Gaza: a genocide ignored by the west

Image - Mohammed Ibrahim

Any reader of this article is most likely familiar with the term “genocide”. It is commonly understood to mean the horrific killing and destruction of an entire group or community, with the most known example of such a crime being the Nazi’s attempt to wipe out the Jewish population during the holocaust. But, to be more specific, the UN first recognised genocide as a crime in 1946, after the term was coined by Raphäel Lemkin in 1944. For a specific legal definition, the UN’s 1948 Genocide Convention states the following:

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

1. Killing members of the group;

2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

There have been several genocides throughout history besides the holocaust; the Rwandan genocide of over 500,000 members of Tutsi ethnic group, and the 1994 Cambodian genocide under Pol Pot in the 1970s, which took the lives of around a quarter of the Cambodian population, are two examples. Yet there is another genocide happening in 2025, one that western media and governments are saying shockingly little about, and that is the genocide in Gaza.

It's impossible to know the total number of deaths in Gaza. Attacks are so frequent and very few reporters can enter, not to mention the thousands of bodies that are estimated to be trapped under. Furthermore, there are many dying not from the attacks but from enforced malnutrition, starvation and disease as the Israeli’s prevent aid from entering the area. Some estimates for the number of Palestinians killed are as high as 330,000 as of July 2025. As the number of casualties climbs ever higher, how can this not be a genocide?

The part of the legal definition that is often hard to prove is the “intent” to destroy a group, however multiple members of the Israeli government have vocalised such an intent. Zviwka Fogel, for example, stated that there shouldn’t be a single Palestinian left in Gaza at the end of the war. Amiha Eliyahu, the heritage minister, stated that anyone waving the Palestinian flag shouldn’t continue living on the face of the Earth. Most notably, Itamar Ben-Ghavir, the national security minister, said that the only way to secure the return of the hostages would be the full conquest of the Gaza strip, the end of humanitarian aid and the encouragement of emigration of the entire Palestinian population. This certainly reads like genocidal intent to me.

Ultimately, the international courts are the ones tasked with coming to a final decision on whether the atrocities in Gaza count as a technical genocide, but even if it narrowly avoids the legal catchment, the fact that it is even an “almost genocide” would surely call for a worldwide outcry. Over 90 UN states have now come out and said they believe it to be a genocide, but for many of the western powers, namely the US, the UK, Germany and France, alliances with Israel outweigh any humanitarian concerns. Yes, David Lammy, the UK’s foreign secretary, has made the odd declaration of horror, but in practical terms the UK has done nothing. Western governments are standing by as a genocide happens right under their noses. After the holocaust the allies swore that nothing like this would be allowed to happen again, yet here we stand, complicit in a genocidal campaign against the Palestinian people. What is even more distressing is how little attention that mainstream media is giving to this issue, with UK papers giving more attention to the actions of Bob Vylan at Glastonbury than to the issue they were focused on. One can only hope that there is some shred of humanity left in the world and that soon, leaders and the worlds media will make a stand.