A massive smoke and dust cloud rises after Israeli forces demolish several buildings in the Shujaiyya neighborhood located inside the so-called yellow zone in northern Gaza City, Gaza on December 9, 2025. (Photo by Khames Alrefi/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“The American public is demanding decisive action to end US complicity in the Israeli government’s war crimes by stopping the flow of weapons to Israel.”
Jewish Voice for Peace Action on Friday led a coalition of groups demanding that the Democratic Party stop providing arms to the Israeli government.
Speaking outside the Democratic National Committee’s Winter Meeting in Los Angeles, Jewish Voice for Peace Action (JVP Action) held a press conference calling on Democrats to oppose all future weapons shipments to Israel, whose years-long assault on Gaza has, according to one estimate, killed more than 100,000 Palestinian people.
While carrying banners that read, “Stop Arming Israel,” speakers at the press conference also called on Democrats to reject money from the American Israeli Political Action Committee (AIPAC), which has consistently funded primary challenges against left-wing critics of Israel.
JVP Action was joined at the press conference by representatives from Health Care 4 US (HC4US), Progressive Democrats of America, the Council on American-Islamic Relations Action (CAIR Action), and the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) Board of Directors.
Estee Chandler, founder of the Los Angeles chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace, warned Democrats at the press conference that they risked falling out of touch with public opinion if they continued to support giving weapons to Israel.
“The polls are clear,” Chandler said. “The American public is demanding decisive action to end US complicity in the Israeli government’s war crimes by stopping the flow of weapons to Israel, and the Democratic Party refusing to heed that call will continue to come at their own peril.”
The press conference came a day after the progressive advocacy group RootsAction and journalist Christopher D. Cook released an “autopsy” report of the Democratic Party’s crushing 2024 losses, finding that the party’s support for Israel’s assault on Gaza contributed to last year’s election results.
Chandler also called on Democrats to get behind the Block the Bombs Act, which currently has 58 sponsors, and which she said “would block the transfer of the worst offensive weapons from being sent to Israel, including bombs, tank rounds, and artillery shells that are US-supplied and have been involved in the mass killing of Palestinian civilians and the grossest violations of international law in Gaza.”
Although there has technically been a ceasefire in place in Gaza since October, Israeli forces have continued to conduct deadly military operations in the enclave that have killed hundreds of civilians, including dozens of children.
Ricardo Pires, a spokesperson for the United Nations Children’s Fund, said last month that the number of deaths in Gaza in recent weeks has been “staggering” given that they’ve happened “during an agreed ceasefire.”
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.
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A protester seen with a “Stop Arming Israel” placard during the demonstration. Tens of thousands of people marched in Berlin under the slogans “All Eyes on Gaza” and “Stop the Genocide,” demanding a ceasefire, peace talks, and an end to German arms exports to Israel, on 27 September 2025 [Vasily Krestyaninov/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images]
On 29 February 2024, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin sent shockwaves when he informed lawmakers in the House Armed Services Committee that over 25,000 Palestinian women and children had been killed by Israel in Gaza up to that date. Austin, the military chief of the Biden Administration, delivered a fact that immediately subverted his own government’s rhetoric.
The announcement was shocking for two main reasons. First, Austin himself had orchestrated the relentless flow of US arms to Israel, directly enabling the very campaign that liquidated those innocent people. Second, the figure provided was noticeably higher than the casualty tally reported by the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza for the same period — 22,000 women and children in the first 146 days of the war.
The crux of the contradiction, however, is that Austin’s detailed account of the US-funded Israeli atrocities in Gaza directly subverted the official narrative regularly disseminated by the White House.
In fact, as early as 25 October 2023 — barely two weeks into the war — President Joe Biden himself began doubting the Palestinian Ministry of Health’s death toll estimates. “(I have) no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using,” he flatly declared.
Naturally, Austin’s declaration neither eroded his unwavering endorsement of Israel nor softened Biden’s patronising attitude toward the Palestinians. To the contrary, US military and political backing for Israel surged exponentially after that congressional hearing. US military and financial support for the Israeli genocide during the Biden administration in the first year of the war is estimated to be at least $17.9 billion.
These apparent contradictions, however, are not inconsistencies at all, but a perfectly calibrated, deliberate policy. Historically, this approach grants the US license to consistently flout its own declared principles. Iraq was invaded, at a horrific cost of life and societal destruction, under the banner of ‘good intentions’: democracy, human rights, and the like. Afghanistan’s protracted agony of war and instability endured for two decades in the name of fighting terror, exporting democracy, and women’s rights.
The operational part of the equation satisfies military and political strategists. Meanwhile, the hollow rhetoric of democracy and human rights keeps intellectuals, both on the right and the left, mired in a protracted, perpetually unproductive debate that serves to conceal rather than influence policy.
While the US government may have perfected the craft of deliberate contradictions, it is not the original architect. In modern history, this phenomenon has been owned almost entirely by the West: colonialism was advanced as a solution to slavery, and forced conversions were brazenly justified as civilising missions.
The West’s stance on the Israeli genocide in Gaza, however, offers the most blatant and current example of this deliberate contradiction. A concise examination of Germany’s conduct in the last two years suffices to illustrate the point.
Germany is the world’s second-largest supplier of weapons to Israel, after the US. Not only did it refuse to accept the genocide definition recognised by many countries, and eventually by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), but it also fought ferociously to shield Israel from the mere accusation.
Domestically, it brutally suppressed pro-Palestinian protests, detained countless activists, and outlawed the use of the Palestinian flag, among numerous other draconian measures. Yet, in the same breath, Germany continued to champion freedom of speech and democracy, and criticise Global South nations that allegedly curtailed these same values.
Predictably, Germany continued to arm Israel, concocting every conceivable justification for its support of Tel Aviv, even after the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for top Israeli leaders for the crime of extermination in Gaza. Only under immense pressure did Berlin finally yield and agree to stop approving weapons exports to Israel.
Fast forward to recent days. The BBC, among other outlets, reported on 17 November that Germany would reinstate its weapons exports to Israel, rationalising the decision with the 10 October announcement of a Gaza ceasefire—one that Israel has flagrantly violated hundreds of times.
“Germany’s decision to lift its partial suspension of weapons shipments to Israel is reckless, unlawful and sends entirely the wrong message to Israel,” Amnesty International declared in a press release—a condemnation that, naturally, was utterly ignored.
A week later, new research conducted by two top, highly regarded academic institutions showed that the number of Palestinians killed as a result of the Israeli genocide is substantially higher than the Gaza Ministry of Health figures. Worse, life expectancy in Gaza has plummeted by nearly half because of the Israeli war.
Of the two institutions, the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) is German. The globally leading research organization is largely funded by public money coming directly from the federal government—the very entity that ships the weapons that, along with US support, have fueled Gaza’s escalating death toll.
In all these scenarios, the West serves as the simultaneous judge and executioner, the honest researcher and the weapons manufacturer, the violator and the self-appointed defender of human rights.
But the rest of us in the Global South must not simply yield to the role of the victim, whose lives are taken but precisely counted. To reclaim our collective agency, however, we must begin with a unified realisation that the West’s calculated contradictions are specifically engineered to perpetuate the iniquitous relationship between Western powers and the rest of us for as long as possible.
Only by rigorously exposing and forcefully rejecting this hypocrisy can we finally liberate ourselves from the historic delusion that the solution to our problem is a Western one.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.
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Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAOrcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.
On November 29, hundreds of thousands marched across Europe in support of Palestine and against government complicity in Israel’s genocide.
The Palestine solidarity movement in Europe again brought record numbers to the streets on the UN’s International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, November 29, reaffirming demands for an end to government complicity in the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the occupation of Palestine. Hundreds of thousands marched across the region, with demonstrations in London and Rome each reaching an estimated 100,000 participants.
“On this day, people around the world express their support for the inalienable rights that are currently denied to Palestinians: the right to live free from discrimination, the right to self-determination, and the right to return to their lands,” the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) wrote on social media. “Despite this Britain continues to arm Israel and refuses to implement meaningful sanctions or end its diplomatic support. It still provides parts for Israel’s F-35 fighter jets, used to bomb Palestinians in Gaza and maintains contracts with Israeli weapons manufacturers like Elbit Systems.”
Saturday’s demonstration was the 33rd national march for Palestine in Britain. In addition to local activists, it also welcomed international guests who have stood with Palestinians since the beginning of the genocide, including Belgian MEP Marc Botenga of the Workers’ Party of Belgium (PTB-PVDA), French parliamentarian Nadège Abomangoli of France Unbowed (LFI), and Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald. While addressing the crowd in London, they emphasized the internationalist character of the mobilization and echoed demands that could be heard in their home countries around the same time.
As thousands marched in Paris and Dublin, they insisted on the need to continue organizing despite political obstruction and attacks. Irish actor Liam Cunningham, a vocal supporter of Palestine, helped lead Dublin’s demonstration. Responding to artists being de-platformed for speaking out against genocide, he said: “If anyone doesn’t want to employ me because I’ve taken a stand against injustice, against the refusal to give self-determination to a group of people who are politically, culturally on the same track that my country was on for 800 years […] they’re not going to be very good at their job, because they’ve no soul.”
Another recurring message across Europe refused the mainstream media allegation of a “ceasefire” in Gaza. “There’s no ceasefire just because it’s written on a Western media banner,” Cunningham added. “Let’s come up with another word, ‘ceasefire’ is not working.”
In Italy, the central mobilization followed a successful day of general strike organized by the grassroots union Unione Sindacale di Base (USB). The march welcomed UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese and Freedom Flotilla activists Greta Thunberg and Thiago Ávila. Dockworkers and firefighters affiliated with USB, who have played key roles in earlier protests and faced reprisals for this, also formed notable protest blocs. The response of Italy’s political establishment to growing support for Palestine mirrors that of other European governments: attempting to suppress dissent and insisting that further militarization is the only path forward.
Palestine solidarity march in London, November 29, 2025. Source: Marc Botenga/Facebook
“Today we see what this path has created: a genocide, broadcast live, carried out with the complicity of Western governments; massacres in the Mediterranean; NATO wars; bombs across the world,” said Marta Collot, spokesperson for the left party Potere al Popolo, during the Rome demonstration. “But something has changed too. The September mobilizations, the three general strikes called by USB that brought everything to a halt, and our march today show that they were wrong […] Our demonstration is the message coming from Palestine, from socialist Cuba resisting, from Venezuela. It shows that an alternative path is not only necessary, but that it’s possible.”
“Today there are two Europes,” Marc Botenga emphasized in London. “There is the Europe of the establishment, the Europe of the governments that have funded this genocide, that have supported this genocide, and that are continuing to do so. And then, there’s the other Europe, there’s the Europe that we incarnate here today. That is the Europe of liberation, the Europe that says no to occupation.”
Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAKeir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.
