Humanitarian aid is fast becoming concerned with its own image, trapped as it is by donor funding of the same countries complicit in genocide.

by Ramona Wadi

As Israel omits Palestinians from Gaza in its depraved genocide, let the international community omit all its hypocritical rhetoric of “concern”, “deeply disturbed”, “deplores” and “catastrophic”. The international community is comfortably ensconced in its complicity and the humanitarian paradigm is its veneer.

Meanwhile, the world was regaled with more horrific live footage from Israel’s genocide in Gaza – Palestinians blasted in the air as bombs hit civilian buildings in Gaza. What we are seeing is beyond the mental capacity of imagination. Unless the imagination is depraved enough to be linked to colonial violence and genocide, that is.

Mere weeks ago, the international community, with the European Union (EU) at its helm, was proudly distancing itself from US President Donald Trump administration’s so-called Riviera project for Gaza, having found its rebuilding niche in the plan proposed by Egypt. The alleged contention with Trump’s plan was the forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza.

Thousands of dead bodies later, as Israel announced its “negotiations under fire” like policy novelty, although that is far from the truth, the international community turned its attention to starvation in Gaza. According to Jonathan Whittall, the acting head of Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the occupied Palestinian territories: “As humanitarians … we cannot accept that Palestinian civilians are dehumanised to the point of being somehow unworthy of survival … [and] people’s survival is dependent on an aid system that itself is under attack.”

The statement is not entirely correct. People’s survival is dependent on a change in politics that would ultimately make humanitarian aid achievable due to its temporary nature, as originally planned. Humanitarian aid cannot compete with colonialism and genocide; it cannot even level out the discrepancy between the violence and its repercussions and the alleviation of perpetual pain. What Gaza has been experiencing is beyond hardship. Only international rhetoric made Gaza sound manageable in terms of humanitarian aid, which in turn allowed Israel further space to colonise by genocide.

Humanitarian workers may not accept dehumanisation – Israel has targeted many aid workers in Gaza. But humanitarian workers are part of a system that depends on atrocities, even genocide, to function because this is what the international community determined. Just like concern, humanitarian aid no longer bears its own definition. All these terms, once coined for at least a partial semblance of order are now incarcerated into the paradigm that works for world leaders, not for civilians whose lives have been ruptured by the same powers feigning equivalence between Israel’s alleged right to defend itself and humanitarian aid.

Humanitarian aid will not save Palestinians from being blasted into the air by bombs. It will, at the very least and given the genocide context, feed Palestinians until the next bomb kills them. The international community’s complaints about Israel refusing the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza have nothing to do with Palestinians and everything to do with the politics of complicity in genocide. Since the international community has tacitly agreed to genocide and is not yet ready to overtly admit it, it needs to keep up its charade through the humanitarian paradigm. Saving lives to have them killed later has its own macabre positioning in a world that manufactures weapons and relies on them for dominance.

Genocide cannot be prevented by humanitarian aid. Humanitarian aid is the logical service of provision that helps sustain a population if the atrocity itself stops. Why is there no questioning of the disparity that world leaders rely on to maintain their façade of concern? Of course, this fabricated concern does not extend to the many different methods Israel shows us it has of killing Palestinians.

Is it not disturbing that we have arrived at a point where seeing bodies flying in the air becomes normalised? Were the Palestinians burned to death in their tents and torn to shreds, not enough? Is genocide just an eight-letter word to skim over? Has it no implications, not even humanitarian ones? A real humanitarian would have been horrified at the footage, the harrowing whimpers of the helpless observers in Gaza.

Germany, which is the largest weapons provider for Israel after the US and the primary supplier in the EU, donated €45 million to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) in March this year. UNRWA Commissioner Philippe Lazzarini expressed gratitude over “Germany’s solidarity with UNRWA”, hailing it as: “Proof of its commitment to contributing to the human development of Palestine Refugees, and to their right to a dignified life.”

If Germany was truly committed to enabling Palestinians to live a dignified life, would it be supplying weapons to Israel? And why does UNRWA claim neutrality when it is as politicised as its donors force it to be? Germany’s solidarity is with the humanitarian paradigm that provides the necessary veneer for political allegiance with Israel; the same goes for most of the international community.

Humanitarian aid is fast becoming concerned with its own image, trapped as it is by donor funding of the same countries complicit in genocide. The dissolution of meaning from words that once held significance has disrupted all order. World leaders have decided what humanitarian aid now means – an interim before civilians are killed. It is abnormal to fund genocide and humanitarian aid, but the neutral politics has made it not only possible but normalised to the point that one can barely call out its illegitimacy. The absurd is atrocious, and the atrocious is absurd. Palestinians are killed in ways that make us think – without being able to fathom – in what way will they be killed next? And why?

For Israel, Palestinians are killed in the name of colonisation. The rest of the world and its humanitarian paradigm have rendered the Palestinians pawns in their hypocritical endeavour to save the last colonial enterprise.

The equation Palestinians are left with is to be killed in the name of Israeli colonisation and international humanitarian aid by all means possible, even if that clause initially applied to anti-colonial resistance in international law.

This is the international community’s legacy and for what it will be remembered – its pro-genocide stance for the sake of an ideology it purportedly vowed to eradicate.

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• Feature Image: The bodies of Palestinians killed in the Israeli attack and the wounded are brought to Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital after an Israeli airstrike hit Shujaiyye neighborhood in eastern Gaza, where grieving relatives of the deceased mourn their loss on April 4, 2025. [Ali Jadallah – Anadolu Agency]

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