‘Never Again,’ Again: The World’s Silent Endorsement of Gaza’s Genocide

As Gaza burns, the global silence reveals a grim complicity in the face of unfolding genocide. With every bomb dropped, the world’s indifference cements its role as an enabler of Gaza’s suffering.

The cries of Gaza—where lives are snuffed out under the weight of bombs and cold indifference—echo faintly, if at all, across the headlines of Western media. Today, another Palestinian baby froze to death, another hundred lives were lost to Israeli airstrikes, and another chapter of unspeakable horror unfolds in this U.S.-backed Israeli genocide. Yet, the world’s gaze is fixed elsewhere: on the glitz of the Golden Globes or any of many other trivial distractions.

What Israel is doing in Gaza is not war as we understand it and are told; it is industrialized slaughter, a hell on Earth meticulously crafted and perpetuated. Gaza, a strip of land reduced to an open-air prison, is now undeniably a death camp. The world’s most vulnerable—the sick, the young, the displaced—are being annihilated. This is not hyperbole; it is a stark reality and chilling reminder that history repeats itself. A holocaust is happening right before our eyes and the world is silent.

Despite relentless bombardment and the systematic starvation of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, Israel’s strategy seems to be fueling resistance rather than extinguishing it. Israeli security officials admit that, even after the indiscriminate destruction, Hamas fighters have only been reduced from 25,000 to 19,000—a grim testament to how oppression breeds defiance faster than it can be crushed.

The Silent Genocide

Freezing temperatures and Israel’s relentless onslaught is killing newborn Palestinian babies. UNRWA reports that 7,700 infants are being denied life-saving care. The death toll among children rises each and every day, as nearly two million displaced Palestinians endure bombardments without adequate shelter, heating, or medical aid. UNICEF estimates at least 17,000 children are now orphaned or separated from their families, wandering alone in a desolate wasteland.

Consider Dr. Thabat Salim, a 29-year-old neonatologist whose life—dedicated to saving others—was snuffed out by an Israeli airstrike.

She was delivering medication when the army bombed the home she entered. Her body was only identifiable by a ring on her hand. Her death was, like all other targeted civilians, journalists and doctors in Gaza, not collateral damage; it was the erasure of hope, a deliberate attempt to extinguish the humanity she represented. Her death affirms Israel’s calculated campaign to shatter the spirit of a people and to erase future generations.

Meanwhile, families like the Zohds are wiped out in a single airstrike, their remains trapped beneath rubble for lack of equipment to recover them. Entire lineages are erased, their names fading into a growing list of the obliterated. This is ethnic cleansing in plain sight, executed with precision and impunity.

Journalist Motasem A Dalloul posted this photo reportedly showing the only remaining survivor of the Zohd family.

Impunity and Western Complicity

In Brazil, an Israeli soldier’s vacation ended abruptly when local authorities began investigating him for war crimes in Gaza. Yuval Vagdani was reportedly smuggled out of Brazil by Israeli intelligence officials, because of a Brazilian court order for police to take investigative measures against him. There are also indications that evidence is being destroyed.

This rare accountability was triggered by the Hind Rajab Foundation, which submitted 500 pages of evidence including video footage, geolocation data, and photographs that show the suspect planting explosives and participating in the destruction of entire neighborhoods—a fraction of what could be compiled against countless others. Israel’s response reveals the power of the impunity afforded to this rogue state by a complicit political and media establishment: Warning soldiers not to post evidence of their crimes on social media, rather than urging them to refrain from committing atrocities in the first place, let alone documenting and bragging about them.

Israel’s soldiers, shielded by their government and backed by Western powers, act as if they are above the law, because so far, they have been. The Israeli army, government, and media are growing increasingly uneasy. Soldiers who served in Gaza now face the risk of arrest in at least 125 countries that are signatories to the Rome Statute, charged with war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.

In Brazil and beyond, legal actions against Israelis suspected of atrocities in Gaza are long overdue. #Apartheid Israel is working tirelessly to shield its soldiers, knowing that a conviction abroad for crimes against Palestinians would set a dangerous precedent it cannot afford.

According to Israeli media, pro-Palestinian organizations have filed 50 legal complaints worldwide against Israeli soldiers for war crimes in Gaza. Israel’s public broadcaster KAN reports that while 10 cases have been investigated, no arrests have been made—yet. The Israeli daily Haaretz, which the government sanctioned and cut ties with banning government funding bodies from communicating or placing advertisements with the newspaper, said South Africa, Sri Lanka, Belgium, France, and Brazil saw complaints filed against Israeli soldiers.

While legal complaints have been filed in more countries, arrests remain elusive at best. The Rome Statute, Geneva Conventions, and international laws designed to protect civilians are being treated as inconvenient suggestions rather than binding obligations. Western governments, led by the United States, turn a blind eye time and time again, continuing to supply weapons and financial aid to fuel this machinery of death.

The Biden administration’s own actions exemplify this complicity. In October, just weeks before the U.S. presidential election, the administration warned Israel to improve Gaza’s humanitarian conditions within 30 days or risk violating U.S. military aid laws. The demands included allowing 350 aid trucks daily and implementing combat pauses to ensure safe humanitarian access. Yet, after the deadline passed, the administration concluded Israel wasn’t obstructing aid, despite unmet demands, and in fact a drop in the number of trucks being allowed in. This Friday, it notified Congress of plans to sell $8 billion in weapons to Israel, sending a clear message: impunity will not only be tolerated but rewarded.

The Media’s Deafening Silence

Western media’s complicity lies not only in its omissions but in its framing. Reports that do emerge sanitize the violence, reducing massacres to “clashes” or “responses.” The context of occupation, the siege, and the systematic dehumanization of Palestinians is erased, leaving an impression of symmetry where none exists. The result? A public misled into believing that what is happening in Gaza is a “conflict” rather than a genocide.

The video clip above is from an October 2024 episode of The Listening Post on Al Jazeera. You can watch the full episode here.