Something terrible has killed our hearts.

Given the near euphoria in the West on the Donald Trump-imposed ceasefire in Gaza, with an interim administration that has no representation of Palestinians to be headed by the infamous Tony Blair (of the 'weapons of mass destruction' war crimes in Iraq), it might be easy to get on, forgetting to fix responsibility for war crimes, as happened in the case of Iraq. But the post-Holocaust slogan “Never Again” must also apply to the war crimes committed by the pariah Zionist state, Israel.

What has happened in Gaza is truly unprecedented in history: a full-blown genocide of Palestinians for the world to see. We were seeing this appalling horror in real time on our TV screens and social media platforms. This genocide was aided and abetted by the US, UK and EU, and the mainstream media in these countries, including the BBC. They were not merely complicit, but active participants through shipping arms and sharing intelligence. Two exceptions in the EU were Ireland and Spain, who have both denounced the EU’s complicity.

India too is more than complicit – not just by its silence on the genocide, but by the close economic links being forged, the supply of labour to replace Palestinian labour, and the Indian IT industry’s links with the Israeli defence system.

Nobody can honestly say today, as well-meaning people did after the horrors of Nazi Germany came to light, “We did not know.” As a matter of fact even then, many did.

The Balfour Declaration, creating Israel, came about because the UK did not want persecuted Jews from Europe arriving on her shores. Plain and simple racism. It was only in 1890 that the UK gave citizenship rights to male Jews.

I proudly remember my first passport said it was not valid for South Africa and for Israel, both countries of Apartheid. Those were days when I was proud to be an Indian, a supporter of anti-imperialist and anti-colonial movements, where citizenship mattered, and not ethnicity, tribe, race or religion.

All this changed after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the world was now unipolar, with the US dominating everything globally. India made the change to recognising Israel, but since 2014, there has been a growing relationship, rooted ideologically.

What a distressing journey since then, with India deeply implicated in Israel’s economy and the genocide through labour, intelligence, software and, above all, moral complicity. The only explanation I have is bigotry and hatred: the hatred for Muslims, and Palestinians are predominantly Muslims.

How proud I am of Gandhi, who said that Palestine belongs to the Palestinians, as England belongs to the English or France to the French.

But today we live in an India that celebrates the assassins of Gandhi.

Let me give you some figures of the horrible massive nature of these crimes against humanity. As per the Commission of Enquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, chaired by the former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillai, which confirmed the perpetration of genocide, Gaza’s life expectancy collapsed from 75.5 years to 40.5 years in one year. This unprecedented demographic collapse is one critical indicator of group destruction, revealing intentional harm. The report also documents the destruction of Gaza’s largest IVF clinic containing 4,000 embryos and 1,000 sperm samples, an act intended to prevent births in the population. This too comes under the legal definition of genocide. Since May 2025, 1,300 Palestinians were killed while seeking food at food aid sites, part of “a widespread and systematic pattern showing intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza”.

MSF reports that since October 7, 2023, over 1,580 health care workers (including 12 MSF colleagues) have been killed. Not a single hospital in Gaza is fully functional. The WHO has reported 772 attacks on healthcare with 94% of hospitals damaged or destroyed.

The Lancet in July 2024 estimated that 186,000 deaths could be attributed to Israel’s war on a defenceless people, without an army. This is 7.9% of the total population. As the journalist Craig Murray points out, the percentage of children killed in Ukraine is 0.03%. The percentage of children killed in Gaza is 37.7%. This, in simple statistical terms, is the difference between a war and a genocide.

The Lancet 2024 report estimated four indirect deaths per one direct death. The mortality estimate of 186,000 direct deaths would translate into a total of 744,000 deaths, the large majority of them women and children. About 400,000 are estimated to be of children under the age of five years. This is significantly higher than the 65,000 deaths reported in the Western media.

Compounding the appalling number of deaths, the WHO, the FAO and the World Food Programme have pointed to the famine-like conditions prevailing. In August 2025, the UN officially declared a famine in Gaza.

The deliberate withholding of food and water amount to war crimes under international law.

Leading Israeli politicians have not been shy about revealing the intent of genocide. Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant described Palestinians as “human animals”, dehumanising an entire population. Dehumanising populations is what makes genocide acceptable and possible.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered Israel to take all measures to prevent and punish “direct and public incitement to commit genocide”. Under international law, incitement to genocide is a crime.

A UN Commission of Enquiry found that statements by President Isaac Herzog and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “incited the commission of genocide”.

At the ICJ, the South African legal team – South Africa took the lead in approaching the ICJ because apartheid Israel had supported apartheid South Africa in myriad ways, above all with military training and intelligence – pointed to a database compiled by Law for Palestine that has meticulously documented 500 statements by high-ranking Israeli officials that embody Israel’s intent to commit genocide.

In a December 2024 report entitled ‘“You Feel You Are Subhuman”: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza’, Amnesty International concluded that Israel is indeed committing genocide in Gaza. In the same month, Human Right’s Watch also came to the same conclusion.

It is not just the bombings, the flattening of the entire cities or the targeted killings of civilians, including children, it is also the destruction of water supplies, sanitation and above all, with holding humanitarian aid that has plunged the entire population into famine.

We must do whatever we can to pressurise the Government of India to stop this complicity with genocide. To bring Netanyahu to face trial at The Hague.

We must begin with joining local protests, many of which have been proscribed in Bangalore, despite a Congress government, from whom we expected better.

Mohan Rao is former professor, Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health, JNU, New Delhi.

The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.