'Cannibal capitalism': How the Gaza genocide portends a dark global future
'Cannibal capitalism': How the Gaza genocide portends a dark global future
From the outset of Israel’s war on Gaza in October 2023, it has been clear to me that the mass killing of Palestinians is not just a local tragedy. It is a grim preview of humanity’s shared future.
The atrocities in Gaza are part of a wider pattern of large-scale killing that has also marked conflicts in Yemen, Sudan, Syria, Mexico, Ukraine and beyond.
Violence today takes multiple forms - from conventional wars between states, to civil wars, to armed violence linked to organised crime. Together, they suggest that mass killing is becoming a global condition.
Governments and militaries routinely justify such violence through claims of “self-defence”, “national security” and “existential threats” - arguments rooted in extremist ideologies that normalise, and even sanctify, the killing of the Other.
In the final chapter of my forthcoming book (NAME, October 2025), I attempt to provide a comprehensive analytical framework for understanding the genocide in Gaza, synthesising findings from research institutions, human rights groups, and investigative journalism.
One of the most alarming aspects of the Gaza war is the normalisation of systematic violence. After more than 22 months of bombardment, starvation and destruction, much of the international system, and even many Arab societies, have adapted to the ongoing horror.
Life goes on as though the deliberate killing of children and women, the cutting off of water and electricity, the bombing of hospitals and schools, and the obliteration of entire neighbourhoods are routine, acceptable events.
Hallmarks of genocide
Statements from Israeli political leaders, military officials, commentators and intellectuals have repeatedly signalled genocidal intent, suggesting that most - if not all - Palestinians in Gaza are responsible for, or supportive of, the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack.
Dehumanisation is a prerequisite for this violence. Palestinians have long been cast as “less than human” - a discourse that dates back to the earliest days of Zionist settlement and the displacement of the Palestinian population.
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A July 2025 report by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, “Our Genocide”, documents the scale, intent and execution of Israel’s assault on Gaza. It concludes that Israel’s leadership has acted with clear, coordinated intent to destroy Palestinian society in Gaza - fully aware of the devastating consequences of its policies of mass killing, starvation, and systematic destruction of civilian infrastructure.
Since October 2023, according to Gaza’s health ministry, more than 62,000 Palestinians have been killed and more than 145,000 wounded. More than 11,000 others are missing. At least half of those killed were women and children, and 83 percent are civilians.
Israeli F-35 fighter jets - described as “instruments of slaughter” in a report published by the advocacy group Arms Embargo Now - have been used to bomb homes, refugee camps, and even designated “safe zones”, with munitions such as 2,000-pound bunker-buster bombs.
The question is no longer whether genocide is happening in Gaza, but how global economic and political systems continue to turn human beings into expendable inputs
The massacre on 13 July 2024 in al-Mawasi camp - a so-called safe zone - saw eight such bombs kill at least 90 Palestinians and injure 300 more, hitting tents, a community kitchen, and a water desalination plant. The UN condemned the attack, saying it underscored that “nowhere is safe in Gaza”.
Israel’s campaign has aimed to make Gaza uninhabitable in myriad ways. It has collapsed the health system, resulting in infant deaths and skyrocketing miscarriage rates, while medical supplies have been blocked or looted.
Starvation is widespread, with farmers barred from their land, crops destroyed, and attacks on rural communities. More than 2,000 Palestinians have been killed at food distribution points.
The educational system has also been decimated, with more than 90 percent of Gaza’s schools damaged or destroyed; many were bombed while sheltering displaced families.
Journalists have been systematically targeted, with more than 240 killed since October 2023 - making Gaza the deadliest place for the media in decades. Survivors of Israeli detention report systematic torture, sexual assault and sadistic abuse.
Why the killing continues
To understand the longevity of this genocide, we must examine its economic and political architecture - what feminist philosopher Nancy Fraser calls “cannibal capitalism”: a system that feeds on the destruction of its own social and ecological foundations, including human life itself.
Capitalism depends on structurally “disposable” populations - groups stripped of political and legal protections, rendered vulnerable to expropriation and annihilation. Imperial and racial hierarchies define who is killable and who is not. In Gaza, the dehumanisation of Palestinians enables both their physical destruction and the commodification of that destruction.
Fraser’s concept captures this moment: death and human suffering become commodities, traded and consumed for profit. The war in Gaza, like the war in Ukraine, is a goldmine for arms manufacturers, allowing them to test weapons in live combat.
A July 2025 study from Brown University’s Costs of War project found that between 2020 and 2024, the US Pentagon awarded $2.4 trillion in contracts - 54 percent of its total discretionary spending - to private firms. About a third of that went to five major arms companies: Lockheed Martin, Boeing, RTX, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman. This dwarfs the $356bn spent on diplomacy, development and humanitarian aid in the same period.
Israeli arms firms, such as Elbit Systems, openly market weapons as “combat proven”, profiting directly from Palestinian deaths. Western states arm Israel with lethal munitions, while simultaneously cracking down on pro-Palestinian voices, weaponising accusations of antisemitism to silence critical academics, politicians and journalists.
Fraser argues that the crises of contemporary capitalism are deeply intertwined: class exploitation, gender oppression, racial and imperial domination, environmental collapse, and the hollowing out of public authority all reinforce one another.
In Gaza, these dynamics converge. Palestinians are rendered structurally killable; their suffering and death are commodified for profit; democratic oversight and international law are undermined; and the machinery of war and profit grinds on.
The question is no longer whether genocide is happening in Gaza, but how global economic and political systems - driven by a cannibalistic capitalist logic, and shielded by political complicity - continue to turn human beings into expendable inputs, marketable products, or spectacles for consumption.
This is the logic that sustains not just the ongoing destruction of Gaza, but the normalisation of mass killing as a permanent feature of our shared global future.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
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