On May 4th 2025, The Guardian published an editorial titled The Guardian View on Israel’s Aid Blockade of Gaza: Hunger as a Weapon of War. It comes after 20 months of unabated atrocities and after two months of total blockade in Gaza. It is worth emphasising what total means here—that no food or medicine has been allowed in by Israel—not aid, not commercial shipments, not even through third-party intermediaries.
The Gaurdian ends its editorial with, “What is shameful is that this has, indeed, been allowed to happen.” Indeed, it is deeply shameful—but do the enablers of this heinous reality even recognise themselves? When The Guardian runs a headline that reads Palestinian Journalist Hit in The Head With a Bullet (June 8, 2023), is it not purposefully trying to amputate the truth to guide public opinion? Or when The New York Times writes Explosion Gazans Say Was Airstrike Leaves Many Casualties (Nov 5, 2024), is it not more invested in seeding doubt than with conveying even a loosely grounded account of reality?
Irrespective of the political orientation, the mainstream Western reporting on Gaza has consistently used passive language, omitted naming Israel as the perpetrator, depicted Israeli suffering in strong, emotive, and visceral terms—while conveying the Palestinian plight as minimally as possible, with the result that the Palestinians have been completely dehumanised, and the talking point hasn’t been allowed to stray far from Israel’s right to defend itself.
And after nearly 20 months of obfuscating the truth to manufacture consent, there now seems to be a flurry of editorials in the Western media, lamenting the scale of the death and destruction in Gaza. Not days after the editorial by The Guardian, The Financial Times also appears to have discovered the word shame. This has been followed by The Economist’s The War in Gaza Must End (May 8, 2025). The Independent too has realised that it is time to End The Defeaning Silence on Gaza (May 10, 2025). Meanwhile, no editorial is forthcoming from The New York Times as of now, but the prestigious newspaper seems to have made the journey from Lives Ended in Gaza (March 4, 2024) to the guest opinion-essay titled This is The Moment of Moral Reckoning in Gaza (May 6, 2026). Still, the talk is mostly about urging restraint—the moment for calling for sanctions and suspending transfer of arms has not been reached.
At the beginning of this war, Omar Al Akkad wrote:
“One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.”
As the end in Gaza—and of Gazans—nears, and it becomes abundantly clear to anyone still watching that there will soon be no one left to save, these editorials signal a narrative shift for the post-genocide era.
Western media at large is complicit in this genocide, and while it may not care much for upholding journalistic standards, it does care about the drop in readership and revenue. Perhaps it is also this that is now being realised: 20 months of pandering to power has not guaranteed financial security. The tide in public opinion has not been contained.
What is shameful, indeed, is this last-minute attempt to leap on the right side of history—in a desperate bid for a ticket to the future.
A shorter version of this post was submitted to The Guardian Letters. It has not been published.
Chromological 