Why do Western countries continue to support Israel despite carrying out genocide ?
While Gaza's enclave has grown into an increasingly large killing zone, it has largely escaped the attention of the western establishment media for months. This is due to a variety of reasons.
First, nearly a year into what the World Court has described as a “plausible genocide,” Israel has kept out Western journalists, wiped out most Palestinian journalists, and drove out international aid organizations and the United Nations, resulting in a significant lack of sources to inform us about the situation.
We possess only snapshots of individual suffering, without the whole picture. What is the actual Palestinian death toll? It is acknowledged that at least 41,000 Palestinians had been killed by Israel, according to deaths documented by Palestinian authorities prior to the collapse of the health system. However, how many more? Double that amount? Increase it fourfold? Multiply it by ten. No one knows.
What is the status of the prolonged starvation in Gaza, exacerbated by Israel's systematic obstruction of relief to the enclave, consistent with its commitment in October to deprive the Palestinians of food, water, and electricity?
The head prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, has sought arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, citing their starvation of Gaza as a crime against humanity.
However, the famine is depicted as a near-victimless crime. Where are the victims of the terrible starvation? They are undoubtedly absent from our television screens and front pages.
The actual death toll is likely to remain unreported, similar to the aftermath of the West's bloodbaths in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. Western politicians exhibit a disinterest in knowing the truth, while the Western mainstream media demonstrates a lack of enthusiasm in uncovering it.
There is another purpose behind the deliberate suppression of the events in Gaza. The ongoing genocide Israel is committing serves as palpable and alarming evidence that Western capitals do not embody the democratic ideals and defenses against barbarism they profess to uphold.
Western leaders have been fully involved in Gaza’s genocide, a reality that is inescapable for the people they represent. The Biden administration had the opportunity to stop the killing at any moment.
Common citizens have expressed a desire for the cessation of violence, prompting Biden to feign efforts in negotiating a ceasefire—a ceasefire he could impose whenever he chooses to.
Israel is wholly reliant on U.S. military, diplomatic, and financial support, as evidenced by the 50,000 tons of weaponry the Biden administration has dispatched to Israel since last October.
However, the reality is that Western politics is now completely indifferent to public demand. Powerful multinational companies completely dominated the political institutions of the West, eradicating the final remnants of democratic accountability years ago.
Millions of people protested across Europe to oppose the unlawful invasion of Iraq by the United States and Britain in 2003, yet it had no impact whatsoever.
The situation in Gaza is even worse. It is not just that, as before, no one in power is listening. People who are protesting against Israel's atrocities and the West's collaboration in them are facing severe defamation. The millions protesting against the genocide are described as “tens of thousands” and are openly attacked as “antisemites.”
Western states, along with their self-identified "defensive alliance," NATO, do not serve to promote the public interest. They have mostly transformed into instruments for advancing the limited interests of a corporate elite, whose goal, in turn, is to siphon into private hands the profits from publicly funded, permanent wars.
It is not solely armaments manufacturers and high-tech firms, with their flourishing surveillance enterprises, whose stock values are rising due to the carnage in Gaza and Ukraine.
Bloomberg reported last month that Israeli airstrikes on Gaza have reduced the homes of 2.3 million Palestinians to 42 million tonnes of rubble. That quantity is sufficient to fill a line of dump trucks extending from New York to Singapore.
The substantial benefits from the extensive clean-up operation are not going to flow to companies in Gaza. Following Israel's 17-year blockade of the enclave, Gaza's industrial and commercial sectors were almost nonexistent prior to Israel's recent devastation. Once again, Western firms will be the recipients.
Should the "day after" materialize, it would likely be Western firms competing to reconstruct Gaza, predominantly not for the existing Palestinian inhabitants. Israel seeks either their extermination or ethnic cleansing from the region.
A devastated, vacant Gaza will be a tabula rasa. Costly new beachfront properties can be marketed to rich Israeli Jews. New industrial zones and ports will facilitate easy exports to Europe and North Africa.
Furthermore, we must contemplate who would take advantage of the abundant natural gas located off Gaza's coast, which Western firms have been greedily eyeing for the past two decades.
While Western populations have had to endure constant belt tightening, Western corporations have prospered more.
The United Kingdom's newly appointed prime minister, Keir Starmer, recognizes that his political longevity relies on the ongoing appropriation of public resources by corporations and is busily managing Britons’ expectations.
Despite having a substantial parliamentary majority, he conveyed neither hope nor change. He informed the British public that “things are worse than we ever imagined." No explanation was provided as to why they might be so bad, except for anticipated political criticism of the preceding administration.
Starmer cautioned on the necessity to “do things differently." However, the difference he presented was, in fact, a pledge for further austerity—the hallmark policy of his predecessors.
Starmer's program reflects a stance of stagnation both domestically and in foreign policy. The perpetual wars will persist.
Like its predecessor, the new British administration continues to offer justifications for selling arms to an Israeli military that employs them to perpetrate civilian massacres.
On 2 September, Foreign Secretary David Lammy groveled before Israel while announcing the suspension of eight percent of certain shipments, following warnings over their potential use in Israeli war crimes. It is seemingly acceptable to transfer the remaining 92 percent of military contracts, including components utilized in Israel's fleet of F-35 airplanes, to a regime currently perpetrating genocide.
Simultaneously, the current administration, akin to its predecessor, endeavors with what it terms “laser focus” wider business opportunities with Israel.
In the United States, Kamala Harris has been positioned as the Democratic presidential candidate to succeed Joe Biden without any votes being cast. The compliant media portrays her as the candidate of "joy," a superficial political message devoid of substance, akin to former President Barack Obama's renowned slogan of "hope."
“Joy” functions as a pretext for repression. Protesters outside the Democratic National Convention, as it crowned Harris, expressed their outrage at her and Biden's prolonged culpability in the Gaza genocide. However, they were not permitted to diminish the "joyful" atmosphere inside. They were forcibly removed from sight by law enforcement.
In her initial interview following her nomination, Harris assured that the US backing for Israel's genocide in Gaza would persist, even if it potentially jeopardizes her chances in several swing states in November and facilitates Donald Trump's election as president.
Starmer and Harris are loyal representatives of a permanent bureaucracy that has long been co-opted by the profit-driven corporate military-industrial complex of the West.
Its most favored progeny is Israel, a heavily militarized entity—a colonial extension of the West—embedded within an oil-abundant Middle East like a bone lodged in the throat. Israel seeks to promote overtly aggressive Jewish supremacy, reflecting a Western supremacy that currently opts to obscure its colonial aspirations.
From the outset, Israel's supporters were provided with an ideal narrative to obscure the transgressions they facilitated against the indigenous population, the Palestinians, a narrative that could be modified to rationalize Israel's incessantly belligerent stance in the region.
The West's self-serving narrative posits that the persistent threat of antisemitism necessitates the establishment of a militarized fortress state for Jews, akin to a contemporary Pale of Settlement, functioning as a safeguard against a potential Holocaust.
Western capitals recognized a singular criterion for the rehabilitation of Westerners from their prior anti-Semitism: they must acquiesce to fulfill Israel's every military demand.
Individuals in the West who provided armaments to Israel and facilitated the expulsion of native Palestinians in 1948 and 1967, who ignored the establishment of the region's sole nuclear arsenal, who supported its military conflicts with neighboring states, and who advocated for the erosion of international law in the context of those conflicts proved themselves to be free of the virus of Jew-hatred.
Opponents of Western imperialism and the excesses of its preferred Middle Eastern client state, as well as advocates for human rights and international law, could be labeled and condemned as antisemites.
The established pattern, remarkable as it appears, has endured despite Israel's pursuit of Jewish supremacism culminating in Gaza: the extermination of its population.
Proponents of arming a genocide are virtuous individuals. Opponents include antisemites and proponents of terrorism.
Independent journalists and Palestinian solidarity activists are currently being apprehended and coerced under stringent anti-terrorism legislation in Britain.
Social media sites are suppressing the visibility of posts that criticize Israel, confining dissent against the genocide to isolated online ghettos.
Universities are beginning to formulate new regulations to classify Zionism—adherence to Israel's radical political ideology—as a protected characteristic, akin to being born Hispanic or Black.
The goal is to suppress any Palestinian solidarity movement on campus by equating it with racism, thus eliminating the possibility of a resurgence of the significant protests that occurred at US universities over the spring and summer.
Western institutions are deliberately obstructing an explanation of the origins of Israel's genocide. They are eliminating the essential terminology required to initiate that discussion.
Zionism is an ideology that emerged centuries ago, rooted in an antisemitic Christian fundamentalism that necessitated the coercion of European Jews to "return" to the Holy Land. This would fulfill a supposed biblical prophecy, resulting in an apocalyptic scenario where only Christians attain salvation.
Just over a century ago, Zionism began to influence a select group of European Jews, who perceived Christian antisemitism as a means to establish a Jewish state under Western authorization.
The antisemitic Christian Zionists sought to remove Jews from Europe and confine them to the Holy Land, a goal also shared by the emerging Jewish Zionists.
Theodor Herzl, the father of Jewish Zionism, specifically recognized this convergence of interests when he documented it in his Diaries:
"The anti-Semites will become our most dependable friends, the anti-Semitic countries our allies.”
To comprehend the mechanisms and rationale behind Israel's genocidal actions in Gaza, as well as the West's approval, it is essential to examine the historical influence of Zionism and the strategic weaponization of antisemitism over the decades, which has facilitated the dispossession and current extermination of the Palestinian people.
Which is precisely why, in his pursuit of power, Starmer, the new Prime Minister of Britain, ensured the false conflation of anti-Zionism—opposition to Zionism—with antisemitism.
The corporate war machine demands that anyone allowed near the centers of power demonstrate their commitment to maintaining this distortion of reality, which labels proponents of war as good while opponents of genocide are labeled as antisemites.
In his attempt to restore reality, Starmer's predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, condemned himself to perpetual defamation.
People who attempt to maintain their sense of reality and humanity during a genocide face similar vilification.
This is the hidden context for understanding the increasingly catastrophic events surrounding the Gaza genocide.
There is disagreement among Israeli political and military authorities about their next move.
Some are prepared to negotiate over the surviving Israeli captives after devastating Gaza, pull back somewhat, and allow the ongoing genocide to unfold gradually.
Aluf Benn, editor of the Haaretz newspaper in Israel, has outlined the forthcoming strategy for "the day after."
Along the Netzarim corridor, Israel will divide Gaza into northern and southern regions, starving those in the north until they die or leave.
Jewish settlers will settle in North Gaza, drawn by its "convenient topography, a sea view, and proximity to central Israel."
Israel will abandon South Gaza, home to impoverished, homeless, and frequently injured refugees who lack housing, educational institutions, and medical facilities, to rot under an Israeli siege, marking an escalation of Israel's policies before October 7. The media is anticipated to diminish its already limited attention to the plight of Palestinians there.
Benn refrains from disclosing subsequent events. The enclave's inhabitants will endure a prolonged cold and wet winter devoid of electricity and sanitation. Famine will intensify, and epidemics will spread.
A genocide by proxy.
Unless neighboring powers, particularly Egypt, can be coerced into complicity in Gaza's ethnic cleansing.
This reflects the perspective of a significant portion of the military leadership, as articulated in Defense Minister Gallant’s alleged “shouting match” with Netanyahu during a cabinet meeting on 30 August on the prime minister’s ongoing attempts to impede a captive agreement with Hamas.
It is also the inspiration behind the substantial rallies in Israeli cities and the declaration of a countrywide strike by the main labor union following the return of six dead captives from Gaza.
The question is whether Netanyahu's administration can be convinced to adhere to this "minimalist" genocide.
The far right in Netanyahu's government sees this situation solely as an opportunity, eager to accelerate the genocide in Gaza and aware that non-western nations and increasingly western populations already perceive Israel as a pariah state. They want to obstruct a ceasefire indefinitely and utilize that period to extend the genocide into the more valued Palestinian land of the West Bank.
This is Israel's approach to killing two birds with one stone. This is the sole method for Netanyahu to maintain his far-right coalition and leverage his position as "wartime leader" to postpone his court date in his long-running corruption trial.
Last month's extensive assaults on prominent West Bank cities, along with Israeli officials advising the populace to prepare for rapid evacuation from occupied regions, serve as a precursor to what is intended.
The lack of opposition from Western capitals regarding the Gaza genocide has instilled confidence in the Israeli right to adopt a similar approach in the West Bank.
“exactly as we deal with terror infrastructure in Gaza, including the temporary evacuation of Palestinian civilians”.
A US official stated that Washington was prepared to endorse an escalation of Israel's assault on the Palestinian people into the West Bank:
“We recognise that localised evacuation orders may be necessary in certain instances to protect civilian lives during sensitive counter-terrorism operations.”
The World Court's recent ruling that Israel's occupation of Palestinian lands is illegal and constitutes apartheid has heightened the sense of urgency among Israeli officials.
Rampaging through the West Bank can be perpetually rationalized under the guise of countering an "Iranian-backed terror threat."
And US backing will intensify if Trump secures victory in November. If he succeeds in terminating NATO's proxy conflict in Ukraine, the military resources utilized there can be reallocated to Israel.
Netanyahu and his allies recognize that his approach to the "Palestinian problem" poses a threat of a regional war, necessitating the US's involvement in the situation.
They possess several potential provocations that might further entangle Washington in neutralizing the regional "axis of resistance," which obstructs Israel's military hegemony in the area.
Itamar Ben Gvir, the fascist minister in charge of the police, aims to incite unrest at al-Aqsa in occupied East Jerusalem. His police militias have been providing cover for Jewish extremists breaking into the mosque complex to pray.
On 26 August, Ben Gvir escalated his incitement by publicly advocating for the construction of a synagogue within al-Aqsa for the first time.
But Iran and its affiliated groups are the primary focus. Netanyahu's pyromania has culminated in a series of murders aimed at both humiliating Tehran, the principal supporter of resistance, and its Hezbollah allies in Lebanon, while also rendering discussions to cease the violence in Gaza unfeasible.
In April, Israel targeted Iran’s consulate in Damascus, killing 16 people. On 31 July, Hamas' political head and principal negotiator, Ismail Haniyeh, was assassinated while in Tehran.
One day prior, Israel assassinated Fuad Shukr, a Hezbollah military leader, in an assault on the Lebanese capital, Beirut.
Netanyahu was aware of the inevitable consequences.
Yahya Sinwar, the more uncompromising military head of Hamas, has filled the void left in the group by Haniyeh’s execution.
Hezbollah and Iran possess substantial justifications for initiating retaliatory actions against Israel, which may rapidly escalate into a full-blown war.
Late last month, an escalation nearly occurred as heavy gunfire erupted along the Lebanese border, with Israeli airplanes targeting over 40 locations in Lebanon, while Hezbollah fired more than 300 rockets and drones at military installations in Israel.
The northern border of Israel has been tense for several months.
Prominent Israeli leaders have loudly called for the Israeli force to devastate and reoccupy southern Lebanon. In June, Israel reportedly sanctioned a plan for a war in Lebanon. The US ambassador to Lebanon reportedly informed Hezbollah that Washington “won’t be able to hold Israel back”.
The New York Times has reported a significant increase in the recruitment of Palestinians in Lebanon by armed Hamas brigades, introducing an additional unpredictable element to the scenario.
And in a useful feedback loop for Israel, the more it provokes Iran, the stronger the excuse it establishes to replicate the Gaza genocide formula in the West Bank, bombarding its cities and displacing its inhabitants.
Foreign Minister Katz has articulated this idea in English-language writings for Western audiences, indicating that Iran is trafficking weaponry through Jordan into the West Bank.
“working to establish an eastern terror front against Israel through special units of the IRGC [Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps], involved in smuggling weapons, funding, and directing terror organizations.”
Western politicians and media will never acknowledge that Israel is perpetrating genocide in Gaza. Once this occurs, the facade of illusions cultivated over decades regarding Israel—intended to obscure the West's culpability in Israeli crimes—will be dismantled.
A state transcends a threshold when perpetrating genocide. It cannot be moderated. Nor can it be rationalized into the pursuit of peace. It must be rigorously isolated and sanctioned.
Western establishments show no willingness to undertake such actions for one very simple reason: They cannot afford to do it.
They will continue to fuel the war machine until we intervene and stop them, or the deadly inferno blows up in all of our faces.