It was a powerful moment at the 80th United Nations General Assembly last week when the world quite literally turned its back on a leader accused of "committing genocide in Gaza."

When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was about to deliver his address at the UN, more than a hundred diplomats — about three fourths of those in the assembly hall — walked out before he even spoke, leaving the chamber hollow with so many empty seats.

The UN delegates did not want to hear more rhetoric justifying Israel’s actions that have left Gaza in ruins. The mass walkout spoke louder than any verbal condemnation: Netanyahu’s words no longer deserve the dignity of being heard.

At the same time, formal recognition of Palestinian statehood has surged. France, UK, Canada, and Australia have joined those that have recognized Palestine, bringing the total to 156 of the 195 UN member states. And others that have not extended formal recognition, such as the Philippines, are backing a two-state solution to the Palestine-Israel conflict.

For decades, Western countries have delayed recognition of Palestine as a state, waiting for negotiated peace that has not come. Now they are moving ahead, apparently frustrated in realizing that waiting for Israel to change course can be futile.

The walkout did not seem like routine theatrics or a mere gesture of protest. It could be a historic turning point, the culmination of months of horror in Gaza that has shocked global conscience. The images of starving, emaciated children and flattened neighborhoods tell of horrendous human suffering that denials just cannot erase.

Adding weight to the continuing story of Gaza’s suffering is a report of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry, which reached a unequivocal conclusion: "Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, meeting four of the five acts defined under the 1948 Genocide convention, including imposing living conditions to bring about destruction of a people."

“In establishing the genocidal acts, the Commission examined the Israeli military operations in Gaza, including killing and seriously harming unprecedented numbers of Palestinians; imposing a total siege, including blocking humanitarian aid leading to starvation; systematically destroying the healthcare and education systems in Gaza; committing systematic acts of sexual and gender based violence; directly targeting children; carrying out systematic and widespread attacks on religious and cultural sites; and disregarding the orders of the International Court of Justice,” the UN report said.

But Netanyahu thrives on defiance, casting every rebuke as proof that Israel is besieged, and using international condemnation to shore up his base, to harden further Israeli politics. He rejected the genocide findings, telling the UN: “There is no famine in Gaza. These are lies spread by our enemies.” He also called Palestine recognition as “sheer madness” and “like giving statehood to terrorists.”

Still, many believe that the horrific images from Gaza erode Israel’s narrative as perpetual victim, reframing it now as a perpetrator of horrific acts that “go beyond war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

The brutal Oct. 7, 2023 killings by Hamas of civilian Israelis, many of them very young children, certainly deserve a severe response by Israel, to a point that the terrorist group must be eradicated or subdued so decisively that it can never again mount a repeat of the most gruesome bloodbath in the history of Israel since its founding in 1948.

The slaughter of innocent children and other civilians had the world grieving for Israel as it coped with the shock of the massacre. Widespread condemnation of the treacherous attack reverberated across the globe as people fully understood why Israel has long been pursuing its foremost advocacy: its right to exist and to defend itself.

But now, two years later after the Hamas attack, world opinion has shifted. More people expressing empathy for Palestine and the plight of Palestinians in Gaza where Israeli attacks have claimed more than 60,000 civilian lives, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

The UN walkout was a rare and stinging rebuke of Netanyahu on the world’s biggest stage, a collective refusal to legitimize his message. It showed the world has begun to draw lines, to act, and to isolate Israel’s leadership in ways that would have unthinkable in the past.

In previous columns, I’ve said that there’s no doubt that searing images of suffering children, Palestinian or Israeli, can tug at the heartstrings of the civilized world. At the risk of being deemed naïve, I dare say again that seeing these bloodied children ought to strengthen efforts from both sides to seek peace.

Indeed, if only both sides really loved their children more than they hated their enemies, peace might not be too far-fetched, and an end could finally be in sight for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that has simmered since time immemorial. ([email protected])