Sahar, one of the honorees and a gifted writer with an unfailing 24 moral compass, delivered the acceptance speech, explaining why she chose such dangerous work. “It’s because I’m tired of being branded a terrorist; tired that a human life lost in my country is no loss at all,” she told the audience. “It is our responsibility to do our utmost to acquire the answers, to dig them up with our bare hands if we must.”

Maybe I'm being nitpicky but I lowkey hate when people refer to the region by Middle East. My main issue with it is that there's no universal definition that tells you which countries are included in this term. The editor used Middle Eastern and North African x a lot in the foreword but many people already include North Africa in the Middle East. Every person has a slightly different definition of this word so you never really know exactly which countries they mean. Using geographical terms like west Asia makes it, to me, clearer which countries she's talking about; and as a bonus all ethnicities would be included (Arabs, Kurds, Assyrians, ...). But this is a general critique and not really directed at this book.

"A world that shrugs at one kind of slaughter has developed a terrible immunity. No atrocity is too great to shrug away now, the muscles of indifference having been sufficiently conditioned."

He's right again. To give an example: when Israel bombed that first hospital world leaders and news outlets went out of their way to make excuses for them and that enabled them to bomb all those other hospitals. If you don't bat an eye at 1 hospital being bombed, what's 20 more? Another example is ICE; the atrocities taking place in the US now did not come out of nowhere. Gradually, because we tend to look away, because we became numb, the perpetrator gets bolder and bolder. And our response is to keep looking away because it is easier, because we feel helpless.

"No society in human history has ever donated or applauded its way out of a genocide."

Not to undermine the power of donating and calling out the atrocities, but as sad as this sounds, it is true.