blood every day. Hospitals have become morgues. Schools, graves. Aid trucks burn on the roads while international bodies issue statements that amount to nothing more than shrugging in a different font.

Meanwhile, Iran — already strangling its own people with religious authoritarianism and surveillance; exploits the conflict to expand influence through its proxies in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq. Over 7,000 civilians across the Middle East have died in adjacent or retaliatory strikes linked to Iranian-backed militias in the last two years alone.

And America? We keep writing the checks. The United States has sent more than $14 billion in military aid to Israel since October 2023, while quietly green-lighting expanded arms sales to the Gulf and launching our own drone strikes across Syria and Iraq. We scream “freedom” while propping up regimes that torture journalists and behead dissidents. Our own media only seems to rediscover humanity when American citizens die; not when our bombs kill wedding parties or flatten refugee camps.

The Real Enemy: Power Without Accountability

This isn’t a war between good and evil. This is a war between power and the powerless.

The truth is, no bomb discriminates. No sniper rifle stops to ask for a passport. No drone strike pauses when a toddler wanders into the crosshairs. The civilians, the majority in every conflict,  are the ones who bleed, while the powerful go on television to defend the “necessity” of it all.

So we must ask: Who benefits?

• Arms manufacturers: Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Elbit Systems, Palantir — their stock prices rise with every explosion. War is their business. Civilian death is a line item.

• Governments in crisis: Netanyahu’s political survival is tied to perpetual war. Hamas’s grip on Gaza is strengthened by martyrdom and fear. The Iranian regime uses “Zionist aggression” as a cudgel against dissent.

• Geopolitical powers: From the United States to China to Russia, these deaths are leveraged for bargaining chips and influence in the new Cold War of resources and AI.

• Religious fanatics: On every side, zealots justify horror as holy. They hijack faith to mask genocide. They turn sacred texts into permission slips for slaughter.

It’s not about land. Not really. It’s about control. It’s about oil, natural gas, access to the Mediterranean, and the illusion of divine superiority. And above all, it’s about never having to answer for it.

A Plea for the Innocent

We can no longer afford to debate who is more to blame while children choke under rubble. We cannot allow our morality to be dictated by flag, faction, or fear.

To lift up the innocent means refusing to excuse any atrocity; not from Hamas, who used civilians as shields and murdered families in cold blood; not from the IDF, who leveled neighborhoods with U.S.-made missiles; not from Iran, who funds war under the guise of liberation while silencing its own daughters; and not from the United States, whose hands are red from a century of selective outrage and profitable conflict.

This is a call not for neutrality; but for moral clarity. Neutrality suggests both sides are equal. They are not. But all sides are guilty of sacrificing the innocent for power.

Where Do We Go From Here?

We must grieve without condition. We must name the dead; all of them; and never become so desensitized that more than 50,000 souls become a footnote.

We must demand accountability: war crimes investigations, end of blank-check aid, ceasefires enforced by global consensus, demilitarization, and peace talks that include civilians, refugees, activists, and survivors; not just warlords and heads of state.

We must fight to humanize each other across the borders of propaganda and pain. That means listening to Palestinian mothers and Israeli peace activists and Iranian protesters and Jewish survivors and Arab Christians and secular voices who refuse to become mouthpieces for violence.

And most of all, we must speak the truth; even when it costs us friends, followers, or funding.

Because if we don’t, we are not just bystanders. We are complicit.

A Moment of Silence

Not for one side. For all sides.

For the child in Gaza whose school was shelled.

For the girl in Israel whose bones were found in a field.

For the teenager in Iran who bled in a protest for freedom.

For the Yemeni mother who prayed for food that never came.

For those who died not knowing why.

Let the silence be deafening — and let it finally move us to act.