Selective Empathy - by Roberto de Vogli (Hardcover)

About the Book

Selective Empathy offers a rigorous, interdisciplinary analysis of Western emotional bias in humanitarian cooperation and intervention. Combining psychology, media studies, and international relations, Roberto De Vogli critically examines the moral failures underlying the West's selective response to the Gaza genocide.

Book Synopsis

Selective Empathy: The West Through the Gaze of Gaza takes us to the heart of the greatest moral crisis of our time: the genocide in Gaza. Blending sharp political critique with psychological and global health research, haunting testimonies, and suppressed facts, Roberto De Vogli exposes the moral double standards of mainstream Western leaders, journalists, and intellectuals. The book reveals an international community that extends compassion to some victims while denying it to others. Gaza has become a mirror, a litmus test, and a moral blind spot in the West's eye. Will our civilization survive this crisis of humanity? De Vogli challenges prevailing narratives and calls for a new solidarity grounded in universal empathy, social justice, and emotional decolonization.

Review Quotes

"A brave and timely contribution... a passionate, scholarly and reasoned treatise which marshals considerable evidence and demands an engaged response." "Its power derives from its bold and uncompromising commitment to documented evidence... and a refusal to be subdued by vested interests."
- Graham Scambler, in: Critical Sociology (April 5, 2026)

"With great courage and meticulous research, this is a searing indictment of Western moral failure in the face of genocide. De Vogli's unflinching analysis forces us to confront how, by reserving empathy for some but denying it to others, democracies have become complicit in mass atrocity. Essential, urgent, and profoundly necessary, this is a masterwork of extraordinary intellectual rigor and profound moral courage."
- Richard Wilkinson, Emeritus Professor of Social Epidemiology, University of Nottingham, and author of The Spirit Level

"Mature democracies have entered a dystopia: the smaller the injustice, the more extreme the response; the greater the injustice, the deeper the bureaucratic indifference. De Vogli shows something that compounds the problem: one can easily strip people of empathy by manipulating their consciousness into believing that the victims belong to a different species."
- Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan

"A brilliant, powerful, and essential book. It presents a moral challenge we are obliged to confront."
- George Monbiot, columnist for The Guardian and author of The Invisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism and Bring on The Apocalypse: Six Arguments for Global Justice

"Selective grievability and white unseeing are dissected in this thought-provoking book on how the genocide was sustained for over two years."
- Ghassan Abu-Sittah, Rector of the University of Glasgow, Director of the Conflict Medicine Program, Global Health Institute, American University of Beirut

"The original proposed publisher of this book provided a graphic illustration of its argument, when they refused to allow Roberto De Vogli to even use the word 'genocide'. Since this is the only term which adequately captures what Israel has done to the Palestinians, we must be grateful that he refused andfound a more principled publisher. Selective Empathy provides a passionate, incisive and scrupulously documented explanation of the West's complicity, and deserves to be widely read."
- Martin Shaw, Emeritus Professor of International Relations, Institute of International Studies, Barcelona, and author of The New Age of Genocide and What Is Genocide?

"In this extremely well researched and balanced volume, Roberto De Vogli provides updated and systematic knowledge on the horror of the Israeli geno- cide in Gaza - the killing, the starving, the dehumanizing, the scholasticide, the ecocide. The selective empathy and ensuing denial of solidarity with Palestinians among Western elites is linked to the powerful propaganda of Israeli and Western allies. At the same time, however, courageous acts by activists, doctors, and journalists testify to the emergence of universal empathy and global identification."
- Donatella della Porta, Professor and Founding Dean of the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences, Scuola Normale Superiore, Florence, and author of Social Movements: An Introduction

"Selective empathy is not our destiny is the ethico-political cry that emanates from Roberto De Vogli's powerful and uncompromising book. Whereas Western political powers preach a (neo)colonial ethics of ideological resemblance - care only about Israeli Jewish lives, lives that look like yours - so as to obscure the horrors of the Gaza genocide, De Vogli carefully attends to the ways this message is thwarted by incredible acts of self-sacrifice (from doctors volunteering in Gaza, Israeli soldiers refusing to serve in an eliminationist war, university students protesting on their campuses, and faculty risking their careers for the cause of Palestinian liberation). In Selective Empathy, Gaza registers as a site of utter destruction and global resilience. Western leaders desperately want us to forget about the former and stop the latter. De Vogli courageously points us in the opposite direction."
- Zahi Zalloua, Professor of Literature and Philosophy, Whitman College, and author of Solidarity and the Palestinian Cause: Indigeneity, Blackness, and the Promise of Universality

"This riveting must read offers a heart-rending but rigorous analysis of the systematic dehumanisation of the Palestinian people in Gaza and beyond, the complicity of the international community and major Western powers - and a startling insight into the systemic, institutional and ultimately civilisational processes and values that have led us to a point where genocide becomes fully normalised. I strongly recommend it."
- Nafeez Ahmed, investigative journalist, The Guardian blogger, and author of Alt Reich and Failing States, Collapsing Systems

About the Author

Roberto De Vogli teaches Psychology of Power at the University of Padova. He has served as an Associate Professor of Public Health at University College London, the University of Michigan, and the University of California, Davis. He is the author of two books and has published in leading scientific journals, including The Lancet, Nature, and British Medical Journal.