Recently, 28 democratic countries—including Poland—called on Israel to immediately halt its military campaign in Gaza, citing an escalating humanitarian catastrophe.
More than 100 people have already died of starvation, and that number is expected to rise rapidly unless Israeli policy changes.
According to the United Nations and humanitarian organizations, regular aid deliveries have been obstructed since March, leaving Palestinians without basic means of survival.
Israel denies this, accusing the UN of lying and insisting that aid trucks are waiting at the border, blocked not by Israeli policy but by anti-Israel conspiracies and incompetence.
What Israel fails to acknowledge is that the UN lacks safe conditions to carry out distribution.
Entry routes are routinely blocked, and the situation has become so dire that desperate civilians are approaching the trucks themselves, even as access points are regularly bombed.
Nearly a thousand Palestinians—including children—have reportedly been killed in recent months while trying to reach aid distribution sites.
Air drops have proven no real solution either. Some packages have landed on tents, injuring or killing those sheltering inside.
And the scale of assistance is absurdly inadequate. A daily airdrop of 25 tonnes of aid equals just 10–15 grams per person—barely a symbolic gesture.
Humanitarian aid is airdropped over the central Gaza Strip on Thursday, July 31, 2025. Photo: EPA/ATEF SAFADI
Gaza today lies in ruins. Its entire infrastructure has been decimated, and drinkable water is increasingly hard to find.
If the situation continues, deaths from hunger, thirst and disease will rise exponentially.
Already, nearly 60,000 Palestinians have been killed in this war, according to international organizations—figures Israel dismisses as antisemitic propaganda. Yet it refuses access to independent journalists and labels those inside Gaza as terrorists.
According to global media watchdogs, 232 journalists have died in Gaza since the conflict began.
Yes, antisemitism is a real and dangerous phenomenon—as Poles were recently reminded by far-right European lawmaker Grzegorz Braun’s shameful denial of gas chambers at Auschwitz.
But when accusations of antisemitism are indiscriminately deployed to deflect all criticism, they risk becoming meaningless. The term loses moral force when applied too broadly.
Today, Israel's leaders are branding all allegations of war crimes as antisemitic—even when they come from within.
Israeli experts, including Holocaust scholars such as Omer Bartov, Raz Segal and Omer Shatz, have begun to sound the alarm.
Bartov, a renowned historian, warned that the burden of guilt for Gaza may fall not on today’s leaders but on tomorrow’s Israelis.
Israel risks losing moral capital
Once seen globally as a state born from the ashes of the Holocaust, Israel may instead be remembered for moral failure—and lose forever the moral capital it once held.
Tragically, most Israelis appear unmoved by this shift in perception. This includes not just Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s supporters but many of his opponents, who may blame him for corruption and security failures but see no issue with forcibly displacing Palestinians from Gaza.
Under the so-called Katz Plan, named after Defense Minister Israel Katz, the 2 million residents of Gaza would be squeezed into the ruins of Rafah with a single "option": permanent exile.
Israel increasingly ignores international pressure. But that doesn't mean such pressure is futile. The real problem lies with Europe itself, which continues to speak with many voices instead of one.
Yet Europe’s stance on this conflict matters enormously—both for its own security and for global stability.
Russia, for its part, has seized on the Gaza crisis to manipulate public opinion across the Muslim world, blaming the West while downplaying the ties many pro-Putin oligarchs have to Israel.
From the outset of the war, Europe has been divided. Of the EU’s 27 members, only eight had recognized Palestine when the conflict erupted. Two of those—Hungary and the Czech Republic—are strongly pro-Israel.
Since the start of the war, Ireland, Spain, and Slovenia have joined the ranks of countries recognizing Palestinian statehood.
In September 2024, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution urging Israel to end its occupation of the West Bank within a year. Thirteen EU countries backed it; 12—including Poland—abstained. Just two, Hungary and the Czech Republic, voted against it.
Among the 28 countries that recently called for an end to the Gaza war, 20 are EU members. Notably absent are Germany, Croatia, and five other Central European nations—all of which recognize Palestine but declined to sign the joint appeal.
Germany remains paralyzed by its historic guilt over the Holocaust. Yet internal tensions are rising as its large immigrant population expresses views increasingly at odds with Berlin’s official stance.
France, also facing pressure from its Muslim community, has just announced it will recognize Palestine in September.
Israel cannot guarantee its long-term survival by continuing on its current course. The state was founded in a region of overwhelming demographic and ideological hostility. Every escalation deepens that hostility and makes future peace more elusive.
For now, Israel has bet everything on American backing. But that support hangs by a thread, with public opinion in the US shifting—especially among younger voters—against unconditional aid.
Ignoring Europe may seem like a short-term strategy. But it is ultimately a dangerous miscalculation. And if Europe truly wants to make a difference, it must speak with one voice—and act with consistency and resolve.
Witold Repetowicz
Witold Repetowicz. Photo: PR24/AK
The author is an assistant professor at the War Studies University in Warsaw.