Successive UN investigations have documented Israel's genocide, yet Western regimes continue to refuse to call it by name or provide the accountability their own institutions demand.
The United Nations repeatedly reminds us that genocide is taking place in the Gaza Strip. The report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, issued on June 23, 2026, documented all that Israel has committed against the Palestinian people, especially children.
This report followed an earlier report by the same committee on 16 September 2025, which found that genocide was occurring, as well as a report by the UN Special Rapporteur issued on 20 October 2025.
But what good are carefully documented international reports to those who consistently turn a blind eye to Israel’s declared intentions: genocide, ethnic cleansing, total destruction, and the infliction of a terrible famine? Not to mention the torrent of live images that have been streamed to mobile devices day and night for two full years from the scene of atrocities on the ground.
Specialized UN reports, testimonies from international rapporteurs and experts, assessments from the most prominent global human rights organizations, and even Israeli testimonies have followed one another, all confirming the reality of the genocide that Israel has been committing before the eyes of the world since October 2023.
In contrast, most European and Western states have adopted a rigid stance that ignores this glaring truth, despite the genocidal intentions being openly expressed by senior Israeli leaders who continue to boast about what their army and authorities are doing on the ground. Official comments from Western powers on these reports have often been lacking, contrary to what would have been the case in other cases.
Is it not reprehensible that senior European and Western officials consistently avoid using the term „genocide” in connection with these systematic and horrific Israeli practices? It seems as if the word is strictly taboo in European and Western political, media and cultural discourse whenever Israel is mentioned. This taboo exerts power over officials and commentators, who thereby give rise to the suspicion that recognition of genocide depends on the identity of the perpetrator and the status of the victims.
Double standards
It is entirely understandable that allies of the occupying and genocidal regime, or those who consider themselves partners and friends of Israel, avoid unequivocally condemning acts that they themselves have directly or indirectly supported and encouraged – even if only by remaining silent and denying the atrocities.
During this prolonged period of horror, the Israeli side enjoyed military and political support, as well as propagandistic cover, provided by carefully crafted statements by senior European and Western officials. These amounted to evasive justifications for any war crimes or grave violations that an occupying power and its military forces might commit against a population completely exposed to continuous bombardment.
This can be deduced from the phrase that has become a staple of Western discourse: „Israel has every right to self-defense” – words that Israeli leaders interpret simply as a preliminary legitimization of a policy of mass murder and total destruction on the ground. Of course, in this context there is no mention of any right of self-defense of the Palestinian people, or of their right under international humanitarian law to resist the military occupation of their land.
States, governments and political leaderships – accompanied by the elites of thought, culture and the media – insist on ignoring the reality of the genocide against the Palestinian people, or they cover it up with a tendency to deny the genocide, as if all serious international efforts at documentation and investigation were worthless to them.
Denying a genocide that has unfolded in full view of everyone is simply a downplaying of the confirmed atrocities. It also directly or indirectly encourages this pattern of horrific violations as long as it is met with such shocking negligence. Moreover, insisting on outright denial encourages the perpetrators to continue committing horrific war crimes as long as they are not called out. Which Western leaders – with a handful of exceptions, such as Spain – have described what the Israeli leadership and its army have committed as „genocide” or „war crimes”?
It should be recalled that the centers of Western decision-making, including the European Union and its governing bodies, adorned with the slogans of noble values and human rights, engaged in an overwhelming display of bias when they chose very mild or evasive terms to describe Israeli war crimes, which the entire world followed in images, sound and live broadcast. Leaders and spokespeople resorted to cold terms such as „expressing concern” or expressing „condolences” for the victims, often without naming the perpetrator, since the perpetrator was the Israeli leadership and army, whose brutal policies and actions were visible to all.
Observers around the world have noticed how the accusation of „double standards” has become entrenched in European and Western political discourse. This is exactly what former European Commission Vice-President Josep Borrell warned his EU colleagues about – in front of a world that is noticing the serious moral gap between European positions on Ukraine and Palestine. He made this warning in the days of war, on 23 October 2023, at the Foreign Affairs Council in Luxembourg. It is not an exaggeration to conclude from these contradictory positions that some human beings are being placed above others in terms of status, care and human dignity, so that the lives, safety and protection of Palestinians are of lower rank than those of others. This is how the trampling of children, mothers, the sick and the elderly in the Gaza Strip becomes acceptable, without serious steps being taken to curb the machinery of genocide.
The margins, not the center
These wavering positions gave the strong impression that they granted moral immunity to the perpetrator, namely the Israeli leadership and its regular army. The dominant European and Western criticism was limited to two reckless ministers of the Israeli government, which is of little value, since Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich are already the subject of constant criticism within Israeli circles.
Meanwhile, the government and the political leadership in general continue to avoid direct criticism, even after the accumulation of filmed atrocities and the issuance of an arrest warrant for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by the International Criminal Court. This avoidance becomes even more evident when criticism, along with some limited sanctions, is limited to settler gangs and their leaders, without any verbal reprimand or punitive measures directed at the Israeli army, which not only supports and protects the settlers on the ground, but also directly commits grave violations, horrific war crimes, and ethnic cleansing campaigns in the context of a horrific genocide.
This contradiction reflects a deep-rooted European and Western position that seeks to exempt the state, its leadership, and its regular military and security apparatus from any clear criticism, explicit condemnation, or accountability, while only formal positions are formulated at the margins, not at the center: a few settlers instead of the army, and only two ministers instead of the government.
Political Europe, and many elites in the public life of Western states, have avoided even confronting a simple question: does what Israel has done against the Palestinian people constitute genocide?
Denying the genocide in Gaza requires deliberate neglect. It begins by brushing aside these war crimes and acting as if they don’t deserve attention. The accepted narrative has shifted to familiar terms of „humanitarian crisis” and „alarming” conditions, or to showing concern for „civilian suffering” – as if the programmed genocide, confirmed by declared intentions, were simply a natural disaster that struck the place.
States and governments that pride themselves on their moral stance, human values, international law and human rights should have respected these commitments. They should have warned of the genocidal campaign in its earliest stages, deprived it of its political and propagandistic cover, and supported the enforcement of international justice and the prosecution of cases related to the genocide against the Palestinian people. The most important of these is the case brought by South Africa to the International Court of Justice on the grounds of Israel’s violation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
Instead, moral turpitude, incitement, intimidation, and even the imposition of unjust sanctions against prosecutors have escalated, affecting international judicial bodies and their staff, as well as UN rapporteurs. Thus it becomes clear that complicity in the genocide committed against the Palestinian people is increasingly undermining international law and threatening the foundations of international action and the protection afforded to its institutions and authorities.
