Haider Al-Aila, Gaza

Calling the Israeli military the “most moral army in the world” is a claim thoroughly shattered by the facts on the ground and the atrocities committed against the Palestinian people. What morality can an army claim when it massacres civilians, collapses homes on top of families, loots private property, and desecrates the dead—all while its leadership projects an air of moral supremacy to the world?

Morality is not measured by slogans or military technology; it is defined by how force is applied and the degree of respect shown for human life and dignity. From this perspective, Israel’s devastating war on Gaza reveals systematic, criminal practices that cannot be justified under any pretext of security or self-defense.

When killing becomes a display of power

Among the most harrowing dimensions of this war is the relentless bombardment that turns inhabited homes into mass graves, with utter disregard for women, children, and the elderly. In the densely populated Gaza Strip, widespread strikes have decimated entire neighborhoods, burying thousands of families beneath the rubble.

Equally horrifying are the reports of mass graves uncovered near Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City and Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. These sites revealed the bodies of women and the elderly, some bearing signs of execution, binding, and stripped of clothing. Eyewitnesses documented similar mass graves near the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza. The United Nations has rightfully demanded independent, transparent investigations to establish accountability for these apparent war crimes.

The sanctity of the dead is a fundamental human right. Any violation of this principle demands rigorous investigation and prosecution—free from diplomatic cover or denial.

A single target as a pretext to level entire blocks

I do not speak here merely from reports; I speak as a firsthand witness in Gaza. I have watched entire residential blocks—housing vulnerable families—flattened under the pretext of targeting a single individual. Time and again, the Israeli military has tracked a target via reconnaissance drones, waited until he entered a crowded residential building, and then brought the entire structure down. In doing so, they have wiped out dozens of civilians who had absolutely no connection to the individual being pursued.

This reality raises a damning question: If an army possesses the surveillance technology to track a target with surgical precision, why wait to destroy the building while innocent civilians are inside? What crime did these families commit to pay with their lives?

Deliberately subjecting civilians to catastrophic harm without taking the legally required precautions cannot be excused by the presence of a target. It is a direct violation of International Humanitarian Law and constitutes unlawful collective punishment. These are not abstract statistics or fleeting screen images to me; they are the lived realities of families wiped out in an instant.

Looting at gunpoint

The degradation extends beyond killing and physical destruction. Human rights organizations and a 2024 UN Commission of Inquiry have documented widespread instances of Israeli soldiers looting Palestinian homes—stealing cash, gold, jewelry, and electronics.

Compounding the crime, soldiers have frequently posted videos on social media mocking the victims, showing off stolen goods, and celebrating the destruction of civilian property. Pillaging the belongings of displaced or deceased civilians is not military heroism; it is a war crime and an assault on human dignity.

The racism that precedes the bullet

These actions cannot be separated from a dehumanizing, racist discourse that treats Palestinians as subhuman and undeserving of life. When national supremacy is normalized and Palestinian lives are deemed worthless, military atrocities become the inevitable outcome. In the eyes of an indoctrinated soldier, a dehumanized population becomes an open target for slaughter, torture, and humiliation.

This is not a condemnation of Jewish people, who are not a monolith; rather, it is an indictment of the racist Zionist ideology, the brutal policies of the occupation, and all who enable or justify these crimes.

When killing becomes a hunting game

Among the most chilling accounts are videos and testimonies of snipers targeting young Palestinians as if hunting prey. Soldiers have been filmed stalking victims from fortified positions, then cheering and celebrating as their bullets hit their mark.

Killing here ceases to be an act of war; it becomes sport. What moral decay allows human death to become a source of entertainment? It strips the victim of their humanity, reducing someone with dreams, a future, and a family to mere target practice.

Technology without morality

The Israeli military boasts advanced surveillance, artificial intelligence, and precision weaponry. Yet technological superiority does not confer moral superiority, nor does it grant an army a blank check to use disproportionate force.

International Humanitarian Law mandates distinction, proportionality, and precaution. Technology merely amplifies the capacity for violence; it does not legitimize mass slaughter, nor does it grant immunity from accountability.

Internal dissent: “I can no longer bear the silence”

Cracks in the narrative have also emerged from within. A widely circulated account attributed to Israeli reserve Major Avdar Shailovsky, titled “I Can No Longer Bear the Silence” (published by the Jerusalem News Agency), recounts his refusal to remain silent about the horrors he witnessed in Gaza.

The account details the deliberate targeting of civilian gatherings, aid distribution points, and the sniping of women and children, alongside systemic mockery of Palestinian suffering. Shailovsky expressed profound remorse for his complicity and called for a rejection of the racist indoctrination driving the military. While such voices of conscience exist within Israeli society, they remain a marginalized minority against a prevailing culture of right-wing extremism that condones the occupation and the erasure of Palestinian rights.

What morality remains?

The rhetoric driving this war was made clear early on when former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant referred to Palestinians as “human animals.” Such language laid the ideological groundwork for the atrocities that followed.

Public relations campaigns cannot erase the reality on the ground in Gaza. Neither military power nor foreign diplomatic protection can hide the mass graves or silence the voices of the victims.

In Gaza, I have seen multistory towers turned into tombs and human beings reduced to collateral damage by an army that views their existence as worthless. How can there be any talk of moral superiority when the dead lie trapped under concrete, emergency responders are barred from reaching them, and a nation’s suffering is trivialized?

Gaza has not only shattered the myth of the “most moral army in the world”—it has placed the conscience of the entire international community on trial.

In its shortest, leanest, and simplest definition, foreign policy is the management of all manner of relations entered into with other countries. Foreign policy is a costly undertaking. It demands extensive knowledge, skill, experience, and leadership. For the price of failure is heavy, in every respect. A country’s reputation, influence, and deterrence, as well as its human resources, finances, and borders, are all directly affected by the success or failure of its foreign policy.

The program researching the costs of war at Brown University in the US (see https://costsofwar.watson.brown.edu/paper/overview) determined in its research that post-9/11 US attacks and invasions imposed an economic burden of $8 trillion and caused the direct or indirect deaths of more than 4.5 million people. The report also noted that, alongside the financial burden of these attacks and invasions, they displaced millions of people and exacerbated global environmental pollution.

Today, to understand the decline in US imperialism’s capacity for hegemony and its ecological dominance, one must first understand the burden borne by the US economy. For the US is no longer a country that accounts for more than half of global output, as it did in the aftermath of World War II. Its share of total production stands at around 20%. The social, class, and cultural fault lines within the country, as well as the divide between rich and poor, run exceptionally deep. The combined debt of the public sector, private corporations, and households has approached $200 trillion. The total debt of the federal government has exceeded $40 trillion (see: https://www.usdebtclock.org/world-debt-clock.html).

What does the US prioritize when lending?

The 3 largest creditors to the US, according to June 2026 data, are Japan ($1.117 trillion), the United Kingdom ($940 billion), and China ($633 billion). Israel is the country receiving the greatest amount of US economic and military aid in the Middle East, followed by Egypt. Ukraine, too, has received substantial economic and military aid, funds, and loans from the US. One must also not forget that the US lends money to its allies, including Ukraine, so that they will purchase US goods, weapons, and aircraft. The US dictates how they may use this debt. What is more, it has been doing this for years. During World War II, it lent substantial sums to its allies. Britain, for instance, was only able to pay off this debt in 2006; and Britain, alongside Israel, is one of the two strategic allies of the US. Rather than lending directly to countries undergoing economic crises, the US extends credit through the IMF and the World Bank. When lending, the US takes into account not only its economic priorities but also its strategic and geopolitical ones.

As an imperialist power, the US concerns itself with the entire world. It strives to remain effective and influential on a global scale. Yet just as the power of the US itself has waned, its allies no longer possess their former strength either, especially the Europeans. The European Union, an imperialist project, is not a global actor. There is no such cohesion, no such harmony within the European Union. Nor does it have such an objective. Furthermore, the European Union possesses neither the power, nor the will, nor the courage for this. Germany, the leader of the European Union, seeks merely to exert influence in its immediate neighbourhood: the Balkans, the Baltics, the Black Sea, and the Caucasus; that is all. And the extent to which it succeeds even in this remains open to debate. Moreover, there is not a single country in the world that desires or expects the European Union to step forward, take initiative, and project power globally in distant lands.

The methods used by imperialism

When reflecting on the relationship between imperialism and foreign policy, one should remember that the tools and methods employed by imperialism have evolved. In the 19th century, for example, imperialism resorted to cruder, more brutal, and more barbaric methods. Later, while continuing to turn to military methods and brute force, it systematically deployed economic and financial instruments, cultural hegemony, and sophisticated instruments and methods of governance, utilizing them with far greater frequency.

One of the lessons history teaches is this: every empire, every great power that grows too vast, expands too far, and stretches itself too thin also hastens its own demise. This condition is natural. It is inevitable. This holds true for the Roman Empire, just as it does for the Ottoman Empire, which ruled over immense territories stretching from the Caucasus to the gates of Vienna, and from the Arabian Peninsula to North Africa. For governance and rule become increasingly difficult. For the financial burden mounts. For the bureaucracy grows cumbersome. For centrifugal tendencies come to the fore, competition among local powers far from the centre sharpens, and tensions between provincial power bases escalate. For difficulties arise in implementing necessary administrative and military reforms and in taking the required steps.

In summary, when the predicament of the US is evaluated in the light of this iron law of history, the decline in US power becomes all the clearer.

The streets of France have turned into a stage not merely for anger against the government, but for a deep-seated mistrust of the state’s approach to security. The blurring of the line between peaceful demonstrators and looters, lingering questions over police conduct, and the media’s refocusing on the immigration debate are bringing the country to the brink of a political reckoning far deeper than a routine public-order crisis.

In France, a government does not have to wait for an electoral defeat to lose its legitimacy. Sometimes, slogans chanted in a public square, tear gas fired down a boulevard, crowds penned in at the exit of a cordoned-off street, and testimonies of unhindered looting in shops only hundreds of metres away suffice to expose just how fragile the bond of trust between state and society has become.

Events in Paris on Saturday, 17 October point to precisely such a political fracture. Planned demonstrations with the participation of student unions, trade unions, and the Yellow Vests were marked throughout the day by police crackdowns, disputes over march routes, looting in the city centre, and widespread criticism of the government’s perceived inadequacy. The scene that emerged by evening suggested that France was grappling not merely with an issue of public order, but with a burgeoning crisis of confidence regarding the state’s impartiality and political motives.

Whom does the state permit to take to the streets, whom does it obstruct, and which forms of violence does it intervene against, and to what degree? The answer to this question may prove decisive in understanding France’s current political impasse.

The shadow of 17 October 1961

It is impossible to view the date of these demonstrations as a mere coincidence on the calendar. On 17 October 1961, a peaceful demonstration in Paris supporting Algerian independence was brutally crushed by the French police. Scores of people were killed, with some demonstrators drowned after being thrown into the River Seine. The event remains etched in memory as one of the darkest chapters in France’s colonial history and state-sponsored violence.

Sixty-five years later, as police interventions, youth rage, and the state’s stance on the right to protest are debated once again on the streets of Paris on 17 October, the resurgence of this historical memory was inevitable.

This memory may hold a distinct meaning, especially for French citizens of North African descent. Yet it would also be a mistake to reduce all the young people taking part in the demonstrations to a single identity, immigrant origin, or political motivation.

To what extent has the French Republic truly reckoned with the legacy of its colonial past and the relationship its security apparatus maintains with diverse segments of society?

Looters on the streets, where are the police?

Individuals dressed in black and associated in the public eye with the Black Bloc broke into shops at various locations, damaged businesses, and engaged in looting.

While peaceful demonstrators marched under a heavy police presence, fierce criticism arose that looting in certain areas had been allowed to unfold unchecked.

It is striking that while 14,000 police officers were deployed across the capital during the Pope’s visit to Paris, only 10,000 officers in total were assigned across the whole of France for the demonstrations of 17 October.

To which areas were police resources allocated? Had intelligence services assessed the risk of looting beforehand? While a robust security presence flanked the routes of peaceful marches, why was the same effectiveness not demonstrated in safeguarding commercial districts?

The deployment of elite units trained to quell urban unrest, such as CRS 8, does not resolve these questions. On the contrary, the failure to contain the incidents despite the presence of specialized units calls the quality of planning and coordination into question.

A political reckoning extending from Marseille to Limoges

The debate in Paris soon reverberated across the country’s other cities. In a televised address, the socialist mayor of Marseille stated that he had requested police reinforcements from the government, yet the units dispatched fell short given the scale and requirements of the city.

The mayor’s most striking allegation was that while looters stormed Marseille City Hall, the Hôtel de Ville, police officers stood roughly 200 metres away and failed to intervene. Stating that he possessed security camera footage, the mayor affirmed that he would await the scrutiny of a Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry and demand an explanation from the government.

The mayor of Limoges likewise issued what amounted to an ultimatum to the government, demanding the reconstruction of the torched town hall and the full reimbursement of costs. According to the mayor, the government had failed to protect a public building and neglected to provide the police with the necessary resources and backing.

These statements emerging from two distinct cities demonstrate that a new confrontation over security policy has arisen between local authorities and the central government. How security resources are allocated, which risks are prioritized, and whether the warnings of local administrations are heeded must all be brought to light.

The deepening scrutiny over the administration’s stance was compounded by President Emmanuel Macron’s refusal to accept the resignation tendered by Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez. The rejection of the resignation raises the question of whether the executive aims to preserve the chain of accountability, or fears that a political reshuffle would only exacerbate the crisis.

In either case, the government faces a crisis of trust.

An eight-minute speech and unanswered demands

Macron’s roughly eight-minute televised address failed to meet expectations regarding the political dimensions of the crisis. The president announced that he would meet with student unions and that the prime minister would engage with political parties, yet he presented neither tangible decisions nor a comprehensive political roadmap.

Education spending, police violence, the Palestinian cause, anti-fascism, and backlash against the Macron administration appear to have ceased being disparate issues in the eyes of the youth.

To be sure, the true strength of a state lies not in silencing its people and streets, but in addressing legitimate demands. It must not be forgotten that institutions unable to adapt and change are destined to break.