Every leader should move now to end our complicity.
Children collect usable items from the rubble of Israeli army’s attack on the As-Salam Tower, which also caused damage to the nearby Basmet Amal Camp in Gaza City, Gaza on September 9, 2025.(Hamza Z.H. Qraiqea / Getty Images)
The United States is aiding and abetting genocide in Gaza. This horror has the support —like so many of our most disastrous foreign debacles from Vietnam to Iraq—of both political parties.
As more and more children die of starvation and the famine deepens, as the Netanyahu government begins its attack on Gaza City, moving to occupy all of Gaza, as Israeli soldiers and bulldozers systematically level city after city in Gaza, the criminal horror is reaching its obscene goal: the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza (and, if Netanyahu’s ministers have their way, all of the occupied West Bank).
While all signatories to the Genocide Convention have the right—and indeed the duty—to intervene to halt this slaughter, only two countries have the power to actually stop the genocide: the Israeli government that is committing it and the US government that is aiding, abetting, and arming it. The US could stop this criminal assault by ending its support for Israel, cutting off the flow of arms, ammunition, bombs, and military coordination and demanding and helping to organize immediate, emergency humanitarian relief. To do any less makes us complicit in the ongoing crime.
Across the world—and within Israel itself—some brave leaders have demanded an end to the horror.
David Grossman, Israel’s leading literary and moral voice, says that for many years he has refused to use the word genocide, but now he must—“with immense pain and with a broken heart.”
Two leading Israeli human rights groups—B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel—released a report on “Our Genocide,” detailing the unfathomable violence and concluding that there is “no doubt” that since October 2023, the Israeli regime has been responsible for carrying out genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza strip.” Physicians for Human Rights Israel provided a medical-legal analysis documenting Israel’s deliberate destruction of the healthcare system in Gaza, as well as other systems critical for the survival of the Palestinian civilian population.
The special rapporteur of the United Nations has reported on the companies and countries profiting from the “economy of genocide.”
Back In January 2024, the International Court of Justice ruled that there was a plausible risk that Israel’s actions amounted to genocidal acts—long before the systematic starvation became apparent. The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, then–Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and a former Hamas commander on the suspicion of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
A growing number of countries have suspended all or part of their arms shipments to Israel, including Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Canada. Last month, in a resolution passed by 86 percent of its members, the oldest and largest association of genocide scholars concluded that Israel’s nearly two-year military campaign in Gaza meets “the legal definition of genocide,” The resolution, by the International Association of Genocide Scholars, added to a growing chorus from human rights organizations and academics concluding that Israel is committing genocide by “killing members of the group” and “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part,” according to Emily Sample, a member of the association’s executive board.
Across the world, citizens of conscience demonstrate in greater and greater numbers, demanding an end to the horror.
And in the United States where the responsibility and the complicity are the greatest?
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Courageous Jewish scholars like Omer Bartov and writers like Peter Beinart have spoken out early against the calamity.
More than 1,000 rabbis have called for Israel to allow humanitarian aid, stating “we cannot condone the mass killings of civilians…or the use of starvation as a weapon of war.”
After months of looking the other way, more and more of the mainstream US media are beginning to awake to the humanitarian catastrophe that is being inflicted on the Palestinians.
But among those who could actually bring the horror to an end, courage is in short supply.
Only 13 members of Congress have been willing to state the obvious: that Israel is committing genocide. House minority whip Katherine Clark declared that the “genocide and destruction” in Gaza needs to end—only to walk back her comments a few days later.
The Senate Resolution submitted by Senator Bernie Sanders to block some weapons sales to Israel received not one Republican vote. Instead, Republicans line up behind Donald Trump, who muses about beachfront properties in Gaza and tells Israel to hurry up and finish the job.
A Gallup poll showed only 8 percent of Democrats support Israel’s military action in Gaza. The Sanders Resolutions received support from a majority of the Senate Democratic caucus, yet those still refusing to stand up include Senator Charles Schumer, the Democratic leader in the Senate, as well as Senator Corey Booker, who styles himself as a voice for human rights.
This is no longer a policy debate. This is now an urgent question of basic humanity. Will the United States continue to arm genocide in Gaza? Will legislators continue to support an unconscionable crime against humanity—or act to end it? As more Palestinians starve to death, as more doctors and aid workers and journalists are murdered, as needed food and water continues to be withheld, as families are huddled into smaller and smaller open-air camps, no amount of censorship, doubletalk, lies, or excuses can hide the true horror.
There is no excuse for inaction. There is no escape from responsibility. Each legislator, official, and officer will have to look in the mirror. Complicity in this crime will destroy their reputations. Growing numbers of their constituents, their neighbors, even their own children will demand to know why they chose complicity rather than courage.
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Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
America is aiding, abetting, and arming that genocide.
Every American should stand up to protest the horror being committed in our names.
Every leader should move now to end our complicity.
Katrina vanden HeuvelTwitterKatrina vanden Heuvel is editor and publisher of The Nation, America’s leading source of progressive politics and culture. An expert on international affairs and US politics, she is an award-winning columnist and frequent contributor to The Guardian. Vanden Heuvel is the author of several books, including The Change I Believe In: Fighting for Progress in The Age of Obama, and co-author (with Stephen F. Cohen) of Voices of Glasnost: Interviews with Gorbachev’s Reformers.