Sitting on my tiny rooftop garden, how much I cherish the early morning tea with the sweet sounds of a bird family, who has graciously made my roof their home since the day I settled here.

How thankful I am for this precious gift of sound, offered by my birdy friends despite the city noise that they have to compete with. How unbearable it would be, imagine one day, I find no birdy singing on my roof nor in any other corner of this Earth.

In the quiet corners of our world, where nature once thrived and rang its melody, Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” warned us about a future where the symphony of Nature would be no bird chirping, no insect buzzing, not even leaf rustling, but replaced by creepy hush, only. And that scary destructive silence was caused by the pesticide and herbicide.

These days, we find ourselves in a different strike of silence, one that haunts the holiday season in Gaza, Palestine – a Silent Christmas, where the laughters of children and the voices of joyous carols are muted by the horrors of war and genocide.

This is not a Christmas story from a distant land; this haunting silence deeply matters to our conscience. For this silence echoes the death of humanity. For this silence is the death of the voice in our heart.

Today, the Silent Spring’ metaphor manifests as a heart-wrenching reality in Gaza. The land, once filled with life, is now and again suffering the cries of dead innocent civilians on a muted Christmas. The parallel is striking, and it hits me hard. It is close to our heart and home. The death of Nature is intimately tied to our own humanity’s loss of conscience. The birds had no trees to nest then died, the people of Palestine had no land to home then perished.

This silence is a collective human tragedy.

The Silent Christmas is not a call to just stop celebration or stop singing. It’s about the collective loss of innocence and joy of thousands of children, many of them even died unborn.

The Silent Christmas is not about no festive meals prepared by loving hands of thousands of mothers and women, many lost their lives and their unborn babies in labour, because of bombardment.

The faces behind the silence are real people, like you and me. They are my children, your children, our children, the children who should be playing, laughing, dreaming and having peaceful futures. They are my mothers and your fathers. They are our sisters and brothers. Yet their families are all killed by the brutalities of war. Their pain is our pain; their silence is our collective responsibility.

Break the silence, speak out! Speak from the deepest spot of your heart

In this profound silence, there is hope – the collective voice of humanity rising against the atrocity and against the genocide. For the Carson’s work ignited a powerful environmental movement, the catastrophes in Gaza have sparked a global outcry. The silence matters as it urges everyone to take our responsibility and compels us to speak up against the genocide, against the destruction of lives. The silence matters because it deeply reminds us of our interconnectedness as human beings.

Let us break free from the shackles of apathy. Let us call out the hypocrisy. Let us raise our voices against the silence of atrocity and genocide.

Speak out!

Speak from our hearts, speak through our songs, speak with our stories, speak by our actions.

Speak out in your prayers, and ask for you to be the voice of love, hope and Peace.

With compassion.

Đào Thu Hằng