The Man Who Didn’t Raise His Hand

The heat of summer has reached its peak. I lie in bed, unable to sleep. From outside, the voices of young people drift up—gathered on the sidewalk, talking, laughing. This is how they spend their summer break: in idle repose, carefree, stretched out on concrete tiles that soaked up the day’s heat and now release it slowly back into the night. Every so often, an ambulance passes, its siren slicing through the dark, sawing apart the illusion of calm.

My shirt clings to my skin—sweat, heat, hormones, a pressure that builds at the edges and gradually takes center stage. These are days of mental unrest. The temperature rises, and the cerebral cortex slows down, giving way to something older, deeper. Something ancient takes over—limbic, primal. It’s a season of danger, of losing one’s cool. A time when action springs from confusion, from panic. But it’s also a time of clarity. Nothing remains hidden beneath the blazing sun—its white light, sharp and unforgiving, lays everything bare. Even I, face to face with myself, can no longer hide in its glare.

I remember myself at nine or ten, standing silent during the Holocaust memorial siren, already wondering how democracies die. How could an entire people—educated, enlightened, progressive—stand by in the face of unthinkable injustice? Or worse: embrace a murderous ideology, wholeheartedly, drunk on power, swept up in the dream of a renewed, united nation—one that never truly was.

I try to trace the arc of it all. I remind myself: democracies, as we know them, are fragile—recent inventions, historical experiments still in progress, not ancient legacies. What we learned in school about classical Greece bears little resemblance to the democracies we recognize today.

Democracy may be our highest form of government—something millions can only dream of. In many parts of the world, people still fight and die for the right to vote, to be heard, to have even a fraction of a say. And yet, even where those rights exist, democracies are inherently flawed. They allow us to believe we hold power—that we can make a difference. It’s comforting to think we’re choosing the most capable, the most devoted among us to lead. That those we elect will carry our interests—our well-being—in both their minds and their hearts.

But are we?

Do they?

Democracies don’t collapse overnight. They decay slowly—under the weight of sweltering summers, when people are too tired to act. Worn down by political instability. By divisions deliberately kept alive and echoed across every platform. By economic strain. And by a persistent threat that hovers—precise, sharp, like an arrow lodged in the heart of a target.

They die with a weary shrug. First, in the face of minor infractions—small deviations from the norm. Then, when blatant corruption is met with an exhausted sigh.

At first, there’s still strength. Still hope. People take to the streets and discover brief flashes of solidarity. They stand in the heat, waving flags and shouting through megaphones at the gates of power. But the gates remain closed. Little by little, the solidarity erodes. And life, as it always does, presses in—too complex, too consuming, or simply too comfortable to allow resistance.

The truth is unsettling, but it must be said: power doesn’t even lie in numbers. In a world where slogans drown out nuance, it is the extremists who set the tone. Their messages—simple, sharp, loud—cut through the static, echo far and wide, and take root in tired, overloaded minds. The voices of balance—of unity—are harder to hear. They don’t make headlines. They aren’t provocative enough. Not polarizing enough. Not easily packaged or shared. So they vanish—slipping quietly between the lines, swallowed by the noise.

History, it seems, doesn’t repeat like a scratched, worn-out record. It returns like a revival on stage—new set, fresh cast, a different director. But the plot? Uncannily familiar. And the ending—painfully predictable. Like a relentless wheel of karma, spinning endlessly to force us to know ourselves from every possible angle. Those who fail to learn from history, the saying goes, are doomed to repeat it. And us? We study it. Memorize it. Only to stumble through the same scenes, make the same mistakes, in the very same places.

Why does this keep happening—even when we know better?

Because human nature isn’t wired to heed warnings. We reject whatever threatens our self-image—our story, our justice, our sense of safety. That’s how we manage dissonance: not through reflection, but through denial. Through distraction. By looking away. Because what happens there—in other places, in other times—surely won’t happen here.

We’re different. Better. Smarter. Immune.

And so, without noticing, we point outward. We blame, we boycott, we isolate “the others”—so we won’t have to see what’s unfolding right before our eyes. So we won’t have to admit: it’s not just them.

It’s us.

I used to believe it couldn’t happen here. That we, of all people—having lived through the unimaginable—would ensure nothing like it could ever happen again. Not here. Not anywhere. But it does. Again and again. Everywhere that victimhood becomes currency—first for moral high ground, then perhaps as justification for the unjustifiable.

I don’t write this to draw simple parallels or accuse. History never repeats itself in the same form. But it rhymes. And when fear, power, and exhaustion take hold—no society is immune.

There’s that photo—grainy, black and white—of a crowd at a rally, all arms raised in perfect unison. Except for one man. His arms remain folded across his chest. His face isn’t defiant, just quietly resolute. While the others pledged loyalty, he held on to something else: to doubt. To conscience. To the quiet knowledge that the tide wasn’t just turning—it was rising to swallow them whole.

Most people never noticed him.

Most still don’t.

We like to think we’d be that person. The one who resists. Who stands apart. Who refuses to disappear into the crowd.

But most of us are bound by ties we’re afraid to risk—loved ones, safety, standing, belonging. And sometimes, protest changes nothing.

Sometimes, the only act of resistance left is refusing to join in.

Just watching. Holding on to reason.

Doing nothing—utterly, deliberately nothing—because that may be the only thing left to do.

I’m tired, but my eyes refuse to close—refuse to surrender to the haze of a summer night. There’s a fine line that runs through history—a trembling thread—drawn between that man and me. As long as I can write—as long as I can put words to what I see—clearly, honestly, with the sharpness of a summer day—I can still hope to be that man.

I no longer believe the wheels of history can simply be stopped,

or gently turned in another direction.

But I believe this:

Every single act of defiance matters.

Even when it changes nothing.

Especially then.