For a long time, many people have argued that silence about perceived evil or outrages against human rights and humanity itself amounts to complicity in such evil. These include some of the greatest scientists, moral philosophers and human rights campaigners, such as Albert Einstein, Mahatma Gandhi and Dr Martin Luther King Jr, who reportedly said, “The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people”. 

There is now wide recognition of the idea that silence, especially when exhibited by those in a position of formal authority and with the capacity and power to act, implies tacit agreement with, if not approval of, evil acts. Yet, the contemporary abject refusal by vast swathes of supposedly “good” people in positions of responsibility to publicly condemn manifestly egregious conduct, much less take action to stop it, suggests that powerful counter-motivators are at work.

Does anyone care about mass civilian carnage in Gaza?

Few people could remain unaware of the terror attack by Hamas militants on October 7, 2023, on Israel close to the border with the Palestinian territory of Gaza. This killed around 1,139 people in Israel, wounded 3,400 others and resulted in Hamas taking 251 hostages into Gaza. Equally, few could be unaware of Israel’s apocalyptic military response in Gaza, which has gone on relentlessly for over 20 months. 

By July 9, 2025, according to the UN, out of Gaza’s 2.2 million people, at least 57,680 (around 70% of which were women and children) had been killed by Israeli Defense Force (IDF) action as recorded from birth and death certificates, plus an estimated 12,000 others unaccounted for and presumed buried under rubble. At least another 125,000 have been wounded.

According to the UN, IDF aerial or ground bombardment has destroyed most of the residential, business, government, education, medical and food supply buildings and facilities across Gaza. The IDF has forcibly displaced 90% of the Gazan population, typically three, four or more times, either because their homes have suffered destruction or because IDF short-notice evacuation diktats directed them to so-called “safe zones” away from an impending IDF attack. 

Often, the IDF attacks these “safe zones” — empty schools doubling as displacement shelters and makeshift tented shelter areas — causing more civilian casualties. Nearly all Gaza’s hospitals and clinics have been subject to IDF bombardment, gunfire and/or IDF incursions, sometimes several times, and more than half are closed or only partly functioning. 

In addition, the IDF blocked all shipments of essential food, medicines, fuel and water into Gaza from March 2 to May 19, 2025, thereby creating a potential humanitarian disaster. Even after partly lifting the blockade, fewer than 20% of the daily 600 trucks required were allowed in, and once inside, further IDF restrictions and warehouse insecurity hindered aid distribution. By the end of May, with imminent mass starvation and rising deaths, Israel — backed by the US — ignored the existing UN aid network in Gaza and imposed a new aid organization called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). However, its local inexperience initially resulted in chaos with the shooting of dozens of aid seekers and only minimal aid being distributed. 

International aid organisations with many years’ experience in Gaza universally rejected the new scheme as naïve and unworkable. Controversy surrounds the entire project, especially since it was widely publicized that not only does the foundation willingly let the Israeli government direct and vet its activities, but also that its new owner reportedly holds a former senior CIA officer position and owns a private security company, Safe Reach Solutions, that will work with the foundation.

Israel also stands accused of arming criminal Palestinian gangs — some of which are linked to ISIS terrorists — to protect GHF operations in Gaza. However, these gangs reportedly also run protection rackets against other aid organizations.

The official Israeli position

The Israeli government and IDF steadfastly assert that all their military activities in Gaza are essential to root out, defeat and ultimately eliminate Hamas as a terrorist organization. At face value, this may not seem an unreasonable position to take. After all, Hamas militants (and other groups such as Hezbollah) have inflicted many terrorist attacks on Israel over the years, and perhaps the October 7th atrocity constituted such a significant escalation that the incumbent government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided it now required a final crushing showdown with Hamas. 

However, the IDF’s “devastated terrain warfare” strategy has, unsurprisingly, had apocalyptic consequences for civilians. The relentless mass civilian carnage inflicted by Israel in Gaza — with 50 times more people killed and 37 times more wounded relative to the Israeli casualties on October 7, 2023 — plus an almost complete destruction of all buildings, facilities, essential supplies and means for sustaining life, coupled with a complete blockade of food and humanitarian aid for two-and-a-half months, suggest an Israeli motivation other than military necessity. 

Nevertheless, the Israeli government remains adamant that only a total annihilation of Hamas will suffice, regardless of “collateral” death and destruction. Finally, in May 2025, many governments that are traditionally pro-Israel (with the notable exception of the US) openly rejected Israel’s justification. While the majority of Gaza’s 2.2 million population have not been killed, nevertheless, the numbers continue to rise, and the specific intent of the Israeli government and its IDF more than meets the 1948 Genocide Convention criteria. The trajectory appears genocidal, more accurately a proto-genocide rather than one yet achieved. However, Professor Avi Shlaim, an Israeli–British historian, argues that it is already a de facto genocide. Regardless of how it is classified, it is undoubtedly an atrocity on a mammoth, slow-motion scale. 

A more plausible narrative

So, what plausible narrative could explain this orchestrated mass inhumanity? Here, we encounter a peculiar, contradictory espousal from Netanyahu, other Israeli leaders, spokespersons, politicians and the IDF. On the one hand, they constantly assert that Israel remains in clear and present danger of being destroyed by Hamas to such an extent that the Gaza War must be prosecuted relentlessly and ruthlessly. This assertion persists despite the IDF commanding 169,000 armed ground forces plus 465,000 reservists compared to Hamas, which had an estimated 30,000 fighters (now reduced to about 12,000). 

The IDF also possesses greater weaponry, including 40,000 armoured vehicles, 350 self-propelled artillery pieces, 171 towed artillery systems, 50 helicopter gunships, 600 aircraft — including 272 combat craft — and numerous drones. Hamas has no such weaponry other than drones, miniature rockets and firearms, RPGs and barely 7% of the number of Israel’s armed ground forces, or 1.9% if reservists are included. 

As their October 7 attack and other attacks have shown, Hamas clearly does present a formidable long-term terrorism threat to Israel’s population and peace. However, set against Israel’s overwhelming military strength, firepower, advanced technology and intelligence systems, it will never likely pose an existential threat to the State of Israel.

On the other hand, Netanyahu, along with IDF chiefs and government spokespersons, maintains that in its conduct of the Gaza War, Israel is a paragon of morality. They claim that the country makes significant efforts to adhere to the language and intent of the Laws of War, particularly in protecting civilians. They deny all the mounting allegations, despite the tally of civilian casualties, video evidence, eyewitness accounts, forensic evidence and medical reports. 

International courts have accused Israel of various war crimes, including genocide. Neither Israel nor the US accepts these charges or recognizes these courts. However, as highly respected independent observers have noted, the way foreign governments respond to Israel’s unbridled savagery may haunt them for years to come.

With the military necessity justification universally discredited, why else would Israel want to perpetrate such wanton mass carnage and destruction on Gaza? A compelling answer to the question can be found in a complex and often toxic interplay of factors. This includes the vengeful collective punishment and suffering inflicted on the civilian population in response to the Hamas atrocities committed on October 7, 2023. Deep-rooted religious beliefs and the concept of Eretz Yisrael, along with ultra-Zionist interpretations of Jewish superiority and rights, contribute to this dynamic. Additionally, there are elements of opportunistic ethnic cleansing and land grabbing, as well as the desperate measures taken by right-wing Prime Minister Netanyahu since 2004 to maintain his grip on power.

His megalomania has allowed fanatical ultra-nationalist Zionist groups to gain influence by giving them positions in his Cabinet in exchange for their loyalty. They now control him and dictate government policy. This influence has shaped a master plan regarding Gaza and the Palestinians, including those in the Occupied West Bank. This plan aims to fully implement the 2018 Israeli Nation State Law, particularly Article 7. This article explicitly encourages the expropriation of Palestinian land by Israeli settlers and the expulsion of its owners. 

The ultimate goal appears to be the complete removal, intimidation, or forced exit through violence of all Palestinians from Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. Where the total of some 5.5 million expelled Palestinians would go is not in this extremist plan, and Israeli ministers have made it clear that it is not their problem and they don’t care as long as they are gone!

The Eretz Yisrael ideology and the Greater Israel territorial expansion mission of ultra-nationalist and ultra-Zionist supremacists, who hold sway over Netanyahu and IDF strategy, has a colossal reach. It encompasses not only Gaza and the West Bank but also Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, large areas of Iraq, Saudi Arabia and even as far away as Kuwait. Absorption of Gaza and the West Bank and expulsion of all Palestinians is their first step.

The justification for these bold territorial claims is repeatedly emphasized, with a focus on the belief that God informed Abraham nearly 4,000 years ago that he and all his descendants would inherit “the whole land” of Israel. However, a small number of Jewish supremacists derived the political ideology of Eretz Yisrael only in the late 19th century, as part of the creation of the Zionism movement. Maps appeared that showed Eretz Yisrael stretching from Egypt in the west to Kuwait in the east and as far north as Anatolia in modern-day Turkey.

Of course, being convinced of divinely granted superiority and exclusive entitlement to other people’s land is not supported by any objective evidence. Furthermore, jus divinum (God’s law) cannot be used to sanctify land grabs or the repression, if not violent expulsion or homicide, of the incumbents. Beyond the universal rights of existence and self-defense, the justifications of God’s law and a claimed exclusive right to all the land of Eretz Yisrael appear more like naked, neo-imperialist sophistry rather than self-determination, rightful sovereignty or anything remotely godly.

If this potential explanation seems far-fetched, consider the numerous statements by Israel’s leaders and ethno-religious nationalist activists. 

Israeli leaders in their own words

Today, Israeli authoritarians dogmatically advance a revisionist history of Palestinian and Jewish presence that insists that Palestinians are only recent squatters who never had any land rights and have no right to be in Eretz Yisrael. 

In reality, both Jews and Palestinian Arabs have cohabited in the same land for roughly the same length of time — several thousand years. What’s more, according to the 1922 British census, Jews represented only 11% of the population, with Palestinian Muslims at 78%. By 1948, via natural birth rate and immigration, it still only stood at 32% against Palestinian Muslims at 60%. As former Israeli Prime Minister, Golda Meir, stated unequivocally in 1970, “I am a Palestinian. From 1921 to 1948, I carried a Palestinian passport.”

Bezalel Smotrich, Israeli Finance Minister:  “There is no such thing as a Palestinian people. There is no Palestinian history.” March 19, 2023.

Gaza’s 2.2 million population will be confined to a narrow “humanitarian zone”, with the rest of Gaza “totally destroyed” … “They will be totally despairing, understanding that there is no hope and nothing to look for in Gaza, and will be looking for relocation to begin a new life in other places.” May 6, 2025.

Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israeli National Security Minister:  The Gaza War presents “an opportunity to concentrate on encouraging the migration of the residents of Gaza … I do not rule out Jewish settlement there … it is an important thing.” January 1, 2024.

“There is no need to bring in aid. They have enough. Hamas food stores should be bombed.” May 6, 2025.

Amihai Eliyahu, Israeli Heritage Minister: The Palestinian population “can go to Ireland or deserts … the monsters in Gaza should find a solution themselves.” When asked if Israel should drop a nuclear bomb on Gaza and kill all the inhabitants, he replied, “That is an option.” November 5, 2023.

Israel “must find ways for Gazans that are more painful than death” to defeat them and break their morale. January 6, 2024.

“We must stop humanitarian aid. There is no problem in bombing their food and fuel reserves. They should starve.” May 6, 2025.

Israel Katz, Israeli Defence Minister: “Israel’s policy is clear. No humanitarian aid will enter Gaza, and blocking this aid is one of the main pressure levers … No one is currently planning to allow any humanitarian aid into Gaza, and there are no preparations to enable such aid.” April 17, 2025.

May Golan, Israeli Social Equality Minister: “I am personally proud of the ruins of Gaza.” February 21, 2024.

“Taking territory is what hurts them most”. Re-establishing Jewish settlements in Gaza would be “a lesson that the Arabs would never forget.” October 21, 2024.

Nissim Vaturi, Israeli Knesset Member: “Gaza and its people must be burned.” January 10, 2024.

 “Who is innocent in Gaza? Civilians went out and slaughtered people in cold blood.” Israel needs to “separate the children and women and kill the adults in Gaza, we are being too considerate.” February 24, 2025.

Anti-extreme Zionism is not anti-Semitism

Anyone criticising contemporary Israeli actions against Palestinians is likely to be slurred as anti-Semitic by fanatical Zionists trying to deflect attention away from their Gaza inhumanity. Peter Isackson highlights the absurdity of such defensive “gaslighting”, and various courts (e.g., Denmark, Australia) have supported the distinction. 

While some critics of Israeli actions may well be anti-Semitic, the vast majority are not. They are simply calling out relentless violations of civilized standards that have persisted for at least 20 months. Such condemnation is not against all Israelis, all Jews or even against all Zionists among them. Rather, it is against the fanatical ultra-Zionist minority and their political enablers who are currently orchestrating the slaughter and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza (and the Occupied West Bank). All while they rejoice in the terror and torment inflicted. 

It is a criticism against the wholesale sado-psychopathy that will forever rank Israel and Israelis, unfortunately, and most unfairly, the innocent along with the guilty, as perpetrators in the list of other genocidal catastrophes, such as those faced by the Armenians under the Ottomans (1915-1923), Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda (1994), Cambodians by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge (1975-1979), the Muslim Rohingya in Myanmar (2016-2022), and yes, ironically, Jews and other minorities across Europe in the Nazi Holocaust (1933-1945). 

The original benign Zionist model, founded by Theodor Herzl and Chaim Weizmann, was all about establishing a permanent, safe and secure home for the Jewish diaspora alongside Palestinian Arabs. The model, as summarized in the 1917 Balfour Declaration, stated that the Palestinians’ pre-existing rights would be fully protected. In particular, “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.”  

Since 1948, however, successive Israeli governments have relegated the Palestinians to a barely tolerated second-class status with diminished rights. In the 21st century, the Netanyahu regime has totally reneged on affording them any rights. By May 2025, his Gaza War and West Bank repression had degenerated into wholesale ethnic cleansing and land grabbing.

Why such a complicit silence? And is it total?

With such an appalling Gaza tableau, it is unsurprising that United Nations reports began condemning manifest Israeli rampages sparked by the Oct 7, 2023, Hamas attack. Further, the UN General Assembly resolved in September 2024 that Israel had to dismantle its occupation of all Palestinian territory, including Gaza and the West Bank, by September 15, 2025. Various submissions of other related resolutions against Israel at the UN Security Council have failed, largely owing to vetoes by the US.

From early 2024, one might also have expected a rapid and widespread condemnation of Israel, if not action, from many foreign governments and leaders who claim to defend universal human rights and oppose hegemonic tyranny. However, aside from occasional complaints, it took more than a year before individual leaders, often slowly, grudgingly and almost apologetically, started to criticize Israel. Significant calls for sanctions and measures by foreign governments, usually friendly towards Israel, only truly began in Spring 2025.

For example, Spain cancelled contracts in May 2025 worth over €290 million ($330 million) to supply defense products to Israel and proposed wider sanctions to its European allies. In 2024, Spain began blocking access to its ports for any vessel carrying arms to Israel, as seen in May and November of that year.

UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Norway sanctioned Israeli Cabinet Ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir on June 10, 2025, for inciting “extremist violence and serious abuses of Palestinians’ human rights.” The sanctions include travel bans and asset freezes. Spain and France are likely to impose similar sanctions.

In February 2024, Ireland sanctioned the passage through Ireland of any weaponry for Israel. In May 2025, Ireland banned the importation of any goods emanating from Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.

Before June 2025, only a handful of foreign political leaders had publicly taken a stand against the Israeli excesses. For example, former Australian Foreign Minister, Bob Carr, commented on May 26, 2025, on the Israeli Gaza War, stating, “Yes, it is genocide, Yes, they are starving civilians. Yes, these settler fanatic politicians are baby-killers. None of this can any longer be denied.”

On May 26, 2025, Anthony Albanese, Australian Prime Minister, condemned the Israeli food and aid blockade of Gaza, saying that it was “completely untenable” for the Netanyahu government to starve Gazans.

In May 2025, British Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) Mark Pritchard delivered to the UK Parliament an impassioned plea to protect Gaza civilians from Israel’s food and aid blockade.

Former British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott were also prominent in their steadfast commentaries on Israel’s conduct in Gaza following the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack.

What about the Fourth Estate? 

Again, lazy and/or gullible journalists have been only too happy to regurgitate propaganda from the Israeli or US government or play safe by waiting for minimal and uncritical commentary from their own country’s politicians. Fortunately, there are some outstanding exceptions.

On May 12, 2025, Times columnist and former Conservative MP Matthew Parris published one of the most unflinching critiques of Britain’s policy toward Israel. “We have reached the point at which Israel’s western allies must say ‘enough is enough’ — and actually mean it,” he wrote.

Parris accused Britain of hiding behind American power while reciting empty phrases about “restraint” and “international law,” all the while supplying Israel with its most powerful weapon — silence. He challenged both the British left and the Conservative opposition for abandoning their moral commitments. “Why did we, through silence and quiet support, give cover to this atrocity?” he asked.

He then offered a blunt answer. Guilt has shaped Western sympathy for Israel’s fight for survival. The shame of Europe’s past and the West’s lingering remorse have formed a deep well of political credit for a small, embattled nation to draw from. Israel, he argued, has turned victimhood into a strategic asset.

But that well is drying up. Nothing seems likely to stop Israel’s push for annexation — first Gaza, next the West Bank — where settlers continue to seize land with the government’s quiet approval. A slow, corrosive moral decay now spreads through both civil and military policy. One day, Parris warned, Israelis may wake to find that the world sees them not as a beacon of democracy but as just another repressive regime in the region. 

Parris’s stark assessment echoed the moral tension voiced by another British Conservative, Times columnist Lord Daniel Finkelstein OBE. In his article, “What Do I Feel About Gaza?”, Finkelstein grappled with the anguish of watching the war unfold as both a committed Jew — whose family suffered under the Nazi Holocaust — and as a humanitarian appalled by the suffering in Gaza. “I feel distress, dismay, despondency. I feel depression, despair, disgust, defiance. Above all, I feel defeated,” he wrote.

Finkelstein condemned the idea of permanently displacing Palestinians or settling the West Bank, warning that if Israel’s war of defense transforms into a campaign of expulsion, it will cross a moral line. “All the language about genocide and war crimes that has been used as taunts by Israel’s opponents will be applicable,” he wrote. He rejected the tactic of collective punishment, stating that if Israel aims to destroy Gaza instead of Hamas, the line between civilian casualties and deliberate harm vanishes. Starving civilians, he argued, is not a strategy — it is simply unacceptable.

He adds that creating a Greater Israel by force is something that he had “always seen as morally wrong and a strategic error” and that plenty of Jews agree with him.

Righteous voices in Israel

Despite the overwhelming cacophony of Israeli government propaganda, its media supporters, large sectors of its population and a campaign to intimidate and silence dissent against Netanyahu’s Gaza War, there are still clear voices within Israeli society that will not be silenced or made to comply. 

For example, Oded Na’aman’s article “Menacing Silence” eloquently decries the ongoing denial, concealment and self-censorship of Israeli media about the Gaza reality. He notes that the Israeli public are so disorientated and riddled with self-doubt that they are easy targets for zealots and manipulative politicians offering a fantasy future.  At the same time, “there is simply no available vision of a tolerable future.” They “refuse to look directly at the calamity of Gaza … because knowing the devastation of Gaza is knowing the true devastation of Israel … their declarations of righteousness are as fierce as the fear of their depravity.”

As Israeli Professor Chaim Gans notes, the self-defining and self-serving nature of ultra-Zionists’ arguments is “valid only for those who believe them” and that “they do not make the slightest attempt to provide moral or universally valid arguments, only reinforcing the prejudices of the already persuaded.” He observes that one nation’s extreme quest for self-determination may expunge another’s legitimate quest and may involve a criminal land grab.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has consistently opposed Netanyahu’s strategy and conduct of the Gaza War, and by Spring 2025 he was becoming increasingly disillusioned and alarmed. As the civilian Palestinian carnage grew and IDF bombardment, shootings and mass displacements intensified, an exasperated Olmert finally exploded in interviews with Haaretz, CNN and other media: “What is it if not a war crime?”, accusing Netanyahu and far-right cabinet members of “committing actions which cannot be interpreted in any other way … What we are doing in Gaza now is a war of devastation: indiscriminate, limitless, cruel and criminal killing of civilians.” He stated that “terrible damage” had been caused “to the moral integrity of the state of Israel and the people of Israel.”

In early July 2025, Olmert accused the Israeli government’s plan to force the surviving Palestinians in Gaza into a narrow so-called “humanitarian zone” as creating a massive “concentration camp” as part of an ethnic cleansing mission.

Yet, as early as July 2024, reports were appearing in Israel that IDF soldiers were videoed confessing to shooting Palestinian civilians for sport or out of boredom. More recently, Haaretz has published damning admissions by IDF soldiers that their commander ordered them to shoot unarmed Palestinians desperately trying to join the massive queues for food at the sparse number of GHF food aid locations, adding that these were undeniably genocidal acts.

Why have so many leaders stayed silent for so long?

Foreign governments and politicians have remained complicitly silent about Israel’s actions in Gaza for several intertwined reasons. Some act out of self-interest, shallow integrity and political hypocrisy. Others remain burdened by historical guilt, shame and remorse — aware that their predecessors during the 1930s and 1940s looked the other way as Hitler’s Final Solution unfolded, and only acknowledged its full horror once the evidence became undeniable in 1945. Many fear appearing bold or controversial, unwilling to risk being labeled anti-Semitic for criticizing ultra-Zionist abuses. And for some, their silence stems from a deeper, prejudiced view that sees Palestinians as an inherent ethno-religious threat to Western values and interests. 

Only after the Nazis were defeated and WWII had ended did foreign governments and politicians suddenly all claim to be philo-Semites and champions of a new Jewish State. When Palestine and Palestinians finally gain release from Israeli hegemony, will that same class of Western leaders and politicos be true to form and suddenly proclaim they had been pro-Palestinian all along?

Some countries have already severed or downgraded diplomatic relations with Israel. Many more (147 out of 193 countries in the UN) now formally recognize Palestine as a state. Israel has isolated itself and created its own pariah status. Now more than ever the situation demands sustained diplomatic, economic, financial, trade, weaponry, travel and cultural sanctioning pressure, especially after Israel’s pre-emptive military attacks on Iran beginning on June 13, 2025, cast attention away from its Gaza crimes. 

[Kaitlyn Diana edited this piece]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.