The West’s Ethical Framework Might Not Recover After the Israeli Genocide in Gaza

The New York Times published a story showcasing a skeletal child who later died of malnutrition. A British-Israeli “journalist-investigator” accused the paper of intentionally misleading its audience. He claimed the child did not die of malnutrition but of a congenital disease. Backed by this claim, the Israeli lobby exerted full pressure on the newspaper, which, days later, published an amendment to the article reflecting this view.

The “journalist-investigator” David Collier—who, judging from the content of his X account and website, is an uncritical supporter of everything the State of Israel does—claimed to have a document from an NGO stating that the child suffered from cerebral palsy, had hypoxemia, and was born with a serious genetic disorder. He also pointed to the child’s brother, featured in one of the pictures, who did not show signs of malnutrition.

What he did not say, and what the child’s mother stated in an interview, is that the child, named Mohammed, was born in December 2023, during the Israeli offensive, without any preexisting chronic illnesses. “Doctors diagnosed him with macrocephaly, which they said was caused by nutritional deficiencies during pregnancy due to the Israeli war,” the mother stated.

She emphasized that Mohammed was healthy and of normal weight at birth. “Over the past four months of displacement, his condition worsened due to the severe shortage of food. That is when he developed acute malnutrition.” His brother was older when the Israeli attack began and had greater strength to survive. Mohammed, on the other hand, suffered from the Israeli starvation policy even before he was born—and he died because of it.

Israeli propagandists are now deploying this argument to justify the tragedy unfolding in Gaza. They no longer deny the brutal reality of starvation—though some still try—because the evidence is overwhelming and the cause so clear that their lies are exposed. What they attempt now is to deflect blame—either to Hamas, the UN, or any organization trying to help the Palestinians—or, in the face of undeniable deaths, to a preexisting medical condition.

The Wall Street Journal shamelessly published an op-ed with exactly that argument: “Hamas propaganda exploits ill children and the media goes along,” reads the subtitle. This claim was later echoed by British journalist Julia Hartley-Brewer and by the pro-Israeli blogosphere, using the supposed credibility of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal as legitimacy for their narrative.

This is the way Israeli propaganda works. It is even feasible, though speculative, that The New York Times, given its openly pro-Israeli coverage of Gaza, purposefully published the piece in that way so that it would have to issue an amendment later that Israeli apologists could use to strengthen their claims. But it is not just one child. There are hundreds of them—as well as men and women of all ages—starving. At the time of writing, 193 people, 96 of them children, have died of starvation.

The reality of the situation—the man-made, Western-enabled famine—is obvious to all of us. That is why Western governments are rushing to show the most irrelevant signs of support for the Palestinians who are dying: they want an excuse in case they are asked tomorrow. But it is too late. The stain of this genocide will haunt us all because we have entered uncharted ethical territory.

“Do not do unto others what you would not want done to yourself.” This principle, known as the Silver Rule, has been articulated in one form or another as the cornerstone of ethics throughout history.

It appears in The History of the Peasant in ancient Egypt and in Confucian thought as: “Do not impose on others that which you yourself do not desire.” In the Mahabharata, the Sanskrit tradition states: “One should never do something to others that one would regard as an injury to one’s own self. In brief, this is dharma. Anything else is succumbing to desire.”

The pre-Socratic philosopher Thales of Miletus, one of the Seven Ancient Sages, when asked how to lead a righteous life, said: “Avoid doing what you would blame others for doing.” A similar principle was echoed by Pittacus of Mytilene, another of the Seven Sages, in the words: “Do not do what you scold others for.” Romans maintained this ethical tradition, and Cicero expressed it as: “Everything you criticize in others, you should avoid doing yourself.”

The Abrahamic prophetic tradition maintained this principle as a cornerstone of its ethical framework. The revered Rabbi Hillel, who lived in Palestine at about the same time as Jesus, when asked by a polytheist to explain in short the essence of religion, answered: “What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow: this is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation.” Jesus made it the second great commandment in the Sermon on the Mount when he stated: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Muhammad famously stated: “You will not believe until you love for your brother what you love for yourself.” The Qur’an equates killing one person with killing all of humanity, and saving one person with saving all of humanity.

Jumping ahead, Kant, in his characteristically rational way, first defined it in his Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals as: “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” He later refined it in the Critique of Practical Reason: “Act in such a way that the maxim of your will could always hold at the same time as a principle of universal legislation.”

Modern utilitarian, humanist, and atheist thinkers have continued expressing this idea as the basis for ethical behavior. John Stuart Mill implied this reciprocity when he stated: “The morality of an action depends on its consequences for general happiness.” Bertrand Russell called it “the essence of morality,” and Richard Dawkins proposed that acting in this way is what it means to be “cultured, with the power to defy our selfish genes.”

Of course, interpretations of the applicability of this principle vary, and defining what is harmful or beneficial is another discussion. But what is clear is that across traditions and in modernity, this principle remains the near-universal foundation of ethics and morality.

Following this, the genocide of the people of Gaza should not be wished upon anyone. Yet parts of Israeli society and some of its leaders express a vehement desire to inflict unimaginable pain and suffering on Palestinians—not on Hamas combatants, whether one calls them terrorists or resistance fighters, but on the civilian children, women, and men. They wish them all to starve, to be bombarded and killed, and to be removed from their homeland. They wish for their total annihilation.

That is not war. Even war has rules—hence the Geneva Conventions, which state that in armed conflicts, civilian harm must be avoided. In war, the warring parties have a conflict to resolve; they may seek to subjugate the other, but not to exterminate them entirely. One side may wish harm on the other, but it accepts the possibility of suffering a similar fate, even if it tries to avoid it. When that is no longer the case—when one party intentionally seeks the total annihilation of the other and has the means to achieve it, while the other has little to no ability to stop it—we call it genocide, but no word truly captures it.

It is difficult—and perhaps impossible—to justify a war as ethical, but war can be waged with some ethics. In Gaza, there are none, because the most fundamental rule of ethics is ignored.

It is not the first time this has happened in history, and unfortunately, it probably won’t be the last. It is, however, the first time a genocide has been publicly broadcast, and almost no one can claim ignorance. This holds especially true for Western governments that have enabled Israeli rhetoric and actions. Their support for Israel, even as its intentions were made explicitly clear, amounts to acquiescence in those actions. The rest of the world has been less silent, but equally incapable of stopping it.

The possibility of something like this occurring while Israel maintains near-impunity poses many serious questions about international institutions, international law, and human rights. But one goes to the core of the social order under Western states: under which ethical framework—religious, secular, atheist, or otherwise—do Western governments operate if they do not uphold the first principle of ethics? It is an important question to ask because much of their legitimacy—and our safety—depends on it.

The Israeli government, for its part, has lost all legitimacy not only because of the genocide it is committing, but also because it has failed to uphold a principle central to Jewish life, according to Rabbi Hillel, and its entire claim to legitimacy is built upon being a state for the Jewish people.