Angola is not Gaza. It was unlucky.

The recent unrest in Angola received little or no attention in Portugal. No one here truly cares about what's happening in Luanda, Maputo, or Bissau. The CPLP is a collection of failed states—ours included, clinging to Europe by pincers, as if to remind us that our standard of living is increasingly distant from that of European countries and increasingly closer to Africa, which begins just beyond the Algarve.

The latest popular uprising in Angola—which began as a taxi drivers' strike—was, in fact, the inevitable explosion of a people exhausted by hunger, disease, and hopelessness. The trigger was the rising price of gasoline, but the bomb that exploded in the streets is the portrait of a bankrupt country. All this happened a week after President João Lourenço's visit to Portugal, received with all the pomp and circumstance and the usual theatrics: polished speeches, flags on lapels, promises of investment, official dinners with our political and business elite, a déjà vu of the golden days of the Dos Santos clan.

This was just one of more than 120 official trips, the most frequent destinations not including Portugal, but rather the United States, Spain, Namibia, and the United Arab Emirates. Presidential delegations include a court of 70 to 150 people, and the estimated cost of these trips already exceeds one billion. Interestingly, none of these trips departed from Luanda's new airport, a monument to waste in a nation where the civil aviation sector is dwindling: passenger, route, and airline statistics are falling year after year, and even the special flight to repatriate Angolan citizens fleeing the war in Ukraine returned virtually empty! Of the nearly 300 Angolans registered upon arrival in Warsaw, only 30 agreed to return home… fleeing a war and choosing to stay abroad says a lot about these refugees' country of origin.

The little we saw on the streets of Luanda was just that: a people exhausted by living without dignity. But these images didn't shock, didn't make headlines, and, worse still, didn't move. Perhaps we've become too accustomed to seeing Africans suffer. First, it was slavery; now it's poverty or drowning on some random boat in the Mediterranean. Protesting for food, healthcare, education, or a minimally decent life in one of Africa's richest countries doesn't mobilize, nor does it generate hashtags or international outrage.

Perhaps the problem is marketing , and so I leave you with this suggestion: if Angolans first elect a Jewish government and only then take to the streets to protest, perhaps they'll garner global media attention. Just as a certain subcutaneous racism allows us to view the streets of Luanda, Maputo, or Bissau with a natural indifference masked by respect for "sovereignties," anti-Semitism, disguised as some noble cause, moves worlds and blames regimes, countries, and entities.

In the midst of a debate about the recognition of the State of Palestine – a cause that is complex and full of nuances – I would like to see Portugal recognize first and with the same energy the real state of Angola: a country with hollowed-out institutions, plundered resources and an elite that lives like an extractive oligarchy, keeping the people hostage to a present without bread and a future without hope.

When Angola becomes Gaza, perhaps European activists of selective morality will be outraged; perhaps they will organize marches; perhaps they will publish solidarity posts ; perhaps they will make tearful videos. When Angola becomes Gaza, perhaps then Angola will prosper.