Israel’s Greatest Weapon Isn’t F-16s — It's The Silence of the World

What Israel couldn’t destroy through fire, it’s trying to wipe out with famine. And the silence of the world —maybe the most insidious weapon of all — grows louder as EU blames those being starved.

On the second day of Ramadan — a month of reflection, fasting, and renewal — Israel announced it is stopping all aid from entering Gaza , in coordination with the United States. Not a pause. Not a breakdown in negotiations. This is a weapon Oxfam clearly defines as “an act of collective punishment, explicitly prohibited under international humanitarian law.”

Cartoon by Carlos Latuff

Yet, somehow after Israel announced its plan to starve 2.2 million Palestinians, the European Union actually issued a condemnation of those being starved rather than of Israel. They even felt compelled to provide the understatement of the century: “Israel’s subsequent decision to block the entry of all humanitarian aid into Gaza could potentially result in humanitarian consequences.”

Israel’s suffocation of Gaza — the blockade of aid, the shattering of ceasefire promises — is all met with silence. Yet the refusal of Hamas to accept Netanyahu’s outlandish proposition — a brief pause in fire to hand over all the hostages and then a return to genocide — is shamelessly being framed as the true obstruction to peace.

For 17 months, Israel has unleashed hell upon Gaza with impunity. Now, with much of it already reduced to rubble, the bombs have quieted to make room for a quieter kind of killing: Hunger.

What Israel couldn’t destroy through fire, it’s now trying to wipe out through famine. And the silence of the world —maybe the most insidious weapon of all — grows louder with every body buried without the sound of explosions to mark its death.

The siege is genocidal warfare in slow motion.

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"Israel is once again blocking an entire population from receiving aid, using it as a bargaining chip. This is unacceptable, outrageous, and will have devastating consequences," says MSF’s Caroline Seguin.

Empire’s Unwritten Laws

Israel’s audacity is possible because the Western world speaks in the language of moral absolutes only when the victims look like them. When Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine in 2022, the condemnation was swift, the lines of aggression drawn in bold relief.

French President Emmanuel Macron spelled it out plainly on X yesterday: “There is an aggressor: Russia. There is a victim: Ukraine".

This sentiment has been echoed tirelessly by Ursula von der Leyen, and all Western leaders. Aid poured in. Sanctions rained down. Ukraine’s resistance became a sacred struggle, wrapped in the rhetoric of sovereignty and self-determination.

But swap the names — Israel for Russia, Palestine for Ukraine — and the entire moral framework collapses.

When Ukrainian civilians fashion Molotov cocktails to defend their homes, they are glorified heroes. When Palestinians hurl stones at armored vehicles, they are terrorists. When Russia targets civilian infrastructure, it’s a war crime. When Israel cuts off water, fuel, and electricity to Gaza’s two million inhabitants — a textbook act of collective punishment under the Geneva Conventions — it is merely “defending itself.”

International law, we are told, is a fixed and impartial force. But in the hands of empire, it bends to the will of the powerful — a mirage shimmering just out of reach for the oppressed.

The West’s unwavering support for Israel reveals what has always been true: the so-called “rules-based international order” was never meant to protect the powerless. It exists to regulate who is allowed to wield violence, and who must endure it in silence.

Nowhere is this selective empathy more vividly exposed than in the small humiliations of empire — the rituals through which power performs its generosity while reminding the powerless of their dependence.