The Zone of Interest, directed by Jonathan Glazer, is probably the most boring film I’ve ever seen. For a film about the Holocaust, there are no real plotlines, no action, no catharsis—it’s observational cinema. The film centres around the life of an Auschwitz commandant and his family, whose house sits just beside a concentration camp, separated by a concrete wall. They move through the motions of life in this picturesque dream house—friends visit for afternoon tea, pool parties fill Sunday afternoons, and luscious vines grow in their garden.
We never see beyond the wall that separates their home from the camp, but its presence is felt through sound: the hum of machinery, the occasional gunshot, a heart-wrenching scream. The family, of course, doesn’t acknowledge the horrors they hear. How could they? If they allowed themselves to feel the horrors happening just across those walls, it would shatter their paradise, and they’d lose their sanity. So they compartmentalise; they tuck the darkest aspects of humanity into a corner and choose to focus on the good parts. By refusing to confront evil, they’re able to live unburdened, focusing on the beauty around them. And just like that, denial becomes a form of complicity. A soft, almost polite kind of evil.
The more the film leans into the mundane, the more it stops being a film and begins to resemble a mirror instead. The family’s actions aren’t confined to some distant past or alternate reality—they’re familiar tasks we still do today. Evil doesn’t have to announce itself dramatically; it can exist within the quiet crevices of ordinary life. It can happen here; it can happen now.
This realisation, of course, sent me spiralling. The parallels between the film and the ongoing situation in Palestine became impossible to ignore. While observing the family, I started asking questions about myself I didn’t want the answers to. Do I do this every day? How am I different from them? I had to force myself to confront my actions and humanity. It was unpleasant, sure, but it was a necessary wake-up call.
I'll say it—for a film that’s won Academy Awards and BAFTAs, I didn’t get much entertainment value out of it, and I doubt I’ll be rewatching it in this lifetime. But I think that was Glazer’s intention. A film about the Holocaust shouldn’t entertain you. This is history; it happened. Turning such history into entertainment risks diminishing its horrors for new generations of consumers, making it easier for our minds to compartmentalise that side of humanity, much like the family in the film does. The Zone of Interest challenges us to confront our humanity rather than hide behind a comfortable wall of detachment.
When the ceasefire was called and agreed upon on 19 January 2025, it was a scene on social media; people cheered, clapped, and reposted celebratory posts. It felt like we had been vindicated, like our efforts had amounted to something, that the Palestinians were finally free. We graduated from this, moved on to the next topic of interest, and never looked back. Even though 170 people were silently murdered during this ceasefire period, we turned the page. Shrugged it off as if those 170 people weren't also complex beings of the same worth as you and I. We gave Israel the benefit of the doubt because we didn't want to believe it; maybe it was just isolated cases of demented IDF soldiers.
Then Israel really went and did it. They officially violated the ceasefire deal two months later, injuring 562 people and killing 404, many of whom were children. This sent Gaza back into a state of darkness. Food, water, and electricity started to thin again, as the death toll continues to creep higher by the day.
Yet, even with this development, we continue to look forward, because turning back would send us right back into that state of moral flux. A genocide, as it turns out, takes up a lot of real estate in our heads, and we only have so much room in our minds. So we start scrolling past the suffering of Palestinians on Instagram. I don’t want to see that now. Are they still suffering? That’s too much.
But what if we took all that dread, all that helplessness we’re feeling—and multiplied it by a hundred. A thousand? You might get close to what the Palestinians live with every day. If that feels unfathomable, that’s because it is. We can’t truly feel what we haven’t lived. But that doesn’t excuse the looking away, because even though it might be an involuntary psychological defence mechanism, it’s what enables this atrocity exhibition to continue.
If it sounds like I’m claiming some sort of moral high ground, I apologise. But I’m writing this because I’ve done it too—I’ve looked away, scrolled on. Reflecting on those thoughts makes me sick now, but they reveal how easily we can become desensitised, especially when it seems like the horror never ends.
The first interview I conducted for Esquire Singapore was with Gilbert Goh for our “What I’ve Learnt” column. Gilbert is the founder of Love Aid Singapore, and through his work, he’s raised over five million dollars in aid for Palestinians. Since our interview back in June 2024, we’ve kept in touch. He sends updates sometimes—photos of smiling children, boxes of supplies, the occasional selfie. He’s been in Cairo, working to get those supplies into Gaza, and staying away from the strikes.
But late last year, he went further. He ventured into Lebanon, where he had been doing on-the-ground humanitarian work for close to nine years. When he heard the conflict had spread to Lebanon, it felt natural to return and support the displaced homeless who had been neglected by government-led shelters. The scale of displacement was staggering—1.2 million Lebanese forced out of their homes due to Israel’s military campaign. While half of them had been evacuated to neighbouring countries, among those who remained, only 200,000 found their way to organised shelters at the height of the crisis. During that period of Gilbert being there, his Instagram posts started ending with the same sign-off, “We only live once, so let’s make it count.”
Don’t worry, Gilbert is safe now, he's back in Singapore visiting friends, family, and supporters of the cause. But I think about that trip a lot. Not just because of what he did—but because he almost didn’t do it. The night before his flight, he admitted he’d secretly hoped it would be cancelled. Maybe the plane would be damaged. Maybe the airport would close. Something—anything—that would keep him from flying into a war zone.
He was afraid. And he still went. That stayed with me.
It’s easy to see activists like Gilbert as unwavering, but his story reminded me that courage isn’t the absence of fear—it’s moving forward in spite of it. It’s a commitment to remembering, acknowledging, and standing in solidarity with those who aren’t given a voice.
“The safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.” – C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (1942)
Those small, everyday choices—to look away, to carry on with routine, to focus on life’s comforts while horror unfolds elsewhere—are particularly insidious because they don’t feel wrong. It feels like self-preservation, like keeping a grip on normalcy and staying within what we can control.
But we don’t need to be a Gilbert Goh to care. We don’t need to fly into war zones, set up polyclinics, or fund hospitals in Gaza. We can contribute through donations, engaging in meaningful discourse, educating the people around us, and participating in organised boycotts. Most importantly, we can choose to confront our own conscience instead of turning our backs on it—resisting that urge to push our humanity out of the “zone of interest” in our minds.
For more information about Gilbert's cause, click here.
