Ahram Online
Western calls to stop Israel's genocude
Azza Radwan Sedky
Friday 30 May 2025
The rock-solid wall of support for Israel in the West is waning, and the Western media and Western politicians are finally admitting the truth and denouncing the dehumanisation and the dispossession of the Palestinians that Israel is committing.
Some Western countries may finally be realising the truth about the genocide that Israel is carrying out against the Palestinians in Gaza. Three Western countries, the UK, France, and Canada, recently issued a statement saying they were “horrified” by Israel’s military escalation in Gaza and threatening to take “concrete actions” against it if it did not stop its offensive and lift aid restrictions.
“We strongly oppose the expansion of Israel’s military operations in Gaza. The level of human suffering in Gaza is intolerable,” said the statement.
It also demanded a ceasefire and called Israel’s escalation “wholly disproportionate.” The British government then suspended free-trade negotiations with Israel and has levelled new sanctions on West Bank settlements.Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reacted in his usual way, his tone never faltering and accusing the three countries of offering a huge prize to Hamas. The only action he took was to allow a handful of trucks of inadequate aid to enter Gaza, which the UN called “a drop in the ocean.”
These trucks carried baby food and nutrition, hardly nourishment that Hamas would want to lay it hands on, and yet to this day, the contents of the trucks have not been distributed and have not reached the starving babies.
Finally, and after nine months of brutality, the pictures of skin-and-bones children emerging from Gaza bearing a strong resemblance to the skeletal Jewish children imprisoned in Nazi camps in World War II are affecting Western politicians and media.
The words of the UK, French, and Canadian leaders expressed an awakening in the West. But much of the world woke up many, many months ago; it has been the Western media and Western politicians that have maintained a deaf ear all along.
Statements made by the UN may have contributed to the sudden change. Tom Fletcher, UN under-secretary-general for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief coordinator, said that 14,000 babies could die in Gaza in 48 hours if aid does not reach them in time. Tedros Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organisation (WHO), said that two million people were starving in Gaza while “tons of food are blocked at the border.”
Hence, a rhetorical shift is occurring, and an awakening is indeed happening even if it has taken the Western world over 500 days to react to Israel’s atrocities. The rock-solid wall of support for Israel in the West is waning, and the Western media and Western politicians are finally admitting the truth and denouncing the dehumanisation and the dispossession of the Palestinians that Israel is committing.
This is clear from a look at the Western media, which had earlier been oblivious to the suffering of the Palestinians. The UK Guardian newspaper said that Israel “plans a Gaza without Palestinians. What is this, if not genocidal?” The UK Financial Times called the situation “the West’s shameful silence.” It also accused the US and Europe of being complicit as Israel made Gaza uninhabitable.
A Washington Post headline utilised a remarkably different tone than its usual one: “As Israel Starves and Destroys Gaza, It’s Turning into a Global Pariah.” The British online newspaper the Independent said “end the deafening silence on Gaza – it is time to speak up.” The US network CNN’s Christiane Amanpour bluntly asked Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel if she was seriously denying that people are dying of starvation in Gaza in a 20-minute interview where the latter continued to lie.
The patience of Israel’s Western allies appears to be running out, and cracks are evident in Western governments and parliaments, too. British Foreign Secretary David Lammy has been very vocal against Israel. He slammed Israel’s war in Gaza as he paused the trade deal negotiations with it and called the Israeli lawmakers’ ongoing comments “repellent and monstrous.”
He also said that Israel’s approach is “incompatible with the principles that underpin our bilateral relationship, rejected by members across this House, and frankly it’s an affront to the values of the British people.”
Grumblings are occurring elsewhere, too. French President Emmanuel Macron called Israel’s complete blockade on aid into Gaza “shameful and unacceptable.” He added that “my job is to do everything I can to make it stop.” Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni similarly denounced the blockade, calling it “unjustifiable.”
Even amongst US lawmakers, there are similar feelings. Democratic Senator Chris van Hollen said US President Donald Trump’s plan “to essentially force two million Palestinian civilians to leave Gaza is simply ethnic cleansing by another name.”Trump himself acknowledged that “a lot of people are starving in Gaza.” US Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff told ABC News that although the situation in Gaza was “logistically complicated,” the US administration did not want to see a humanitarian crisis, “and we will not allow it to occur on President Trump’s watch.”
It is to be hoped that the pressure will mount even further, as the only way to stop Israel is if Western politicians and the media find far more courage than they have dared to muster so far.
Lip service will not cut it, and the ongoing calamity in Gaza needs more than rhetorical speeches to stop it.The writer is a former professor of communication who is based in Vancouver, Canada.
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