How bankers, bureaucrats and bystanders sustain Israel's genocide in Gaza
Human beings are, relatively speaking, absent from the scene of perpetrating genocide in its "modern" form, and only the victims are visible. This evolved form of genocide conceals its perpetrators and those complicit in it.
It operates through policies, procedures and the instruments of mechanised, technological and digital warfare, including artificial intelligence, unlike the atrocities of the past, when those wielding tools of killing and terror appeared directly, shouting as they beheaded victims or burned homes.
Israeli occupation soldiers, for instance, have carried out the bombardment of civilian neighbourhoods in the Gaza Strip from within warplanes and tanks, while drone operators remain in air-conditioned environments inside distant military bases, or station themselves in Palestinian homes they have seized.
Behind these largely unseen officers and soldiers stand leaders, officials, policymakers and implementers of procedures, as well as developers of weapons, munitions and software, alongside military, political and economic backers and propagandists of modern genocide, who often appear in mild, respectable guises, sometimes wearing silk ties.
One of the most intricate tasks is identifying those complicit in modern genocide, such as that perpetrated in the Gaza Strip between 2023 and 2025. Roles appear layered and complex, many of them indirect or not clearly visible.
Yet this difficulty does not justify failing to examine both overt and concealed responsibilities.
Doing so remains an ethical imperative in holding perpetrators of modern, evolved genocide accountable, or in attempting to prevent it and ward off its precursors where possible.
Hidden perpetrators
Modern genocide functions as a system encompassing a wide array of responsibilities, some of them invisible or fundamentally unexpected. These may include, for example, the involvement of a university research centre somewhere in developing technologies and software used in practices of genocide and ethnic cleansing.
They may also include the allocation of funds from sovereign wealth funds or social security institutions into military industries that support the Israeli occupation and the war crimes it commits.
Such realities can haunt people of conscience when they discover their unexpected complicity in a system that perpetrates atrocities, even if they have not personally pressed the button that launches a massive explosive projectile that crushes a residential district in a Palestinian refugee camp.
Claude Eatherly offers an early example of the torment of conscience that afflicted some individuals.
The US Air Force pilot came to recognise his involvement in one of the great atrocities of the modern age, having helped prepare for the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
Eatherly did not drop the bomb himself. His role had been limited to conducting prior aerial reconnaissance over Hiroshima ahead of the devastating strike.
Yet he came to see himself as a partner in the erasure of the Japanese city, and his sense of guilt pursued him to the point that he attempted suicide twice and was hospitalised.
Layers of complicity
Others in western countries that supported the Israeli side during the genocide in the Gaza Strip publicly resigned from prestigious positions in governments, ministries, public administrations and IT companies, refusing to participate in what sustained the ongoing atrocities.
Some went further, choosing far more costly paths when they decided to sacrifice their lives to renounce complicity. Among them was the young US Air Force officer Aaron Bushnell, who on 25 February 2024 arrived at the entrance of the Israeli embassy in Washington, DC and set his body on fire, declaring in a livestream, "I will no longer be complicit in genocide," and shouting "Free Palestine" as his body burned.
The 25-year-old officer said that direct US military support for an army committing genocide made him complicit in a crime the world could witness in real time. His act was intended as a protest against that complicity.
It is necessary to search for those complicit in genocide in unexpected places as well, including where those who support it in overt or covert ways reside – people who are complicit in providing military, logistical, political, diplomatic, economic or propagandistic support; people failing to hold accountable their citizens who join an army committing genocide, or people profiting from the system of genocide at the level of corporations, factories and vested interests.
A detailed report issued in July 2025 by Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, identified more than 60 companies, including major US and European firms, as allegedly embedded in what she described as an "economy of genocide".
The list of potential accomplices extends further, to include paid commentators and influencers who attempt to sanitise atrocities and persuade audiences with simplistic arguments they themselves may not believe.
Silence and power
It must also be recalled that those who fail to take appropriate action in response to genocide are likewise complicit in enabling it when they choose to look away, remain silent about its atrocities, and avoid demonstrating serious reactions.
Their silence became a partner in paving the way for the horrors inflicted by Israeli leadership upon the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip.
In this context, the slogan "Silence kills" rings true. Those who fail to take even minimal action in the face of a genocide visible to all resemble individuals who ignore a fire consuming an inhabited house nearby, making no effort to respond or even to call emergency services, but instead continuing to indulge in their hobbies.
Follow Middle East Eye's live coverage of Israel's genocide in Gaza
It is well known that the European Union took no punitive measures against Israel over the course of two years of a genocide that unfolded relentlessly in full public view. The bureaucracy of European decision-making thwarted successive efforts to impose even modest sanctions and derailed proposals to withdraw the privileges Israel enjoys under the EU-Israel Association Agreement.
Meanwhile, Europe continued to impose sweeping packages of sanctions on Russia over the war in Ukraine, comprising thousands of measures.
As inaction prevailed, denial and avoidance became necessary to shield European and western governments from the obligation to respond proportionately. In this environment, the Israeli leadership gained the impression that it could persist in committing atrocities without facing accountability.
The genocide targeting the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip could not have continued for two years without individuals and entities complicit in it, directly or indirectly.
These include those who supported, enabled and encouraged it, explicitly or implicitly. They include those who participated in aspects of its operations, those who invested in its industries or profited from related contracts, and those who failed to attempt to stop or oppose it. It also includes those who simply ignored it and remained silent, or who persisted in denying it, even avoiding recognising it as genocide in the first place.
None of these can be absolved of suspicion of complicity in the terrible genocide perpetrated over two years in a small coastal enclave along the Mediterranean, densely populated with Palestinian refugees in the 21st century.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
This article was sourced from Middle East Eye.
Read Full Article on Middle East Eye →