The cry of "never again"
rings hollow from Gaza’s rubble strewn streets, where the West’s
hypocrisy lies buried alongside an estimated 377,000 Palestinian dead.
By Fareed Khan
A version of this article can be found on Substack.
On October 7, 2023, Palestinian resistance group Hamas, designated a terrorist organization by many Western nations, launched an attack
on southern Israel, resulting in 1,195 deaths—736 Israeli civilians, 79
foreign nationals, and 379 security personnel—and the abduction of 251
hostages. While this act of violence was labelled as an act of terrorism
by Western nations, it cannot be equated with the catastrophic genocide
Israel has inflicted on Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians over the
subsequent two years. Presented by Israeli officials as a campaign to
dismantle Hamas and secure hostages, this operation is instead a
meticulously orchestrated effort to annihilate Palestinian existence in
Gaza through mass slaughter, starvation, and ethnic cleansing.
The Western
alliance, which cloaks itself in the mantle of the “rules-based
international order,” stands as a willing accomplice to the horrors
Israel has committed. The US alone has shipped more than $21 billion
worth of arms to Israel, with the US, Germany, the UK and Canada
funnelling billions more since October 2023, all the while preaching
human rights and international law.
In January 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found a plausible risk of genocide in Gaza, issuing provisional measures to halt genocidal acts, ensure humanitarian aid, and called on Israel to cease offensive actions in Gaza. Israel defied these orders, and instead slashed humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza by half and bombed designated “safe routes,” killing scores of fleeing civilians. This defiance was a deliberate choice, enabled by Western powers—particularly the United States and its European allies. They could have imposed sanctions or arms embargoes to enforce Israeli compliance, as urged by UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese. Instead they chose to shield Israel, exposing their hypocrisy as a betrayal of the very legal frameworks they frequently claim to champion.
Israel’s actions systematically violate the foundational treaties of the post-World War Two order, established to prevent atrocities like those of the Holocaust. When admitted to the United Nations in 1949, Israel pledged to implement UN General Assembly Resolution 181 (1947), which partitioned Palestine and mandated minority rights, and Resolution 194 (1948), guaranteeing the return of 750,000 Palestinian refugees displaced during the Nakba—the ethnic cleansing that birthed Israel. That pledge was immediately broken in 1948 when Israel refused the right of return to Palestinian refugees and began implementing policies that violated the rights of non-Jews.
Then in 1967 Israel occupied Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem contravening the UN Charter’s Article 2 (4), prohibiting the use of force against territorial integrity. The ICJ’s July 2024 advisory opinion declared Israel’s occupation unlawful, demanding its immediate cessation, yet Israel persisted in its criminal actions. In addition, over 40 UN Security Council resolutions, from 242 (1967) calling for Israel’s withdrawal from occupied territory, to 2334 (2016) which condemned illegal Jews only settlements, have been ignored. These are all binding obligations under Article 25 of the UN Charter which were rendered meaningless by the West’s support for or silence about Israel’s illegal acts. This pattern of impunity underscores a broader truth—that the international legal order is selectively enforced, a tool to be wielded by Western powers against adversaries like Russia but abandoned for Israel, a favoured ally.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), adopted in 1948 to affirm the inherent dignity of all peoples, has also been rendered a charade in Gaza. The right to life guaranteed under Article 3 has been obliterated by decades of Israeli violence against Palestinians, and certainly since October 2023, with Amnesty International’s December 2024 genocide report documenting 15 attacks that killed 334 civilians, including 141 children, in a deliberate targeting of families. Article 25’s promise of adequate food, shelter, and health care has been erased by a blockade that, according to Human Rights Watch’s “Extermination and Acts of Genocide“ report, has weaponized thirst and hunger, killing thousands through dehydration and disease after destroying over 100 water and sanitation facilities, and food distribution locations. Article 5’s prohibition on torture has also been repeatedly violated for years by the arbitrary detention and sexual violence against thousands of Palestinian men and boys, their bodies marked as targets for death. Statements from Israeli leaders—Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s labeling of Palestinians as “human animals“ and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s vow to reduce Gaza to “rubble”—reveal a chilling intent to dehumanize and destroy all things Palestinian. Western signatories to the UDHR, with the power to enforce it through sanctions, diplomatic pressure or military force, instead chose to supply bombs and bullets to Israel, their silence and actions a betrayal of the UDHR’s ethos, which was crafted in part by Holocaust survivors to ensure universal dignity.
The 1948 Genocide Convention, born from the imperative to prevent another Holocaust, has been desecrated daily in Gaza over the past two years. Article II of the Convention defines genocide as acts committed with intent to destroy a group, in whole or in part, through killing, serious harm, inflicting life-destroying conditions, or preventing births—all evident in Gaza. According to Euromed Human Rights Monitor, the Palestinian death toll was 74,100 as of September 6, 2025, with more than 165,000 injured, famine gripping over a third of the population, and 80% of reproductive health facilities lying in ruins. The ICJ’s 2024 rulings affirmed plausible genocide, yet Israel’s response was to intensify its siege, with Amnesty International documenting over 102 official statements calling for Gaza’s “erasure.” Western states (particularly the US) obligated under Article I to prevent and punish genocide, instead vetoed UN actions targeting Israel at the Security Council, ensuring Israel’s impunity. Albanese’s “Anatomy of a Genocide“ (March 2024) frames this as a “settler-colonial erasure,” with corporate complicity—such as Microsoft’s AI targeting systems—amplifying the slaughter. The Convention’s Article VIII mandates states to intervene to stop genocide where and when it occurs. The West’s failure to do so, while arming Israel, implicates them under Article III(e).
The Geneva Conventions, cornerstones of humanitarian law, have also been shredded by Israel for almost 60 years. Common Article 3 mandates humane treatment of occupied peoples in conflicts. Yet Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets, and 700 attacks on hospitals, destroying 94% of Gaza’s medical facilities, constitute war crimes under Additional Protocol I. The Fourth Convention’s Article 49 prohibits population transfers (ethnic cleansing), yet 90% of Gazans have been forcibly displaced repeatedly, herded into so-called “safe zones” that Yaakov Garb’s Harvard Dataverse analysis reveals as kill corridors, with “aid” compounds designed to expose civilians to lethal force. Article 33 bans collective punishment, but Gallant’s “complete siege“ declaration, issued on October 9, 2023—cutting off water, electricity and fuel to all of Gaza’s residents—is a textbook violation. Euromed Human Rights Monitor documents dozens of field executions, including six family members in December 2023, alongside systematic targeting of medics and journalists. These acts are not aberrations but official Israeli policy, rooted in a colonial, genocidal mindset to erase Palestinian existence, as noted by B’Tselem’s July 2025 genocide report, which details a “coordinated destruction” now spreading to the West Bank.
Israeli genocide and Holocaust scholars have also issued scathing condemnations, their voices cutting through the state’s weaponization of Jewish suffering. Raz Segal, an Israeli historian at Stockton University, labelled the campaign a “textbook case of genocide” in October 2023, noting how the siege escalated very quickly into annihilation, with rhetoric echoing historical preludes to mass murder. Amos Goldberg, a Hebrew University genocide scholar, came to the conclusion that “this is exactly what genocide looks like.” He called it an “eliminationist assault” that betrays the ethical lessons of Jewish history. Omer Bartov, a Holocaust expert at Brown University, decried Israel’s actions and came to the inescapable conclusion that “that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people.” In public statements he called it a “catastrophic moral failure,” warning in open letters of ethnic cleansing masquerading as defense, urging Jews worldwide to confront this betrayal.
Additionally, nearly 800 scholars, jurists, and practitioners signed an October 2023 letter warning of a “serious risk of genocide,” citing killings, siege, and incitement as violations of the Genocide Convention. By September 2025, 86% of 500 members of the International Association of Genocide Scholars affirmed that Israel was committing genocide, pointing to more than 50,000 child casualties reported by UNICEF as evidence of systematic intent. Furthermore, over 1,100 jurists endorsed the May 2025 Lawyers’ Letter, demanding states cease complicity under the Convention. Jewish healthcare professionals also added their voices to the condemnation of Israel in their September 2025 letter, citing 64,656 dead, hundreds of attacks on Gaza’s health care facilities, citing “deliberate harm,” and invoking the Hippocratic Oath to condemn silence as ethical failure. These voices expose a state perverting Holocaust memory to justify the annihilation of historic Palestine’s indigenous population, while claiming to be victims of Jew hatred.
The October 7th context further indicts Israel’s moral collapse. Ha’aretz investigations reveal that the Hannibal Directive—a protocol to kill Jews to save them from captivity—resulted in the deaths of dozens of Israelis: 13 hostages in Kibbutz Be’eri killed by tank fire, festival-goers struck by Israeli helicopter attacks, and kibbutz residents caught in crossfire. This reckless disregard for life—prioritizing military objectives over human lives—extended to Gaza, where Palestinians have been dehumanized as “human animals,” thereby justifying their mass murder. The directive’s use underscores a broader Israeli mindset. Life, whether Israeli or Palestinian, is secondary to the Zionist nation’s militarized ideology of control and intent to erase the Palestinian people.
We also have to acknowledge that the West’s complicity and hypocrisy is a stain on its moral and legal claims of being a defender of international law. In the 1970s and 80s it rightfully sanctioned apartheid South Africa into submission. Yet for decades it has funded Israel’s apartheid regime, despite over 40 ignored UN resolutions and more recently, ICJ rulings. The US vetoing of UN Security Council action against Israel, while nations like Germany, the UK and EU weakly condemn Israel as they continued to ship arms to them while they slaughtered Palestinians, is a clear violation of the Genocide Convention’s Article VIII, which requires states to prevent genocide. The West’s selective enforcement—condemning Russian violations in Ukraine while excusing Israel’s crimes—reveals a hollow commitment to the “rules-based order” it touts, and a deeply embedded anti-Palestinian racism that facilitated genocide.
Two years after October 7, 2023, Israel’s genocide in Gaza remains a festering wound on humanity’s conscience. The West’s inaction—its refusal to leverage its immense diplomatic, economic and military power—betrays the very laws it claims to uphold. An immediate ceasefire, arms embargoes, and the end of Israel’s unlawful occupation are legal imperatives. Without them, history will judge not only Israeli perpetrators of genocide but also American, British and European leaders, and their allies as enablers of this century’s gravest crime. The cry of “never again” rings hollow from Gaza’s rubble strewn streets, where the West’s hypocrisy lies buried alongside an estimated 377,000 Palestinian dead.
© 2025 The View From Here. © 2025 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.
In January 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found a plausible risk of genocide in Gaza, issuing provisional measures to halt genocidal acts, ensure humanitarian aid, and called on Israel to cease offensive actions in Gaza. Israel defied these orders, and instead slashed humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza by half and bombed designated “safe routes,” killing scores of fleeing civilians. This defiance was a deliberate choice, enabled by Western powers—particularly the United States and its European allies. They could have imposed sanctions or arms embargoes to enforce Israeli compliance, as urged by UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese. Instead they chose to shield Israel, exposing their hypocrisy as a betrayal of the very legal frameworks they frequently claim to champion.
Israel’s actions systematically violate the foundational treaties of the post-World War Two order, established to prevent atrocities like those of the Holocaust. When admitted to the United Nations in 1949, Israel pledged to implement UN General Assembly Resolution 181 (1947), which partitioned Palestine and mandated minority rights, and Resolution 194 (1948), guaranteeing the return of 750,000 Palestinian refugees displaced during the Nakba—the ethnic cleansing that birthed Israel. That pledge was immediately broken in 1948 when Israel refused the right of return to Palestinian refugees and began implementing policies that violated the rights of non-Jews.
Then in 1967 Israel occupied Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem contravening the UN Charter’s Article 2 (4), prohibiting the use of force against territorial integrity. The ICJ’s July 2024 advisory opinion declared Israel’s occupation unlawful, demanding its immediate cessation, yet Israel persisted in its criminal actions. In addition, over 40 UN Security Council resolutions, from 242 (1967) calling for Israel’s withdrawal from occupied territory, to 2334 (2016) which condemned illegal Jews only settlements, have been ignored. These are all binding obligations under Article 25 of the UN Charter which were rendered meaningless by the West’s support for or silence about Israel’s illegal acts. This pattern of impunity underscores a broader truth—that the international legal order is selectively enforced, a tool to be wielded by Western powers against adversaries like Russia but abandoned for Israel, a favoured ally.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), adopted in 1948 to affirm the inherent dignity of all peoples, has also been rendered a charade in Gaza. The right to life guaranteed under Article 3 has been obliterated by decades of Israeli violence against Palestinians, and certainly since October 2023, with Amnesty International’s December 2024 genocide report documenting 15 attacks that killed 334 civilians, including 141 children, in a deliberate targeting of families. Article 25’s promise of adequate food, shelter, and health care has been erased by a blockade that, according to Human Rights Watch’s “Extermination and Acts of Genocide“ report, has weaponized thirst and hunger, killing thousands through dehydration and disease after destroying over 100 water and sanitation facilities, and food distribution locations. Article 5’s prohibition on torture has also been repeatedly violated for years by the arbitrary detention and sexual violence against thousands of Palestinian men and boys, their bodies marked as targets for death. Statements from Israeli leaders—Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s labeling of Palestinians as “human animals“ and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s vow to reduce Gaza to “rubble”—reveal a chilling intent to dehumanize and destroy all things Palestinian. Western signatories to the UDHR, with the power to enforce it through sanctions, diplomatic pressure or military force, instead chose to supply bombs and bullets to Israel, their silence and actions a betrayal of the UDHR’s ethos, which was crafted in part by Holocaust survivors to ensure universal dignity.
The 1948 Genocide Convention, born from the imperative to prevent another Holocaust, has been desecrated daily in Gaza over the past two years. Article II of the Convention defines genocide as acts committed with intent to destroy a group, in whole or in part, through killing, serious harm, inflicting life-destroying conditions, or preventing births—all evident in Gaza. According to Euromed Human Rights Monitor, the Palestinian death toll was 74,100 as of September 6, 2025, with more than 165,000 injured, famine gripping over a third of the population, and 80% of reproductive health facilities lying in ruins. The ICJ’s 2024 rulings affirmed plausible genocide, yet Israel’s response was to intensify its siege, with Amnesty International documenting over 102 official statements calling for Gaza’s “erasure.” Western states (particularly the US) obligated under Article I to prevent and punish genocide, instead vetoed UN actions targeting Israel at the Security Council, ensuring Israel’s impunity. Albanese’s “Anatomy of a Genocide“ (March 2024) frames this as a “settler-colonial erasure,” with corporate complicity—such as Microsoft’s AI targeting systems—amplifying the slaughter. The Convention’s Article VIII mandates states to intervene to stop genocide where and when it occurs. The West’s failure to do so, while arming Israel, implicates them under Article III(e).
The Geneva Conventions, cornerstones of humanitarian law, have also been shredded by Israel for almost 60 years. Common Article 3 mandates humane treatment of occupied peoples in conflicts. Yet Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets, and 700 attacks on hospitals, destroying 94% of Gaza’s medical facilities, constitute war crimes under Additional Protocol I. The Fourth Convention’s Article 49 prohibits population transfers (ethnic cleansing), yet 90% of Gazans have been forcibly displaced repeatedly, herded into so-called “safe zones” that Yaakov Garb’s Harvard Dataverse analysis reveals as kill corridors, with “aid” compounds designed to expose civilians to lethal force. Article 33 bans collective punishment, but Gallant’s “complete siege“ declaration, issued on October 9, 2023—cutting off water, electricity and fuel to all of Gaza’s residents—is a textbook violation. Euromed Human Rights Monitor documents dozens of field executions, including six family members in December 2023, alongside systematic targeting of medics and journalists. These acts are not aberrations but official Israeli policy, rooted in a colonial, genocidal mindset to erase Palestinian existence, as noted by B’Tselem’s July 2025 genocide report, which details a “coordinated destruction” now spreading to the West Bank.
Israeli genocide and Holocaust scholars have also issued scathing condemnations, their voices cutting through the state’s weaponization of Jewish suffering. Raz Segal, an Israeli historian at Stockton University, labelled the campaign a “textbook case of genocide” in October 2023, noting how the siege escalated very quickly into annihilation, with rhetoric echoing historical preludes to mass murder. Amos Goldberg, a Hebrew University genocide scholar, came to the conclusion that “this is exactly what genocide looks like.” He called it an “eliminationist assault” that betrays the ethical lessons of Jewish history. Omer Bartov, a Holocaust expert at Brown University, decried Israel’s actions and came to the inescapable conclusion that “that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people.” In public statements he called it a “catastrophic moral failure,” warning in open letters of ethnic cleansing masquerading as defense, urging Jews worldwide to confront this betrayal.
Additionally, nearly 800 scholars, jurists, and practitioners signed an October 2023 letter warning of a “serious risk of genocide,” citing killings, siege, and incitement as violations of the Genocide Convention. By September 2025, 86% of 500 members of the International Association of Genocide Scholars affirmed that Israel was committing genocide, pointing to more than 50,000 child casualties reported by UNICEF as evidence of systematic intent. Furthermore, over 1,100 jurists endorsed the May 2025 Lawyers’ Letter, demanding states cease complicity under the Convention. Jewish healthcare professionals also added their voices to the condemnation of Israel in their September 2025 letter, citing 64,656 dead, hundreds of attacks on Gaza’s health care facilities, citing “deliberate harm,” and invoking the Hippocratic Oath to condemn silence as ethical failure. These voices expose a state perverting Holocaust memory to justify the annihilation of historic Palestine’s indigenous population, while claiming to be victims of Jew hatred.
The October 7th context further indicts Israel’s moral collapse. Ha’aretz investigations reveal that the Hannibal Directive—a protocol to kill Jews to save them from captivity—resulted in the deaths of dozens of Israelis: 13 hostages in Kibbutz Be’eri killed by tank fire, festival-goers struck by Israeli helicopter attacks, and kibbutz residents caught in crossfire. This reckless disregard for life—prioritizing military objectives over human lives—extended to Gaza, where Palestinians have been dehumanized as “human animals,” thereby justifying their mass murder. The directive’s use underscores a broader Israeli mindset. Life, whether Israeli or Palestinian, is secondary to the Zionist nation’s militarized ideology of control and intent to erase the Palestinian people.
We also have to acknowledge that the West’s complicity and hypocrisy is a stain on its moral and legal claims of being a defender of international law. In the 1970s and 80s it rightfully sanctioned apartheid South Africa into submission. Yet for decades it has funded Israel’s apartheid regime, despite over 40 ignored UN resolutions and more recently, ICJ rulings. The US vetoing of UN Security Council action against Israel, while nations like Germany, the UK and EU weakly condemn Israel as they continued to ship arms to them while they slaughtered Palestinians, is a clear violation of the Genocide Convention’s Article VIII, which requires states to prevent genocide. The West’s selective enforcement—condemning Russian violations in Ukraine while excusing Israel’s crimes—reveals a hollow commitment to the “rules-based order” it touts, and a deeply embedded anti-Palestinian racism that facilitated genocide.
Two years after October 7, 2023, Israel’s genocide in Gaza remains a festering wound on humanity’s conscience. The West’s inaction—its refusal to leverage its immense diplomatic, economic and military power—betrays the very laws it claims to uphold. An immediate ceasefire, arms embargoes, and the end of Israel’s unlawful occupation are legal imperatives. Without them, history will judge not only Israeli perpetrators of genocide but also American, British and European leaders, and their allies as enablers of this century’s gravest crime. The cry of “never again” rings hollow from Gaza’s rubble strewn streets, where the West’s hypocrisy lies buried alongside an estimated 377,000 Palestinian dead.
© 2025 The View From Here. © 2025 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.
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