The Moral Bankruptcy of the West
On 19 December 2024, Human Rights Watch issued a 179-page report detailing Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
On 5 December 2024, Amnesty International issued a 296-page report detailing Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
On 21 November 2024, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for crimes against humanity and war crimes.
On 26 January 2024, the International Court of Justice found that a plausible case can be made that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
Given the West’s presumed commitment to human rights and especially to preventing genocide, one would have expected countries like the United States, Britain, and Germany, to have stopped the Israeli genocide in its tracks.
Instead, the governments in those three countries, especially the United States, have supported Israel’s unimaginable behavior in Gaza at every turn. Indeed, those three countries are complicit in this genocide.
Moreover, almost all of the many human rights advocates in those countries, and in the West more generally, have stayed silent while Israel executed its genocide. The mainstream media has made hardly any effort to expose and challenge what Israel is doing to the Palestinians. Indeed some key outlets have staunchly supported Israel’s actions.
One wonders what people in the West who have either supported Israel’s genocide or remained silent tell themselves to justify their behavior and sleep at night.
History will not treat them kindly.
Direct result of the fundamental flaw of liberal democracy which is that politicians and policies are on the open market, just like prostitutes. With no exception, all the liberal democracies are really plutocracies.
Rich Jews in this case bought out the western leaders who in return are providing Israel with full support for their genocide. It’s all transactions.
Professor, you are absolutely correct in your assessment. I would add Canada to the complicity list of Western nations. Canada’s government should know better, considering Canadian Generals were in command of UN peacekeepers in Rwanda and Bosnia-Herzegovina. They have seen this movie before but still “crickets”. Unfortunately the Israeli government has led Western governments by the nose with their propaganda. Fortunately, social media has exposed the reality of ethnic cleansing to those of us who are paying attention to media like the Intercept, Al Jessera and following Palestinians posting on IG and TikTok. Even those outlets are manipulating their algorithms to bury reality.
Protestors here in Canada have been over policed to the point of police officers initiating physical violence against them and journalists when the protest is very peaceful and then trumped up charges by ambitious narrow minded prosecutors. But of course Canada is “all in” because naming what Israel as genocide points back to our own genocidal history with our many Indigenous peoples.
Those of us with moral-ethical compasses need to continue to speak up. It’s the least we can do!!