The
West's apathy towards Palestinians today mirrors the 1930s treatment of Jewish
refugees on the MS St. Louis fleeing Nazis in 1939, who were denied entry by
Cuba, the US, and Canada.
By Fareed Khan
A version of this article can be found on Substack.
The evidence of this systematic persecution lies not only in the staggering loss of life but in the West’s deliberate refusal to intervene and its aggressive efforts to muzzle voices condemning Israel’s actions. Western governments—the so-called defenders if the “international rule of law’—including the United States, Canada, and European nations, have provided billions in military aid to Israel while offering Palestinians mere platitudes and minimal humanitarian support. This double standard, coupled with systematic suppression of pro-Palestinian activism, reveals a profound anti-Palestinian bias embedded in Western policies, governments, and institutions.
Consider the words of former US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on November 10, 2023: “Far too many Palestinians have been killed.” At that point, mere weeks into the conflict, the death toll was already deemed excessive. Now, over two years later, the death toll as reported by Euromed Human Rights Monitor, one of the only international organizations able to verify Palestinian casualty figures, places direct deaths at over 75,300, with more than 173,800 wounded. These numbers, however, are widely acknowledged as underestimates due to the total collapse of Gaza’s civil infrastructure—hospitals bombed, morgues overwhelmed, and bodies buried under rubble without identification.
Independent analyses of Palestinian casualties paint an even grimmer picture. A study by Ben-Gurion University professor Yaakov Garb, utilizing Israeli military data and published by Harvard Dataverse in June 2025, estimates that between 377,000 and 400,000 Palestinians are unaccounted for, presumed dead or buried under Gaza’s rubble. This figure aligns with reports of mass graves and unrecovered bodies under destroyed buildings. Even more alarming is the epidemiological assessment by Australian scholars Gideon Polya and Richard Hil, who, in their July 2025 report “Skewering History: The Odious Politics of Counting Gaza’s Dead,” project a total death toll exceeding 680,000 by mid-2025 when including indirect deaths from starvation, disease, and deprivation. This estimate, which factors in a ratio of four indirect deaths per direct violent one by Israel, draws from precedents in conflicts like Iraq and Afghanistan, and has been referenced by UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese. In a September 2025 briefing, Albanese suggested that if verified, this could mean 380,000 deaths among children under five alone, describing the situation as “apocalyptic” and a “collective crime.”
These figures represent an average of hundreds of deaths per day over 800 days, even during the nominal ceasefire. Over 30% of identified victims are children and 20% women, a disproportionate toll that far exceeds civilian casualties on the Israeli side during the October 7 attack—where the reported 1,200 deaths include military personnel and those killed by Israeli troops under its controversial Hannibal Directive, which prioritizes preventing capture over saving lives. The deaths of Palestinian children, potentially in the hundreds of thousands under broader estimates, have become the emblem of this horror, with images of lifeless bodies in the rubble fuelling global outrage. Yet, this outrage is met with inaction, implying to many that there exists an “acceptable” threshold of Palestinian suffering—a perverse calculus that echoes the dehumanization seen in the actions of Nazis towards Europe’s Jews.
If Blinken’s early assessment was “far too many,” what phrase captures the current reality? The scale rivals the Holocaust in the systematic nature of Israel’s brutality, though differing in the number of dead. Palestinians today are the most persecuted people globally, their oppression evidenced by the West’s complicity. Unlike Ukraine, where Western nations swiftly provided over $330 billion in military, economic, and humanitarian aid, allowing Ukrainians to defend themselves, Palestinians—lacking an army, navy, or air force—receive paltry levels of aid and no military assistance by comparison. The US alone has funnelled at least $21.7 billion in military aid to Israel since October 2023, including $4 billion expedited in March 2025, while aid to Gaza is restricted or blocked by Israel, exacerbating famine and disease. This disparity highlights a racialized hierarchy of victimhood, where brown and Muslim lives (Palestinians) are deemed expendable, while white and Christian lives (Ukrainians) are worth saving.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has repeatedly intervened, issuing provisional measures in January 2024 and beyond, ordering Israel to prevent genocide, ensure humanitarian access, and halt incitement. In an October 2025 advisory opinion, the ICJ declared Israel’s occupation unlawful and called for its end, noting plausible risks of genocide in Gaza. Yet, Western powers, including the US with its veto power at the UN Security Council, have shielded Israel from enforcement, allowing violations to continue unchecked.
This inaction is compounded by active suppression of dissent. Western governments have waged a sustained assault on pro-Palestinian voices, using smear campaigns, legal restrictions, and police to silence criticism. In the US, legislation equates anti-Zionism with antisemitism, leading to job losses, doxxing, and investigations of activists. Universities have fired professors and disbanded student groups for Gaza solidarity. In Europe, Germany has banned pro-Palestine conferences, like the April 2025 Palestine Congress in Berlin, ruled unlawful by courts but emblematic of broader crackdowns. France and the UK have imposed disproportionate restrictions on protests, weaponizing terrorism laws against anti-genocide demonstrators.
A 2025 report by the International Federation for Human Rights documented this trend, warning that such actions erode democratic freedoms and violate fundamental rights. Social media platforms, have also censored Palestine-related content, banning accounts and removing posts. This orchestrated silencing ensures that Israeli narratives are given priority while those calling for justice for Palestinians are marginalized, and narratives that call out Israeli war crimes are suppressed.
There are historic parallels that amplify the tragedy. The West’s apathy towards Palestinians today mirrors the 1930s treatment of Jewish refugees. The MS St. Louis, carrying nearly 1,000 Jews fleeing Nazis in 1939, was denied entry by Cuba, the US, and Canada, leading to over 250 of them being killed during Holocaust. Canada’s infamous “none is too many” policy epitomized this racism. Today, Palestinians face similar abandonment with refugees denied asylum, aid convoys bombed, and pleas for intervention ignored.
In Canada, this moral failure is acute. Despite acknowledging its genocidal history against Indigenous peoples—residential schools, forced assimilation, and land theft—the political establishment repeats the pattern with the Indigenous people of historic Palestine. Governments under Justin Trudeau and now Mark Carney have prioritized ties with Israel, ignoring the designation of the nation as an Apartheid state by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch years before the start of the Gaza genocide. Weekly protests in major cities across Canada, which have drawn tens of thousands, demanding sanctions and justice, have been systematically ignored. An August 2025 Angus Reid poll revealed 52% of Canadians believe Israel is committing genocide, with 61% agreeing aid is deliberately blocked—a sharp rise from prior surveys. Yet, leaders dismiss these voices, complicit in what has been labelled “the most transparent genocide in human history.”
The commitment of ordinary Canadians and global citizens is unwavering. Over two years, millions have marched worldwide, horrified by Gaza’s transformation into a post-apocalyptic wasteland, with more than 90% of infrastructure destroyed, farmland poisoned, water contaminated. Daily life is a struggle against starvation, with children scavenging amid rubble. This has galvanized a new wave of activism, including hunger strikes and boycotts, bridging divides and sustaining resistance.
Canadian politicians—Mark Carney, Justin Trudeau, Pierre Poilievre, Mélanie Joly, Anita Anand, and others—must heed history’s judgment. Unless aggressive action is taken to intervene and halt Israel’s action, their legacy will be one of criminal complicity in genocide, war crimes, and the oppression of a people brutalized for over 75 years. The blood of innocents stains their hands, and Canadians will not forget this moral crisis. Until the West enforces accountability, lifts the blockade, and amplifies suppressed voices, Palestinians remain the world’s most abandoned minority. The 800 days of transparent genocide demand not just words, but transformative action demonstrating that being Palestinian is not a crime.
© 2025 The View From Here. © 2025 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.
Today, December 16, 2025, the world marks a sombre milestone—800 days
since Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza began on October
8, 2023. What was initially framed as a defensive response to the
October 7th Hamas attack has morphed into a relentless campaign of
death, destruction, and displacement, that international legal experts,
Holocaust scholars, human rights organizations, and the United Nations
have described as the crime of genocide. And despite a tenuous ceasefire
established in early October 2025, daily violations by Israel continue,
and the humanitarian catastrophe persists unabated. Palestinians in
Gaza, trapped in what was already the world’s largest concentration
camp, now face existential annihilation, their plight met with global
indifference that underscores their status as the most persecuted
minority in the world today.
The evidence of this systematic persecution lies not only in the staggering loss of life but in the West’s deliberate refusal to intervene and its aggressive efforts to muzzle voices condemning Israel’s actions. Western governments—the so-called defenders if the “international rule of law’—including the United States, Canada, and European nations, have provided billions in military aid to Israel while offering Palestinians mere platitudes and minimal humanitarian support. This double standard, coupled with systematic suppression of pro-Palestinian activism, reveals a profound anti-Palestinian bias embedded in Western policies, governments, and institutions.
Consider the words of former US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on November 10, 2023: “Far too many Palestinians have been killed.” At that point, mere weeks into the conflict, the death toll was already deemed excessive. Now, over two years later, the death toll as reported by Euromed Human Rights Monitor, one of the only international organizations able to verify Palestinian casualty figures, places direct deaths at over 75,300, with more than 173,800 wounded. These numbers, however, are widely acknowledged as underestimates due to the total collapse of Gaza’s civil infrastructure—hospitals bombed, morgues overwhelmed, and bodies buried under rubble without identification.
Independent analyses of Palestinian casualties paint an even grimmer picture. A study by Ben-Gurion University professor Yaakov Garb, utilizing Israeli military data and published by Harvard Dataverse in June 2025, estimates that between 377,000 and 400,000 Palestinians are unaccounted for, presumed dead or buried under Gaza’s rubble. This figure aligns with reports of mass graves and unrecovered bodies under destroyed buildings. Even more alarming is the epidemiological assessment by Australian scholars Gideon Polya and Richard Hil, who, in their July 2025 report “Skewering History: The Odious Politics of Counting Gaza’s Dead,” project a total death toll exceeding 680,000 by mid-2025 when including indirect deaths from starvation, disease, and deprivation. This estimate, which factors in a ratio of four indirect deaths per direct violent one by Israel, draws from precedents in conflicts like Iraq and Afghanistan, and has been referenced by UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese. In a September 2025 briefing, Albanese suggested that if verified, this could mean 380,000 deaths among children under five alone, describing the situation as “apocalyptic” and a “collective crime.”
These figures represent an average of hundreds of deaths per day over 800 days, even during the nominal ceasefire. Over 30% of identified victims are children and 20% women, a disproportionate toll that far exceeds civilian casualties on the Israeli side during the October 7 attack—where the reported 1,200 deaths include military personnel and those killed by Israeli troops under its controversial Hannibal Directive, which prioritizes preventing capture over saving lives. The deaths of Palestinian children, potentially in the hundreds of thousands under broader estimates, have become the emblem of this horror, with images of lifeless bodies in the rubble fuelling global outrage. Yet, this outrage is met with inaction, implying to many that there exists an “acceptable” threshold of Palestinian suffering—a perverse calculus that echoes the dehumanization seen in the actions of Nazis towards Europe’s Jews.
If Blinken’s early assessment was “far too many,” what phrase captures the current reality? The scale rivals the Holocaust in the systematic nature of Israel’s brutality, though differing in the number of dead. Palestinians today are the most persecuted people globally, their oppression evidenced by the West’s complicity. Unlike Ukraine, where Western nations swiftly provided over $330 billion in military, economic, and humanitarian aid, allowing Ukrainians to defend themselves, Palestinians—lacking an army, navy, or air force—receive paltry levels of aid and no military assistance by comparison. The US alone has funnelled at least $21.7 billion in military aid to Israel since October 2023, including $4 billion expedited in March 2025, while aid to Gaza is restricted or blocked by Israel, exacerbating famine and disease. This disparity highlights a racialized hierarchy of victimhood, where brown and Muslim lives (Palestinians) are deemed expendable, while white and Christian lives (Ukrainians) are worth saving.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has repeatedly intervened, issuing provisional measures in January 2024 and beyond, ordering Israel to prevent genocide, ensure humanitarian access, and halt incitement. In an October 2025 advisory opinion, the ICJ declared Israel’s occupation unlawful and called for its end, noting plausible risks of genocide in Gaza. Yet, Western powers, including the US with its veto power at the UN Security Council, have shielded Israel from enforcement, allowing violations to continue unchecked.
This inaction is compounded by active suppression of dissent. Western governments have waged a sustained assault on pro-Palestinian voices, using smear campaigns, legal restrictions, and police to silence criticism. In the US, legislation equates anti-Zionism with antisemitism, leading to job losses, doxxing, and investigations of activists. Universities have fired professors and disbanded student groups for Gaza solidarity. In Europe, Germany has banned pro-Palestine conferences, like the April 2025 Palestine Congress in Berlin, ruled unlawful by courts but emblematic of broader crackdowns. France and the UK have imposed disproportionate restrictions on protests, weaponizing terrorism laws against anti-genocide demonstrators.
A 2025 report by the International Federation for Human Rights documented this trend, warning that such actions erode democratic freedoms and violate fundamental rights. Social media platforms, have also censored Palestine-related content, banning accounts and removing posts. This orchestrated silencing ensures that Israeli narratives are given priority while those calling for justice for Palestinians are marginalized, and narratives that call out Israeli war crimes are suppressed.
There are historic parallels that amplify the tragedy. The West’s apathy towards Palestinians today mirrors the 1930s treatment of Jewish refugees. The MS St. Louis, carrying nearly 1,000 Jews fleeing Nazis in 1939, was denied entry by Cuba, the US, and Canada, leading to over 250 of them being killed during Holocaust. Canada’s infamous “none is too many” policy epitomized this racism. Today, Palestinians face similar abandonment with refugees denied asylum, aid convoys bombed, and pleas for intervention ignored.
In Canada, this moral failure is acute. Despite acknowledging its genocidal history against Indigenous peoples—residential schools, forced assimilation, and land theft—the political establishment repeats the pattern with the Indigenous people of historic Palestine. Governments under Justin Trudeau and now Mark Carney have prioritized ties with Israel, ignoring the designation of the nation as an Apartheid state by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch years before the start of the Gaza genocide. Weekly protests in major cities across Canada, which have drawn tens of thousands, demanding sanctions and justice, have been systematically ignored. An August 2025 Angus Reid poll revealed 52% of Canadians believe Israel is committing genocide, with 61% agreeing aid is deliberately blocked—a sharp rise from prior surveys. Yet, leaders dismiss these voices, complicit in what has been labelled “the most transparent genocide in human history.”
The commitment of ordinary Canadians and global citizens is unwavering. Over two years, millions have marched worldwide, horrified by Gaza’s transformation into a post-apocalyptic wasteland, with more than 90% of infrastructure destroyed, farmland poisoned, water contaminated. Daily life is a struggle against starvation, with children scavenging amid rubble. This has galvanized a new wave of activism, including hunger strikes and boycotts, bridging divides and sustaining resistance.
Canadian politicians—Mark Carney, Justin Trudeau, Pierre Poilievre, Mélanie Joly, Anita Anand, and others—must heed history’s judgment. Unless aggressive action is taken to intervene and halt Israel’s action, their legacy will be one of criminal complicity in genocide, war crimes, and the oppression of a people brutalized for over 75 years. The blood of innocents stains their hands, and Canadians will not forget this moral crisis. Until the West enforces accountability, lifts the blockade, and amplifies suppressed voices, Palestinians remain the world’s most abandoned minority. The 800 days of transparent genocide demand not just words, but transformative action demonstrating that being Palestinian is not a crime.
© 2025 The View From Here. © 2025 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.
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