Since World War II, Germany and its people have had to address their forefathers’ participation in the emblematic evil of modern times, the Holocaust. Coming to terms with their Nazi ancestors’ crimes became a major issue for many families. But this was also a major issue for the German state, which resolved it by making solidarity with Israel (and anti-antisemitism) its Staatsräson — literally, “reason of state.” Indeed, as the Nazi genocide became a universal “sacred evil” in American and Western thought, these same themes became (in a more familiar language) raisons d’état unifying the entire liberal-democratic world.

When Hamas murdered hundreds of Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023, Western leaders and opinion-formers therefore moved quickly to interpret their actions in this established frame. Hamas were the new Nazis, those who raised the alarm about Israel’s massive assault on Palestinian civilians were pro-Hamas and antisemitic, and the counterattack was fully justified as “self-defense.”

Almost two years later, the campaign that the West endorsed has morphed into the emblematic genocide of our century, and this framework looks threadbare. Far from defending itself, Israel has mercilessly destroyed Gaza, killed, wounded, dehoused, and starved its people, threatening to remove the desperate survivors from the territory so as to build new Jewish colonies and Donald Trump’s “riviera.” Along the way, Israel’s leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, has sacrificed his country’s hostages, whom the West adopted as the prime reason for endorsing his campaign, to the pursuit of unending violence and his far-right government’s survival.