In 1945, the world was forced to confront its own cowardice. Allied troops liberated the Nazi death camps and filmed the horror: skeletal corpses, mass graves, ruined lives. The images stunned the public. But the truth was, the world had long suspected what was happening. And the shame wasn’t just for what the Nazis had done—it was for what everyone else had allowed.
In 2025, a similar moment of reckoning draws near.
But this time, the difference is staggering: the world has watched the genocide unfold in real time. From the first bombs over Jabalia to the starvation in Rafah, the obliteration of entire families, and the targeting of aid workers, every stage of the slaughter has been visible—streamed, uploaded, documented. And still, nothing was done.
Israel disallowed all foreign journalists from entering Gaza, despite it not being Israeli territory, in an effort to control the narrative. But that control collapsed under the weight of testimony, footage, and the courageous reporting of Palestinians trapped under siege. Even without international access, the truth bled through.
Since October 2023, Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed more than 60,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, with tens of thousands more expected to die from starvation, untreated wounds, and the collapse of all basic services. One peer-reviewed study published in The Lancet estimated that the true toll—counting indirect deaths—could exceed 186,000. More than half of those killed are believed to be women and children. This is not a war. It is a systematic annihilation.
And now, for the first time, the charge of genocide is no longer coming only from international observers. It is coming from within Israel itself.
On July 28, 2025, two of Israel’s most respected human rights organizations—B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights (PHR)—published separate reports concluding that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. They cited not just the scale of civilian killing, but its intent: the targeting of a people for who they are, not for what they’ve done.
“What we see is a clear, intentional attack on civilians in order to destroy a group,” said Yuli Novak, director of B’Tselem. “Every human being has to ask: what do you do in the face of genocide?”
PHR’s report focused on the deliberate destruction of Gaza’s health system—hospitals bombed, doctors killed, medical care denied. Its director, Guy Shalev, stated that this alone fulfills Article 2(c) of the Genocide Convention, which prohibits “deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to destroy” a people. The Israeli government, he said, “had enough times and enough opportunities to stop this gradual, systematic attack.”
The Children Were Not Hidden
The horror is not theoretical. It is specific and human.
One story, shared by a former U.S. Green Beret, described a barefoot boy named Amir – he had reached the GHF checkpoint after walking 12 kilometres. Starving but dignified, Amir approached the soldier at a food distribution site, kissed his hand, and said, “Shukran.” The soldier told him: “You are a human being. The world cares about you.” Amir walked away with his aid box. Moments later, he was shot and killed by an Israeli sniper.
The story was retold live on Dialogue Works by host Nima Alkhorshid, who choked up mid-sentence. Opposite him, retired U.S. Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson—former Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell—sat trembling with rage. In another interview given recently, a UK doctor working in Gaza told how he encountered children who had been shot to death by Israelis, with food found in their mouths.
“I’m revolted,” Wilkerson said. “This is as bad as anything Hitler ever did. Netanyahu is the Adolf Hitler of the present day.”
This wasn’t a careless comparison. It was a veteran soldier, schooled in the brutal calculus of war, calling out what he saw as a campaign of extermination, not just occupation.
A Controlled Starvation
What is unfolding in Gaza is not a war between armies. It is a siege designed to make life impossible. More than 85% of the population has been displaced. Refugee camps are bombed. Food convoys are shelled. UN officials warn that famine is imminent, and in some areas already underway. The water is undrinkable. Hospitals are gone. Children are dying of malnutrition. Aid workers speak of babies wasting away in front of them.
Yet Israel insists there is “no starvation in Gaza.” A grotesque lie, made possible only because no foreign press is allowed in to disprove it.
But the testimony still gets out. Not only from Palestinians, but from UN staff, aid workers, international surgeons, and now even Israelis.
Macron and Starmer: The Politics of Delay
And still, the governments of Europe remain frozen in cowardice. Emmanuel Macron has said France may recognize a Palestinian state—in September. Keir Starmer insists Israel has a “right to self-defense,” supports ongoing arms sales, and has refused to call for a ceasefire even after mass civilian massacres were confirmed.
These men are not confused. They are not uninformed. They are managing their reputations. Colonel Wilkerson was blunt:
“They’re trying to swash the guilt they feel. This is all political expediency. Their reputations are at stake.”
Macron and Starmer sense what is coming. They know Gaza will haunt them, as Rwanda haunts Clinton, and Srebrenica haunts Europe. Their gestures are not humanitarian—they are tactical, delayed just enough to preserve deniability.
Genocide, Confirmed
The shift in Israeli civil society is perhaps the most damning development of all. B’Tselem and PHR’s reports describe the war not just in legal terms but as a moral failure on a global scale. The targeting of civilians, the bombing of hospitals, the incitement from Israeli leaders who spoke of “human animals” and “no civilians in Gaza”—these are not isolated events. They are patterns.
And they are patterns that fit the legal and moral definition of genocide.
“We don’t need to guess what Israel is doing,” Novak said. “The leadership has said it out loud, from day one. They talked about extermination. They talked about collective punishment. And now, they are carrying it out.”
No More Excuses
In 1945, Allied generals filmed the camps because they knew people would try to deny it happened. That footage stands as a monument to truth. Today, in Gaza, footage is being filmed too—by civilians with phones, by doctors with bodycams, by aid workers smuggling out hard drives. A record is being built.
And when the time comes to answer for what happened, the question will not be: “Where was Netanyahu?”
It will be:
“Where were Macron and Starmer?
Where were the leaders of the Arab world?
Where was anyone in power who could have sent peacekeepers, or intervened, or even spoken the truth?”
They were there.
They saw it.
And they did nothing.
