A Funded Genocide: How Politicians and Western Media Enable the Horror in Gaza

Watan-Arwa Mahdawi wrote that Gaza has become a “field of death” where a population is being starved, questioning how long the world will continue to tolerate this.

She wrote that what’s happening is genocide, yet politicians in Western countries continue to fund it, and media institutions are working to normalize it and make it seem ordinary and acceptable.

She asked:”Where do I begin? I sat down to write about Gaza, and every time I steal a moment to write about a massacre, another one is committed. Palestinian journalists have been burned alive, children have frozen to death, medics have been executed and buried in mass graves, and children have been killed in their sleep.

Meanwhile, in the United States and Germany, speaking about dead Palestinian children puts you at risk of deportation. Arguing for the importance of respecting international human rights laws can get you abducted and placed in a detention center.”

This Is Not War — It’s Genocide

She continued:”I don’t know where to begin, and I don’t know what’s left to say at this point. After 18 months of continuous massacre, everyone should know this is not a war. This is not self-defense. What is happening in Gaza is simply genocide. A series of genocide experts have said so. The respected human rights organization Amnesty International has concluded that Israel is committing genocide. Yet our politicians still fund it.”

She added that Palestinians are not only being annihilated by U.S.-made bombs—the deadlier weapon is hunger. On March 2nd, more than a month ago, Israel cut off supplies to Gaza in an attempt to reshape the terms of a ceasefire agreement.

Mahdawi argued that calling this a “humanitarian aid blockade,” as many headlines tend to do, fails to describe the horror of what’s actually happening: this isn’t an “aid blockade”—it’s a starvation campaign. Gaza has, ultimately, become rubble. There simply isn’t enough food for the population to survive.

A United Nations satellite imagery analysis from November showed that over 90% of livestock had died, and about 70% of Gaza’s agricultural land had been destroyed or damaged since the start of this recurring war in the territory. Water is also being used as a weapon of war. In early March, a week after food and humanitarian supplies were blocked, Israel cut off electricity to Gaza’s main water desalination plant. The situation could not be more desperate.

On Tuesday, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said: “Gaza is a graveyard. Civilians are living in a never-ending nightmare.”

Israel’s Plan for Gaza: Ethnic Cleansing and Forced Migration

Mahdawi said that emboldened by former U.S. President Donald Trump’s statements about wanting to seize Gaza and build hotels and casinos on these killing fields, Israel no longer tries to hide its aims.

She wrote that Israel simply wants to ethnically cleanse Gaza of Palestinians and annex the West Bank. It is willing to starve, kill, and terrorize Palestinians until they “voluntarily” agree to a mass exodus to somewhere like Sudan or Somalia—two countries previously proposed by the U.S. and Israel as possible resettlement zones.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently said:“We will oversee general security in the Gaza Strip, and we will work to implement Trump’s plan for voluntary migration. This is the plan. We are not hiding it, and we are ready to discuss it at any time.”

Meanwhile, the Deputy Speaker of the Israeli Knesset, Nissim Vaturi, recently appeared on Kol Barama radio and called for turning the West Bank into Gaza. He said:“We need to separate children from women and kill the adults in Gaza. We are being overly considerate of others’ feelings.”

He added: “We will soon turn Jenin into Gaza.”

Mahdawi noted to readers that if Vaturi’s comments seem surprising, it’s because Western media is too busy covering chants like “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” and treating them as genocidal incitement. But if the media reported every public incitement to genocide by Israeli politicians and thought leaders, there would be no space left to cover anything else.

She added that instead of exposing these incitements, some media outlets seem eager to normalize the people who make them. For example, last month, former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant took part in a panel with the Anti-Defamation League in New York alongside CNN’s Bianna Golodryga—even though the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant against Gallant for war crimes.

Gallant and Netanyahu: War Crimes and Media Complicity

The warrant stated that the court found “reasonable grounds” to believe that Gallant and Netanyahu “bear criminal responsibility for the following crimes as co-perpetrators along with others: the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare, and crimes against humanity including murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts.”

It’s worth noting, Mahdawi said, that CNN has produced excellent reporting on Gaza. But for the network to sit down for a “cozy chat” with Gallant while Palestinian journalists are being burned alive is appalling.

She wrote:”Usually, when I write an opinion piece, I feel like I’m having a direct conversation with the reader. But I’m not really sure who I’m writing this for anymore. If you’ve read this far, you probably already agree with me. You are probably horrified by what’s happening, and you will use your voice as best you can. And if you’re not horrified at this point, then nothing I write will make you care.”

She continued:”I’ve written many opinion pieces begging people—including some of my colleagues in Western media—to care about Palestinian suffering, to remember that Palestinians are human too, to understand that starving civilians is a war crime that can’t be whitewashed with passive voice and vague language. This is not some distant foreign policy issue: this genocide is being funded by American taxpayers. And at the same time, the unprecedented attempts to suppress free speech in the U.S. regarding Palestine have turned this into a domestic issue too.”

She ended the article with:”I’m tired of begging people to care about Palestinians. I write this not because I hope to change anyone’s mind, but because the only power I have—and the only power many of us have—is to keep raising our voices and saying: we do not consent to this.”

As journalist Omar El Akkad once wrote:“One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal cost to calling things by their name, and when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will be against it.”
And when that day comes, no one will be able to pretend they didn’t know.