How Europe is managing Guilt over Gaza: The Politics of moral Cleansing

By Dalia Ismail

( Globalvoices.org ) In the last few months, a noticeable shift has emerged across Europe as several governments signal a willingness to pressure Israel by moving toward the recognition of a Palestinian state. 

France announced it would formalize recognition at the UN General Assembly, which sparked similar calls by other European countries. In Germany, Israel’s strongest ally in Europe, a senior lawmaker in Friedrich Merz’s coalition has even proposed potential sanctions on Israel, including suspending arms exports. 

While these moves have yet to translate into concrete policy changes, they reflect a growing need among progressive EU leaders to distance themselves from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has become the focal point of international blame. By isolating him as the sole architect of the genocide, the EU avoids confronting its own structural complicity — through arms sales, economic ties, and political protection — that have long enabled Israel’s actions so far.

The focus on Netanyahu’s personal responsibility allows these countries to re-write the narrative on the genocide as a matter of leadership failure, rather than reckon with the broader system of support that has enabled the genocide in Gaza to happen. 

This narrative shift is further reinforced by the promotion of internal Israeli dissent, which functions to delineate the current atrocities as an exception within Israeli politics, thereby preserving the state’s international legitimacy and obscuring the structural continuity of its policies toward Palestinians.

The strategic use of internal Israeli critics

Mainstream EU and US media have granted significant space to Israeli political and military figures such as former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Democrats party leader Yair Golan, presenting them as ethical alternatives to Netanyahu. 

Recently, Olmert and Golan have openly criticized Netanyahu for his crimes in Gaza. Golan called the government’s actions “fuel for antisemitism and hatred of Israel” and accused it of “killing babies as a hobby.” Olmert, too, has condemned Netanyahu’s leadership by saying explicitly, “Israel is committing war crimes.” 

Yet both Olmert and Golan played central roles during past Israeli massacres in Gaza — 2008–09 (“Operation Cast Lead”) and 2014 (“Operation Protective Edge”) — that were, and still are, the subjects of war crimes investigations by the Human Rights Council and the International Criminal Court (ICC), and documented in reports by Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights (LPHR), Al Mezan Center for Human Rights and many other Palestinian and international organizations. 

Their status as moral counterweights serves to frame the current atrocities as a deviation, downplaying the continuity of Israeli military policy and the crimes committed by former Israeli prime ministers and military generals. 

Their opposition may also serve a strategic function. By distancing themselves, they could be attempting to mitigate potential legal liability under international investigations. It can be viewed as part of a broader legal strategy to demonstrate non-involvement or lack of intent in the past military aggressions. 

Moral recalibration through familiar narratives

By amplifying dissenting voices — especially those of Olmert and Golan — EU institutions and mainstream media contribute to a process of moral recalibration that serves their audiences across their countries. These figures are presented as evidence of a robust internal debate, thereby reinforcing the image of Israel as a functioning democracy capable of self-criticism and self-correction, and suggesting that crimes against Palestinians began only on October 7, 2023, under the Netanyahu administration — not before. 

This framing enables European publics to interpret the ongoing genocide not as the product of a systemic colonial structure, but as a temporary exception. In this narrative, the genocide is portrayed as something new, erasing what Professor Ilan Pappé has described as an “incremental genocide” carried out since at least 1948.

Epistemic inequality and the marginalization of Palestinian voices

Simultaneously, Palestinian voices — journalists, academics, survivors, lawyers, and human rights defenders — remain marginalized in European discourse. 

Despite the ongoing genocide and the increased visibility of Palestinian voices through social media, what Palestinian literary critic Edward Said argued in his 1984 essay “Permission to Narrate” still holds true: Israeli voices are still perceived as more accurate and authoritative when it comes to criticizing Israel and exposing its crimes against the  Palestinians.

Journalists Romana Rubeo and Ramzy Baroud reported an emblematic example of this phenomenon in The Palestine Chronicle: when iconic Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was murdered by Israel in the Jenin refugee camp, her colleague Ali al-Samoudi, who witnessed the killing and was wounded in the same attack, publicly described from his hospital bed what had happened: that there were no armed clashes nearby, that both journalists were wearing clearly marked press vests, and that the shots came directly from Israeli soldiers — not from any crossfire with Palestinian resistance fighters.

Despite being the closest eyewitness, his account was dismissed. Israeli officials denied responsibility, and much of the European and US media followed suit. But later, investigations by international organizations — and a reluctant Israeli admission — confirmed that al-Samoudi’s version of events was accurate.

Giving more visibility and credibility to an Israeli dissident than to a Palestinian who reports the very same event reinforces a persistent racialized hierarchy of credibility. This not only marginalizes Palestinian voices but also weakens accountability: if the suffering of Palestinians is only taken seriously when filtered through Israeli voices, then justice is delayed or denied altogether. 

As a result, Israel is rarely held to account in any meaningful way because the victims themselves are not considered credible enough to trigger real consequences.

Rewriting facts to contain guilt

Delegating responsibility for the horrors committed in Palestine solely to Netanyahu and a few others functions as a psychological defense mechanism. By isolating blame to a limited group, European societies can distance themselves from their own complicity and preserve a self-image of moral integrity.

After World War II, Germany’s denazification process focused mainly on prosecuting prominent Nazi officials. Philosopher Karl Jaspers, in The Question of German Guilt, argued that this selective attribution of guilt allowed Germans to reconstruct their national identity without confronting the broader political and moral culpability shared by institutions and ordinary citizens. 

Jaspers distinguished between four types of guilt: criminal, political, moral, and metaphysical. While criminal guilt is punishable by law, political guilt implicates the collective responsibility of a society; moral guilt refers to personal ethical failings, and metaphysical guilt involves a deeper existential failure to oppose injustice.

By limiting guilt to criminal liability, Jaspers warned that societies risk avoiding ethical reckoning and thereby enabling a form of collective denial.

Europe’s current response to the genocide of Palestinians reflects this same pattern. Public outrage is directed at Netanyahu, but the longstanding political, economic, and institutional support for Israeli policies remains unexamined. Palestinians are marginalized, and false narratives, such as those surrounding October 7, 2023, keep being used to deflect attention and responsibility. This selective blaming externalizes guilt and protects European societies from confronting their own roles.