By Fareed Khan
A version of this article is available on Substack.
In two weeks, the Western world will hold official ceremonies and issue solemn government statements to mark the third anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel — an event in which 1,200 Israelis were killed, including more than 300 Jews who were killed by the Israeli military under the controversial “Hannibal Directive.” As Western politicians prepare to centre their grief on those deaths while ignoring the genocide Israel launched in response, it is worth asking a simple, unavoidable question: What does it truly mean when someone says they “stand with Israel” or a government says they support Israel?
What it means is: I stand with shooting children, killing babies, raping women, demolishing homes, and bombing hospitals. It means supporting the torture of Palestinian detainees, the burning of families in tents, and the execution of unarmed civilians. It means endorsing leaders who openly orchestrate and advocate the genocide of Palestinians. It means supporting mass starvation, the use of illegal weapons, and the assassination of hundreds of journalists. It means ignoring state‑sponsored sexual violence and the total disregard for international law. It means defending crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide.
This is what it means. It means supporting and defending the actions of a racist, apartheid, fascist, genocidal state that has violated international law with impunity for decades. And it means that those who “stand with Israel” and support it are choosing to stand with the sort of evil not seen since World War II — because there is no other word that can describe a state that commits genocide with impunity, and uses the same language when referring to Palestinians that the Nazis used when talking about Jews during the Holocaust.
For decades, Israel has violated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Fourth Geneva Convention, the Hague Conventions, the Genocide Convention, the Vienna Conventions, and the UN Charter — not occasionally, not accidentally, but systematically, deliberately, and without apology. It has done so while killing tens of thousands of Palestinians since its creation, ethnically cleansing hundreds of thousands more, and entrenching a regime of racist apartheid recognized by leading human rights organizations.
Since October 2023, Israel’s assault on Gaza has been described as genocide by dozens of respected international institutions, legal bodies, human rights organizations, and Jewish genocide and Holocaust scholars. This is not hyperbole but rather a legal determination grounded in evidence about mass murder, mass starvation, deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructure, and explicit statements of genocidal intent by Israeli political, military and religious leaders.
Since the fall of 2023, a broad and authoritative consensus has emerged: Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. This conclusion has been reached by the UN Independent Commission of Inquiry; the UN Special Committee; the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights; the UN Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories; Amnesty International; Human Rights Watch; Israeli human rights group B’Tselem; Physicians for Human Rights Israel; Doctors Without Borders; Oxfam; Save the Children; the International Federation of Human Rights; the International Association of Genocide Scholars; leading Israeli Holocaust scholars Omer Bartov, Amos Goldberg, Daniel Blatman, Raz Segal, and Shmuel Lederman; as well as the 30 nations supporting South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice. Together, these bodies, experts, and states represent the most significant legal, humanitarian, and scholarly institutions in the world, and they have all reached the same devastating conclusion.
When someone says they “stand with Israel,” they are standing with all of this — with a state whose actions have been identified as genocidal by the world’s most respected human rights institutions and genocide scholars. They are standing with a system of violence that extends far beyond the battlefield and deep into the daily lives of Palestinians.
They are standing with settlers who burn Palestinian homes, destroy olive groves tended to for generations by Palestinian families, kill Palestinian livestock, and attack Palestinian villages with firearms — crimes documented extensively by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and B’Tselem. They are standing with settlers who murdered 19‑year‑old Qusai Matan in 2023, who torched homes in Turmus Ayya, and who carried out pogroms in Huwara. And they are standing with a state that protects these settlers, arms them, and integrates them into its military operations — a state whose violence is not incidental, but systematic, sanctioned, and central to its occupation, domination and oppression of Palestinians.
They are standing with a government that has ignored every UN Security Council resolution demanding an end to settlement expansion, every ruling of the International Court of Justice, every obligation under the Geneva Conventions, and every principle of international humanitarian law. They are standing with a state that has situated more than 750,000 illegal Jewish settlers into the West Bank, many of whom terrorize Palestinians with impunity.
They are standing with a state that has bombed hospitals, schools, refugee camps, UN shelters, ambulances, journalists, and aid workers — all documented by international monitors. They are standing with a state that has deliberately starved more than two million people in Gaza, blocked humanitarian aid, and used starvation as a weapon of war — a war crime under international law. They are standing with a state whose leaders have repeatedly declared their intent to destroy Gaza, “erase” entire neighborhoods, and “eliminate” the Palestinian people — statements that meet the legal definition of genocidal intent.
And they are standing with Western governments whose performative condemnations — like the August 20, 2026 joint statement by Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, and the United Kingdom — are nothing more than public relations exercises designed to create the illusion of moral concern while ensuring that nothing changes.
These governments have armed Israel, funded Israel, protected Israel diplomatically, and shielded Israel from accountability for decades. They have watched Israel violate every major international legal instrument meant to keep the peace and protect human rights, and responded with statements of “grave concern” instead of sanctions, arms embargoes, or diplomatic isolation. Their complicity has enabled Israel’s crimes, and continues to do so.
The hypocrisy of these and other Western governments is staggering. When Russia invaded Ukraine, Western governments unleashed sweeping sanctions, froze assets, expelled diplomats, mobilized international institutions, and poured military aid into Ukraine within days. But when Israel commits genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes, and apartheid, those same governments retreat into the familiar language of “concern” while continuing business as usual.
This selective application of international law exposes the racial and geopolitical biases at the core of the so‑called “rules‑based order.” It reveals that Western governments do not oppose genocide as a principle — they oppose genocide only when committed by their enemies. When committed by their allies, they tolerate it, excuse it, and enable it.
So yes — standing with Israel means standing with evil. And as Western governments prepare their anniversary speeches, their candlelight vigils, their choreographed displays of solidarity with Israeli victims, they will once again erase the more than 80,000 of thousands of Palestinians killed since October 2023. They will mourn 1,200 Israelis while refusing to acknowledge that Israel has killed more than fifty times that number of Palestinians, many of them children, and that hundreds of Israelis died not at the hands of Hamas but under Israel’s own Hannibal Directive. Standing with Israel today means choosing to sanctify one group’s suffering while denying another group’s humanity. It means choosing to defend atrocity rather than defend life.
The world cannot survive if genocide is tolerated — and yet Western governments are preparing to commemorate October 7th while continuing to arm, fund, and politically shield the state committing that genocide. Their ceremonies and statements will not be expressions of moral clarity, they will be monuments to moral collapse. If Western leaders refuse to confront Israel with real coercive force — sanctions, arms embargoes, diplomatic isolation, and, if necessary, military intervention — then their anniversary statements will not be remembrance. They will be complicity no different than that which has been happening since October 2023.
Standing with Israel, especially in this moment, is not a moral position. It is the abandonment of morality and humanity itself.
© 2026 The View From Here. © 2026 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.
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