By Ramzy Baroud

The consequences of the Israeli genocide in Gaza will be dire. An event of this degree of barbarity, sustained by an international conspiracy of moral inertia and silence, will not be relegated to history as just another “conflict” or a mere tragedy.

The Gaza genocide is a catalyst for major events to come. Israel and its benefactors are acutely aware of this historical reality.

This is precisely why Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in a race against time, desperately trying to ensure his country remains relevant, if not standing, in the coming era. He pursues this through territorial expansion in Syria, relentless aggression against Lebanon, and, of course, the desire to annex all occupied Palestinian territories.

But history cannot be controlled with such precision. However clever he may think he is, Netanyahu has already lost the ability to influence the outcome.

He has been unable to set a clear agenda in Gaza, let alone achieve any strategic goals in a 365-square-kilometer expanse of destroyed concrete and ashes. Gazans have proven that collective sumud can defeat one of the most well-equipped modern armies.

Indeed, history itself has taught us that changes of great magnitude are inevitable. The true heartbreak is that this change is not happening fast enough to save a starving population, and the growing pro-Palestinian sentiment is not expanding at the rate needed to achieve a decisive political outcome.

Our confidence in this inevitable change is rooted in history. The First World War was not just a “Great War” but a cataclysmic event that fully shattered the geopolitical order of its time. Four empires were fundamentally reshuffled; some, like the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman, were erased from existence.

The new world order resulting from the First World War was short-lived. The modern international system we have today is a direct outcome of the Second World War. This includes the United Nations and all the new Western-centric economic, legal, and political institutions that were forged by the Bretton Woods Agreement in 1944.

This includes the World Bank, the IMF, and ultimately NATO, thus sowing the seeds of yet more global conflicts.

The fall of the Berlin Wall was heralded as the singular, defining event that resolved the lingering conflicts of the post-WWII geopolitical struggle, supposedly ushering in a new, permanent global realignment, or, to some, the “end of history.”

The Arab, the Left and those who remained silent: History will not forgive you

by Dr Ramzy Baroud @RamzyBaroud https://t.co/S7ZtDYVS5l

— Middle East Monitor (@MiddleEastMnt) August 12, 2025

History, however, had other plans. Not even the horrific September 11 attacks and the subsequent US-led wars could reinvent the global order in a way that was consistent with US-Western interests and priorities.

Gaza is infinitely small when judged by its geography, economic worth, or political import. Yet, it has proven to be the most significant global event defining this generation’s political consciousness.

The fact that the self-proclaimed guardians of the post-WWII order are the very entities that are violently and brazenly violating every international and humanitarian law is enough to fundamentally alter our relationship with the West’s championed “rule-based order.”

This may not seem significant now, but it will have profound, long-term consequences. It has largely compromised and, in fact, delegitimised the moral authority imposed, often by violence, by the West over the rest of the world for decades, especially in the Global South.

This self-imposed delegitimisation will also impact the very idea of democracy, which has been under siege in many countries, including Western democracies. This is only natural, considering that most of the planet feels strongly that Israel must end its genocide and that its leaders must be held accountable.

Yet, little to no action follows.

The shift in Western public opinion in favor of Palestinians is astounding when considered against the backdrop of total Western media dehumanisation of the Palestinian people and Western governments’ blind allegiance to Israel. More shocking is that this shift is largely the result of the work of ordinary people on social media, activists mobilizing in the streets, and independent journalists, mostly in Gaza, working under extreme duress and with minimal resources.

A central conclusion is the failure of Arab and Muslim nations to factor into this tragedy befalling their own brethren in Palestine. While some are engaged in empty rhetoric or self-flagellation, others subsist in a state of inertia, as if the genocide in Gaza were a foreign topic, like the wars in Ukraine or Congo.

This fact alone shall challenge our very collective self-definition — what it means to be an Arab or a Muslim, and whether such definitions carry supra-political identities. Time will tell.

The Left, too, is problematic in its own way. While not a monolith, and while many on the Left have championed the global protests against the genocide, others remain splintered and unable to form a unified front, even temporarily.

Some leftists are still chasing their own tails, crippled by the worry that being anti-Zionist would earn them the label of antisemitism. For this group, self-policing and self-censorship are preventing them from taking decisive action.

History does not take its cues from Israel or Western powers. Gaza will indeed result in the kind of global shifts that will affect us all, far beyond the Middle East.

For now, however, it is most urgent that we use our collective will and action to influence one single historical event: ending the genocide and the famine in Gaza.

The rest will be left to history, and to those who wish to be relevant when the world changes again.

Dr Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of six books. His forthcoming book, Before the Flood, will be published by Seven Stories Press. His other books include Our Vision for Liberation, My Father was a Freedom Fighter and The Last Earth. Dr Baroud is a non-resident senior research fellow at the Centre for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). Republished with permission. His website is www.ramzybaroud.net

This article was first published on Café Pacific.

I want to share a writer’s journey — of living and writing through the Genocide.  Where I live and how I live could not be further from the horror playing out in Gaza and, increasingly, on the West Bank.

Yet, because my country provides military, intelligence and diplomatic support to Israel and the US, I feel compelled to answer the call to support Palestine by doing the one thing I know best: writing.

I live in a paradise that supports genocide
I am one of the blessed of the earth. I’m surrounded by similarly fortunate people. I live in a heart-stoppingly beautiful bay.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

ANALYSIS: By Ilan Pappé

Responses in the Western world to the genocide in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank raise a troubling question: why is the official West, and official Western Europe in particular, so indifferent to Palestinian suffering?

Why is the Democratic Party in the US complicit, directly and indirectly, in sustaining the daily inhumanity in Palestine — a complicity so visible that it probably was one reason they lost the election, as the Arab American and progressive vote in key states could, and justifiably so, not forgive the Biden administration for its part in the genocide in the Gaza Strip?

This is a pertinent question, given that we are dealing with a televised genocide that has now been renewed on the ground. It is different from previous periods in which Western indifference and complicity were displayed, either during the Nakba or the long years of occupation since 1967.

During the Nakba and up to 1967, it was not easy to get hold of information, and the oppression after 1967 was mostly incremental, and, as such, was ignored by the Western media and politics, which refused to acknowledge its cumulative effect on the Palestinians.

But these last 18 months are very different. Ignoring the genocide in the Gaza Strip and the ethnic cleansing in the West Bank can only be described as intentional and not due to ignorance.

Both the Israelis’ actions and the discourse that accompanies them are too visible to be ignored, unless politicians, academics, and journalists choose to do so.

This kind of ignorance is, first and foremost, the result of successful Israeli lobbying that thrived on the fertile ground of an European guilt complex, racism and Islamophobia. In the case of the US, it is also the outcome of many years of an effective and ruthless lobbying machine that very few in academia, media, and, in particular, politics, dare to disobey.

The moral panic phenomenon
This phenomenon is known in recent scholarship as moral panic, very characteristic of the more conscientious sections of Western societies: intellectuals, journalists, and artists.

Moral panic is a situation in which a person is afraid of adhering to his or her own moral convictions because this would demand some courage that might have consequences. We are not always tested in situations that require courage, or at least integrity. When it does happen, it is in situations where morality is not an abstract idea, but a call for action.

This is why so many Germans were silent when Jews were sent to extermination camps, and this is why white Americans stood by when African Americans were lynched or, earlier on, enslaved and abused.

What is the price that leading Western journalists, veteran politicians, tenured professors, or chief executives of well-known companies would have to pay if they were to blame Israel for committing a genocide in the Gaza Strip?

It seems they are worried about two possible outcomes. The first is being condemned as antisemites or Holocaust deniers. Secondly, they fear an honest response would trigger a discussion that would include the complicity of their country, or Europe, or the West in general, in enabling the genocide and all the criminal policies against the Palestinians that preceded it.

This moral panic leads to some astonishing phenomena. In general, it transforms educated, highly articulate and knowledgeable people into total imbeciles when they talk about Palestine.

It disallows the more perceptive and thoughtful members of the security services from examining Israeli demands to include all Palestinian resistance on a terrorist list, and it dehumanises Palestinian victims in the mainstream media.

On ‘Moral Panic’ and the Courage to Speak – Professor Ilan Pappé examines how fear of professional consequences silences Western voices in the face of genocide in Gaza — and what this reveals about power, complicity, and moral responsibility.

Don’t miss this exclusive article.… pic.twitter.com/bnYHYVNckM

— The Palestine Chronicle (@PalestineChron) April 18, 2025

Lack of compassion
The lack of compassion and basic solidarity with the victims of genocide was exposed by the double standards shown by mainstream media in the West, and, in particular, by the more established newspapers in the US, such as The New York Times and The Washington Post.

When the editor of The Palestine Chronicle, Dr Ramzy Baroud, lost 56 members of his family — killed by the Israeli genocidal campaign in the Gaza Strip — not one of his colleagues in American journalism bothered to talk to him or show any interest in hearing about this atrocity.

On the other hand, a fabricated Israeli allegation of a connection between the Chronicle and a family, in whose block of flats hostages were held, triggered huge interest by these outlets.

This imbalance in humanity and solidarity is just one example of the distortions that accompanies moral panic. I have little doubt that the actions against Palestinian or pro-Palestinian students in the US, or against known activists in Britain and France, as well as the arrest of the editor of the Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah, in Switzerland, are all manifestations of this distorted moral behaviour.

A similar case unfolded just recently in Australia. Mary Kostakidis, a famous Australian journalist and former prime-time weeknight SBS World News Australia presenter, has been taken to the federal court over her — one should say quite tame — reporting on the situation in the Gaza Strip.

The very fact that the court has not dismissed this allegation upon its arrival shows you how deeply rooted moral panic is in the Global North.

But there is another side to it. Thankfully, there is a much larger group of people who are not afraid of taking the risks involved in clearly stating their support for the Palestinians, and who do show this solidarity while knowing it may lead to suspension, deportation, or even jail time. They are not easily found among the mainstream academia, media, or politics, but they are the authentic voice of their societies in many parts of the Western world.

The Palestinians do not have the luxury of allowing Western moral panic to have its say or impact. Not caving in to this panic is one small but important step in building a global Palestine network that is urgently needed — firstly, to stop the destruction of Palestine and its people, and second, to create the conditions for a decolonised and liberated Palestine in the future.

Dr Ilan Pappé is an Israeli historian, political scientist, and former politician. He is a professor with the College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, director of the university’s European Centre for Palestine Studies, and co-director of the Exeter Centre for Ethno-Political Studies. This article is republished from The Palestine Chronicle, 19 April 2025.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz