How Israel and its Western co-Perpetrators are weaponizing humanitarian aid for genocide and ethnic cleansing
Tarik Cyril Amar
July 16, 2025
Tarik Cyril Amar
July 16, 2025
The Gaza Genocide is special. And in not one but two regards: As has often been observed, this is the first genocide in history that is, in essence, live-streamed. No genocide before has been committed under the eyes of the world like this one. And second, the Gaza Genocide is undermining and, in effect, devastating whole moral and legal orders – or, at least, long-standing claims to them – in an equally unprecedented way.
These two peculiarities are, of course, related: The only way the world as a whole could have tolerated the Gaza Genocide for now almost three years is by stubbornly disregarding fundamental norms, both written and unwritten. For instance, almost no state – with the exception of Yemen (under de facto control of the Ansar Allah movement or “Houthis”) – has even tried to comply with its binding and clear obligations under the 1948 UN Genocide Convention, namely to “prevent and punish” the crime of genocide. No one with the power – alone or with others – to do so, not in the Middle East, not beyond it, has come to save the Palestinian victims of the Gaza genocide in the only manner that would work: by stopping their Israeli murderers by massive force.
Yet the small but still disproportionately influential part of the world that calls itself the West has gone beyond “merely” failing to act. That’s because, whether the West is a civilization once shaped by Christianity or not, for a long time already its true, most inner core has been hypocrisy. And during the Gaza Genocide, the West’s compulsive need to rationalize even its most vicious actions into acts of virtue covered by “values,” has led to a new peak of absolute moral and intellectual perversion: Precisely because the West has not “only” abandoned the Palestinian victims but is actively co-perpetrating this genocide together with Israel, its elites – in politics, culture, the media, the police and judiciary – have made a sustained, obstinate effort to radically alter our sense of right and wrong, from specific legal norms down to our intuitive and widely shared understanding of limits never to be crossed.
Waging, for example, a so-called “war” by killing or injuring – often maiming for life – over 50,000 children (as of May 2025)? A “war” in which we receive one reliable testimony after another that many of these children are targeted deliberately, including by sadistic drone operators and snipers? A “war” in which starvation, medical deprivation, and the promotion of epidemics have all been deployed equally deliberately? In the West, we are told to call this “self-defense.”
Yet the small but still disproportionately influential part of the world that calls itself the West has gone beyond “merely” failing to act. That’s because, whether the West is a civilization once shaped by Christianity or not, for a long time already its true, most inner core has been hypocrisy. And during the Gaza Genocide, the West’s compulsive need to rationalize even its most vicious actions into acts of virtue covered by “values,” has led to a new peak of absolute moral and intellectual perversion: Precisely because the West has not “only” abandoned the Palestinian victims but is actively co-perpetrating this genocide together with Israel, its elites – in politics, culture, the media, the police and judiciary – have made a sustained, obstinate effort to radically alter our sense of right and wrong, from specific legal norms down to our intuitive and widely shared understanding of limits never to be crossed.
Waging, for example, a so-called “war” by killing or injuring – often maiming for life – over 50,000 children (as of May 2025)? A “war” in which we receive one reliable testimony after another that many of these children are targeted deliberately, including by sadistic drone operators and snipers? A “war” in which starvation, medical deprivation, and the promotion of epidemics have all been deployed equally deliberately? In the West, we are told to call this “self-defense.”
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