As bombs fall on hospitals, as children are buried beneath rubble, and as entire families vanish in Gaza’s infernos, the world stands either silent, ineffectual or complicit. We are witnessing not a ‘conflict’ but the active dismemberment of a people—a genocidal process rooted in settler colonialism, racial supremacy, and imperial impunity.
Western powers—led by the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France and the European Union—have become co-belligerents in this horror. They supply the bombs, provide the vetoes, and parrot the lies. The mantra of “Never Again,” once a solemn vow, has become a selective slogan. For Palestinians, genocide is not a warning—it is their lived reality.
What moral order remains when the so-called ‘rules-based international system’ is obliterated by the very states that claim to uphold it? How can international law be invoked against Russia in Ukraine, yet suspended when it comes to Israel’s atrocities in Gaza? Their human rights discourse is hollow; their condemnations are drenched in colonial hypocrisy.
Meanwhile, the mainstream media routinely sanitise war crimes, erase Palestinian voices, and reproduce unverified Israeli military claims, while downplaying or ignoring the findings of respected human rights organisations. This is not journalism; it is narrative warfare. As Dorothy Lennon observed, “Media and journalists don’t drop the bombs. They don’t pull the trigger. They do provide the cover and propaganda that allows others to drop the bombs and pull the trigger. Their hands are just as blood-soaked as our elected officials who justify imperialism and genocide.”
What we are witnessing is the Nazification of Israeli political culture, backed by a network of global Zionist institutions and corporations that wield enormous influence over Western discourse and policy. This comparison is not made lightly, nor does it erase the Holocaust. Rather, it affirms the universal lesson of “Never Again”—that no people should be dehumanised, no children should be burned alive, and no regime should be allowed to act with genocidal impunity.
Zionism: settler colonialism in motion
The forced displacement of Palestinians in 1948—the Nakba—was not a tragic exception but the prototype of a political project that equates Jewish ethno-nationalism with existential right, and the indigenous Arab presence as a threat to be eradicated.
Israel’s descent into fascism is not a recent aberration but the logical culmination of Zionism’s settler-colonial foundations. The forced displacement of Palestinians in 1948—the Nakba—was not a tragic exception, but the prototype of a political project that equates Jewish ethno-nationalism with existential right, and sees the indigenous Arab presence as a threat to be eradicated. Today, we see this logic revived with genocidal intentionality and intensity: mass starvation, carpet bombing of civilian areas, systematic targeting of journalists, paramedics, and UN shelters, and the public rhetoric of Israeli officials referring to Palestinians as “human animals”—untermensch.
Israel: imperial garrison and regional cop
The role of Israel within the broader imperial architecture has always been clear: a watchdog, enforcer, and proxy capable of projecting Western power throughout the Arab world. Since 1948, Israel has received over $260 billion in US aid, mostly in military support. Except this isn’t aid, it’s investment. What the West receives in return is a militarised outpost capable of policing the region, destabilising rivals, and serving as a buffer against pan-Arab or anti-imperialist unity.
Israel has repeatedly acted as a force multiplier for Western interests. In 1967, it destroyed the military capacity of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan in six days—a blow to Nasserist Arab nationalism. In 1982, it invaded Lebanon, targeting Palestinian resistance and eventually aligning with far-right Christian militias in the Sabra and Shatila massacres. It sells arms and surveillance tools to dictatorships worldwide and trains militaries from Colombia to India in counterinsurgency warfare, based on tactics refined in Gaza and the West Bank.
The Gaza Tribunal: a people’s court of conscience
In May 2025, the Gaza Tribunal convened in Sarajevo, bringing together legal experts, human rights advocates, and civil society representatives to address the ongoing atrocities in Gaza.
The tribunal’s Sarajevo Declaration condemned Israel’s actions as constituting genocide, apartheid, and settler colonialism. It highlighted the systematic nature of these crimes, including forced displacement, collective punishment, and the targeting of civilians. The declaration also criticised the complicity of Western powers and the inaction of international bodies like the UN, emphasising the need for civil society-led initiatives to pursue justice.
Arab regimes: the complicit collaborators
While Israel serves as the sword of empire, the Arab regimes—monarchies and dictatorships alike—act as its shield. These governments are not neutral actors; they are client regimes, propped up by imperial support, fossil-fuel wealth, and violent repression. From the normalisation deals of the Abraham Accords to Egypt’s blockade of Gaza, these regimes actively participate in the subjugation of Palestine.
The likes of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Jordan, and Egypt have traded the Palestinian cause for weapons deals, surveillance tech, and US patronage. Their repression at home mirrors that of Israel: censorship, torture, mass incarceration, and the crushing of labour, feminist, and democratic movements. Their survival depends on the same extractive and authoritarian order that Israel enforces. They fall over themselves to appease the very empire enabling Israel’s genocide. Trillions of dollars in arms deals, tech transfers, real estate acquisitions, and normalisation pacts are handed to the US and its political elites, like tribute from vassal states. These regimes shower Donald Trump with gold-plated gifts and grotesque flattery, while not a single convoy of food or clean water reaches the children starving in Rafah.
This isn’t diplomacy. It’s extortion money—protection payments made to retain their thrones and repress their own populations. In exchange, they buy silence, US military backing, IMF lifelines, and permission to continue ruling without legitimacy. They have sold out Palestine not by accident, but by design.
This betrayal is not accidental. As Frantz Fanon observed in The Wretched of the Earth, the comprador bourgeoisie in colonised societies often act as intermediaries for foreign capital and empire, sacrificing national liberation for elite survival. The Arab regimes have become this class: guards at the gates of empire, silencing solidarity and securing imperial plunder.
Empire, extraction, and capital
What unites Israel and the Arab autocracies is not religion, ideology, or history; it is capital. Specifically, fossil fuel capital. The Middle East holds over half of the world’s proven oil reserves, and its gas pipelines, shipping routes, and ports are central to the functioning of global capitalism. Any movement that seeks to disrupt this flow—be it Nasserism, Ba’athism, the Iranian revolution, or Palestinian resistance—is labelled a threat, isolated, or annihilated.
Israel’s position is central here. Its navy protects the Eastern Mediterranean gas fields. Its companies are involved in extraction deals with Europe. Its drones monitor critical infrastructure. Its military capabilities deter any challenge to the fossil-fuelled status quo. And its existence ensures that no unified Arab political force can emerge to threaten imperial control over oil and markets.
As has argued, Israel is the world’s foremost “disaster capitalism laboratory”—turning war, displacement, and surveillance into privatised profit.
Dismantling apartheid and settler colonialism
Ending Israeli apartheid cannot mean reforming the occupation or asking the coloniser to be kinder. It must mean dismantling the entire colonial structure, from the military bases to the racist laws to the ideology of Zionism itself.
This requires:
- Ending all military and economic aid to Israel, particularly by the US and EU.
- Supporting the full right of return for Palestinian refugees, as outlined in UN Resolution 194.
- Dismantling the apartheid legal system and settler infrastructure.
- International legal accountability for war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity.
- Solidarity with the Palestinian-led BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement, modelled after the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa.
- Mass mobilisation in the Global South and North—protests, strikes, and student uprisings—to isolate Israel and all regimes that collaborate with it.
This also means rejecting the two-state delusion, which enshrines segregation, and embracing a vision of a free, decolonised Palestine from the river to the sea—one where all people live in equality, and where colonisers are not erased, but de-privileged, de-militarised, and de-nationalised in favour of justice.
Anti-imperialism or nothing
Palestine is not a humanitarian crisis. It is a political struggle against racial capitalism, settler colonialism, and global empire. To support Palestinian liberation is not an act of charity; it is a revolutionary necessity.
As Ghassan Kanafani wrote, “The Palestinian cause is not a cause for Palestinians only, but a cause for every revolutionary…because it is a cause of the exploited and oppressed masses in our era.”
If we are serious about dismantling imperialism—from the police in our cities to the bombs dropped abroad—we must stand with Palestine. Not just in words, not just in outrage, but in action: in divestment, resistance, and revolution.
The path to a liberated Palestine is the same path that leads to a liberated world.
Usuf Chikte is a co-ordinator for the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (Cape Town).
