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A great many people around the world believe that Israel’s government and military have committed and continue to commit crimes against humanity, the ethics of armed conflict, ethnic cleansing, and even genocide in Gaza since the attacks by Hamas in October 2023. Many also believe that Israel as a state was and remains founded on a colonialist principle of ethnic supremacy and the systematic practice of mass atrocity crimes. Many of these observers conclude, further, that they have a moral duty to respond to these crimes by criticising and directing attention to Israel’s behaviour, and also by calling for intervention by relevant political actors such as their own national governments, but also (international) civil society organisations such as Human Rights Watch, universities, business corporations, and internationally authorised actors like the International Court of Justice and the United Nations Security Council.
The charges against Israel can be and are disputed. I will leave the adjudication of claims about the relevant facts and their legal and ethical implications to others more expert in such matters. For the purposes of this analysis I need only note that many people sincerely believe that these charges are substantially correct. In that case – believing what they do - those criticising Israel and calling for interventions may appear to be responding correctly. Injustice on such a scale would deserve the world’s attention, condemnation, and at least consideration of appropriate external interventions. Nevertheless, the cumulative result of many apparently individually correct actions can be unjust, and this is the case here. This much criticism of Israel is too much - a grave moral failure - insofar as it comes at the cost of neglecting other injustices that also deserve the world’s attention.
My argument comes in two parts. First I will take up the (deontological) principle that mass atrocity crimes straightforwardly deserve the world’s attention and condemnation, and show that directing a disproportionate share of the world’s attention to Israel’s crimes is inconsistent with this principle. Second I will consider the case from an alternative consequentialist principle that the world’s attention should be directed towards cases where it can be most effective at deterring, ending, or ameliorating mass atrocity crimes. Here, again, I conclude that the share of attention directed towards Israel cannot be justified because it necessarily entails neglecting many other ongoing and arguably more ameliorable mass atrocity crimes.
An important note before I go further: there is an important distinction between criticising Israel qua state and demanding changes in its behaviour and even structural reform, and criticising Israelis as a population or as a religious/ethnic group under tendentious concepts such as ‘collective responsibility’ or cultural pathologies such as ‘settler colonialist ideology’. Whenever I use the term, ‘Israel’ refers only to the Israeli state.
I. Neglecting Other States’ Crimes Is Unjust
As noted, many observers believe that Israel’s governments have historically carried out acts amounting to the highest level ‘mass atrocity crimes’, i.e. war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity and even genocide, and continue to do so. The present conflict in Gaza (October 2023-) has supercharged the amount of attention and condemnation directed at Israel, even among populations (Western Europe and the USA), governments (such as Germany, France, UK, Canada), and establishment institutions (such as the Economist magazine), that have previously been reluctant to reach such strong conclusions.
If these accusations of mass atrocity crimes are merited (as these observers sincerely believe), it would be correct to conclude that the Israeli state’s behaviour deserves the world’s attention and condemnation.[1] Mass atrocity crimes are by definition the duty of the international community to investigate and attempt to prevent, stop, and punish, as formalised in the international norm of ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty 2001; UNGA 2005, arts 138–139).
We might express this somewhat more formally:
Premise 1: Mass atrocity crimes deserve global attention and condemnation
P2: Israel has committed and continues to commit mass atrocity crimes
Therefore
Conclusion 1: Israel deserves global attention and condemnation
P3: Every moral agent has an obligation to condemn the perpetrators of mass atrocity crimes
Therefore
C2: I should criticise Israel and encourage others to do so too
This argument is fine as far as it goes. But it misses something important: that many other state and sub-state actors also deserve global attention and condemnation for their mass atrocity crimes.
We live in a world that is a long way from even minimal ‘do no evil’ justice. From China to Russia to Japan to Bhutan to Iran to Myanmar to Morocco, most countries in the world are founded as homelands for some privileged ethnic group (or operate as if they were), with a corresponding right to rule over any other ‘foreign’ inhabitants unlucky enough to find themselves living there. Nor is this a merely historical or merely structural (background) injustice. Various governments (and sub-government actors) around the world are currently busily engaged in mass atrocity crimes, from Rwanda’s and Uganda’s sponsorship of murderous ethnic militias in the Congo to China’s (cultural) genocidal suppression of Uighurs and other ethnic minorities to the strategic use of famine, ethnic cleansing, and mass murder in Sudan’s civil war (on which more below).
This is not a ‘What Aboutist’ argument. My argument is not that other states (under which I include also sub-state actors) get away with doing things just as bad or worse than Israel, therefore, to be consistent, people shouldn’t criticise Israel either. Rather, my argument is that every state that commits mass atrocity crimes deserves global attention and condemnation for their crimes. This includes Israel but is not limited to it.
More formally:
P1: Mass atrocity crimes deserve global attention and condemnation
P2: Israel has committed and continues to commit mass atrocity crimes
Therefore
C1: Israel deserves global attention and condemnation
P4: Other states besides Israel commit mass atrocity crimes
Therefore
C3: Other states besides Israel deserve global attention and condemnation
My concern is that the level of global attention and condemnation for Israel’s crimes is excessive insofar as it comes at the expense of the world’s duty to attend properly to the crimes committed by other states (C3). For example, in many years the UN passes more resolutions critical of Israel than of every other country in the world put together (as noted by organisations across the political spectrum, such as this one, this one, and this one). Thus, sincerely believing that Israel is committing crimes that deserve global criticism is consistent with concluding that the share of global criticism that Israel actually receives cannot be justified.
This remains the case even if we suppose (for argument’s sake) that Israel’s crimes are objectively worse than those currently being committed by any other state, and therefore that Israel is more deserving of criticism than any other state. It is still not the case that only Israel deserves moral criticism and therefore those criticising Israel may still be contributing to a collective moral failure.
This is the phenomenon of ‘Each-We Moral Dilemmas’, first identified by Derek Parfit as part of his critique of ‘common-sense morality’ (Reasons and Persons, 1984). These are a type of collective action problem but in the space of morality rather than personal self-interest maximisation (the famous prisoners’ dilemma). The action that it would be morally right for any one of us to do as individuals turns out to be the morally wrong thing to do if every individual (or just most) follows that same apparently correct moral reasoning.
According to Parfit, Each-We dilemmas dissolve if common-sense morality is replaced by a proper understanding of deontological ethics:
For Kantians, the essence of morality is the move from each to we. Each should do only what he can rationally will that we all do. A Kantian morality cannot be directly collectively self-defeating (Parfit 1984, 106).
Following Parfit, the solution to the problem that Israel’s crimes receive too much attention would be to move from an individualistic to a more collective perspective on global justice.
What does that imply for any particular moral agent (in which broad category I include not just individuals, but also governments, newsmedia companies, NGOs, etc) with possible influence on the direction of the world’s political attention and capabilities for intervention?
We should each recognise that fulfilling our moral duties to attend to, criticise, and ameliorate mass atrocity crimes requires taking a broader ‘collective’ perspective of whether we are doing the right thing altogether. It is necessary but not sufficient to ensure that some state’s behaviour definitely deserves to be criticised, based on reliable evidence of significant evil-doing. In addition, every moral agent who genuinely cares about the rightness or wrongness of their actions should go further. We should also consider whether criticising this particular political actor might be collectively self-defeating with respect to the universal principle we take themselves to be acting upon (that ‘Mass atrocity crimes deserve global attention and condemnation’). Or whether we are actually acting on a principle which falls short of such universality and hence moral legitimacy (such as, ‘Criticise mass atrocity crimes if committed by Israel’; or ‘Only criticise the state that most deserves it’).
Thus, instead of considering only whether the particular state we want to criticise deserves it, each of us ought – morally – to step back and consider which states are not currently receiving the attention that their crimes deserve.
Expressed more formally:
C3: Other states besides Israel deserve global attention and condemnation
P5: Israel’s crimes presently receive so much attention that other states’ crimes do not receive the global attention and condemnation they deserve
P6: Every moral agent has an obligation to act in such a way as to ensure that no perpetrators of mass atrocity crimes escape the global attention and condemnation they deserve
Therefore
C4: I should draw attention to the crimes of other states besides Israel
II. Protests Directed Against Other States Could Do More Good
An important consequence of directing disproportionate attention to the mass atrocity crimes of only one state is that the injustice suffered by the victims of other states goes un(der)recognised. As well as a straightforward failure of bystanders’ moral duty (as discussed above), this can also be understood as making the world worse than it need have been. It adds to the victims’ original suffering both the direct psychic pain of having the crimes against them ignored and the material consequences of that (a lack of external interventions to alleviate their suffering and end the ongoing crimes). Hence, the disproportionate attention to Israel’s crimes can also be understood as a moral failure from a consequentialist perspective.
This is important insofar as those who criticise Israel for its crimes take themselves to be contributing in some practical way to making the world better (less worse), and not merely to be tracking moral desert. Thus, for example, many critics of Israel see their calls for the condemnation of Israel’s crimes by (global) civil society and interventions by well-placed institutions like governments and international aid organisations as a practical contribution to ending or at least ameliorating those crimes.
More formally:
P1: Mass atrocity crimes are bad because they cause enormous harm to human lives
P2: If a moral agent can do something to contribute to ending or ameliorating a mass atrocity crime then they should do so (at least, so long as it is morally permissible and doesn’t require sacrificing anything of moral significance)
P3: Israel is committing mass atrocity crimes
Therefore
C: Any moral agent who can do something to contribute to ending or ameliorating Israel’s mass atrocity crimes should do so
Again, this reasoning is fine so far as it goes, but it neglects the rather obvious fact that there are many other very bad things going on in the world (such as the extreme poverty of 10% of the world’s population – but to keep things simpler let us only consider the category of mass atrocity crimes). Thus, even if it were true that joining a protest against Israel or writing to one’s political representative about it might have some positive effect, that would not be enough to justify protesting against Israel rather than any other perpetrator of mass atrocities. Someone who justifies their choice of action by the good it will do (or harm it will prevent) should want to do not just ‘something’ but the best thing.
The reader may note a resemblance to the characterisation of the demands of consequentialism developed in the effective altruism movement, concerned with maximising the amount of good that individuals achieve with the resources they are willing to donate. William MacAskill (‘The Definition of Effective Altruism’, 2019, 14) defines effective altruism as follows:
(i) the use of evidence and careful reasoning to work out how to maximize the good with a given unit of resources, tentatively understanding ‘the good’ in impartial welfarist terms, and
(ii) the use of the findings from (i) to try to improve the world.
According to its proponents, taking consequentialism seriously implies, for example, donating one’s ‘spare’ money to charities that can save children’s lives in poor countries for a few thousand dollars each by distributing anti-mosquito bed nets, rather than to universities that can build a new library wing for a few hundred million dollars. The simple rule to follow is: never give to one cause when you know that another cause could do more good with that same amount of money.
Effective altruism’s reasoning is compelling but profoundly limited in its goals and resources without a political dimension that brings in collective action and institutions (previously). Such an ‘effective politics’ approach would follow effective altruism in being concerned to maximise the amount of good one achieves in the world, and not other things such as one’s good intentions or matching bad behaviour to the moral condemnation it deserves. However it would differ from effective altruism in at least two important respects:
1. It would be concerned with political agents’ obligations to direct our surplus political (rather than economic) capital to where it would do most good.
2. It would apply to organisational agents (governments, NGOs, corporations, etc) as well as individual humans.
Obviously maximising the good one achieves via political interventions is far from straightforward. The outcome of a political intervention depends a lot on factors outside one’s control or foresight, including what other people do (in support or opposition to your intervention), social institutions, economic events, and so on. Thus, unlike the kind of reliable linear relationship between inputs and outputs that the effective altruism movement so values about micro-interventions in poor countries (this much money = this many bed nets = this many deaths from malaria averted), politics is characterised by much more uncertain relationships between inputs and outputs. Sometimes a relatively small political intervention results in an entire country taking a different path (such as Armenia’s 2018 Velvet Revolution). Sometimes a huge and sustained intervention achieves nothing, or even the opposite of what was intended (such as America’s invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq).
However, even if we cannot put exact numbers on the expected payoffs of (attempting to instigate) global political interventions against particular states, assigning approximate magnitudes seems feasible and would allow us to build a partial ranking based on their probability of success multiplied by their value if achieved. Doing this properly would require far more command of the relevant facts than a mere philosopher can pretend to. (Perhaps a ‘Protest Well’ organisation could be set up on the model of the effective altruists’ Give Well.) Nevertheless, even a crude comparative analysis suggests that the current near exclusive focus on Israel is not the most effective use of protestors’ political capital and thus constitutes a collective moral failure.
The crimes of which Israel is currently accused concern extreme harms to several million people. In addition, Israel is a smallish country that is quite dependent on the goodwill of liberal democracies and hence the views of the ordinary people in them. Therefore, it might seem that Israel is a very appropriate target for protests intended to make the world a better place, when compared to many other cases. For example, the cultural genocide that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is credibly accused of carrying out against the Uighurs and other ethnic minorities concern many times more victims (as many as 100 million), but lower harm per victim. More decisively, because the CCP is far less dependent on the goodwill of other countries, and is effectively immune to coercive interventions, the expected effectiveness of international protests against its crimes is approximately zero (although, as noted above, even ineffective global public recognition of such crimes is of some value to victims).
However, there are a number of other cases that involve high degrees of harm to even more people than the case of Israel. Most obvious is the case of Sudan’s civil war, which has been characterised by the deliberate targeting of civilians with famine, sexual violence, ethnic cleansing, and mass murder (UN Secretary-General 2024). Around 12 million people have been forced to flee - losing their homes and livelihoods; 25 million are suffering famine or pre-famine conditions; at least many tens of thousands have already died. This seems at least as bad as the situation in Israel’s occupied territories.
In addition, Sudan’s warring parties are much less organised and resourced than the Israeli state, and have only shallow, transactional alliances with other states. This suggests that Sudan’s civil war might be more amenable to external interventions, whether directly – such as by more effective enforcement of existing arms embargoes, and increased funding and protection for humanitarian aid – or indirectly, such as by putting pressure on foreign enablers of the conflict like the UAE and creating credible threats of prosecution for crimes committed.
Yet Sudan’s civil war has received very little recognition in the international media: one survey found 600 news articles on the situation in Sudan per month compared to 100,000 on Gaza (from May 2024: even the studies of Sudan’s neglect are sparse and infrequent). Nor has there been much political attention from the international community: just two relevant UN resolutions, framed as polite requests to the combatants and their foreign arms suppliers (Security Council Report 2025; an additional, more strongly worded resolution was vetoed by Russia).
This astonishing asymmetry of attention and political effort is not limited to the Global North. The African Union, for example, seems to have paid even less attention to Sudan’s civil war than the United Nations Security Council. And barely a week after initiating an International Court of Justice case against Israel’s genocide in Gaza, President Cyril Ramaphosa gave a warm welcome to one of the warlords vying to control Sudan. (Mohamad Hamdan Dagalo - “Hemedti” – was received by 5 other African heads of state during the same tour.)
It is hard to square this astonishing lack of interest and political engagement with the suffering of the people of Sudan (and other ongoing cases I haven’t even mentioned) with any systematic commitment to making the world better through political interventions such as public protest. Especially since it doesn’t seem that a choice between such cases must be made. The international community would seem to have the structural capacity to take effective actions in multiple cases at the same time, if the political will were there. Organisations like the World Food Programme, for example, stand ready to intervene in the multiple ongoing man-made famines afflicting the world, just as soon as they have the necessary funding, political authorisation, and security protection. Interventions by ordinary people and the institutions of civil society are a crucial but missing generator of that political will.
Conclusion
Those who believe there is sufficient evidence that Israel is committing mass atrocity crimes would be right to conclude that this deserves global attention and condemnation. But they should also recognise the global moral failure they themselves may contribute to by limiting their attention to the crimes of Israel alone. Many other states are committing mass atrocity crimes that also deserve condemnation. Moreover, global attention is justified not only by the nature of the crimes, but also by the possibility of bringing about international interventions that contribute to ending, deterring, or mitigating mass atrocity crimes. By that standard too, it seems that those who take up the moral duty to condemn mass atrocity crimes should be criticising other states besides Israel.
Note: This is a substantially revised version of a year old post. Unfortunately still relevant.
