Gaza's genocide is no secret but global silence is deafening

Independent human rights experts suggest the true toll may be far higher. According to peer-reviewed studies by scholars and scientists cited by UN rapporteurs, the number of casualties could approach 680,000 — a staggering scale of human suffering rarely witnessed in modern warfare.

Spain takes historic stand

In a landmark move, Spain took a historic stand and has reportedly become the first European nation to cancel a major defense contract with Israel — scrapping a €700 million (£605 million) deal for Israeli-designed rocket launchers. The decision, confirmed by Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Agence France-Presse, and Spanish media, follows Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s announcement that his government will “consolidate in law” a ban on all military trade with Israel over its conduct in Gaza.

Sánchez went further, calling for Israel’s exclusion from international sporting events “for as long as its barbarism in Gaza continues”. His stance reflects mounting global condemnation of Israel’s actions — and a rare political courage among Western leaders.

Netanyahu blames China, Qatar

However, even as Gaza lies in ruins, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking Monday (September 15) to a delegation of 250 US state legislators in Jerusalem, deflected blame — accusing China and Qatar of orchestrating a “media attack” against Israel through Western social platforms.

Also read: Trump says Israel is winning the Gaza war but losing the PR Battle

“We will counter it,” he vowed, “with our own methods.”

This deflection comes amid unprecedented destruction: entire neighbourhoods erased, hospitals bombed, water and food systems obliterated, and tens of thousands of children buried under rubble.

Modi’s silence speaks volumes

Meanwhile, for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi — who shares warm diplomatic and defense ties with “dear friend” Bibi Netanyahu — the contrast is stark. While Modi swiftly condemned the killing of seven Israeli citizens in Tel Aviv as “heinous”, he has remained conspicuously silent on the indiscriminate slaughter of Palestinian mothers, children, doctors, and aid workers — or the daily annihilation of Gaza’s hospitals, schools, and refugee camps.

India, a signatory to the 1948 Genocide Convention, continues to deepen economic and military ties with Israel — even as the International Court of Justice investigates Israel for potential genocide. Last week, New Delhi signed a new bilateral investment treaty with Tel Aviv — a move that, under international law, may constitute complicity.

Echoes of the holocaust

For Holocaust survivors and their descendants, the images from Gaza are unbearable. The systematic bombing, mass displacement, starvation tactics, and dehumanising rhetoric evoke chilling parallels.

Thousands of Israelis themselves took to the streets last week, demanding Netanyahu halt what they called “ethnic cleansing” in Gaza.

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No one condones the horrific October 7 attacks that killed over 1,200 Israelis. But collective punishment — the wholesale destruction of civilian infrastructure, the blockade of food and medicine, the targeting of families and children — is not justice. It is a historic crime against humanity.

Genocide in Gaza

On September 16, the UN Human Rights Council’s independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory released a damning 70-page report. Its conclusion is unequivocal:

“Israeli security forces have committed crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza — including extermination, torture, rape and sexual violence, forcible transfer, persecution, and starvation as a method of warfare.”

More gravely, the Commission found “reasonable grounds” to conclude that Israel is committing genocide — fulfilling four key criteria under the Rome Statute and the Genocide Convention:

1. Killing members of the group;

2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm;

3. Deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to destroy the group;

4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births.

The Commission documented how Israel has “destroyed in part the reproductive capacity of Palestinians in Gaza”, including attacks on maternity wards, denial of prenatal care, and obstruction of medical evacuations for pregnant women.

Genocide, the report reminds us, is a jus cogens norm — a peremptory principle of international law from which no derogation is permitted. Signatories, including India, are legally bound not only to refrain from genocide, but to prevent it.

Also read: Why Israel and Hamas are alleged to have broken international 'rules of war'

By advancing defense and financial agreements with a state credibly accused of genocide, the Modi government is not merely ignoring international law — it appears to be actively undermining it. This is not realpolitik. It is morally unsustainable.

Legacies betrayed

What would Mahatma Gandhi — who warned in 1938 that “Palestine belongs to the Arabs as England belongs to the English” — say today? What would Desmond Tutu, who called Israel’s treatment of Palestinians “apartheid,” or Nelson Mandela, who stood with the Palestinian cause until his last breath, think of world leaders now turning away?

Their legacies are being betrayed — not by mobs, but by silence. By contracts signed while children starve. By weapons sold as hospitals collapse.

History will remember not only the perpetrators — but those who enabled them.