Nirwa Mehta

Let me attempt to add few arguments to help understand this social phenomena: In India, all-consuming, round-the-clock advocacy for a free Palestine is rarely a simple reaction to foreign news/Social media commentary. It is an act of political self-fashioning, an ongoing construction of identity and belonging achieved through transnational solidarity. As Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink show in "Activists beyond Borders", people separated by continents join global campaigns to satisfy a deep psychological need for shared values and collective meaning. What converts a conflict thousands of miles away into a personal moral imperative? Lawrence Wilde’s research (2004) on solidarity suggests that recognising the suffering of others generates a binding psychological commitment grounded in common causes rather than physical proximity. Advocates in the Global South frequently map this distant crisis onto their own ideological frameworks such as anti-colonialism, human rights, or resistance to systemic power. Simona Sharoni's research (2015) illustrate how disparate social justice movements treat the Palestinian cause as a unifying proxy, a single struggle through which they contest perceived oppression worldwide. Social media significantly amplifies this continuous immersion possible. Hedy Greijdanus's study (2020) demonstrate how digital echo chambers lower the threshold for participation, rapidly generating shared realities and ready-made activist communities. By circulating symbols, narratives, and outrage without pause, the distant advocate merges personal conviction with a global movement turning a remote geopolitical conflict into an inseparable part of daily life and self-definition.