Dystopian distractions are turning eyes away from an atrocity

Frederick Joseph (Opinion Columnist) — I’m of the belief that two things can be true. People are complex, containing multitudes that lend to both trivial and significant. The issue is—in the United States—trivial seems to be winning. Handedly. 

One cannot help but observe the grand spectacle that is our society—part theater, part battleground, wholly consuming. The Met Gala, the Kentucky Derby, the airwaves humming with the latest jabs in the rap beef between Drake and Kendrick Lamar. All part of the grand arena of diversion, vying for the gleam in our eyes, an insatiable audience ever hungry for more of what we don’t need. 

It is a weary trope, perhaps, to invoke Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Gamesas a mirror to our present realities. Yet, despite the cliché, there is a resonant truth in this analogy that refuses to be dismissed. For as overused as it may be, it persists because it captures, almost perfectly, the dichotomy of our existence—the stark divide between the spectacle and the spectator, the lavishness and the austerity, the celebrated few and the struggling many.

Beyond my studies in creative writing, I’ve earned degrees in political science and an MBA in marketing, a triad of disciplines I believe uniquely sharpened my perception. I came to understand that our society’s distractions are not merely coincidental; they are crafted with intent. A society caught in the perpetual motion of distraction is one that cannot forge ahead, nor can it challenge the entrenched status quo that favors those who are privileged. These diversions are tools, wielded with precision to maintain a balance that tips not toward progress, but stagnation under the guise of spectacle.

It is by design that many of the important things happening in this world never find a prominent place in the headlines, obscured as they are by the relentless churn of our celebrity fueled media cycle. For example, millions will never know that Hamas recently agreed to a ceasefire with Israel, proposed by Egypt and Qatar. This agreement, a desperate bid to halt the advance of Israeli military forces into Rafah, comes as a silent scream against the machinery of genocide. 

Rafah has become a reluctant sanctuary to over 1.5 million Palestinians, of whom more than 600,000 are children, has swelled under the Israeli directive for everyone in Gaza to seek shelter. The Palestinians there have been corralled into an area hardly sufficient for the breadth of their lives and dreams. The land is a mere 5 miles, and is more of a cramped holding cell than a refuge. 

For Hamas, the decision to agree to a ceasefire is a calculated move of basic survival. To not agree would be to invite catastrophe—an unfathomable slaughter in Rafah’s cramped quarters, where the harsh geometry of its narrow confines would leave little room for escape from Israel’s hellfire. 

Hamas has released the text of the ceasefire agreement they accepted—an agreement that notably includes the release of all Israeli hostages, war prisoners, and the bodies of deceased Israelis, aligning precisely with Israel’s publicly declared demands. This demand has been the heartbeat of Israel’s “Bring Them Home Now” campaign, a resonant call that wove through the fabric of Israeli society, mobilizing mass support for their actions under a banner of retrieval and return.

Yet, despite Hamas’s alignment with these demands, Israel has not agreed to the ceasefire. Instead, they’ve escalated their military operations, launching the assault on Rafah. This action undermines the stated motives of their campaign, leaving observers and participants alike to grapple with the dissonance between declared intentions and executed actions.

Which is another way of saying—this was never truly about the hostages for Israel’s government.

Israel understands that their genocide of the Palestinian people is a theater, within which their narratives collide and twist in the wind like smoke from a burned-out building. But all they need is for people to be distracted, for people to be uninformed, because anything is possible in the dark.

Which is why, before the first shell was fired in Rafah, Israel moved decisively to silence one of its most vocal external narrators—the operations of news outlet Al Jazeera in Israel were shut down, their broadcasts stopped, ensuring that the lens through which many in and out of Israel viewed its actions was darkened. This was not merely an operational tactic but a strategic erasure of narrative sovereignty, because the arena of conflict is not only physical but informational. Millions of people have mobilized globally against the actions of Israel because they can see what is going on with their own eyes. Hence Israel, and Zionist Americans, have also placed an emphasis on the need for TikTok to be banned in the U.S. 

The timing of Israel’s Rafah invasion is meticulously sinister as well. As the world’s eyes turned towards the solemn ceremonies of Holocaust Remembrance Day, a sacred time of reflection on horrors past and vows against their recurrence, Israel launched its military offensive. This alignment of dates is hardly coincidental; it is a calculated orchestration, leveraging a day of deep mourning and memory to cloak actions in the garb of existential necessity and moral imperative. Prime Minister Netanyahu stands, draped in the flag of national survival, the specter of past atrocities wielded like a shield against scrutiny, criticism diffused by the heavy air of historical grief.

What unfolds is a narrative contortion that seeks not only to justify military aggression but to align it with a continuum of survivalist ethos that has long underpinned the state’s actions. In this context, the assault on Rafah is recast as a defensive act, a necessary grimness to forestall future attacks on Israel, despite the offensive nature of the actions and the overwhelming force used against a trapped population.

Anyone with clear eyes can see the disproportionate nature of what has happened in Gaza. And yet—we find ourselves at a juncture where to speak against the genocidal acts of a far-right regime is to risk being draped in the heavy cloak of antisemitism. It is a sly conflation designed to silence, to stifle empathy and blunt the swords of justice raised in defiance of tyranny. This is not merely a suppression of dissent; it is an assault on the very language of resistance. By corrupting the terms of engagement, Israel ensures that the global dialogue is skewed, the scales tipped ever in their favor.

Again, distractions are not mere happenings; they are orchestrated, drawn out like a map. Israel has emerged not simply as a participant, but as a maestro of this, adept at spinning a web of narratives so intricate, so compelling, that they ensnare even those who strive to stand alert against the seduction of misdirection.

Israel, understanding the utility of distraction, has not only manipulated the global narrative but has actively engineered a situation where any defense of Palestinian life is a battlefield fraught with accusations and recriminations. In this twisted game, the Palestinians of Rafah are the pawns, their lives and deaths mere points to be scored in a broader strategy of supremacy. It is a survival not of the fittest but of the most cunning, a supremacy maintained not simply through bombs but through the domination of discourse.

This is why it’s so important that we not be distracted in a society that dilutes our information sources on a daily basis. Because, the truth remains that the strategic shutdown of Al Jazeera and the timing of the military campaign in Rafah serve a broader and more troubling objective: to act with impunity. 

The global audience has not been ushered towards understanding, but towards a choreographed empathy that aligns with one side. In this controlled arena, the voices of Rafah, the cries of its besieged inhabitants, are drowned out by the louder, more familiar narrative of victimhood and righteousness that has been carefully cultivated.

Thus, the battle for Rafah is not only fought with weapons but with memories and media, a war where history is both sword and shield, and where the truth is the first casualty. 

My hope then, amid all of the diversion and spectacle, is that we do not succumb to the engineered distractions meant to sedate our vigilance. They—those who hold the reins of power—are trying with relentless fervor to strip away our channels of truth, to mute the narratives that challenge their dominance. Yet, it is precisely in this attempt to close our eyes that we must strive to see more clearly, to seek out those truths that are barricaded behind mainstream narratives.

We must clamor for more—not just more information, but more context, more understanding, more empathy. The bombs dropped in Rafah, the cries muffled by the roar of the media’s incessant chatter, demand our attention. They demand that we do more than passively consume the narratives fed to us. These are not mere tales of distant tragedies; they are urgent calls to witness, to respond, and to remember that behind every statistic and every headline are human lives wrenchingly impacted.

Let us be loud for Rafah, for all of Gaza. Let our voices rise above the sound of clinking glasses at gala events, rap beefs, and applause at derbies.

Frederick is a two-time New York Times bestselling author of The Black Friend (2020) and Patriarchy Blues (2022), Better Than We Found It (2022) and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever - The Courage to Dream (2022). He was recognized for the International Literacy Association’s 2021 Children’s & Young Adults’ Book Award, is a 2019 Forbes 30 Under 30 list-maker for marketing and advertising, an activist, philanthropist, and poet. 

Frederick was also honored with the 2023 Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Vanguard Award, the 2018 Comic-Con Humanitarian of the Year award and is a member of the 2018 “The Root 100" list of Most Influential African Americans.

His forthcoming literary works are his debut poetry collection, We Alive, Beloved, his debut novel, This Thing of Ours, and the non-fiction essay collection, Color Me Grateful.