The View From Here

Israel’s actions in Gaza and its general brutality towards Palestinians is what evil looks like in the 21st century—a state committing mass atrocity crimes in full view of the world and nothing is done to stop them.

By Fareed Khan 
A version of this can be found on Substack.

We are living through a new age of systemic evil—an era whose moral contours resemble the 1930s more than any period since. Then, as now, powerful states normalized cruelty, stripped entire populations of rights, and justified mass violence through the language of security, racial hierarchy, and national destiny.

Then, as now, the world’s so‑called democracies watched, equivocated, or actively enabled the perpetrators. However, the lesson humanity had learned from that history—”Never Again”—has been hollowed out, reduced to a slogan invoked selectively, applied to only one people, rather than applied as a universal moral principle.

Unlike the 1930s and World War Two where the Nazis tried to hide their genocidal crimes, today’s evil in Gaza is not hidden.

What distinguishes this moment is not only the scale of destruction unleashed on Palestinians, but the brazenness with which Western nations—the US, UK, Canada, Germany, France—the self‑appointed guardians of the post-World War Two order have chosen to enable, rationalize, and arm that destruction. The governments that claim to champion human rights and the sanctity of civilian life are now the primary suppliers of weapons, diplomatic cover, and political legitimacy to a state—Israel—that is accused by leading genocide and Holocaust scholars, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and UN bodies of committing genocide.

And yet, when most people are asked to describe “evil,” they do not think of these polished, articulate leaders of Western democracies. They think of serial killers, violent criminals, perpetrators of child exploitation, or historical tyrants like Hitler and Pol Pot. They might mention contemporary authoritarian figures such as Vladimir Putin or Kim Jong Un. But few would think to include Western presidents and prime ministers who deliver eloquent speeches about human rights while simultaneously providing arms and political protection to a state committing genocidal crimes.

This disconnect is itself a symptom of the age of evil we inhabit. Evil is imagined as something distant, monstrous, and obvious—not something carried out through bureaucratic memos, arms export permits, diplomatic vetoes, and press conferences delivered in calm, reassuring tones. But if this profound moral inversion does not qualify as an era of systemic evil unseen since the 1930s, then what would? When the machinery of the “rules‑based order” is deployed to protect the aggressor, while the victims’ suffering is minimized or ignored by the most powerful nations in the world, labelled a “complex issue,” the boundary between those who claim to defend “good” and those branded as “evil” dissolves.

A May 2025 survey conducted by the Israeli research firm Geocartography for Penn State University, and reported in Haaretz, revealed a stark reality— support for extreme policies is not confined to Israel’s political and military elites. According to the poll, 82% of Israeli Jews endorsed the forced expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza, while nearly half supported the Israeli military “killing all Palestinians in Gaza.” A majority—56%—favoured expelling every non‑Jew from all territories under Israeli control. These are not fringe views held by a radical minority of elites, they reflect attitudes that have become normalized across broad segments of Israeli society. Such findings underscore a critical truth, that systemic evil does not emerge solely from leaders. It is sustained, legitimized, and amplified by the public they represent that accepts, endorses, or demands it.

And this is not a matter of rhetorical exaggeration. In 2025, the International Association of Genocide Scholars—the preeminent professional body in the field, including numerous Israeli Holocaust specialists—ratified a resolution affirming that Israel’s policies and operations in Gaza meet the criteria of genocide under the 1948 Convention. The resolution passed with 86% support. This was not a fringe opinion. It was a deliberate, rigorous assessment by experts whose scholarship centres on mass atrocities, including the Holocaust itself.

A growing body of academics and jurists in genocide studies, Holocaust studies, historiography, and international law have reached similar conclusions. Their analyses are grounded in decades of research into the crime of genocide, codified into international law after the Second World War precisely to prevent the recurrence of the horrors of the 1930s and 1940s. And it is not only scholars. A United Nations Commission of Inquiry, established by the Human Rights Council, has determined that Israel bears responsibility for genocide in Gaza since October 2023, and that high‑ranking Israeli officials have incited such acts.

In the 1930s, the world claimed it did not know what was happening. Today’s leaders lack this defence. Today, the world knows—and chooses not to act. The Gaza conflict has been termed “the most transparent genocide in human history” precisely because victims and perpetrators have live streamed its horrors. Israeli personnel have disseminated footage of devastation and mistreatment they have inflicted; Palestinians have chronicled the systematic erasure of homes, hospitals, schools, and entire neighbourhoods in real time. Global audiences, including Western officials, have witnessed this annihilation on their phones and screens, yet global leaders have done nothing to stop it.

To understand how we arrived here, we must confront the historical foundations of Palestinian dispossession. The Nakba of 1948 was not an unfortunate byproduct of war; it was a deliberate campaign of ethnic cleansing. More than 750,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled in terror from the lands of historic Palestine, as Zionist terrorist militias and later the Israeli army ethnically cleansed over 400 towns and villages, murdering thousands, and then eventually erased the communities from the map, by planting forests in their place or building over them. This was not a spontaneous collapse of a society; it was the intentional creation of a new demographic reality, documented by Israeli historians and preserved in UN archives. The new state of Israel then barred these refugees from returning, despite UN Resolution 194 affirming their right to go home. The message was unmistakable: Palestinians were to be erased from their land, their history, and their future.

The dispossession did not end in 1948. In 1967, Israel occupied the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza (the second Nakba), launching what has become one of the longest and most brutal military occupations in modern history. Palestinians were subjected to land seizures, settlement expansion, home demolitions, checkpoints, curfews, and a dual legal system that privileges Jewish settlers while criminalizing Palestinian existence. The occupation was not a temporary security measure; it was a structural project of domination designed to fragment Palestinian territory and prevent the emergence of a viable, sovereign state.

Gaza became the laboratory for a new form of control. After Israel’s 2005 redeployment and withdrawal of settlers from that territory came the blockade, imposed in 2007, which transformed the strip into what human rights groups called “the world’s largest open‑air prison.” Israel controls the borders, the airspace, the sea, the population registry, and even the caloric intake of Gaza’s residents. The blockade is not about security, it was collective punishment aimed at breaking the will of a people. Generations of Palestinians have grown up under siege, deprived of basic rights and freedoms, economic opportunity, and the ability to imagine a life beyond confinement.

This is the architecture of Palestinian dispossession—ethnic cleansing, occupation, blockade—and it is the essential context for understanding the horrors of the present. The ongoing genocide in Gaza is not an aberration. It is the logical continuation of a system fed by an ideology of Zionism built on the domination and brutal oppression of Palestinians, with Western complicity.

Defenders of Israel’s actions invoke the familiar refrain: “Israel has a right to defend itself.” But this claim collapses under even minimal scrutiny when applied to an occupying power. Under international law, including the Fourth Geneva Convention, an occupying state does not possess a right of self‑defence against the population it occupies. It has obligations—to protect civilians, to refrain from collective punishment, and to ensure the welfare of the occupied population. Moreover, self‑defence cannot justify the levelling of entire neighbourhoods, the killing of tens of thousands of civilians, the destruction of hospitals and universities, or the ethnic cleansing of an entire people. These are not acts of defence; they are acts of domination and control, and can be considered war crimes.

Once this rhetorical shield is stripped away, the reality becomes impossible to deny. Since October 2023, Israel’s assault on Gaza has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, most of them women and children. Entire neighbourhoods have been erased. Hospitals, schools, refugee camps, and cultural institutions have been bombed. UN experts warn that Gaza may soon become uninhabitable. And yet, instead of restraining Israel, Western governments—especially the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Germany—have continued weapons transfers, with the US blocking ceasefire resolutions, and defending Israel at every international forum.

This is not passive complicity. It is active participation. The US has shipped thousands of bombs, artillery shells, and precision‑guided munitions, even as its own officials privately acknowledge the likelihood of war crimes. The UK continues arms exports despite parliamentary warnings. Despite claiming to support international law Canada is still approving military export permits through a loophole despite a Parliamentary vote, supported by a large majority of MPs calling for the suspension of arms shipments. Germany frames its support as a moral obligation rooted in its own history, even as it arms a state committing atrocities against a defenceless people.

The horrors of what has taken place in Gaza are documented in a widely cited study, based on Israeli military data by Professor Yaakov Garb of Ben-Gurion University, published on Harvard University’s Dataverse. It estimates that more than 377,000 Palestinians are missing and presumed dead — roughly 17% of Gaza’s pre-war population. Around the same time, Australian academics Richard Hil and Gideon Polya concluded in their analysis that the actual death toll likely ranges between 680,000 and 700,000.

The consequences of Israeli actions extend far beyond Gaza. Israel’s military operations have expanded into Lebanon, displacing hundreds of thousands and destroying civilian infrastructure. In Iran, Israeli attacks have escalated regional tensions and risked a broader war. These are not isolated incidents; they are part of a coherent strategy of regional dominance, enabled by Western powers that refuse to impose consequences.

This is what systemic evil looks like in the 21st century. A powerful state commits mass atrocity crimes against civilians in full view of the world, and the nations that claim to uphold international law supply the weapons and political cover that make those atrocities possible.

The phrase “international rules‑based order” has become a hollow incantation. It is invoked by Western leaders selectively, applied inconsistently, and weaponized to justify geopolitical interests rather than universal principles.

When Russia invaded Ukraine, Western leaders spoke passionately about violations of international law and the UN Charter, and the inviolability of civilian life. When Israel flattened Gaza, committing crimes no different than Russia’s, those same leaders spoke of “complexity,” “restraint,” and “Israel’s right to defend itself.” The double standard is not subtle; it is structural.

And so we return to the central question: Why are we here?

We are here because Western governments have treated Palestinian lives as expendable, and see Palestinians as sub-human. Because they have prioritized geopolitical alliances over human rights. Because they have allowed Israel to act with impunity for decades. Because they have refused to confront the root cause of the conflict: the ongoing denial of Palestinian self‑determination, and decades of obstructionism preventing the Palestinian people from having a free and independent state of their own.

The Nakba is not a historical footnote. It is an ongoing crime of ethnic cleansing and genocide which has been rolled out over 78 years. It is the moral and political origin of the present crisis. Every bomb dropped on Gaza, every home demolished in the West Bank, every refugee denied the right to return, every child killed in Lebanon, every escalation in Iran—these are all chapters in the same story.

But it is also a story of resistance. Palestinians have refused to disappear. They have insisted on their humanity, their history, and their right to live in freedom and dignity. And around the world, millions have joined them, demanding an end to the violence and an end to the complicity that sustains it.

The question is no longer whether we know what is happening.

We clearly do.

The central question is whether Western leaders can finally confront their entrenched anti-Palestinian racism, push back against the outsized influence of the pro-Israel and Zionist lobbies that have long dominated the West’s Middle East policy, and rediscover their moral compass. Only then can they muster the courage to halt a state whose act of evil—marked by decades of systematic violence, ethnic cleansing, and collective punishment—echo the gravest atrocities committed by Germany and Japan during World War Two.

History will harshly judge those leaders who continue with a business as usual attitude in their dealings with Israel. As the racist, apartheid, genocidal regime continues its assault against Gaza and Lebanon, as it continues to commit genocide and torture detainees, it is shredding the post-World War Two international order—the very framework built to prevent future horrors and honour the millions who perished in that war. The architects of that order, if they could see it today, would be outraged that the sort of evil they tried to prevent is happening again, and that the system they built is being deliberately destroyed by the actions of a single fascist state supported and shielded by powerful Western patrons.

© 2026 The View From Here. © 2026 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.