ISLAMABAD – From Tehran to Islamabad, the positions on Gaza are defined by moral clarity and historical consistency. 

On 22 July 2025, Iran’s Foreign Ministry denounced “the horrific crimes committed by the Zionist regime in the Gaza Strip,” warning that 90 percent of the territory was now uninhabitable, with over one million people facing starvation. It condemned Israeli plans for Gaza City as acts of ethnic cleansing and called for an emergency meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.

Pakistan’s stance is equally firm. From the earliest days of the state, Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah rejected Israel outright, calling it “an unlawful state, created by usurping the land of Palestinian Muslims,” and famously declaring: “Our souls are not for sale.” Every government since has upheld this position, refusing recognition until Palestinians achieve self-determination with East Jerusalem as their capital. For both Iran and Pakistan, the Palestinian cause is not a distant diplomatic file but a litmus test of the Muslim world’s commitment to justice.

If defeating Hamas were truly the aim, the destruction of Gaza’s homes, hospitals, schools, and water systems would be inexplicable. This is not collateral damage; it is deliberate policy. Much of it unfolded under the cover of the Iran–Israel clashes, when the world’s attention was elsewhere. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, as the Iran–Israel war raged in June 2025, Palestinian deaths had already surpassed 55,637, with more than 129,000 injured. By the end of July, the toll had risen to 60,785 — including 217 journalists, 120 academics, and 224 humanitarian workers, among them 179 UNRWA staff. At least 80 percent of the victims were civilians; 70 percent of residential-area fatalities were women and children. These figures make plain that after the Iran–Israel war, the killing in Gaza not only continued — it escalated.

The willingness of Western voices to use the word “genocide” is significant not merely for validating Palestinian testimony, but for shattering a decades-old architecture of denial. When Jewish scholars, Israeli experts, UN officials, and international courts converge on this language, the space for evasion collapses. For citizens from Melbourne to Montreal, this convergence has given moral legitimacy to what the streets have been saying for months: that Gaza’s struggle is humanity’s struggle.

Yet moral clarity without political action is mere theatre. Sachs and Albanese have both argued that ending complicity requires cutting off arms, imposing sanctions, and prosecuting those responsible. Anything less is an admission of guilt.

Which brings us back to where we began: to a West divided against itself, its conscience laid bare. Gaza’s cry has breached the lecture halls, the courtrooms, and the city streets; whether it can penetrate the seats of power will decide how this age is remembered. The Qur’anic tradition holds that the cry of the oppressed is not a lament, but a summons. History will ask whether, when the West faltered, the East stood firm and whether those who heard the word “genocide” acted before it became only an epitaph.