-Analysis-
PARIS — It has now been nearly 20 months since the massacre perpetrated by Hamas in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, followed by Israel’s retaliation in Gaza — two astounding tragedies, even for a region so rarely at peace over the past century.
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Yet only recently have critical voices begun to speak out against the methods and scale of Israel’s revenge. These first noticeable criticisms are already causing serious tension between Israel and some of its allies, including France.
Why did it take so long for dissenting voices to emerge in the West, when the actions now being condemned have been known for months? They were detailed extensively, for instance, in Jean-Pierre Filiu’s book Un Historien à Gaza (“A Historian in Gaza“), written after his visit there earlier this year.
Israel’s actions likely constitute violations of international humanitarian law and have already led to legal proceedings against Israel in international courts.
Those are delicate, troubling issues — because they touch on history, diplomacy, and the collective subconscious of European societies.
Two reasons behind the silence
The first reason lies in the terrorist attack of October 7 and the deep shock it caused in Israel and across the world. At the time, no one denied Israel’s right to defend itself: the targeting of civilians and the taking of hostages are, undeniably, war crimes.
Israeli officials claimed that all Gazans were, by definition, guilty.
Western leaders therefore turned a blind eye to the scale of Israel’s response — even as it became clear that it amounted to collective punishment of an entire population for the actions of a group within it. That collective punishment — which also qualifies, at the very least, as a war crime — was openly promoted by Israeli officials who claimed that all Gazans were, by definition, guilty.
The second explanation is more complex. It stems partly from a cautious desire not to inflame multicultural societies already divided by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — and partly from Europe’s historical guilt over the Holocaust, which makes any direct criticism of Israel more difficult.
What has changed?
The scale of the information and images coming out of Gaza has made remaining silent impossible — or tantamount to tacit approval. On March 2, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu imposed a humanitarian blockade, then resumed bombing and forced population transfers within the small territory.
The West’s credibility is now at stake.
When an Israeli lawmaker boasted, eight days ago, that Israel had killed 100 Palestinians the previous day and that “no one in the world seemed to care,” he wasn’t wrong — but that is no longer the case. Several Western countries — France, the United Kingdom, and Canada — issued a joint statement last week breaking their silence and threatening Israel with retaliatory measures.
Their credibility is now at stake, because the accusation of “double standards,” heard repeatedly in the Global South since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, has hit home. There is still a long way to go before these reactions influence the course of the conflict — but silence was no longer an option.
