The U.S. lost a lot more than that disastrous game last night.
posted by Satish Sharma at
16:19
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A report issued on 23 June 2026 by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory documented what Israel has committed against the Palestinian people, especially children.
This followed an earlier report from the same commission on 16 September 2025, which found that genocide was taking place, as well as the report of the UN special rapporteur issued on 20 October 2025.
But what can meticulously documented international reports do in the face of those who have insisted on averting their eyes from declared Israeli intentions to commit genocide, ethnic cleansing, comprehensive destruction and horrific starvation - not to mention the torrent of live images transmitted around the clock to mobile devices from the field of atrocities over the course of two full years?
Specialised UN reports, testimonies by international rapporteurs and experts, assessments by the most prominent global human rights organisations, and even Israeli testimonies have followed one another, all confirming the reality of the genocide committed by Israel under the eyes of the world since October 2023.
In contrast, most European and western states have clung to a rigid position that ignores this glaring truth, despite genocidal intentions being openly expressed in advance by senior Israeli leaders, who continued to boast of what their army and authorities were doing on the ground.
Official western comments on those reports were often absent, unlike what would have happened in other cases
Official western comments on those published reports were often absent, unlike what would have happened in other cases.
Is it not worthy of condemnation that senior European and western officials have persistently avoided using the term "genocide" in relation to these systematic and horrific Israeli practices?
It is as though the word were a firmly established taboo in European and western political, media and cultural discourse whenever Israel is concerned.
This taboo exerts its power over those officials and commentators who, in this way, give reason to suspect that acknowledging genocide depends on the identity of the perpetrator and the status of the victims.
Double standards
It is entirely understandable that the allies of a regime of occupation and genocide, or those who consider themselves Israel's partners and friends, would avoid issuing a clear condemnation of conduct they themselves helped support and encourage, directly or indirectly, even if only through silence and denial of its atrocities.
Throughout this prolonged season of horrors, the Israeli side has enjoyed military and political backing, as well as propagandistic cover, through carefully crafted formulas uttered by senior European and western officials.
These amounted to evasive justifications for whatever war crimes and grave violations an occupying authority and its military forces might commit against a population left utterly exposed to continuous bombardment.
This may be inferred from the phrase that has become a staple of western speeches: "Israel has every right to defend itself" - words that Israeli leaders understand simply as advance legitimation for a policy of mass killing and comprehensive destruction on the ground.
Naturally, no mention is made in this context of any right of the Palestinian people to defend themselves, for example, or of their right under international humanitarian law to resist the military occupation entrenched on their land.
States, governments and political leaderships - joined by elites in the fields of thought, culture and media - insist on ignoring the reality of genocide against the Palestinian people, or conceal it through a tendency toward genocide denial, as though all the serious international efforts of documentation and investigation had no value for them.
Denying a genocide that has unfolded before everyone's ears and eyes simply means minimising its confirmed atrocities. It also entails direct or indirect encouragement of this pattern of horrific violations, so long as they are met with such shocking laxity.
Moreover, clinging to outright denial encourages the perpetrators to resume committing appalling war crimes, so long as these crimes are not named as such. Which western leaders - apart from a handful, such as Spain - have described what the Israeli leadership and its army have committed as "genocide" or "war crimes"?
It must be recalled that the centres of western decision-making, including the European Union and its leading bodies crowned with slogans of noble values and human rights, became implicated in a sweeping display of bias when they chose very mild or evasive terms to describe Israeli war crimes that the entire world followed in images, sound and live broadcasts.
Leaders and spokespersons resorted to cold expressions such as the ploy of "expressing concern" and voicing "sorrow" over the victims, often without naming the perpetrator, because the perpetrator was the Israeli leadership and its army, whose brutal policies and measures were visible to all.
Observers around the world have noted how the charge of "double standards" clings to European and western political discourse.
Follow Middle East Eye's live coverage of Israel's genocide in Gaza
This is precisely what the former vice-president of the European Commission, Josep Borrell, warned his EU colleagues against - in full view of a world that notices the grave moral gap between European positions on Ukraine and Palestine. He issued that warning days into the war, at a Foreign Affairs Council in Luxembourg on 23 October 2023.
One would not be exaggerating to conclude from these contradictory positions that they place some human beings above others in status, degree of concern and human dignity, so that the lives, safety and security of Palestinians are placed lower in rank than those of others.
Thus comes the tolerance of the crushing of children, mothers, the sick and the elderly in the Gaza Strip, without serious positions being taken to restrain the machinery of genocide.
The margins, not the centre
Those faltering positions gave the strong impression that they were conferring moral immunity on the perpetrator, namely the Israeli leadership and its regular army.
Prevailing European and western criticism was limited to only two reckless ministers from the Israeli government, which amounts to little, since Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich are already constantly criticised within Israeli circles.
The narrative has been shifted into familiar terms about a 'humanitarian crisis', as though the programmed genocide were merely a natural disaster
Meanwhile, the government and the political leadership more broadly continue to escape direct criticism, even after the accumulation of filmed atrocities and the issuance of an International Criminal Court arrest warrant for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself.
This evasion becomes even clearer when criticism, along with some sanctions of limited effect, has been confined to settler gangs and their leaders, without any verbal reproach or punitive gesture directed toward the Israeli army. The latter not only sponsors and protects settlers on the ground but also directly commits grave violations, appalling war crimes and campaigns of ethnic cleansing within the context of a horrific genocide.
This contradiction betrays a firmly rooted European and western position intent on exempting the state, its leadership and its regular military and security apparatuses from any clear criticism, explicit condemnation or accountability, while merely formal positions are issued concerning the margins rather than the centre: some settlers instead of the army, and only two ministers instead of the government.
Political Europe, and many elites in public life across western states, have even evaded confronting a simple question: does what Israel has committed against the Palestinian people constitute genocide?
Denying the genocide committed in Gaza requires wilful disregard.
It begins by brushing aside these war crimes and behaving as though they merit no attention. The adopted narrative has been shifted into familiar terms about a "humanitarian crisis" and "alarming" conditions, or a show of concern for "civilian suffering" - as though the programmed genocide, reinforced by declared intentions to commit it, were merely a natural disaster that befell the place.
The states and governments that boast of their commitment to moral positions, human values, international law and human rights were supposed to honour those commitments. They should have warned against the campaign of genocide in its earliest stages, stripped it of political and propagandistic cover, and supported the enforcement of international justice and the cases filed over genocide against the Palestinian people.
Foremost among these is the case brought by South Africa before the International Court of Justice, on the basis of Israel's violation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
Instead, campaigns of moral targeting, incitement, intimidation and even the imposition of unjust sanctions on prosecutors have escalated, affecting international justice bodies and their personnel, as well as UN rapporteurs.
Thus, it becomes clear that complicity with the genocide committed against the Palestinian people goes ever further in undermining international law and threatening the foundations of international action and the protection afforded to its institutions and authorities.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
