It has been 600 days since Israel launched its war on Gaza. Six hundred days of relentless bombing, engineered starvation, mass displacement, and unspeakable grief. And the so-called civilised world hasn’t just watched in silence — it has enabled every single day of it.

What do you call it when over 55,000 Palestinians, including more than 16,000 children, are killed and yet Israel faces no accountability? When starvation is used as a weapon? When water, fuel, medicine, and humanitarian aid are systematically blocked from reaching a population that is mostly made up of refugees?

You call it genocide.

That’s not just my word. It’s the word used by leading genocide scholars, major human rights organisations, and a growing number of United Nations experts. 

In fact, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Francesca Albanese, declared that there are “reasonable grounds to believe” that genocide is being committed in Gaza. 

A joint statement by 20 UN experts warned of an “unfolding genocide,” and other UN bodies have echoed these conclusions. Even senior UN humanitarian officials, like Under-Secretary-General Tom Fletcher, have openly used the term to describe what is happening in Gaza.

This isn’t just a legal technicality. It’s a moral alarm.

And while legal institutions slowly catch up with what Palestinians have been screaming for nearly two years, the bombs keep falling. The children keep dying. And Western governments continue to arm, shield and excuse the state doing the killing.

Moral collapse of the West

I write this not just as a Palestinian. Not just as someone who has lost family. I write as someone watching the world fail, in real time. My family in Gaza is still displaced. Still starving. Still grieving. Still unsafe.

I write from London, where I’ve marched, shouted, begged, and wept — while the UK government continues to debate whether Israel’s actions are “disproportionate” or whether it “might” be breaking international law.

On a Sunday morning political show, the UK’s Deputy Prime Minister, Angela Rayner, said it was “not their position” to determine whether Israel is violating international law. This, while over 800 British lawyers and judges signed an open letter to Prime Minister Keir Starmer, urging the government to act against Israel’s “serious violations of international law”.

As if morality were optional. As if the UK’s real position isn’t to stop the killing, but to keep selling the weapons that make it possible. 

Then, on the same programme, Kemi Badenoch — now the leader of the Conservative Party and potentially the next UK prime minister — stood on national television and accused Keir Starmer of “cheering for terrorists.” Why? Because he acknowledged that Israel might have committed war crimes.

Six hundred days of slaughter. And still, for those in power, the only question is: “But what about Hamas?”

As if that justifies burning children alive. As if it excuses the mass murder of civilians and the slow, deliberate starvation of an entire population.

Let me say this clearly: if this isn’t genocide, what is?

In these 600 days, Israel has bombed hospitals, schools, mosques, churches, bakeries, and refugee camps. It has killed entire families — erasing surnames from the civil registry. It has targeted journalists, UN shelters, aid workers, and ambulances. It has burned people alive. It has turned tents into coffins.

And throughout it all, Western leaders have responded with nothing but empty rhetoric, vague “concerns,” and meaningless “warnings.” As if Israel needs more warnings. As if the daily carnage isn’t warning enough.

The genocide that happened in plain sight

When my six-year-old niece Juri was killed, she was asleep in her bed. Our family’s home — not that anywhere in Gaza was ever truly safe — was bombed and flattened. Her five-year-old sister was injured. Her father wounded. 

Her grandfather too. Juri’s tiny body was pulled from the rubble by relatives and buried in a mass grave — there were too many dead that day for proper funerals.

How do you defend this?

How do you justify the starvation of infants? The bombing of Rafah, where families were told to flee “for safety”? The mass graves discovered around hospitals, where bodies showed signs of torture and execution?

You can’t — unless you believe Palestinian lives are worth less.

That is the unspoken logic behind every vague condemnation, every cowardly statement of “deep concern.” 

Because when two Israelis were killed in Washington DC last week, it makes international headlines. 

But when thousands of Palestinian children are slaughtered, the world debates the definition of genocide — all while continuing to supply weapons to the state doing the killing.

This is not a war between equals. It never was. This is the most powerful military in the region — backed by the most powerful nations on Earth — laying siege to a population of trapped refugees. Half of them children.

And the world didn’t just allow it — it helped it happen.

Not just by doing nothing. But by doing too much in the wrong direction — silencing dissent, sacking journalists, banning protests, criminalising solidarity. In the UK, I’ve seen people lose their jobs simply for saying the word “Palestine.” 

I’ve watched British media refuse to say “genocide” — while platforming Israeli spokespeople who deny Palestinian children even exist.

Six hundred days.

It should never have gone on this long. Every single day it continues is not just a tragedy — it is a choice.

And history will remember that this genocide didn’t happen in secret. It happened live. In high definition. On every screen. In every language.

We told you. We are still telling you.

The only question now is: How many more days will it take before the world finally says: enough?