We begin from a question: Why are we, as scholars engaged within the humanities, surprised by the support of most liberal democracies worldwide of the now full-blown, livestreamed genocide unfolding before our eyes?
Why have most liberal governments and institutions in Europe, such as universities, cloaked themselves in silence, downplaying and diverting attention from genocidal violence?
In liberal Europe, post-Shoah liberalism promised equality, justice, and the guarantee of “never again.” It is this post-Shoah liberalism that also influenced the international legal order (the UN Charter, the UN Genocide Convention, the UN Refugee Convention, etc.) as well as modern liberal and constitutional democracies, centering individual rights and strengthening due process vis-à-vis the state. Despite this post-Shoah realignment of the Western political sphere, these same liberal democracies are now complicit in the Gaza genocide.
There is an ongoing lack of a substantive response to this genocide despite UN experts, scholars, NGOs, and states, including South Africa before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), having warned that acts committed in this latest onslaught may amount to genocide. The ICJ found a plausible risk of “irreparable prejudice” to the rights of Palestinians in Gaza, a protected group under the UN Genocide Convention, and ordered Israel, inter alia, to “take all measures within its power” to prevent genocidal acts, prevent and punish incitement to genocide, and ensure urgent humanitarian aid.
Alongside the genocidal violence against Palestinians, we see the attempt to hollow out the most fundamental liberal rights, especially in “secular” European democracies that played a central role in founding the post-Shoah Western liberal order – freedom of speech, freedom of protest, and academic freedom.
The question this leaves us with is: How and why has liberalism’s promise of equality and the commitment to “never again” support a genocide been unfulfilled? Why does post-Shoah liberalism sponsor, sustain, and espouse the Zionist project, which is explicitly committed to a second Nakba, an “ever again” rather than the promised “never again”?
Post-Shoah liberalism enables and sustains genocide by means of denialism. In a forthcoming essay in Political Theology,we posit that denialism is fundamental to liberalism. Liberal denialism provides an epistemic fata morgana which functions as a hermeneutical resource that has been emptied of its substantive meaning and political potency yet continues to be presented as though it remains intelligible and accessible.
In essence, liberal denialism is the ability to minimize, deny, or distance oneself from responsibility for material and discursive harm.
Liberal denialism has its roots in Protestant political theology and specifically in three central concepts: individualism, intentionality, and privatization. These foundational liberal concepts are also key features of liberal ideology institutionalized in the law that is currently enabling the downplaying of genocide. The history of liberal political theory—its legal institutions and norms it has informed—suggests that what we are witnessing is a continuation of, not a departure from, the liberal norm. Liberal genocide denial enables a liberal innocence which has shown its entanglement with colonialism and imperialism from early on and that primarily functions as a shield against accountability and legal obligations.
In the context of the genocide in Gaza, liberal denialism permits and empowers genocidal violence while also removing the epistemic and political resources to denounce and challenge genocidal violence. In order to explore liberalism, or the fantasy of liberalism, we return to its ideological foundations and consider its reliance on a Protestant political theology that privileges individualism, intentionality, and privatization as a form of depoliticization.
As this remains theoretical (it would be important to demonstrate the same denialism in practice), we also consider how liberalism’s ideology is institutionalized in the international legal system.
One clear example of liberal denialism can be found in international law. Its doctrinal and normative architecture privileges individualism, intentionality, and the depoliticization—or privatization—of harm. This legal framework, grounded in liberal Enlightenment values, tends to abstract violence from its political and historical contexts, thereby constraining the recognition of systemic and structural forms of mass atrocity, including genocide.
Liberalism in international law is often reflected in the use of the humanitarian as a universal, neutral and objective position. Liberal individualism in international humanitarian law emphasizes the protection and rights of individuals during armed conflicts, asserting their status as primary legal subjects. This perspective has evolved from traditional state-centric doctrines to a more human-centered approach. While this approach has led to significant advancements in human rights protections, it has reduced the question of Palestine almost exclusively to a scheme of “humanitarian management” through international humanitarian law and the international human rights paradigm without addressing the larger questions of violence such as the right to self-determination or the occupation’s illegality.
Israel has strategically invoked international humanitarian law as “humanitarian camouflage,” in the words of Francesca Albanese, to legitimize its genocidal violence in Gaza. The term “humanitarian camouflage” refers to the strategic use of humanitarian rhetoric and legal language to obscure or justify actions that may be violations of international law, particularly the UN Genocide Convention. The terms “human shields,” “collateral damage,” and “safe zones” are being used by Israel to present harmful military actions in a way that disguises their true impact and denies their legal and moral consequences. This phenomenon allows for the manipulation of international humanitarian law, distorting principles and creating illusions of civilian protection when such operations often lead to further harm and erosion of protections.
Thus, international humanitarian law functions as an epistemic fata morgana, a framework that is stripped of any meaningful protection. By using legal and humanitarian language to justify military actions, Israel as well as liberal states, institutions, and individuals deny accountability for violations that may amount to genocide.
Liberal denialism is now paving the way for an all-out repudiation of international law as established in the post Shoah liberal legal order, signalling a transformation from the liberal era to a new fascist era.
Liberal denialism is key in deflecting any responsibility or accountability, and it is this position of “not taking a position” that enables the impunity of perpetrators, enabling even more violence.
Liberal denial explains to a large extent not only the genocidal violence we are witnessing right now inflicted by Israel on Palestinians but also why liberal states, institutions and individuals are not advocating a halt of this violence. Instead, more often than not, they choose to go against those addressing genocidal violence.
Confronting liberal denial requires a critique of liberalism that goes beyond reformist approaches. Such critiques call for acknowledging present injustices and the transforming liberal institutions’ reliance on individualism, intent, and depolitization through privatization that continue to reproduce oppressive logics.
