They’re not waking up. They’re covering their asses.

On Western liberalism and the Israeli genocide in Gaza

They’re not waking up.

They’re covering their asses.

Western leaders are not, suddenly, consumed by conscience. They haven’t had a late-night revelation, haven’t seen the footage of Gazan children burnt by white phosphorus and wept into their parliamentary carpets. What they’re doing now—this sudden flurry of condemnations, sanctions, crocodile outrage—is not a turning point. It’s an old pattern. It’s the liberal tradition of saving face when the tide of public opinion turns. A long legacy of washing bloodied hands just before the next election cycle.

When Keir Starmer calls the genocide “intolerable,” it isn’t a moral stand—it’s a risk assessment. When the Spanish government halts a €287 million arms deal, they’re not standing with the Palestinian people—they’re watching their own reflection in the rearview mirror, trying to ensure history won’t spit in their face. When Blinken stutters through another press conference, it’s not because he’s uncertain about what’s right—it’s because he knows exactly how complicit the West has been, and now the walls are closing in.

This isn’t new.

The West has always waited until the smoke clears to issue its statements. Always preferred silence when profits were flowing and only found its voice when the wreckage could no longer be ignored. They did it in Rwanda. They did it in Bosnia. They’re doing it now.

And when they do speak, it’s never about justice. It’s about timing. Optics. Damage control. They pretend at neutrality until neutrality becomes unsustainable, until their own citizens fill the streets in numbers too big to ignore, until artists start refusing state funds, until students camp on campuses and call apartheid what it is. Then, and only then, they begin to squirm. Not because they feel remorse—but because they feel watched.

They are not ashamed of Gaza. They are ashamed of being seen supporting Gaza’s destruction.

54,000 lives later, they’re hesitating—not to stop the killing, but to keep their own hands clean.

And we know what comes next.

They will point the finger at Netanyahu. They will make him the monster. The outlier. The aberration.

They will not say: this is Zionism.

They will not say: this is settler colonialism.

They will not say: this is the logical conclusion of an apartheid state backed by Western money, Western silence, and Western weapons.

No, they will say: he went too far.

As if all the others didn’t already go far enough.

They will treat Netanyahu like Trump—a convenient scapegoat. As if removing one man from power could somehow erase the decades of displacement, blockade, and bloodshed. As if the genocide was an error, not a policy. As if the system itself wasn’t engineered for this very outcome.

They will praise ceasefires without naming the bombs that fell. They will mourn the dead without acknowledging who armed the killers. They will speak of peace while signing arms deals behind closed doors. And when this ends—and it will end, because it must—they’ll pretend they were on the right side all along. Just like they always do.

But we remember.

We remember how long they stayed silent.

We remember the white phosphorus.

We remember the babies starved by siege.

We remember Genocide Joe, Kamala the Cop, Bibi the Butcher—and every single leader who watched, waited, and calculated their next move like it was a press release, not a war crime.

They were not silent. They were strategic.

So no, this is not moral awakening.

This is self-preservation, dressed up in liberal linen.

The system isn’t shifting. It’s shielding itself.

And we are the ones waking up.

We always have been.