Lest We Forget: Why It’s Our Duty to Prevent Western Ideals from Dying Alongside the Besieged Children of Palestine

Honouring Sacrifice – and Confronting Silence

Each year on Remembrance Day, people across the Western world bow their heads to honour those who fell defending freedom. We pin poppies to our lapels and recite “Lest we forget,” vowing that the sacrifices of past soldiers who fought for liberty and justice will never be in vain. Remembrance honours those who serve to defend our democratic freedoms and way of life. It is a time to remember how dearly our values have been purchased – in trenches and beachheads, in skies darkened by warplanes, on seas prowled by U-boats. It is also a time to remind ourselves that these values must continually be upheld. Yet today, as innocents suffer in Palestine, many who proudly uphold Western traditions have lapsed into a troubling silence. What does it mean to celebrate those who died for liberty and justice, only to avert our eyes when those very ideals are under assault?

Western democratic civilization is built on principles of humane treatment, due process, and the rule of law. These are not abstract concepts; they are the concrete values for which countless Western soldiers have bled and died. Our forebears fought world wars believing they were safeguarding liberty, justice and a humane way of life for future generations. Remembrance…is a sign of both Remembrance and hope for a peaceful future – a future anchored in the notion that all humans deserve dignity. But that hope is betrayed when we remain quiet as thousands of Palestinian civilians – men, women, and children who carry no arms – are subjected to collective punishment and inhumane methods of warfare. We must ask: Have we forgotten the very lessons we pledged to remember?

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Western Heroes and the Soul of Our Ideals

Like the ancient oaks in whose shade the druids once walked, our Western civilization is rooted deeply in ideals nurtured through centuries of struggle, sacrifice, and unwavering courage. These ideals—justice over revenge, dignity over brutality, freedom over tyranny—are not mere abstract concepts. They are living legacies, passed down by ancestors who refused to bend under oppression and cruelty, even at the cost of their lives. From the shadowed glens of Celtic lands to the shores of wartime Britain, our history is marked by ordinary people who chose to become extraordinary heroes because they knew something greater than themselves was at stake. They understood that our civilization, much like those ancient forests of lore, could only flourish if nourished by integrity and courage, steadfastness and compassion. Today, as we reflect on these heroes—figures like William Wallace, Boudicca, and Winston Churchill—we are reminded that the soul of Western ideals lives not in the cold monuments of stone alone but in the moral compass that guided their deeds and must now guide ours.

William Wallace, depicted in a statue in Aberdeen, Scotland, stands as a symbol of freedom and defiance against tyranny. Wallace – one of Scotland’s greatest national heroes – led a rebellion to free his people from oppression in the 13th century. His story, immortalized in lore and popular culture, embodies the Western ideal that no people should live under the yoke of injustice. He was willing to go to any length for his nation’s freedom, and for this unyielding spirit he lives on as the epitome of a true freedom fighter. Wallace’s cry of “Freedom!” still echoes as a reminder that the very DNA of Western civilization includes resistance to tyranny and empathy for the oppressed.

No conversation of western heroes, or heroines, would be complete without mentioning one name. Boudicca’s monument stands near the British Parliament – an iron-willed Celtic queen who dared defy an empire. Boudica (Boudicca) is considered a British national heroine and a symbol of the struggle for justice and independence. Two millennia ago, after Romans brutalized her family and subjugated her people, Boudicca rose in revolt. She led Britons into battle not for conquest or religious zeal, but to avenge atrocities and reclaim dignity. Her legend, passed down through British history, exemplifies the Western creed that no ruler – foreign or domestic – has the right to inflict wanton cruelty on the innocent. Boudicca’s spirit infuses our modern democratic ethos: the belief that every people has the right to live free from terror and oppression, and that to remain silent in the face of barbarity is to acquiesce to evil.

The very name Winston Churchill’s evokes sentiment of a leader who rallied his nation against a regime of unprecedented barbarism. As Prime Minister during World War II, Churchill became the voice of indomitable resistance to Nazi terror. He framed the war as more than a struggle for territory – it was a fight to preserve “Christian civilization” and the continuity of our institutions. Under his leadership, Britons withstood the Blitz and soldiers stormed Normandy beaches, driven by the conviction that tyranny must be opposed at all costs. Churchill, despite his flaws, understood the moral stakes: if we sacrifice our core values in order to win, we lose what makes us worth defending. He warned that “A nation without a conscience is a nation without a soul. A nation without a soul is a nation that cannot live.”. Those words ring down to us today. Our Western heroes – from Wallace and Boudicca to Churchill and countless other men and women whose names have been lost to history – represent the soul of Western ideals. They did not fight and die so that we could inherit a civilization that mimics the very barbarism it once stood against.

Barbaric Tactics Betray Our Ideals

The ongoing plight of Palestinian civilians tests whether we truly mean what we say about Western values. In Gaza, entire neighbourhoods lie in ruins; families sift through rubble where homes and hospitals once stood. The death toll is staggering. By early 2025, Palestinian health authorities say Israel’s campaign in Gaza killed over 46,600 people – with over half of the identified victims being women, children or the elderly. Forty-six thousand lives. To grasp that number: it is as if the entire population of a small city were wiped off the map. Each of those lives was as precious as the ones we honour on memorial plaques. And yet, too often their deaths are explained away as “collateral damage” or, worse, met with silence or even tacit approval by those who claim to defend Western civilization.

Let us be crystal clear: nothing in Western moral tradition or international law permits the mass punishment of innocent civilians, even in the pursuit of legitimate military goals. The laws of war – which Western nations helped craft after the horrors of the World Wars – forbid collective punishment and deliberate attacks on noncombatants. Violations – such as deliberately targeting civilians or imposing collective punishment – can never be justified by claiming that another party has committed violations. This principle, rooted in centuries of Just War theory and codified in the Geneva Conventions, states that we do not get a moral blank check simply because our enemy is monstrous. Indeed, Western integrity is proven by holding ourselves to a higher standard even when under threat. If we allow “the ends justify the means” to excuse the killing of children or the bombing of hospitals, we descend into the very barbarism we profess to oppose.

Even United Nations experts – who equally condemned Hamas’s heinous attacks on Israeli civilians – have deplored the Israeli military’s “indiscriminate” reprisals against Gaza’s population, declaring that “This amounts to collective punishment… absolutely prohibited under international law and amounts to a war crime.” Silence or acquiescence in the face of such tactics is nothing less than a betrayal of the values our forefathers fought for. How can we claim to champion liberty, human rights, and justice while civilians are denied food, water, and electricity as a war tactic? How can we celebrate the Magna Carta’s principle of due process – “to no one will we deny or delay right or justice” – yet watch an entire population punished without trial for the crimes of a few? To support or ignore these methods is to mock the sacrifices of those who died to stamp out similar cruelty in decades past.

Islam, Israel, and the Uncrossable Moral Line

It must be said: speaking out for Palestinian lives does not require one to support Hamas, nor to take a side in every aspect of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This is not about endorsing any political or religious agenda – it is about drawing a hard line against inhumanity. Even if you are staunchly pro-Israel, even if you feel deep anger toward Hamas for its terror attacks, even if you harbour Islamophobic sentiments born of fear or misinformation – you should still find these civilian atrocities abhorrent. In fact, especially if you see yourself as a defender of Western civilization against perceived threats, you must hold your own side to the highest standards of that civilization. Otherwise, what exactly are you defending?

Consider the contradiction: some argue that harsh measures in Gaza are needed to protect “the West” or Israel as a bastion of civilization against barbarism. But when we justify barbaric tactics – be it levelling residential blocks, depriving an entire populace of basic necessities, or casting every Gazan man, woman, and child as fair game – we have already surrendered the moral high ground. We become exactly what we claim to fight. One cannot save democratic values by abandoning them. One cannot uphold civilization by countenancing war crimes. As Churchill aptly suggested, our conscience is our compass; if we lose it, our claim to be civilized rings hollow.

Let us imagine for a moment if the tables were turned: If an extremist group perpetrated a horrendous attack in a Western city, would we accept rounding up and executing that group’s entire ethnic or religious community in retribution? Would we sanction flattening the neighbourhood they live in? No – we would rightly insist on justice, not revenge; on distinguishing the guilty from the innocent; on maintaining due process and humanity even under duress. Why, then, do we see a different standard when the victims are Palestinian civilians? The answer cannot be that their lives are worth less – for that is a notion completely antithetical to the universal human rights the West claims to champion. If latent prejudice or dehumanization is influencing our reaction, we must confront it. Western values demand impartial empathy – the ability to see a child in Gaza as equal in dignity to a child in London or New York.

Upholding the West’s Legacy of Justice

To remain silent, or to look away, as Palestinian civilians suffer en masse is to fail the most basic test of our professed values. It is to say that “Never again” only applies to some people, in some places, at some times – and that is a dangerous moral relativism. The spirit of William Wallace, Boudicca, and Churchill does not belong to one nation or one era; it is the inheritance of all who live in democratic societies. That spirit calls on us now to speak out against injustice, even when it is inconvenient, even when it pits us against allies or popular opinion. It calls on us to care for the living as we honour the fallen. In every act of remembrance for our war dead, we implicitly pledge to uphold what they died for – and that includes protecting the innocent and opposing tyranny in all its forms. “We will remember them,” we say of our heroes. But we must also remember why they fought.

In the face of such destruction, neutrality or silence is not an option for anyone who genuinely treasures Western ideals. Our democracies were built on the promise that every human being has inherent worth – a notion starkly contrasted by the carnage of total war and genocide that scarred the 20th century. It is why we erected monuments to humanitarian law, why we teach our children about Anne Frank and not just about generals and battles. We wanted future generations to understand that the measure of a civilization is how it treats the vulnerable.

Some will argue that speaking up for Palestinians undermines Israel’s right to self-defence or emboldens extremists. But condemning the mass suffering of innocents is not a partisan act – it is a moral one, entirely in line with supporting true security and peace for all peoples. Indeed, peace is never built on atrocity. As Western citizens, we have both the freedom and the responsibility to raise our voices without fear. Our veterans and ancestors fought so that we could live in societies where we are free to protest injustice, free to demand better from our leaders, free to insist that our nations do not betray the principles of liberty and justice for all.

A Call to Conscience

It is time to reclaim the full meaning of Remembrance. To truly honour those who died in the World Wars and other conflicts, we must carry forward their commitment to humane values. The poppy is not only a symbol of memory – it is a symbol of hope for a peaceful, just future. That hope falters when Western voices go quiet as war crimes are committed in the name of “security” or “revenge.” We owe it to the legacies of Wallace, Boudicca, Churchill, and every soldier who ever believed they were fighting for something noble, to speak up. Speak up for the Palestinian mother mourning her children killed in an airstrike. Speak up for the terrified Israeli family in a bomb shelter praying that retaliation won’t obliterate an entire city block. Speak up – not to take sides in a genocide being framed as ancient conflict, but to take the side of universal human rights irrespective of on which side of the fence you sit.

Opposing the slaughter of innocents is not inherent to Islam or Judaism or Christendom – it is human. However, it is also very much Western, because it aligns with the highest ideals the West claims to uphold. If we do not oppose barbaric methods on all sides, we risk losing our civilization’s soul. We become, in Churchill’s words, a nation (or community of nations) without conscience – and thus without a soul. And a civilization without a soul “cannot live”. The soul of the West is defined not by race or religion, but by a commitment to liberty, justice, and the dignity of man. That soul is tarnished when we turn a blind eye to the suffering of Palestinians under siege.

So to those in the West who value our traditions of freedom: this is your moment of witness. You can hold whatever political views you wish about the Middle East – but do not let those views blind you to blatant wrong that is being perpetuated in the name of safety. You can loathe Hamas and still insist that Palestinian children should not be blown apart in their sleep. You can fear Islamic extremism and still reject starving an entire populace as an acceptable tactic. In fact, you must – or else you undermine the moral fibre that gives your stance any legitimacy.

History will judge us by our actions (or inaction) in this moment. When future generations ask what we did while innocent blood was being shed, let it not be said that we shrugged. Let it not be said that we were content to stand by, arms folded, invoking the righteousness of Western civilization while forgetting to practice it. Instead, let it be said that we remembered. We remembered that our grandparents didn’t sacrifice in World War II so that war crimes could be tolerated in the 21st century. We remembered that our democracy and freedom only mean something if we apply them universally, not selectively. We remembered the faces of our heroes – Wallace’s defiant glare, Boudicca’s raised spear, Churchill’s bulldog scowl – and realized that in them we see not just patriots of their age, but guardians of an ethical inheritance that is now ours to defend.

Speak now, with passion and with reason. Urge your leaders to uphold international law and humanitarian ceasefires. Support relief for the besieged and accountability for those who target civilians, no matter who they are. Cut through the propaganda that seeks to dehumanize victims. Reaffirm through your words and deeds that Western civilization will not be defended by betraying the core values upon which that very civilization is built. If you value the memory of those who fought and fell for freedom, then honour them by refusing to forget what they fought for. In standing up for Palestinians’ right to live free from terror, you are not taking up their cause so much as preserving our own moral heritage. Because in the end, they are one and the same – the cause of our common humanity. And if we fail to champion it, we will have truly forgotten everything our Remembrance Days are meant to teach.

Lest we forget.

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Sources: Western democratic traditions emphasise defending the innocent and upholding humane values ( What is Remembrance | Royal British Legion ) ( What is Remembrance | Royal British Legion ). Historical icons like William Wallace and Boudicca are revered as symbols of freedom, justice and resistance to tyranny (“FREEDOM!” The Real Life and Death of Sir William Wallace) (Boudica – Wikipedia). Winston Churchill warned that abandoning conscience destroys a nation’s soul (The Best Winston Churchill Quotes | The Art of Manliness). Today, UN experts note that collective punishment of Palestinians is prohibited and amounts to a war crime (UN experts say Israel’s strikes on Gaza amount to ‘collective punishment’ | Reuters). The toll in Gaza has surpassed 46,000 killed – over half women, children, and elderly (Gaza death toll: how many Palestinians has Israel’s offensive killed? | Reuters) – a humanitarian disaster incompatible with the Western ideals so many have died to protect.

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