As its appalling onslaught in Gaza and treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank are broadcast around the world, Israel is increasingly encountering international opprobrium. Yet Binyamin Netanyahu’s position is still not under threat from the country’s domestic opposition, whose criticism of his government scarcely stretches to the war.
While that may be starting to change, the Israeli prime minister’s rule will likely persist as long as he can rely on the support of Donald Trump, which shows no sign of abating. In any case, he could probably rectify any significant shift in domestic attitudes by engineering another crisis with Iran.
Why support for the war persists in Israel needs to be understood, and it is worth recalling that before the Hamas attack nearly two years ago, Israeli Jews thought that they were at last achieving a measure of lasting security.
At the time, the occupied West Bank has seen a steady increase in the number and size of Jewish settlements, along with all the strategic roads, checkpoints and patrols that went with them. That helped to ensure Israel could more effectively control the whole area, which was already enclosed by the heavily guarded border with Jordan and the separation barrier with Israel.
More widely, Israel had overwhelming air superiority in the region, which enabled it to project power in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and elsewhere. It was far from complete, given the presence of Hezbollah in Lebanon and the theocratic regime in Iran, but Israel’s ever-present connection with the United States offered further protection.
Perhaps the most reassuring element was how Gaza had been subdued after the shock of the 2006 Hamas election victory over Fatah, a secular nationalist party that had previously had a majority on the Palestinian Legislative Council.
That election had been held across all the Palestinian territories and was followed by violent Israeli and international opposition to the onset of Hamas rule, as well as conflict between Fatah and Hamas. Within months, Fatah had regained control of the West Bank, while Hamas ran Gaza, which almost immediately became subject to a near siege by Israel.
Four wars and several lesser periods of intense violence followed between 2008 and 2022.
The first of the four, in 2008, was a 22-day Israeli military offensive that killed around 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis. This was followed by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) assassinating Hamas’s military chief of staff, Ahmed Jabari, and conducting eight days of air raids in 2012.
Then, mid-2014 saw a seven-week IDF offensive after Hamas kidnapped and killed three Israeli teenagers. That bitter air and ground offensive led to the deaths of more than 2,100 Palestinians and 73 Israelis. Israeli losses were mostly IDF ground troops, which is one reason why many senior Israeli soldiers are now reluctant to put troops into Gaza City.
More recently, in May 2021, the IDF killed 260 Palestinians in Gaza, and 13 Israelis died in rocket fire from Gaza. Thirty more Palestinians were killed in further attacks in 2022.
Amid these short but intense wars, many Israelis became used to brief bursts of warfare, which were often seen as a necessary means to control Palestinians. Israeli military personnel even referred to such violence as “mowing the grass”, according to foreign correspondent and author Phoebe Greenwood, whose vivid insights into reporting on the years of war do much to explain the lack of balance in the mainstream media when it comes to Israel and Palestine.
In total, in the 15 years leading up to 2023, in the wake of the first and second Intifadas (Palestinian uprisings) and the control of Gaza, Israeli military operations killed close to 5,000 Palestinians and wounded thousands more. That this was well over three times the Israeli death toll on 7 October counted for little among the great majority of Israeli Jews, enabling the Netanyahu coalition to go to war with those Palestinian “human animals” to destroy Hamas once and for all.
Within weeks, it became clear that Hamas would not easily be defeated. From very early on in the war, the IDF was pursuing the Dahiya Doctrine of punishing the civilian population to undermine support for Hamas. That is failing to the extent that while Hamas has lost thousands of its paramilitaries, there are many thousands more ready to take their place.
As a result, Israel is using increasingly extreme measures, including killing medics and paramedics, destroying hospitals and medical centres, and starving people by cutting off food supplies.
At the same time, the Netanyahu government is conducting an international propaganda exercise, especially in the UK and Germany – two of the states where support is most urgently needed.
In the UK, the support of leading politicians and pundits is essential, and the propaganda process has been aided by providing financial support to Labour cabinet ministers in particular. The extent of the campaign has this week come more fully into the public eye after Declassified UK published the itinerary and lobbying efforts of the Israeli ambassador in London, Tzipi Hotovely.
In an interview with LBC journalist Iain Dale last year, Hotovely suggested that “every school, every mosque, every second house” in Gaza had access to underground tunnels and that this justified Israel’s bombardment.
“But that’s an argument for destroying the whole of Gaza, every single building there,” said LBC presenter Iain Dale. “Do you have another solution?” she responded.
That response starkly supports Nimer Sultany’s assessment of the situation in an article in The Guardian this week. Sultany, a Palestinian citizen of Israel who is a reader in public law at SOAS University of London, wrote: “Israel is pursuing the messianic fantasy and the criminal enterprise of a ‘Greater Israel’, with the goal of ‘maximum land, and minimum Arabs.’”
Ambassador Hotovely’s views certainly support Sultany’s argument, as does the announcement this week that Israel’s security cabinet has approved a plan to take full control of Gaza City. From there, it seems likely that the rest of the Gaza Strip would be next, followed by the West Bank.
Sultany is right to call this aim a “messianic fantasy”. Western political leaders must recognise it as such and radically change their policies on selling arms and sharing intelligence with the IDF, as well as introducing sanctions on trade with Israel. Given the UK’s long-term relationship with Israel, and its close military and security links with the IDF (which exceed those of any other nation bar the US), Keir Starmer should take the lead in this.
The consequences of the Israeli genocide in Gaza will be dire. An event of this degree of barbarity, sustained by an international conspiracy of moral inertia and silence, will not be relegated to history as just another “conflict” or a mere tragedy.
The Gaza genocide is a catalyst for major events to come. Israel and its benefactors are acutely aware of this historical reality. This is precisely why Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in a race against time, desperately trying to ensure his country remains relevant, if not standing, in the coming era. He pursues this through territorial expansion in Syria, relentless aggression against Lebanon, and, of course, the desire to annex all occupied Palestinian territories.
But history cannot be controlled with such precision. However clever he may think he is, Netanyahu has already lost the ability to influence the outcome. He has been unable to set a clear agenda in Gaza, let alone achieve any strategic goals in a 365-square-kilometer expanse of destroyed concrete and ashes. Gazans have proven that collective sumud can defeat one of the most well-equipped modern armies.
Indeed, history itself has taught us that changes of great magnitude are inevitable. The true heartbreak is that this change is not happening fast enough to save a starving population, and the growing pro-Palestinian sentiment is not expanding at the rate needed to achieve a decisive political outcome.
Our confidence in this inevitable change is rooted in history. World War I was not just a “Great War” but a cataclysmic event that fully shattered the geopolitical order of its time. Four empires were fundamentally reshuffled; some, like the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman, were erased from existence.
The new world order resulting from World War I was short-lived. The modern international system we have today is a direct outcome of World War II. This includes the United Nations and all the new Western-centric economic, legal, and political institutions that were forged by the Bretton Woods Agreement in 1944. This includes the World Bank, the IMF, and ultimately NATO, thus sowing the seeds of yet more global conflicts.
The fall of the Berlin Wall was heralded as the singular, defining event that resolved the lingering conflicts of the post-WWII geopolitical struggle, supposedly ushering in a new, permanent global realignment, or, to some, the “end of history.”
History, however, had other plans. Not even the horrific September 11 attacks and the subsequent US-led wars could reinvent the global order in a way that was consistent with US-Western interests and priorities.
Gaza is infinitely small when judged by its geography, economic worth, or political import. Yet, it has proven to be the most significant global event defining this generation’s political consciousness.
The fact that the self-proclaimed guardians of the post-WWII order are the very entities that are violently and brazenly violating every international and humanitarian law is enough to fundamentally alter our relationship with the West’s championed “rule-based order.”
This may not seem significant now, but it will have profound, long-term consequences. It has largely compromised and, in fact, delegitimized the moral authority imposed, often by violence, by the West over the rest of the world for decades, especially in the Global South.
This self-imposed delegitimization will also impact the very idea of democracy, which has been under siege in many countries, including Western democracies. This is only natural, considering that most of the planet feels strongly that Israel must end its genocide and that its leaders must be held accountable. Yet, little to no action follows.
The shift in Western public opinion in favor of Palestinians is astounding when considered against the backdrop of total Western media dehumanization of the Palestinian people and Western governments’ blind allegiance to Israel. More shocking is that this shift is largely the result of the work of ordinary people on social media, activists mobilizing in the streets, and independent journalists, mostly in Gaza, working under extreme duress and with minimal resources.
A central conclusion is the failure of Arab and Muslim nations to factor into this tragedy befalling their own brethren in Palestine. While some are engaged in empty rhetoric or self-flagellation, others subsist in a state of inertia, as if the genocide in Gaza were a foreign topic, like the wars in Ukraine or Congo.
This fact alone shall challenge our very collective self-definition—what it means to be an Arab or a Muslim, and whether such definitions carry supra-political identities. Time will tell.
The left, too, is problematic in its own way. While not a monolith, and while many on the left have championed the global protests against the genocide, others remain splintered and unable to form a unified front, even temporarily.
Some leftists are still chasing their own tales, crippled by the worry that being anti-Zionist would earn them the label of antisemitism. For this group, self-policing and self-censorship are preventing them from taking decisive action.
History does not take its cues from Israel or Western powers. Gaza will indeed result in the kind of global shifts that will affect us all, far beyond the Middle East. For now, however, it is most urgent that we use our collective will and action to influence one single historical event: ending the genocide and the famine in Gaza.
The rest will be left to history, and to those who wish to be relevant when the world changes again.
Humanity’s Fight Against the Perpetrators of Starvation and Extermination
August 15, 2025
Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair
On August 3, 2025, well over 100,000 thousand Australians swept across Sydney’s Harbour Bridge, protesting Israel’s genocidal starvation of Gaza, stopping traffic for hours. Julian Assange was at the front of the march, and social media was alive with imagery and solidarity. One protester posted, “What struck me at #MarchforHumanity was the awesome diversity of Sydney. Friendly eye contact, nods, talk between people of every age, ancestry, gender, families…interacting in harmony and happiness.” Author Trita Parsi observed that “One has to be blind not to see that Israel has completely lost the majority of the world – including in the West…No level of intimidation, surveillance, or threats can force the majority of humanity to support and defend apartheid and genocide.” Syrian girl said “We are a wave. Or rather a flood. We moved with water in the rain on the #SydneyHarbourBridge…Once it crashes the structures that Zionism built will go tumbling down with it.” Max Blumenthal noted that “The flood is growing,” and The Intercept said we seemed to have woken up to the genocide in Gaza.
For weeks the world has seen pictures of skeletal children starving with no relief in sight. As Heba Almaqadma, a 24-year-old Palestinian journalist still living in Gaza City said, “In Gaza, Hunger Has Overtaken Bombs as Israel’s Cruelest Weapon.” Pictures of Starving Palestinians have been juxtaposed against images of Jewish holocaust survivors, and the mirroring of Israeli crimes with those of Nazis are made both visually and verbally. susan abulhawa has rightly called what she saw in Gaza a Holocaust, and we now understand that Gaza is being systematically annihilated.
Western media’s 22-months of pro-Israel rehearsals have faltered slightly in the wake of starving civilians, with critical openings appearing in CNN and MSNBC. Even the right-wing British newspaper the Daily Express ran the headline: “For Pity’s Sake Stop This Now,” alongside a picture of a starving Palestinian boy on the brink of death. The paper added that those “clinging to life in Gaza hell shames us all.” Journalist Matt Kennard wrote on X: “The Zionist holocaust regime has lost the Daily Express.” A few days later Isreal lost the BBC when it’s World Service reported it had complied “over 160 cases where children have been shot in Gaza, and found that in 95 cases the child was shot in the head or the chest. In most of these cases the victim was under 12 years old.”
Speak the Word ‘Genocide’
An angry congressman Al Green, pounds the lectern almost shouting, “We are witnessing before our very eyes, Mr. Speaker, genocide in Gaza.” He asked, how can we ‘see what’s happening in Gaza and not call it what it is?” Human rights groups that have until now withheld judgment on the genocide, are coming to their senses. The Israeli human rights organization B’Tsalem released a report, that though flawed, finally admitted “Our Geocide, is Happening Now,” and in a long overdue announcement, Physicians for Human Rights — Israel, has for the first time publicly concluded that the Gaza “war” is a genocide. These statements follow a long list of organizations from Amnesty International to Doctor Against Genocide that have known this for months. Adding to the growing chorus of voices, acclaimed Israeli writer David Grossman told the Italian daily La Repubblica, “after the images I saw and after talking to people who were there…with immense pain and a broken heart, I have to face what is happening before my eyes. ‘Genocide.’” He understood genocide to be “avalanche word,” arguing that “once you say it…it brings even more destruction and suffering.” But the destruction and suffering in Gaza was allowed to happen precisely because political elites and legacy media refused to say Israel was committing genocide in Gaza. The New York Times still gaslights the world with headlines like this, “No, Israel is Not Committing Genocide in Gaza,” by Bret Stephens.
In the US, lawmakers and pundits alike have been criticizing Israel, and for the first time ever, one quarter of the senate voted to block arms sales to Israel. Senator Peter Welch (D-VT) spoke with sincerity when he said. “It’s a war crime to starve a population to get what you want from your enemy.” No doubt the precipitous drop in favorability toward Israel among Democratic voters has shaken them up. Zeteo reported that “more Americans than not” are against the genocide. As one analyst put it, for Democrats, standing with Israel is political suicide. Israel is even losing Republicans. Pointing to statements against the genocide by Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tucker Calson, Breaking Points called the way Republicans have turned against Israel, a “historic flip.”
Hunger and Our Humanity
Watching another person starve is unbearable, especially when it’s a child. For most of us it’s a fist striking deep into our heart that hits our most basic humanity. Actor, writer and humanist, Stanley Tucci offers some reasons for this in his book Taste, a chronicle of his love of food, its allure, preparation and depictions. Tucci tells us how he learned early on that “audiences love to watch people eating [and] drinking” on screen, because “there is something very compelling about watching” people do these basic things. He attributes this to the way “it humanizes them and therefore allows us to connect to them.” Watching movies about food and cooking shows on TV make us all feel part of a human family. And this is why it is such an emotional blow when we must watch fellow human beings go hungry.
We’ve watched bomb strikes and seen the pictures of the hideous dystopian landscapes of Gaza in rubble, we’re heard devastated doctors testify about the targeted assassinations of children, and those paying attention know the IDF targets starving, unarmed civilians trying to get food for their families at ‘distribution hubs.’ We’ve heard the words of a former special forces veteran Anthony Aguilar who explained that the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in committing war crimes in Gaza. Devastated after a hungry Palestinian child, who received no food, kissed his hand and was then deliberately shot dead, Kristal Ball wrote “I have seen the former Green Beret who has done 9 combat tours shake and break down today over what he saw being done to human beings in Gaza.” She added, “The horror must end and everyone who was complicit must be held to account. Our collective humanity is at stake.”
A weakened, hallowed-eyed person or skeletal crying child is not yet dead. In the words of UNRAW, people in Gaza are “walking corpses.” One doctor from Gaza posted an image of a skin and bones child saying simply, “We are starving.” And they are still suffering. This causes us to gasp and grasp for solutions. It propels us to demand that food come immediately. It’s the only way to find relief from the pain of watching such a deliberate, slow destruction of humanity, and indeed the destruction of our own. And all the while Israel claims the photos are fake.
These human responses to suffering are nothing like the ways the perpetrators react to the Palestinians they are starving to death.
The Evils of Starvation, It’s Perpetrators and Enablers
It’s not rhetorical, ad hominin, unkind, and certainly not antisemitic, to say that Israeli leaders perpetrating the crime of forced starvation have lost their humanity. They are the ones who excitedly told us what they would do from the start, and they’ve been doing it ever since. Recently they’ve doubled down on pronouncements that reveal a deep psychopathology fueled by years of hated, and more recently, by the support and impunity offered by world leaders propelled by the mounting corporate profits rolling in from the business of genocide. They are ensnared in verbal webs of fabrication and dehumanization, even though these same perpetrators regularly announce their true intent. Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir said in his latest hate rant, “We will not allow a single gram of aid into the Gaza Strip until its people kneel and beg. Gaza must be leveled to the ground. There is no such thing as innocent people.” Then in the next breath, Israel makes the false claim that Hamas is stealing the food and aid. Watching the likes of Ben Gvir and others mouth such unthinkable hate while doing such unthinkable crimes is another assault on our sensibilities. So too are the unconscionable actions taken by Israelis who have recently flocked to the border to help block aid from getting into Gaza. And 79
When Shimon Elkabetz chairman of the Israel Film Council, openly urged the mass slaughter of Palestinians on Israel’s channel i24 saying, “Kill them, exterminate them… just like using a lice comb,” the newly elected Democratic candidate for New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani, who is unabashedly anti-genocide, posted “Genocide isn’t hidden. It’s broadcast.” But not by US corporate media. And when Ofer Kassif, a member of the Knesset, read David Grossman’s statement out to the Knesset, he was forcibly removed from the podium to shouts of “He will not say ‘genocide’ in here!” US corporate media did not report the incident, but Haaretz did.
US congressman Randy Fines (R-FL) is playing the role of genocide enabler for Israel. Over a picture of the devastated Gaza Strip, when an Israeli asked, “Did Gaza deserve it?” Fines answered “Yes.” There is ample documentation of the reach Israeli lobbyists have over US politicians, and just how far this has gone became apparent in Trump’s latest missive declaring that the US government will not provide disaster preparedness funds to states in the US boycotting Israel.
Western Media Complicity
Then there are those who have followed the trajectory of establishment media’s abysmal coverage of Israel’s genocide. Assal Rad responded to a CNN broadcast titled, “Palestinians are Starving or being Killed by Israeli Troops While Seeking Aid Almost Daily. How Did we get Here? In outrage, Rad answered with, “You and your colleagues covering up their genocide.”
Corporate media have covered up essential facts and used words that hide the nature of Israel’s crimes against humanity. But why has the BBC suddenly shifted coverage? Because, according to journalist Owen Jones, “everybody knows that the utter calamity engulfing Gaza is going to be impossible to hide.” Jones is angry and relentless in his condemnation. “For the Guilty Men of the media: you all had ample warning for 21 months! You did this! Everything that now happens is on you.”
Francesca Albanese also slammed western media, calling for investigations into how mainstream media have portrayed and dehumanized Palestinians to devastating effects. And FAIR revisited the leaked memos at the New York Times that prohibited journalists from using “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” at a time when it could have made a difference. Albanese’s eloquent condemnation of the West’s refusal to articular humanitarian values and follow international law to stop Israel were condensed into these prose; “Israel has written one of the darkest pages of human history and the world is still holding the pen.”
Charging Global Humanity with Antisemitism
Still holding the pen, they write laws that criminalize those who call on Israel to stop the starvation. As Arundhati Roy pointed out. “The only moral thing Palestinian civilians can do apparently is to die. The only legal thing the rest of us can do is to watch them die. And be silent. If not, we risk our scholarships, grant lecture fees and livelihoods.” Israel and its supporters step up the attacks, and AIPAC accuses Bernie Sanders, a Jewish senator who lost family in the Holocaust, of “blood libel” for announcing “The Netanyahu government’s extermination of Gaza intensifies. Malnutrition is rampant, children are starving to death, people are shot while waiting for meager food rations — and US weapons allow it to happen. Trump and Congress must act NOW. Stop the slaughter. Feed the people.” UK journalist Jonathan Cook wrote about how the ‘blood libel’ charge helps keep the West silent on Israel’s genocide. The more depraved Israel’s actions are, the more antisemitic it is to point them out. The reality is he says, through Israel, the West can hide “boilerplate colonialism” as a uniquely Jewish project.
The pretzeled logic of the charge of antisemitism is now being dismantled like never before, as writers expose the IHRA definition that falsely identifies criticism of Israel as antisemitic.
When Democratic Delegate form Virginia Sam Rasoul, whose family was displaced by Israel, wrote about the ‘evils’ of Zionism, his words prompted a series of attacks from Democratic colleagues like Tim Kaine. Kaine—who won’t use the word genocide because the “tragedy” doesn’t warrant the term—“forcefully reject[s] any claim that Zionism, the desire of Jewish people to have a state of Israel, is inherently racist or evil.” Rasoul shot back, arguing that Zionism can no longer be considered simply an “aspirational belief that there should be a safe place for a homeland for Jews.” Instead, he pointed out that Zionism has led to “the manifestation of an ethno-supremacist state that has produced not only this occupation, but an apartheid regime that now has committed the ultimate act of terror, which is a genocide on the people of Gaza.” Rasoul charged the “apologists for the State of Israel,” of having “nothing else but to claim everything is antisemitic. The reality is that my Jewish friends are less safe because they’ve bastardized antisemitism. And prevented us from really being able to take on truly antisemitic behavior.”
Nothing can stop the condemnation of Israel or the global protests against genocide.
Humanity’s Compassionate Fight
Humanity reacts with actions great and small trying to grab the attention of the world and make the starvation stop. Just like in Sydney, they go into the streets in London as they defiantly raise the Palestinian flag at the Royal Opera House, and the statue of Jessus in Rio De Janeiro is adorned with the Palestinian flag. Celebrities wrap themselves in the flag and truck drivers in Chicago display it. Richard Gere reading a poem by Mahmoud Darwish is just one example of performers in solidarity with Palestinians. More go back into the streets in New York City and protest outside UN headquarters, and 50 Jewish activists are arrested chanting “Let Gaza Live,” as they shut down the offices of Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirstin Gillibrand for arming Israel. Demonstrators bang pots and bans in front of Fox News and NBC News in Washington DC, protesting media complicity in the genocide. Anti-genocide demonstrators block cruise ships carrying Israeli tourists docked at Greek islands, and Belgum has arrested two IDF soldiers for war crimes. Activists carrying supplies to Gaza on the Freedom Flotilla Handala, are arrested by the IOF, and soldiers beat US labor organizer and human rights defender Chris Smalls. Dedicated analysts and activists at Code Pink stand in solidarity with their fellow humanitarians. Ms. Rachel, described as this generation’s Mr. Rogers, is called to advocates on behave of children in Gaza, and Francesca Albanese continues to speak the truth. US Representative Rashida Tlaib calls for a complete arms embargo on all weapons to Israel, and Amnesty International is demanding the release of Dr. Abu Safiya who is being tortured for treating patients in Gaza. Norway’s international development minister Asmund Aukrust said that Israel was eroding principles that protect civilians everywhere, and is pulling investments from a company that outfits Israeli fighter jets. The Mayor of Athens tells the Israeli Ambassador, “We won’t take lessons from those who kill children.”
As Ramzy Baroud observed, the fight for critical mass has been achieved, “No other country, no other conflict, no other cause has permeated public spaces as profoundly as that of Palestine.” This happens when an idea, “initially championed by a minority group, decisively transforms into a mainstream issue…and begins to exert real and tangible influence in the public sphere.” Some have called it a dam breaking, or the Overton window. What is clear is that the world condemns the monstrous deeds of Israel’s twisted Zionist state. After susan abulhawa saw on August 5, that Israel bombed the UNRWA clinic in Gaza City destroying what’s left of Gaza’s health system, she called Israelis DEMONS, and Linda Mamoun observed that there has been zero media coverage of the killings.
Israel, its Western Supporters and the Sham of Palestinian Statehood
Some statements critical of Israel made by Western leaders are rightly being viewed with skepticism. Why have they waited until this 11th hour to object? The notorious apologist for Israel and recipient of $1.5 million from AIPAC, Richie Torres said, “All parties, including the U.S. and Israel, have a moral obligation to do everything in our power to ease the hardship and hunger that’s taken hold in the Gaza Strip.” Torres is coming up against a primary challenger who is against the genocide. Officials such as Keir Starmer, have known from the start what Israel was doing, and the UK provided assistance. Why do they speak up now? It’s likely a self-interested calculation, not an authentic human response or moral outrage, and such announcements do not result in meaningful actions. As Max Blumenthal said of the newfound concerns from top US Democrats like Obama and Clinton, it’s “reputation-washing after years of silence.” Self-serving protestations are designed to avoid the charge of participating in a genocide. As Omar El Akkad wrote in the title of his book, “One Day, Everyone Will Have Already Been Against This.”
Though 147 states out of the 193 member states in the UN recognize a Palestinian state, a few Western countries and their allies, most notably Canada, France and the UK, have put forth a proposal to recognize Palestine “as if it were a new idea.” Mondoweiss wrote, that though it may be political theater, it could serve a meaningful purpose in the future. For now, Mitchell Plitnick argues, it should be clear “that nothing short of boycotts and sanctions, as advocated by the BDS movement around the world, will change Israeli policy. It beggars belief that Macron, Carney, and Starmer don’t know this.” When the Electronic Intifada and The Nation dug into the proposal, they found it little more than a re-packaging of Israeli war goals in the face of the IDF’s failure to defeat Hamas, a fact that even the New York Times had to admit. It turns out starvation is genocide, not a winning military strategy. According to Ali Abunimah, Israel will be given what amounts to total control over Palestinians by using PLO collaborators to serve as a new government. Demands that Hamas destroy itself would leave the new Vishay state with no popular representation or actual resistance, and living under occupation and apartheid would be worse. Israel will not be held accountable for the genocide. Such a plan will not stop the genocidal starvation of Palestinians. The Nation’s Ahmad Ibsais called it a “despicable sham” and argued “they’re offering colonial lies dressed up as liberation.” And Abunimah, noted “I haven’t heard a single Palestinian anywhere saying that what they want from the ‘Western’ genocide regimes that arm and support “Israel’s” extermination of Palestinians is their recognition of a nonexistent Palestinian state ruled by traitors in Ramallah. Not one.”
As Western leaders express their “heartfelt concerns,” in the words of Palestinian Heba Almaqadma, “We do not need pity. We need pressure on those who are blocking food [and] have the power to stop this but choose not to.” The President of Irland has proposed a plan. He’s calling on the United Nations to invoke Chapter 7 of its Charter and bypass the Security Council to pave the way for an internationally enforced corridor to allow 6000 trucks, enough food for 3 months, to pass into Gaza. But the starvation would stop if the US simply decided to make it so.
This genocidal starvation is an unbearable assault on Palestinians, and on all our humanity, and with the exception of the monsters perpetrating it and their supporters, the whole world is demanding that it stop.
Update: In the last few days Israel has announced its final “liquidation of Gaza,” and to ensure there would be no documentation of it, they targeted another Press Tent killing 6 journalists, 5 that worked for Al Jazeera, including the dedicated Anas al-Shafir. In coverage that demonstrates utter disregard for Palestinian life, and their complicity in genocide, both the New York Times and the BBC gave disproportionate space to Israel’s baseless smears and claims against Al Jazeera, and in the words of Jonathan Cook, “The BBC helped Kill Anas al-Sharif.”
by Sammy Attoh / August 15th, 2025
The world—eight billion strong—stands at a precipice. In Gaza, a people are being systematically pulverized, displaced, and erased. And the architects of this devastation—Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the governments that arm him—continue their campaign with brazen impunity.
This is not merely a geopolitical crisis. It is a moral apocalypse.
Where are the men and women of conscience? Where are the statesmen of principle, the diplomats of dignity, the theologians of truth? Where are the poets who once sang of justice, the journalists who once exposed tyranny, the clergy who once wept for the oppressed?
Haba! Shall we stand idly by while the machinery of annihilation grinds on? Shall we watch, mute and inert, as Palestinian lives are extinguished with clinical precision?
The silence of the so-called international community is not neutrality—it is complicity. It is cowardice dressed in the garb of diplomacy.
This is not war. It is extermination. It is the calculated obliteration of a people’s history, culture, and breath.
And those who supply the weapons, those who offer political cover, those who equivocate in the face of atrocity—they are not bystanders. They are collaborators.
But not all are silent.
In Canada, rallies erupt weekly. In the United States, university students defy repression to stand with Palestine. In Sydney, Australia, tens of thousands march. In Cyprus, Israeli Jews are asked to leave unless they disavow the genocide. Businesses across the globe refuse service to those who support apartheid. And South Africa—wounded but wise—has brought a case before the foot-dragging World Court, backed by other nations who still remember what justice tastes like.
So the question is not merely “who is killing?” It is “who is abetting?” Who profits from the blood? Who harvests dividends from the arms trade while quoting scripture?
Donald Trump seeks a peace prize while backing genocide. State and corporate media sanitize the slaughter. Western governments offer platitudes while funding the carnage.
You may not know the pains burning in my heart.
I am a fellow who was raised by my grandmother, who witnessed the Second World War at her age of 14 years and recounted to me horrible stories of how children were bulldozed in Germany. I wish I would never witness the same evils of wars in my lifetime. I am scared to will myself to sleep, haunted by how children, women, and innocent peoples—who know nothing about politics and wars—are killed , or rather slaughtered, on the surface of the earth while the whole world looks the other way.
What is the United Nations for? Where is the Arab League? What is the Arab League for? Where are the churches, mosques, Buddhist temples, Jewish synagogues, and Judaist sanctuaries? Where is the moral outcry from those who claim to speak for God?
Let us dispense with euphemisms. Let us abandon the polite language of policy briefings and press releases.
This is genocide unfolding in real time. And the world’s moral paralysis is its accomplice.
To those who still possess a shred of conscience: rise. Speak. Write. March. Refuse the narcotic of neutrality. Refuse the seduction of silence. Refuse to let history record your indifference as innocence.
Let Gaza live. Let Palestine breathe. Let the human spirit rebel against the machinery of death.
This is not a plea. It is a cry. A cry from the ashes. A cry from the rubble. A cry from the soul of humanity itself.
And let us remember, as I once wrote: “Creation does not dwell in gated gardens, but in the compost of our contradictions. In the cracked walls of our conscience. In the sacred mess of becoming.”
To desecrate a soul with exclusion, exploitation, or neglect is to deface the sacred itself. The ancestors do not sleep. They walk with us, whispering truth into our silence.
Sammy Attoh is a Human Rights Coordinator, poet, and public writer. A member of The Riverside Church in New York City and The New York State Chaplains Group, he advocates for spiritual renewal and systemic justice. Originally from Ghana, his work draws from ancestral wisdom to explore the sacred ties between people, planet, and posterity. Read other articles by Sammy.
As the death toll of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip surpasses 61,000 and Israel continues to starve Gazans to death, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made clear that Israel plans to occupy all of Gaza. When asked in an August 7 appearance on Fox News whether Israel would “take control of all of Gaza,” Netanyahu replied, “We intend to.”
The Israeli Occupation Forces say they already control about 75 percent of Gaza. The remaining 25 percent includes Gaza City, Khan Younis, and many neighborhoods and refugee camps in central Gaza.
Israel’s occupation of Gaza flies in the face of the July 19 ruling of the International Court of Justice (ICJ, or World Court). In its landmark 83-page advisory opinion, the ICJ held, “The sustained abuse by Israel of its position as an occupying Power, through annexation and an assertion of permanent control over the Occupied Palestinian Territory and continued frustration of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, violates fundamental principles of international law and renders Israel’s presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory unlawful.”
During the proceedings at the ICJ, Israel had argued that because it withdrew its military forces from Gaza in 2005, it no longer occupied the Gaza Strip. But the World Court concluded that Israel continues to occupy Gaza because it exercises “effective control” of “the land, sea and air borders” and maintains “restrictions on movement of people and goods, collection of import and export taxes, and military control over the buffer zone.” The court noted that “This is even more so since 7 October 2023.”
Israel’s Security Cabinet Approves the Takeover of Gaza City
Netanyahu’s stated intention leaves no doubt that he aims to make Israel’s occupation of Gaza official. On August 8, in the first step toward executing that plan, the Israeli security cabinet authorized the takeover of Gaza City, the forcible displacement of the 1 million Palestinians taking refuge there, and their confinement in “camps.”
To eliminate media witnesses to its impending slaughter, Israeli Occupation Forces killed five Al Jazeera journalists near Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital on the evening of August 10. They included the beloved Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent Anas al-Sharif, who had reported widely from northern Gaza.
“The Israeli Government’s plan for a complete military takeover of the occupied Gaza strip must be immediately halted. It runs contrary to the ruling of the International Court of Justice that Israel must bring its occupation to an end as soon as possible, to the realisation of the agreed two-State solution and to the right of Palestinians to self-determination,” UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk stated on August 8. “On all evidence to date, this further escalation will result in more massive forced displacement, more killing, more unbearable suffering, senseless destruction and atrocity crimes.”
In a Joint Statement issued on August 9, more than 20 countries, joined by the League of Arab States and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, expressed “their strong condemnation and categorical rejection of Israel’s announcement of its intention to impose full military control over the Gaza Strip.” They wrote, “We consider this announcement a dangerous and unacceptable escalation, a flagrant violation of international law, and an attempt to entrench the illegal occupation and impose a fait accompli/facts on the ground by force, in contravention of international legitimacy.”
On August 10, the United Nations Security Council convened an emergency meeting at the request of the United Kingdom, Denmark, France, Greece, and Slovenia, who issued the following statement:
We condemn the Government of Israel’s decision to further expand its military operations in Gaza. This plan risks violating international humanitarian law. We call on Israel to urgently reverse this decision and not to implement it. And we reiterate that any attempts at annexation or of settlement extension violate international law … We call on both parties to secure an immediate and permanent ceasefire, the release of all the hostages, and to urgently advance efforts to achieve a two-state solution.
All UN member countries except Israel and the U.S. denounced Netanyahu’s occupation plan for Gaza at the Council meeting. For example, the representative from Somalia said the ICJ “was unequivocal” that Israel’s occupation, blockade, denial of humanitarian access, and actions constituting collective punishment in Gaza violate international law. Algeria’s representative strongly condemned the Israeli security cabinet’s decision to displace the entire population of Gaza City and northern Gaza and impose full military control of Gaza, stating that “these are war crimes, and those who draw their maps in blood must not walk in the shadow of impunity.” The delegate from Denmark invoked the ICJ’s ruling that any unilateral attempts to alter the demography or status of Gaza amounts to a clear violation of international law. China’s ambassador said the Council “must firmly oppose any attempt to occupy Gaza.”
The same day the Council met, Saudi Arabia issued a statement saying it “condemns in the strongest possible terms the decision of the Israeli occupation authorities to occupy the Gaza Strip and categorically condemns their persistence in committing crimes of starvation, brutal practices, and ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian people.”
Trump Gives Israel the Green Light to Occupy Gaza
“They’re talking about occupying areas that are packed with so many people,” said Mukhlis al-Masri, who was forced to leave his home in northern Gaza and is now in Khan Younis. He told The New York Times that “If they do that, there will be incalculable killing. The situation will be more dangerous than anyone can imagine.”
The United States tried to prevent the meeting of the Security Council, the body empowered by the UN Charter to maintain international peace and security. Although unable to thwart the meeting from taking place, the threat of a U.S. veto prevented the Council from considering a resolution.
Dorothy Shea, U.S. interim ambassador to the UN, charged that the Security Council meeting was “emblematic of the counterproductive role that far too many governments on this council and throughout the UN system have played on the issue.” Her comments demonstrate the U.S.’s consistent defiance of international law.
Donald Trump gave Israel the tacit green light to take over Gaza. “That’s going to be pretty much up to Israel,” he said when asked about Netanyahu’s plan.
The United States routinely provides Israel with diplomatic cover for its international crimes – not only in the Security Council, but also at the ICJ and the International Criminal Court. The ICC has charged Netanyahu with the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
And the U.S. also flouts its legal obligations by enabling – indeed, aiding and abetting – Israel’s genocide by providing millions of dollars in weapons used to massacre Palestinians.
The U.S. has the power to stop Netanyahu’s illegal and dangerous plan. “Unless the United States changes its stance, I think ultimately, Israel will continue with this plan,” warned Will Todman, chief of staff of the geopolitics and foreign policy department and a senior fellow in the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
That would be a disaster – for the people of Gaza and the region, the rule of law, and the integrity of the global community.
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