Gaza is dying – and the world is watching

A reckoning with complicity, cowardice, and the crime of silence
By Hana Ibrahim
In Gaza, genocide is no longer a grim warning – it is a living, unfolding reality. As of July 31, 2025, more than 60,000 Palestinians have been killed in a relentless campaign of Israeli bombardment. The majority, at least a third, are women and children. Entire families have been buried beneath rubble. Food, water, and electricity have been weaponized. Hospitals lie in ruins. Doctors and nurses have been executed or left to die under collapsed walls. Starvation – once a looming threat- is now a daily death sentence.
This is not a conflict. It is calculated, systematic annihilation.
International humanitarian agencies, including the World Health Organization, have raised the alarm repeatedly. At least 159 Palestinians – including 90 children and infants – have died directly from starvation and malnutrition caused by the siege and destruction of infrastructure. With famine now officially acknowledged in much of Gaza, that number is rising by the day. Aid is blocked at borders. Land crossings remain shuttered. Jordan and the UAE’s airdrops – paltry and sporadic – have been condemned by experts as “dangerously insufficient”. Meanwhile, bombs continue to fall. The death toll continues to rise.
And the world does little. Worse, it enables.
From Washington to Brussels, Riyadh to Abu Dhabi, the stench of moral decay is near palpable. The West’s grotesque double standards are well-documented. But the Arab world’s betrayal cuts deeper. Those who once waved the Palestinian flag in rhetorical solidarity now retreat into deals, gas contracts, and cowardice.
The United States – under both former president Joe Biden and current president Donald Trump – has functioned and continues to function as Israel’s primary arms supplier, political shield, and moral enabler. As images of starving infants and amputated toddlers flash across the world, US weapons continue to arrive in Israeli hands. The White House has vetoed UN ceasefire resolutions, rejected International Criminal Court investigations, and used its global clout not to stop the slaughter – but to ensure it can continue unimpeded.
Europe is no better. Germany, the UK, and France, nations that once claimed moral authority, have shown only cowardice. They echo empty phrases like “all civilian lives matter”, while continuing arms exports and diplomatic cover. Starving a people is not self-defence. Bombing hospitals is not counterterrorism. Genocide is not peacekeeping.
The Arab World: Silence as Betrayal
Even more appalling is the complicity of Arab governments – regimes that wrap themselves in the cause of Palestine when convenient, but today are silent collaborators.
Saudi Arabia, self-proclaimed leader of the Islamic world, has chosen silence. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, architect of economic grandstanding and normalization plans with Israel, issued only a tepid condemnation. Gone are the days of oil embargoes and regional leverage. What good is leadership that chooses silence while children are buried alive?
The United Arab Emirates, a signatory of the Abraham Accords, continues business as usual. Trade flows. Normalization holds. Aid is token at best. The UAE’s posturing on pan-Arab unity has proven hollow – a branding exercise, not a principle.
Egypt, Gaza’s only Arab land neighbour, has actively enforced the Israeli siege. The Rafah crossing has remained mostly closed. Convoys of aid wait for days. Injured civilians are denied escape. Cairo’s silence is not passive; it is active complicity.
Turkey’s President Erdoğan has long cast himself as a defender of Palestine. But while Ankara issued fiery speeches, trade with Israel continued. The Turkish government had condemned with words but has not dared to confront with action. Symbolic outrage is not resistance. It is theatre.
Qatar stands in a more complex role. It hosts Hamas’s political wing and has sent significant aid. But it too remains entangled in US military interests and diplomatic caution. If Qatar wants to stand as a serious humanitarian player, it must leverage every tool at its disposal – publicly, loudly, and relentlessly.
Together, these Arab regimes have failed. Not only the Palestinians. They have failed their own people – millions of whom pour into the streets in Amman, Istanbul, and Cairo, demanding action their leaders refuse to take. The Arab street is awake. Its rulers, meanwhile, are asleep at the wheel, or wilfully complicit.
The Moral Centre Has Shifted
In this dark hour, it is not governments but ordinary people who have become Gaza’s strongest defenders. Activists, both young and old, journalists, students, and aid workers are risking everything to tell the truth and offer help. These are the people refusing to look away, the ones holding candles against the shadows of indifference and hypocrisy.
Because Gaza is not a natural disaster. It is not a humanitarian tragedy. It is a political crime, with perpetrators, enablers, and profiteers.
Those perpetrators include Israeli leaders who greenlight mass killings and collective punishment, and the Israeli soldiers carry out the execution orders. They include Western governments that provide the weapons and veto the justice. They include Arab rulers whose cowardice shields them from accountability but not from history.
Neutrality is no longer an option. To be neutral in the face of genocide is to take the side of the executioner.
As Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel once said, “Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”
History will ask: who stood on the right side?
It will not forget the names of the children. It will not forgive the leaders who enabled their deaths. Every hour of inaction, every diplomatic delay, every weapon sold, adds another line to the ledger of complicity.
The people of Gaza are not begging for charity. They are demanding justice, not just words, but urgent, decisive action to end the genocide and lift the siege. If the world fails to act, the blood of Gaza will stain every hand that remained silent, every state that enabled impunity, and every institution that chose complicity over courage.
-ENCL
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