The world watches in shame and fear as Israel invades Gaza City, bringing its genocidal campaign against the Palestinians to a new level of horror. Public opinion throughout the world, including the United States, has long since turned against Israel’s aggression. The highest organs of international governance have all issued calls to cease and desist.

But while some European governments have begun to distance themselves from Israel, the Western bloc’s most powerful states still back it unflaggingly. US secretary of state Marco Rubio even flew to Tel Aviv to personally pledge the Trump administration’s “full support.” Israeli president Isaac Herzog, who infamously declared Gaza devoid of innocents, was warmly received by British prime minister Keir Starmer in September.

Israel is a small state, entirely dependent on the United States and other Western sponsors. Why are the leaders of these countries so steadfast in supporting it despite overwhelming public disapproval, and even at the cost of their own electoral chances? Is a latent inclination to eliminate non-white populations simply part of the West’s ideological DNA, as the dominant variant of settler-colonial theory argues? Or is there something about the dynamics of the capitalist world-system that makes genocide possible, even probable?