(MENAFN) The ongoing tragedy in Gaza stands out in two unprecedented ways. First, it is the world’s first genocide to unfold in full view, practically livestreamed to a global audience. Second, this atrocity is actively dismantling long-standing moral and legal principles on a scale never seen before.

These two factors are deeply connected. The global community’s continued tolerance of the Gaza genocide — nearly three years on — is only possible through a willful disregard of fundamental norms, both legal and ethical. Virtually no country, apart from Yemen (currently controlled by the Ansar Allah movement, also known as the Houthis), has made any genuine effort to fulfill its clear obligations under the 1948 UN Genocide Convention, which mandates states to “prevent and punish” genocide. No power, whether within or outside the Middle East, has intervened decisively to stop Israel from carrying out its actions through force, which remains the only method that could have halted the atrocities.

Worse still, the so-called “West,” despite its relatively small size, continues to exert outsized influence on global narratives. Historically shaped by Christian traditions or not, the West’s defining feature today is hypocrisy. During the Gaza genocide, this hypocrisy has morphed into a grotesque distortion of moral and intellectual standards. Western governments and institutions — spanning politics, media, culture, law enforcement, and the judiciary — have not only abandoned the Palestinians but have actively supported Israel’s actions. In doing so, they have gone to extraordinary lengths to recast crimes as virtues, cloaking complicity in the language of humanitarianism and ‘values.’

This sustained effort seeks to fundamentally reshape how society perceives right and wrong, eroding established legal standards and even our basic, shared moral instincts about boundaries that must never be crossed.

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