What Will It Take to End Western Complicity in Israel’s Gaza Genocide?

I have rarely felt so helpless. Or hopeless. Every morning I turn on my computer and read of another mass murder by the Israeli military. Thirty, 40, 50, and more murdered while trying to get food while serving as target practice for a military force seemingly disconnected from their own humanity. Lately, the numbers of the murdered include children and old people intentionally starved to death by the slick machine called the Israeli government.

In a manner the war criminal Adolf Eichmann would have approved of, the Israeli military, government, and private sector are openly collaborating with other governments around the world—but mostly in Europe and North America—in a revolting systematic and heartless attempt to eradicate not just the civilization that was Gaza, but the concept of Palestine. Those of us who are disgusted and appalled by this grotesque exercise in extermination struggle to respond in a manner that would make a difference.

While politicians in Israel celebrate their military’s descent into madness, governments in the West call for Israeli restraint while they send more weapons and money so Israel can continue its homicidal course. The callousness of Israel’s supporters in the U.S. Congress is surpassed only by the size of the checks they receive from the Israel lobby. Simultaneously, the personal complicity of each and every taxpaying U.S. resident increases with each missile fired, each home destroyed, each child denied food, and each child starved to death. That complicity is multiplied every time a U.S. fighter jet is sent to Israel to replace one that was destroyed and with every volley of automatic weapons fire from a weapon held by a U.S. mercenary or Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldier.

Washington holds the purse strings while Israel does its work in the region we call the Middle East. Friedrich Merz, the chancellor of Germany, could not have described the role Israel plays in the West’s imperial scheme led by Washington better than when he told the media that Israel’s illegal bombing of Iran was just “dirty work (that) Israel is doing for all of us.” Although his remarks were met with some criticism, he speaks the truth. This doesn’t mean that everything Israel does necessarily gets the specific approval of Washington, London, Berlin or another Western capital; it does mean that whatever Israel does is seen as part of its role in maintaining Western dominance in the region.

Every day that the genocide continues the culpability of each person in the United States increases.

Throughout most of Israel’s 77-year history, this relationship has provided Washington and its cohorts with a degree of plausible deniability—a process that sees Israel violate human rights and international law followed by Washington “reprimanding” Israeli excesses. Nowadays, those reprimands rarely come. Of course, the funding has never stopped no matter what atrocity Israel’s military committed or what United Nations Security Council resolution it ignored.

Every state in the U.S. is guilty of mass murder in the Israeli slaughter in Gaza and the West Bank. This culpability may come in the form of government investments in Israeli Bonds or its private sector; it may come in those investments being held by retirement funds of state employees in the government or state’s educational systems. This culpability also exists in every state where a company with defense contracts that service the IDF is located. Last time I looked that list included every state in the union. The International Court of Justice has called Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land illegal. Numerous officials in the United Nations, together with clergy, artists, politicians, and others have justifiably labeled Israel’s actions in Gaza as a genocide.

I began this piece stating that I have never felt so helpless. Even during the worst days of the U.S. war in Vietnam, the public protests and the opposition to the war by some politicians, business people, and the media kept me hopeful. Nowadays, when the media refuses to present those against the slaughter in Gaza in any reasonable way, those hopes are almost nonexistent. Every day that the genocide continues the culpability of each person in the United States increases. It is way past time that Israel is cut off from all outside aid in any form. Its killing must end.