The moral bankruptcy of the West
Almost all of the many human rights advocates in those countries, and the West more generally, have stayed silent while Israel executed its genocide.
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.
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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.
Palestinian children gather at a destroyed vehicle in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on October 27, 2024, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict. (Photo: REUTERS/Mohammed Salem)
Instead, the governments in those three countries, especially the United States, have supported Israel’s unimaginable behaviour 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 the West more generally, have stayed silent while Israel executed its genocide.
Palestinians stand at the site of an Israeli airstrike on a shelter housing displaced people, amid the conflict between Israel and Hamas, in central Gaza Strip, August 17, 2024. (Reuters)
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 behaviour and sleep at night.
History will not treat them kindly.
John Mearsheimer is a distinguished professor at the University of Chicago and one of the leading International Relations scholars in the world.
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