Unseeing genocide: How the West lost Its moral compass in Gaza

A brutal reckoning with the West’s complicity, as Gaza shatters the illusion of morality and exposes empire’s true reflection, writes Yuki Lindley.

PALESTINIANS UNDERSTAND what Israel means when it speaks of a ceasefire; it is not an end to genocide, but a return to the slower version, which has been eliminating Indigenous Palestinians from their lands since the foundation of the state of Israel in 1948.

We see Western powers now scrambling to rehabilitate Israel's image as a beacon of democratic values in the Middle East. They speak of a return to the two-state solution, which is a return to the status quo, before they lost control of the narrative.

They are asking us all to unsee this genocide, to individualise the problem as one of a few bad actors and to ignore what has become undeniable to those paying attention — that a society built on a national identity of victimhood, growing up on a stage of global impunity, has revealed to the world the worst impulses of Western imperialism and colonisation.

Still reeling from having lost control of the carefully manufactured narrative, to tech-savvy, young Palestinians documenting their own genocide, the Western media continues to try to convince the world that Israel is redeemable; that a return to 6 October 2023 is an acceptable outcome, and to muddy the waters with talks of peace deals and a two-state solution.

Empire rebranded: The new architecture of violence

Colonial power may have changed its language, but it still decides who lives, who dies and who is forgotten.

The Abraham Accords was never a peace deal; it was an arms deal between the West and the oligarchs of the Arab world, and to return to that fantasy is a betrayal of not just the Palestinians but all of us who have borne witness to the atrocities committed in our names.

What Palestine has shown the world is just how invested global elites are in the project of Israel and Israel has shown the world just how much it can get away with, resulting in record profits for Israel’s military, surveillance-tech industries during 2024.

As historian and political theorist Achille Mbembe has forewarned, the Gazafication of the world is well underway, with Israel’s biotech and surveillance technologies “battle tested” on Palestinians, exported to world leaders intent on hardening their borders to contain ever-increasing numbers of desperate people with little left to lose. Israel has ushered in a new horizon for what world leaders think they can get away with in full view of the public.

But for a whole generation in the Western imperial core, unseeing this genocide is unimaginable. As Palestinian scholar Tareq Baconi points out, those within the movement are no longer arguing about two-state solutions or peace deals, but talking about decolonising Palestine, about return and the dismantling of the apartheid state of Israel.

Under unimaginable horror, a singularity of purpose has crystallised and it is this seed of radical unity that we must hold onto. There can be no going back to the fragmentation of Palestinian resistance as before; we must remain steadfast, or sumud, as the Palestinians say, in our commitment to dismantling the root causes of the Palestinian genocide: Israel's settler colonial project.

Like all colonisers, Zionism has sought to fragment Indigenous Palestinians, geographically, ideologically and interpersonally. Separating families from each other through walls and checkpoints, and forcing impossible choices upon Palestinians daily — to get life-saving medical treatment for their child or to remain steadfast and not give up their friends to the Israel Defence Forces (IDF)?

Now, as grinding hunger and starvation set in, the generosity of spirit, the infamous Gazan hospitality and collective care begin to fragment. This has always been the long game of Zionism: to destroy the unity and spirit of the Palestinians as a people, able to be assimilated as second-class citizens if they give up their Palestinian-ness, or slowly see their means to live removed. This is, as Mbembe has described in Necropolitics – the politics of death – is the politics of the slave plantation and Indigenous reservations alike, and it is the politics of settler colonialism.

Weaponising words: How propaganda shapes Gaza narratives

An article in The Nightly highlights the dangerous power of language in framing Gaza, showing how media narratives can shift blame, obscure atrocities and influence public sentiment.

Palestine is the key to understanding the forces that have shaped our global, capitalist, colonial world. It has become the unifying cry for liberation from the inhumanity of colonisation that is reverberating around the world, a collective awakening and growing solidarity between Indigenous resistance to empire across the world.

Finally, Western imperialism has been unmasked for those comfortably in the West; the students who faced off against lines of police on campuses across the globe cannot unsee this genocide and what it has revealed to them about capitalism, imperialism, and what is being done in their name.

There will be a reckoning, for Palestine has shown the world what colonisation looks like in real-time and it is the duty of those who have borne witness to ensure that the work of decolonising the world is not allowed to become buried in the noise of hasbara on endless repeat in the Western media.

Zionism has never been weaker; it is a fragile ideology that has never been able to stand up to any level of scrutiny, which is why it has spent decades ensuring that it remained unquestionable, equating questioning Zionism with the crime of antisemitism. This project of mass indoctrination was only successful due to a long history of anti-Arab prejudice in the West, which allowed many to remain indifferent to the genocidal, colonial violence inflicted over decades upon the Palestinian people.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal, who has live-streamed a genocide for two years now, and any suggestion that we forget this and return to a politics of business-as-usual needs to be challenged. Talks of the disarmament of Hamas and the reconstruction of Gaza serve to distract us from the core of what Palestinians have been demanding all these long years: their right to return to their homes and have sovereignty over their lands.

A free Palestine requires the dismantling of Zionism and we must continue to contest the legitimacy of Israel to exist as an apartheid state. The world is now talking about sanctions and arms embargoes in ways that were previously unimaginable. The narrative window on Palestine has shifted, and there is an opportunity for Palestinians to show the world that it is not okay to displace a people and take their lands with impunity.

In Palestine, the West revealed its commitment to imperialism in all its inhumanity. Could we one day look back on this as the galvanising moment when the world imagined and fought for a decolonial future?

How we navigate the next few years will determine whether we allow ourselves to lose all our humanity and allow for the Gazafication of the world to continue unchallenged, or if we ensure that the seeds of decolonial resistance are nurtured and bear fruit in the decades to come.