When Will Western Support for Israeli Genocide Finally Crack?

After 20 months of horror in Gaza, political rhetoric in Western countries is finally starting to shift—but will words translate into action? And what exactly can other countries do when the United States still shields Israel from efforts to enforce international law, as it did at the UN Security Council on June 5th?

On May 30th, Tom Fletcher, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, accused Israel of committing a war crime by using starvation as a weapon against the people of Gaza. In a searing interview with the BBC, Fletcher explained how Israel’s policy of forced starvation fits into its larger strategy of ethnic cleansing.

“We’re seeing food set on the borders and not being allowed in, when there is a population on the other side of the border that is starving,” Fletcher said. “And we’re hearing Israeli ministers say that is to put pressure on the population of Gaza.”

If the so-called international community were really “very, very clear on that,” the United States and Israel would not be able to wage a campaign of genocide for more than 600 days while the world looks on in horror.

He was referring to statements like the one from Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who openly admitted that the starvation policy is meant to leave Palestinians “totally despairing, understanding that there’s no hope and nothing to look for," so that they will submit to ethnic cleansing from Gaza and a “new life in other places.”

Fletcher called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stop this campaign of forced displacement, and insisted, “we would expect governments all over the world to stand for international humanitarian law. The international community is very, very clear on that.”

Palestinians might wish that were true. If the so-called international community were really “very, very clear on that,” the United States and Israel would not be able to wage a campaign of genocide for more than 600 days while the world looks on in horror.

Some Western governments have finally started using stronger language to condemn Israel’s actions. But the question is: Will they act? Or is this just more political theater to appease public outrage while the machinery of destruction grinds on?

This moment should force a reckoning: How is it possible that the U.S. and Israel can perpetrate such crimes with impunity? What would it take for U.S. allies to ignore pressure from Washington and enforce international law?

If impoverished, war-ravaged Yemen can single-handedly deny Israel access to the Suez Canal and the Red Sea, and drive the Israeli port of Eilat into bankruptcy, more powerful countries can surely isolate Israel diplomatically and economically, protect the Palestinians and end the genocide. But they haven’t even tried.

Some are now making tentative moves. On May 19th, the U.K., France, and Canada jointly condemned Israel’s actions as “intolerable,” “unacceptable,” “abhorrent,” “wholly disproportionate,” and “egregious.” The U.K. suspended trade talks with Israel, and they promised “further concrete actions,” including targeted sanctions, if Israel does not end its offensive in Gaza and lift its restrictions on humanitarian aid.

The three countries publicly committed to the Arab Plan for the reconstruction of Gaza, and to building an international consensus for it at the UN’s High-Level Two-State Solution Conference in New York on June 17th-20th, which is to be co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia.

They also committed to recognizing Palestinian statehood. Of the UN’s 193 member states, 147 already recognize Palestine as a sovereign nation, including ten more since Israel launched its genocide in Gaza. President Emmanuel Macron, under pressure from the leftist La France Insoumise party, says France may officially recognize Palestine at the UN conference in June.

Canada’s new prime minister, Mark Carney, claimed during his election campaign that Canada already had an arms embargo against Israel, but was swiftly challenged on that. Canada has suspended a small number of export licenses, but it’s still supplying parts for Israel’s 39 F-35s, and for 36 more that Israel has ordered from Lockheed Martin.

A General Dynamics factory in Quebec is the sole supplier of artillery propellant for deadly 155 mm artillery shells used in Gaza, and it took an emergency campaign by human rights groups in August 2024 to force Canada to scrap a new contract for that same factory to supply Israel with 50,000 high-explosive mortar shells.

The U.K. is just as compromised. The new Labour government elected in July 2024 quickly restored funding to UNRWA, as Canada has. In September, it suspended 30 out of 350 arms export licenses to Israel, mostly for parts used in warplanes, helicopters, drones, and targeting. But, like Canada, the U.K. still supplies many other parts that end up in Israeli F-35s bombing Gaza.

Declassified UK published a report on the F-35 program that revealed how it compromises the sovereignty of partner countries. While the U.K. produces 15% of the parts that go into every F-35, the U.S. military takes immediate ownership of the British-made parts, stores them on British air force bases, and then orders the U.K. to ship them to Texas for use in new planes or to Israel and other countries as spare parts for planes already in use.

Shipping these planes and parts to Israel is in clear violation of U.S., U.K. and other countries’ arms export laws. British campaigners argue that if the U.K. is serious about halting genocide, it must stop all shipments of F-35 parts sent to Israel–directly or indirectly. With huge marches in London drawing hundreds of thousands of people, and protests on June 17th at three factories that make F-35 parts, activists will keep applying more pressure until they result in the “concrete actions” the British government has promised.

Denmark is facing a similar conflict. Amnesty International, Oxfam, Action Aid, and Al-Haq are in court suing the Danish government and the nation's largest weapons company, Terma, to stop them from sending Israel critical bomb release mechanisms and other F-35 parts.

These disputes over Canadian artillery propellant, Danish bomb-release mechanisms, and the multinational nature of the F-35 program highlight how any country that provides even small but critical parts or materials for deadly weapons systems must ensure they are not used to commit war crimes.

In turn, all steps to cut off Israel’s weapons supplies can help to save Palestinian lives, and the full arms embargo that the UN General Assembly voted for in September 2024 can be instrumental in ending the genocide if more countries will join it. As Sam Perlo-Freeman of Campaign Against the Arms Trade said of the U.K.’s legal obligation to stop shipping F-35 parts,

“These spare parts are essential to keep Israel’s F-35s flying, and therefore stopping them will reduce the number of bombings and killings of civilians Israel can commit. It is as simple as that.”

Germany was responsible for 30% of Israel’s arms imports between 2019 and 2023, largely through two large warship deals. Four German-built Saar 6 corvettes, Israel’s largest warships, are already bombarding Gaza, while ThyssenKrupp is building three new submarines for Israel in Kiel.

But no country has provided a greater share of the tools of genocide in Gaza than the United States, including nearly all the warplanes, helicopters, bombs, and air-to-ground missiles that are destroying Gaza and killing Palestinians. The U.S. government has a legal responsibility to stop sending all these weapons, which Israel uses mainly to commit industrial-scale war crimes, up to and including genocide, against the people of Palestine, as well as to attack its other neighbors.

Trump’s military and political support for Israel’s genocide stands in stark contradiction to the image he promotes of himself as a peacemaker—and which his most loyal followers believe in.

Yet there are signs that Trump is beginning to assert some independence from Netanyahu and from the war hawks in his own party and inner circle. He refused to visit Israel on his recent Middle East tour, he’s negotiating with Iran despite Israeli opposition, and he removed Mike Waltz as National Security Advisor for engaging in unauthorized warmongering against Iran with Netanyahu. His decisions to end the Yemen bombing campaign and lift sanctions on Syria suggest an unpredictable but real departure from the neocon playbook, as do his negotiations with Russia and Iran.

Has Netanyahu finally overplayed his hand? His campaign of ethnic cleansing, territorial expansion in pursuit of a biblical “Greater Israel,” the deliberate starvation of Gaza, and his efforts to entangle the U.S. in a war with Iran have pushed Israel’s longtime allies to the edge. The emerging rift between Trump and Netanyahu could mark the beginning of the end of the decades-long blanket of impunity the U.S. has wrapped around Israel. It could also give other governments the political space to respond to Israeli war crimes without fear of U.S. retaliation.

The huge and consistent protests throughout Europe are putting pressure on Western governments to take action. A new survey conducted in Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy and Spain shows that very few Europeans—between 6% and 16% in each country—find Israel’s assault on Gaza proportionate or justified.

For now, however, the Western governments remain deeply complicit in Israel’s atrocities and violations of international law. The rhetoric is shifting—but history will judge this moment not by what governments say, but by what they do.

AI-tocracy Complete?

I grew up under Enver Hoxha’s totalitarian regime in Albania, where paranoia reigned supreme, propaganda was relentless, dissent was crushed, and concrete bunkers dotted the landscape. Now, as I witness the United States marching toward authoritarianism, I am struck by the haunting echoes of my past. The effort to reshape society through fear, intimidation, and division; the attack on independent institutions; the surveillance state; and the apocalyptic fever remind me so of the dynamics that once suffocated Albania. Beneath it all simmers a pervasive social malaise and a sense of moral decay.

Today’s crisis is not accidental. It’s a long time in the making and the result of powerful interests—Silicon Valley billionaires, MAGA ideologues, Christian nationalists, and Project 2025 architects—who have set aside their differences and coalesced to accelerate collapse, fuel division, and destroy democracy.

AI Regulatory Moratorium

A chief goal of this agenda is the race to build and deregulate artificial intelligence (AI). Since OpenAI launched ChatGPT, we’ve been subjected to the largest tech experiment in history. AI evangelists promise miracles—curing intractable diseases, solving climate crisis, even eternal life—while ignoring its insatiable appetite for water and energy, much of it still sourced from fossil fuels. Revealingly, some billionaires who once called for AI regulation now fund efforts to ban states from regulating AI for the next decade.

Tucked in over 1,000 pages of the recent Republican reconciliation bill is a sweeping moratorium which would ban states and municipalities from regulating AI for 10 years. The same bill slashes hundreds of billions from Medicaid, Medicare, and food aid—an unprecedented transfer of wealth upward that will gravely harm both the most vulnerable and the working class—while pouring over a billion dollars into AI development at the Departments of Defense and Commerce.

The real risk is not that the U.S. will lose to China by regulating AI, but that it will lose the trust of its own people and the world by failing to do so.

The impact would be immediate and profound. It would preempt existing state AI laws in California, Colorado, New York, Illinois, and Utah, and block pending state bills aimed at ensuring transparency, preventing discrimination, and protecting individuals and communities from harm. The broad definition of “automated decision systems” would undermine oversight in healthcare, finance, education, consumer protection, housing, employment, civil rights, and even election integrity. In effect, it would rewrite the social contract, stripping states of the power to protect their residents.

The “End Times Fascism” Forces and the “Network State”

Make no mistake—this isn’t an isolated effort. It’s what Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor call “the rise of end times fascism”—an apocalyptic project of convergent factions to accelerate societal collapse and redraw sovereignty for profit. Particularly, the Silicon Valley contingent merits closer scrutiny. Its ultra-libertarian and neo-reactionary wing, including Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen has abandoned faith in democracy and invested in Pronomos Capital—a venture capital fund backing “network states” that can best be described as digital fiefdoms run by corporate monarchs. Existing enclaves include Próspera in Honduras and Itana in Nigeria where the wealthy bypass local regulation and often displace communities. Now, billionaires lobby for “Freedom Cities” within the U.S.—autonomous zones exempt from state and federal law, potentially enabling unregulated genetic experimentation and other risky activities.

Silicon Valley’s Ideologies

Animating this project is a bundle of techno-utopian ideologies permeating Silicon Valley’s zeitgeist—most prominently, longtermism and transhumanism. Longtermists believe our duty is to maximize the well-being of hypothetical future humans, even at today’s expense. These worldviews envision replacing humanity with AI or digital posthuman species as inevitable, even desirable. Elon Musk and OpenAI’s Sam Altman, who publicly warn of AI extinction, stand to benefit by positioning their products as humanity’s salvation. As philosopher Émile P. Torres warns, these ideologies spring from the same poisoned well as eugenics and provide cover for dismantling democratic safeguards and social protections in pursuit of a pro-extinctionist future.

DOGE

Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) exemplifies the risks. Operating as an unelected, extra legal entity, it has employed AI-driven systems to automate mass firings of federal employees, and deployed Musk’s X AI Grok chatbot to analyze sensitive government data, potentially turning millions of Americans’ personal information into training fodder for the model. Reports indicate DOGE is building a data panopticon pooling the personal information of millions of Americans to surveil immigrants and to aid the Department of Justice in investigating spurious claims of widespread voter fraud.

AI Harms and the Threat of Mass Unemployment

The perils of unregulated AI are not theoretical. Like any powerful technology, AI has enormous potential for both benefit and harm, depending on how it is developed, deployed, and regulated. Embedded within AI systems are the biases and assumptions of the training data and algorithmic choices, which—if left unchecked—can perpetuate and amplify existing social disparities at scale. AI is not merely a technical tool. Rather, it is part of a larger sociotechnical system, deeply intertwined with human institutions, infrastructure, laws, and social norms.

The states must “flip the script,” drawing on the strength of our democratic tradition and shared humanity, to build a future where people and not the “end times fascism” forces can flourish.

Documented AI harms include wrongful denial of health services; discrimination in housing, hiring, and lending; and the spread of misinformation and deepfakes, among others. Where Congress has failed to act, states have stepped in to fill the regulatory void. If they are now prevented from addressing these harms, without a federal framework to take their place, the consequences will likely be severe. Not only will known harms worsen, but new risks will emerge, including the specter of mass unemployment. Some tech CEOs, anxious on making good on their massive AI investments, boast about automating away people’s jobs and another warns of mass job losses, regardless of whether AI is up to the job.

The Purported China Threat

Supporters of the moratorium claim that state-level regulation impedes America’s ability to compete with China. But flooding the market with unregulated, potentially harmful AI risks eroding public trust and creating instability. Contrary to the perennial argument propounded by Big Tech, targeted regulation does not slow innovation. Rather, it creates the stability, predictability, and safety that allow American companies to thrive and lead globally. The real risk is not that the U.S. will lose to China by regulating AI, but that it will lose the trust of its own people and the world by failing to do so.

The Public Opinion Is for AI Regulation

The American public is not fooled. Polls show overwhelming bipartisan support for strong AI oversight. State attorneys general and civil society groups have also opposed the moratorium. In the Senate, the provision may face challenges under the Byrd Rule, which prohibits including provisions in budget reconciliation bills that are “extraneous” to fiscal policy. If enacted, the moratorium would likely be challenged as unconstitutional under the 10th Amendment, which reserves to the states all powers not specifically delegated to the federal government. Regardless of its fate, the intent of its supporters is clear: to harness AI without guardrails, in pursuit of a monarchical dystopian agenda.

The Way Forward

Americans do not aspire to a future of despotic power and unaccountable surveillance—akin to the unfreedom I experienced in communist Albania. We know where that road leads: oppression, corruption, mass brainwashing, and eventually the breakdown of social order. But America’s story isn’t written by those who surrender to fear, fatalism, or nihilism. As James Baldwin said, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” Now is the time to face this challenge together. The states must “flip the script,” drawing on the strength of our democratic tradition and shared humanity, to build a future where people and not the “end times fascism” forces can flourish. Let us answer this moment not with resignation, but with courage and resolve, and ensure that a “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.”

Medication Abortion Is Safe—Political Attacks on Healthcare Are Not

Next to the abortion pills in my medicine cabinet lies a potentially risky drug: Tylenol. Ironically, while this common pain reliever is widely accepted, safer, life-saving drugs like mifepristone and misoprostol have been under relentless attack by Republican lawmakers.

For decades, these pills, Food and Drug Administration-approved after rigorous testing and proven safe through extensive studies, have been trusted by millions of physicians and pregnant people to treat miscarriages, carry out abortions, or address various medical issues. Yet, the necessity and widespread use of abortion pills seem to elude the wisdom of lawmakers and health secretaries, and highlight a troubling disconnect between the realities faced by patients and the decisions made by lawmakers.

For example, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently directed the FDA to review regulations based on a demonstrably flawed study funded by the organization responsible for overturning Roe v. Wade. This study has not undergone peer review or been published in any medical journal, highlighting its misguided methodology and analysis. For instance, it inappropriately cites bleeding and follow-up exams as adverse effects when, in reality, bleeding is an intended effect, and experts recommend follow-up exams.

The science and testimonies are clear: Abortion pills are normal, safe, and necessary.

My abortion saved my life. I am at high risk of death during pregnancy, and my sister, who shares the same medical syndromes, nearly died in childbirth. Mentally, I would have preferred to end my life rather than continue a pregnancy with my then-abusive boyfriend or pass down incurable, painful medical conditions. Emotionally, I could not handle the responsibilities of motherhood. I believe it is the most demanding and beautiful role on Earth, but it must remain a choice.

Every day that the government forces someone to remain pregnant against their will is another day the United States commits a crime against humanity, according to the United Nations. One in four people who can get pregnant will have at least one abortion in their lifetime, with nearly two-thirds of them relying on abortion pills.

I advocate for abortion patients daily and hear their harrowing stories of reproductive and medical distress. For many of them who want to save their life, preserve their liberty, or pursue happiness, abortion pills are their only option, solely due to their address and station in life. For example, consider two women who look down at a positive pregnancy test weeks after being diagnosed with cancer. One is an Oregonian; the other is a Floridian. The Oregonian can access abortion pills or have a D&C within a day or two, well past an unreasoned “heartbeat” law. Meanwhile, the Floridian may have no choice but to rely on abortion pills to protect her life, risking a future where her children could become orphans, as the majority of people who have an abortion are already parents.

If the FDA further restricts access to abortion pills, more people, especially those in marginalized communities, will die. Victims of abuse will be forced to carry pregnancies resulting from incest and rape. More people will drop out of college, and more unwanted children will be born into neglect. These are not mere possibilities; they are certainties based on the experiences of hundreds of thousands of people.

People in blue states may mistakenly believe the FDA’s decision wouldn’t impact their rights, but they would be wrong. Revoking or restricting access to abortion pills would have a ripple effect, overwhelming health centers in blue states with patients from red states. Worse yet, it could eliminate access to abortion pills entirely, effectively reducing abortion resources by 66%. Extremist Republican lawmakers are banking on rolling back our right to abortion pills as a stepping stone to enacting a nationwide abortion ban, followed by the restriction of contraception rights and the falsification or elimination of sex education. This “review” is all part of a plan to control our reproductive rights, finances, health, education, autonomy, and destiny.

Reproductive restrictions for anyone create reproductive restrictions for everyone. The science and testimonies are clear: Abortion pills are normal, safe, and necessary. More than 7 in 10 Americans support access to medication abortion, including half of Republicans.

Just as we should have been more vocal when the Trump administration withdrew from the World Health Organization and defunded cancer research, we must be vigilant about their strategy to roll back reproductive rights. I urge you to share your opinion, call your representatives, and demand that they use their leverage, platform, and influence to speak out and pressure the Department of Health and Human Services to end its misguided review of these safe and vital medications. Together, we can push back against these unjust restrictions and protect the human rights, health, and dignity of the people.

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