Why Gaza Matters: From ‘Never Again’ to Ecocide, A Liberated Palestine Benefits Us All

Pro-Palestine activists in Columbus, Ohio. (Photo: via Wikimedia Commons)

A recent poll by the Pew Research Center shows that many countries around the world are recognizing that Israel’s genocide in Gaza is unacceptable in a world that values human life. According to the survey, a median of 67 percent across 36 countries disapprove of Israel’s actions, a shift that has become particularly pronounced since the bombing of Iran.

These findings reinforce Gallup reports that 41 percent of Americans recently said that they sympathize more with Palestinians than Israelis, marking a shift from the numbers found in earlier polls. Gallup found favorability towards Palestinians highest among younger Americans, Democrats, and political independents.

Despite these encouraging numbers, there are still pockets of the US population who say that they never watch the news because they believe it is too depressing. Many also believe that current problems in this country are so overwhelming that there is little room left to feel empathy for other people.

Nevertheless, it has long been impossible to separate foreign policy from domestic concerns as both are inextricably linked by several factors. In order to promote violence abroad—as in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Latin America, and the Middle East—there must be an effort on the part of corporate media and public officials to promote xenophobia at home.

Complicity on the part of recent administrations in both funding and promoting Israel’s genocide is obvious. From disparaging remarks about individuals from those regions to providing weapons used across Gaza, Iran, and Lebanon, politicians within both the Biden and Trump regimes have enabled mass murder in those countries.

To the unskilled eye, media collusion is less apparent, perhaps because of long-held myths that surround the founding of the “Israeli” state as a bastion of democracy and rightful homeland for the Jewish people in the Middle East.

Yet, as Iqbal Jassat notes, “the pattern of framing [by corporate media] is evident in the choice of soft language as well as the omission of critical context.” After October 7, such reports described Israel’s siege on Gaza as a “just war,” calling it a response to “terrorism” by Hamas, thus omitting years of the entity’s illegal occupation followed by a 17-year blockade, all of which have contributed to the plight of Palestinians in Gaza today.

As far as “soft language,” Jassat writes, journalists have been instructed to avoid terms like genocide, ethnic cleansing, and occupied territories. When referring to Palestinian actions, the term “resistance” is never used, but instead words like massacre and slaughter are substituted to describe what is in reality Palestinians’ legal right to resist the occupiers of their country.

According to the Press on Palestine Series, an initiative by Palestine Square, the blog of the Institute for Palestine Studies-USA, these practices, long common in US reporting, have escalated since October 7th.

For example, when the Washington Post covered the assassination of poet/teacher Refaat Alareer, Farah Hamouda explains that the reporter “perpetuates harmful stereotypes by associating Palestinians with violence,” thus holding the victims responsible for their own deaths. By “escalat[ing] his criticism of Israel,” the Post alludes, Alareer deserved the “Israeli” airstrike that murdered him along with his brother, sister, and her four children.

Indeed, the dissemination of such images by the press has consequences far beyond the page. For instance, on May 18, 2026, a shooting at the Islamic Center in San Diego, California, left three worshipers dead along with a traumatized Muslim community.

Reporting on the incident, Anisah Bagasra writes that “negative portrayals of Muslims shape public opinion towards them,” a trend that she says has escalated since the US bombing of Iran. Thus, foreign policy impacts what happens on the domestic scene, in this case leading to increased discrimination and hate crimes such as the recent shooting in San Diego.

Closer to my home, a proposed mosque and Islamic community center in Albuquerque, New Mexico’s North Valley, has drawn considerable controversy during a recent Planning Commission meeting about the site.

Though the outward objection seems to be increased traffic, comments on social media, along with those in public meetings, tell a different story. As one person wrote, “Islam is not compatible with American and Western ideals,” thus repeating stereotypes perpetuated by Western media.

Also complicit are Republican politicians who recently held a hearing titled “Sharia-free America,” an anti-Muslim trope that Bagasra contends “portrays Muslims as invaders who want to impose Sharia–Islamic religious law–on all Americans.”

Albuquerque activist Selinda Guerrero, who also attended the meeting, had a different take. “It’s the same people who support genocide and support othering and dehumanizing,” she said, thus linking Israel’s genocide in Gaza with such instances of hate at home.

Given the location of Sandia and Los Alamos labs, along with Kirtland Air Force Base, there are other reasons that New Mexicans are living within the belly of the beast. All of these examples point to why Gaza matters far beyond its borders, thereby linking what is happening in Palestine to concerns closer to our homes.

Climate change has also spread around the world, causing massive floods in some areas while severe droughts plague others, particularly in the desert Southwest, where we have had far below-average rainfall and snowpack for at least the past year. In my area, there is a choice between letting our trees die or paying massive water bills, neither of which is a viable option.

On the one hand, Israel describes itself as a champion of green technologies, leading many in drought-stricken areas to collaborate with the entity for help. In 2021, “Israeli” company Watergen installed an apparatus in the Hard Rock Community in Arizona that brought clean drinking water to 10,000 families across the Navajo Nation who had previously lacked access to running water.

On the other hand, Israel has used the destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure as “another weapon of war,” according to Doctors Without Borders. By destroying desalination plants and cutting off electricity, the entity has blocked the population’s access to water, thus adding more misery to those who have endured bombing, displacement, and loss of family and close friends.

In “Israel’s Obliteration Ecocide from Gaza to Lebanon and Beyond,” Dan Steinbock traces how the entity has carried out what he calls The Obliteration Doctrine in both Gaza and Lebanon, then describes how these “environmental consequences of such conflict patterns are not geographically contained.”

Defined as the consequence of “scorched earth policy, collective punishment, and civilian victimization, coupled with massive indiscriminate bombardment and systemic use of artificial intelligence [AI],” this doctrine should be of interest to all those interested in climate change.

Accordingly, Steinbock discusses “spillover trajectories” that cross borders, thereby causing environmental degradation that contributes to the current global crisis.

“What happens in Gaza won’t stay in Gaza,” he concludes. “What happens in Lebanon won’t stay in Lebanon. The stage is being set for obliteration ecocides wherever they are seen as effective necessities.”

In this way, Steinbock’s analysis underscores the thesis of this article: What happens in Gaza, Iran, and Lebanon should concern us all.

Finally, as segments of the US population confront rising healthcare costs combined with steep cuts to healthcare programs included in the recently released White House budget, it should be remembered that massive amounts of tax money have gone to Israel to support its wars.

As of October 7, 2025, the United States has enabled the “Israeli” genocide by sending approximately 21 billion dollars to the Zionist war chest. According to the Costs of War Project at Brown University, without these funds, Israel would not have been able to sustain its genocide in Gaza, start a war with Iran, or repeatedly bomb Yemen.

All of this should matter. After World War II, the mantra “Never Again” arose in reference to the Holocaust of Jewish people and others deemed undesirable by the German government. There, too, genocide was allowed to happen by onlookers who felt it was in their best interest to look away.

As history continues to repeat itself, it is important to understand that what happens in Gaza matters beyond its borders, not only for material and environmental reasons but also for humanitarian ones.

– Benay Blend earned her doctorate in American Studies from the University of New Mexico. Her scholarly works include Douglas Vakoch and Sam Mickey, Eds. (2017), “’Neither Homeland Nor Exile are Words’: ‘Situated Knowledge’ in the Works of Palestinian and Native American Writers”. She contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.