Why the Gaza genocide is an American one

With a military budget exceeding the combined spending of the next ten nations, the U.S. remains a dominant global power. However, it no longer presents itself as the benevolent force it once claimed to be. As it shifts from the post-9/11 era of endless wars, the U.S. continues to participate in, fund, and produce the tools of genocide, marking a significant moral decline that has reached its lowest point.

After a recent lecture, someone approached me with a question: “What makes Gaza unique?” He was referring to the widespread global awareness yet simultaneous inaction in response to the occupation’s brutal actions in Gaza.

The situation holds clear religious significance—Palestine is revered by Muslims, as well as by Jews and Christians, as sacred land. There are also historical dimensions, with over 70 years of Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, the relentless expansion of illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and a growing list of Israeli human rights violations.

But what stands out most is the visibility of this atrocity. Every aspect of this genocide is being publicly documented. As Blinne Ni Ghralaigh, an adviser to the South Africa team at the International Court of Justice, stated, it is a “live-streamed genocide.”

She emphasized, “This is the first genocide in history where the victims themselves are broadcasting their own destruction in real-time.” It’s visible on your phone, computer, and social media feeds. Anyone with a conscience cannot turn a blind eye to the countless mutilated bodies of Palestinian children.

Hypocrisy and Arrogance This is not the first time the U.S. has been involved in the killing of innocent civilians. What if the victims of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan or Iraq had been able to broadcast their own deaths live?

How many massacres has the U.S. either supported or directly perpetrated? How many of its victims remain unacknowledged?

In 2020, under the Freedom of Information Act, the New Yorker sued several military branches in an attempt to access images from the Haditha massacre of 2005, where U.S. Marines killed 24 Iraqi civilians, including women and children. Among the youngest victims were a three-year-old girl and a four-year-old boy named Abdullah, both shot in the head from just six feet away.

After four years of legal battles, the U.S. military finally released images of the carnage in March. The perpetrators have yet to face justice.

The Haditha massacre serves as a snapshot of not just the U.S. occupation of Iraq, but the broader Western endeavor to impose artificial change, secure its national security interests, and dominate the Muslim world at the expense of local populations.

In a recent interview with Al Jazeera’s Centre Stage, David Hearst, editor-in-chief of Middle East Eye, criticized the Western world order for its complicity in the atrocities happening in Gaza.

“Nothing that the Western [liberal] alliance has done in the last three decades has succeeded, yet it continues,” he remarked.

From the endless conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq to Barack Obama’s drone-heavy policy in Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia, the U.S.’s moral decay has been a long time in the making.

It’s not just about the killing and destruction—it’s also about the arrogance and hypocrisy behind it.

A Sinister Defense “They’re using extremely illiberal means to protect their liberalism, and they’re targeting Muslims with it,” Hearst said in his Al Jazeera interview. “They wouldn’t dare use those same methods against Jews or synagogues.”

Most of the bombs dropped on Gaza’s hospitals, mosques, churches, and over 500 schools have been American-made. The U.S.’s backing of Israeli war crimes and human rights violations enables the occupation to persist in its genocide, all while defending Israel’s actions at the expense of its own citizens.

For decades, Washington has dismissed and minimized the killing of its own citizens by Israel, defending the occupation in State Department and White House press briefings.

In 2003, Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old American activist, was crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza. The bulldozer was American, supplied to Israel through a Department of Defense program.

In 2022, Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was shot dead by Israeli snipers in the West Bank.

And just this week, Israeli forces killed 26-year-old Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, a Turkish-American, during protests against illegal Israeli settlements near Nablus. Israeli authorities offered the usual empty response, saying they would “look into it,” a phrase echoed for years.

The U.S. response remains the same: a dispassionate disapproval, without any meaningful consequences. The U.S. is neither a neutral negotiator nor an objective voice when it comes to Israel’s occupation of Palestine. In fact, it is a central driver behind it.

The genocide in Gaza is an American one, and it is time for Americans to recognize their government’s role in these war crimes, the likes of which they usually associate with past imperial powers.