Vagdani was accused by a Palestinian advocacy legal group, the Hind Rajab Foundation, of carrying out well-documented crimes in Gaza. He is not the only Israeli soldier being pursued for similar crimes.

According to the Israeli Broadcasting Corporation (KAN), more than 50 Israeli soldiers are being pursued in countries ranging from South Africa to Sri Lanka to Sweden.

In one case, the Hind Rajab Foundation filed a complaint in a Swedish court against Boaz Ben David, an Israeli sniper from the 932 Battalion of the Israeli Nahal Brigade. He is also accused of committing war crimes in Gaza.

The Nahal Brigade has been at the heart of numerous war crimes in Gaza. Established in 1982, the brigade is notorious for its unhinged violence against Occupied Palestinians. Their role in the latest genocidal atrocities in the Strip has far exceeded their own dark legacy.

Even if these 50 individuals are apprehended and sentenced, the price exacted from the Israeli army pales in comparison to the crimes carried out.

Numbers, though helpful, are rarely enough to convey collective pain. The medical journal Lancet’s latest report is still worthy of reflection. Using a new data-collecting method called ‘capture–recapture analysis’, the report indicates that, by the first nine months of the war, between October 2023 and June 2024, 64,260 Palestinians have been killed.

Still, capturing and trying Israeli war criminals is not just about the fate of these individuals. It is about accountability—an absent term in the history of Israeli human rights violations, war crimes and recurring genocides against Palestinians.

The Israeli government understands that the issue now goes beyond individuals. It is about the loss of Israel’s historic status as a country that stands above the law.

As a result, the Israeli army announced that it decided not to publicly reveal the names of soldiers involved in the Gaza war and genocide, fearing prosecution in international courts.

However, this step is unlikely to make much difference for two reasons. First, numerous pieces of evidence against individual soldiers, whose identities are publicly known, have already been gathered or are available for future investigation. Second, much of the documentation of war crimes has been unwittingly produced by Israeli soldiers themselves.

Reassured about the lack of accountability, Israeli soldiers have taken countless pieces of footage showing the abuse and torture of Palestinians in Gaza. This self-indictment will likely serve as a major body of evidence in future trials.

Image by Şinasi Müldür from Pixabay

All of this cannot be viewed separately from the ongoing investigation into the Israeli genocide in Gaza by the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Additionally, arrest warrants have been issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) against top Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Though these cases have moved slowly, they have set a precedent that even Israel is not immune to some measure of international accountability and justice.

Moreover, these cases have granted countries that are signatories to the ICC and ICJ the authority to investigate individual war crimes cases filed by human rights and legal advocacy groups.

Though the Hind Rajab Foundation is not the only group pursuing Israeli war criminals globally, the group’s name derives from a five-year-old Palestinian girl from Gaza who was murdered by the Israeli army in January 2024, along with her family. This tragedy and that particular name are a reminder that the innocent blood of Palestinians will not go in vain.

Though justice may be delayed, as long as there are pursuers, it will someday be attained.

Pursuing alleged Israeli war criminals in international and national courts is just the start of a process of accountability that will last many years. With every case, Israel will learn that the decades-long US vetoes and blind Western protection and support will no longer suffice.

It was the West’s shameless shielding of Israel throughout the years that allowed Israeli leaders to behave as they saw fit for Israel’s so-called national security—even if it meant the very extermination of the Palestinian people, as is the case today in Gaza.

Still, Western governments, including the US and Britain, continue to treat wanted Israelis as sanctified heroes—not war criminals. This goes beyond accusations of double standards. It is the highest immorality and disregard for international law.

Things need to change; in fact, they are already changing.

Since the start of the Israeli war on Gaza, Tel Aviv has already learned many difficult lessons. For example, its army is no longer “invincible”, its economy is relatively small and highly dependent, and its political system is fragile. In times of crisis, it is barely operable.

It is time for Israel to learn yet another lesson: that the age of accountability has begun. Dancing around the corpses of dead Palestinians in Gaza is no longer an amusing social media post, as Israeli soldiers once thought.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.

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The intention of the report, “The Gaza Strip: The Economic Situation and the Prospects for Development,” was not merely to prophesise, but to warn that if the world continued to stand idle in the face of the ongoing blockade on Gaza, a humanitarian catastrophe was imminent.

Yet, little was done, though the UN continued with its countdown, increasing the frequency and urgency of its warnings, especially following major wars.

Another report in 2015 from UNCTAD stated that the Gaza crisis had intensified following the most destructive war to that date, the year before. The war had destroyed hundreds of factories, thousands of homes and displaced tens of thousands of people.

By 2020, though, based on the criteria set by the UN, Gaza should have become ‘uninhabitable’. Yet, little was done to remedy the crisis. The population grew rapidly, while resources, including Gaza’s land mass, shrank due to the ever-expanding Israeli ‘buffer zone’. The prospects for the “world’s largest open-air prison” became even dimmer.

Yet, the international community did little to heed the call of UNCTAD and other UN and international institutions. The humanitarian crisis – situated within a prolonged political crisis, a siege, repeated wars and daily violence – worsened, reaching, on 7 October, 2023, the point of implosion.

One wonders if the world had paid even the slightest attention to Gaza and the cries of people trapped behind walls, barbed wire and electric fences, whether the current war and genocide could have been avoided.

It is all moot now. The worst-case scenario has actualised in a way that even the most pessimistic estimates by Palestinian, Arab, or international groups could not have foreseen.

Not only is Gaza now beyond “uninhabitable”, but, according to Greenpeace, it will be “uninhabitable for generations to come”. This does not hinge on the resilience of Palestinians in Gaza, whose legendary steadfastness is hardly disputed. However, there are essential survival needs that even the strongest people cannot replace with their mere desire to survive.

In just the first 120 days of war, “staggering” carbon emissions were estimated at 536,410 tonnes of carbon dioxide. Ninety per cent of that deadly pollution was “attributed to Israel’s air bombardment and ground invasion,” according to Greenpeace, which concluded that the total sum of carbon emissions “is greater than the annual carbon footprint of many climate-vulnerable nations.”

A report issued around the same time by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) painted an equally frightening picture of what was taking place in Gaza as a direct result of the war. “Water and sanitation have collapsed,” it declared last June. “Coastal areas, soil, and ecosystems have been severely impacted,” it continued.

But that was over seven months ago, when parts of Gaza were still standing. Now, almost all of Gaza has been destroyed. Garbage has been piling up for 15 months without a single facility to process it efficiently. Disease is widespread, and all hospitals have either been destroyed in the bombings, burned to the ground, or bulldozed. Many of the sick are dying in their tents without ever seeing a doctor.

Without any outside assistance, it was only natural for the disaster to worsen. Last December, Medecins Sans Frontieres issued a report titled “Gaza: Life in a Death Trap“. The report, a devastating read, describes the state of medical infrastructure in Gaza, which can be summed up in a single word: non-existent.

Israel has attacked 512 healthcare facilities between October 2023 and September 2024, killing over 1,000 healthcare workers. This means that a population is trying to survive during one of the harshest wars ever recorded, without any serious medical attention. This includes nearly half a million people suffering from various mental health disorders.

“Back Turned,” Digital, Midjourney, 2024

By December, Gaza’s Government Media Office reported that there are an estimated 23 million tonnes of debris resulting from the dropping of 75,000 tonnes of explosives – in addition to other forms of destruction. This has released 281,000 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide into the air.

Once the war is over, Gaza will be rebuilt. Though Palestinian sumud (steadfastness) is capable of restoring Gaza to its former self, however long it takes, a study conducted by Queen Mary University in the UK said that, for the destroyed structures to be rebuilt, an additional 60 million tonnes of CO2 will be released into an already severely impacted environment.

In essence, this means that even after the devastating war on Gaza ends and the rebuilding of the Strip concludes, the ecological and environmental harm that Israel has caused will remain for many years to come.

It is baffling that the very Western countries, which speak tirelessly about environmental protection, preservation and warning against carbon emissions, are the same entities that helped sustain the war on Gaza, either through arming Israel or remaining silent in the face of the ongoing atrocities.

The price of this hypocrisy is the enduring suffering of millions of people and the devastation of their environment. Isn’t it time for the world to wake up and collectively declare: enough is enough?

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Some of those who wrote these notes have been killed in Israeli strikes, like my sister, Dr Soma Baroud; others lost children, siblings, cousins, neighbours and friends. It may seem strange that none of those who communicated with me throughout the war has ever questioned their faith and have often, if not always, begun their messages by checking on me and my children.

The samples of the messages below have been edited for length and clarity.

Ibrahim:

“How are you? We are all fine. We had to leave Shati (refugee camp). The Israelis arrived at the camp yesterday. Our whole neighbourhood has been destroyed. Our home, too, was destroyed. Alhamdulillah – praise be to God.”

Soma:

“How are you? And how are the kids? Times like these make me realise that no material wealth matters. Only the love of one’s family and community matter most. We had to flee Qarara (east of Khan Yunis, in southern Gaza); the boys fled further south, and I am in Deir Al-Balah with my daughter and grandson. I don’t know what happened to H (her husband). The army bulldozers began destroying the neighbourhood while we were still inside. We ran away in the middle of the night.”

A’esha:

“E (her husband) was killed on the first day of the invasion. A (her son) disappeared after he learned that his father was killed. He said he wanted to avenge his father. I am worried. I don’t know what to do.”

Salwa:

“Cousin, A’esha’s son, A, was killed (he was 19). He was fighting in Jabaliya. She is somewhere in Rafah with her surviving kids. Her newborn has a congenital heart defect. Do you know of any charity that can help her? She lives in a tent without food or water.”

Ibrahim:

“We escaped to Al-Shifa (hospital in Gaza City). Then, the Israelis invaded. They took all the men outside and had us stand in line. They spared me. I don’t know why. All the men were executed. Nasser’s son (his nephew) was killed in front of me. We are still trapped at Al-Shifa.”

Soma:

“My husband was killed, brother. That poor soul had no chance. His illness had prevented him from running away on time. Someone says he saw his body after he was shot by a drone. He was hit in the head. But when we went back to the place, we couldn’t find him. There was a massive heap of rubble and garbage. We dug and dug day and night, to no avail. I just want to give him a proper burial.”

A’esha:

“Did Salwa message you about the charity? My baby is dying. I named her Wafa’ after her auntie (26, who was killed in the first few weeks of the war along with her son Zaid, five, and husband, Mohammed, in Gaza City). She can barely breathe. Some people are allowed to leave Gaza through Rafah. They say the UAE accepts some of the wounded and sick. Please help me.”

Walid:

“Have you heard anything about the ceasefire? We ran away back to the centre of Gaza after we were forced to flee south. They (the Israeli army) said, ‘Go to the safe zones.’ Then, they killed the displaced inside their tents. I saw my neighbours burning alive. I am too old (he is 75). Please tell me that the war is about to end.”

“Gaza Letters,” Digital, ChatGPt, 2024

Ibrahim:

“How are you, cousin? I just wanted to tell you that Nasser (his brother) was killed. He was standing in line waiting for a loaf of bread in Zeitoun. After the martyrdom of his sons, he became responsible for the grandchildren as well. They (the Israelis) bombed the crowd as they waited for the aid trucks. The explosion severed his arm. He bled to death.”

Soma:

“I was in Nuseirat when the massacre happened (278 people were killed and over 800 wounded on 8 June). I walked through the area, not knowing the extent of the bloodbath. I was on my way back to Qarara to check on the kids. Bodies were strewn everywhere. They were mostly mutilated, though some were still groaning, desperately grasping onto life. I wanted to help, but I could do nothing. I kept walking from one body to the next, holding hands and looking into dying eyes. I worked in the emergency room for many years. But at that moment, I felt helpless. I felt that I, too, had died on that day.”

(Dr Soma was killed in an Israeli strike targeting her car on 9 October. She had just left the hospital, where she worked, to check on her sons.)

Ibrahim:

“My condolences, cousin, for the martyrdom of your sister. She will always remain the pride of our family.”

A’esha:

“Wafa’ died this morning in our tent in Al-Musawi. There was no medicine. No food. No milk. My only solace is that she is now an angel in Paradise.”

Walid:

“How are you, cousin? We are okay. We lost everything, but we are still standing. Alhamdulillah. Do you know when the war will be over? Maybe another week or two? I am just too old and so, so tired.”

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When Israel launched its ground operations in Gaza, Beit Lahia was already largely destroyed due to many days of relentless Israeli bombardment which killed thousands.

Still, the border Gaza town resisted, leading to a hermetic Israeli siege, which was never lifted, even when the Israeli military redeployed out of much of northern Gaza in January 2024.

Beit Lahia is largely an isolated town, a short distance away from the fence separating besieged Gaza from Israel. It is surrounded mostly by agricultural areas that make it nearly impossible to defend.

Yet, a year of grisly Israeli war and genocide in Gaza did not end the fighting there. To the contrary, 2024 has ended where it started, with intense fighting on all fronts in Gaza, with Beit Lahia, a town that was supposedly ‘conquered’ earlier, still leading the fight.

Beit Lahia is a microcosm of Israel’s failed war in the Strip, a bloody grind that has led nowhere, despite the massive destruction, the repeated ethnic cleansing of the population, the starvation and the genocide. Every day of Israel’s terrible war on the Palestinians serves as a reminder that there are no military solutions and that the Palestinian will cannot be broken, no matter the cost or the sacrifice.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, however, remains unconvinced. He entered the new year with more promises of ‘total victory’, and ended it as a wanted criminal by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The issuing of an arrest warrant for the Israeli leader was a reiteration of a similar position taken by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at the start of 2024.

The ICJ’s position, however, was hardly as strong as many had hoped or wanted to believe. The world’s highest court had, on 26 January, ordered Israel “to take action to prevent acts of genocide”, but stopped short of ordering Israel to halt its war.

The Israeli objectives of the war remained unclear, although Israeli politicians provided clues as to what the war on Gaza was really all about. Last January, several Israeli ministers, including 12 from Netanyahu’s Likud party, took part in a conference calling for the resettlement of Gaza and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. “Without settlements, there is no security,” extremist Israeli minister of finance, Bezalel Smotrich, said.

For that to happen, the Palestinian people themselves, not merely those fighting on the ground, had to be tamed, broken and defeated. Thus, the ‘flour massacres‘, a new Israeli war tactic that was centered around killing as many Palestinians as possible while waiting for the few aid trucks that were allowed to reach northern Gaza.

On 29 February, more than 100 Gazans were killed while queueing for aid. They were mowed down by Israeli soldiers, as they desperately tried to lay their hands on a loaf of bread, baby milk or a bottle of water. This scene was repeated, again and again in the north, but also in other parts of the Gaza Strip throughout the year.

The aim was to starve the Palestinians in the north so that they would be forced to flee to other parts of the Strip. Famine actualized as early as January, and many of those who tried to flee south were killed, anyway.

From the early days of the war, Israel understood that to ethnically cleanse Palestinians, they must target all aspects of life in the Strip. This includes hospitals, bakeries, markets, electric grids, water stations, and the like.

The Gaza hospitals, of course, received a large share of Israeli attacks. In March, once more, Israel attacked the Al-Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza City with greater ferocity than before. When it finally withdrew, on April 1, the Israeli army destroyed the entire compound, leaving behind mass graves with hundreds of bodies, mostly medical staff, women and children. They even executed several patients.

Aside from a few statements of concern by western leaders, little was done to bring the genocide to an end. Only when seven international aid workers with the charity, the World Central Kitchen, were killed by Israel, a global outcry followed, leading to the first and only Israeli apology in the entire war.

Desperate to distract from its failure in Gaza, but also Lebanon, and keen on presenting the Israeli public with any kind of victory, the Israeli military began escalating its war beyond Gaza. This included the strike on the Iranian Embassy in Syria on 1 April. Despite repeated attempts, which included the assassination in Iran of the head of Hamas’s Political Bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, on 31 July, an all-out regional war has not yet come to pass.

Another escalation was taking place, this time not by Netanyahu but by millions of people around the world, demanding an end to the Israeli war. A focal point of the protests were student movements that spread across US campuses and, ultimately, worldwide. Instead of allowing free speech to flourish, however, America’s largest academic institutions resorted to the police, who violently shut down many of the protests, arresting hundreds of students, many of whom were not allowed to return to their colleges.

Meanwhile, the US continued to block international efforts aimed at producing a ceasefire resolution at the United Nations Security Council. Ultimately, on 31 May, US President Joe Biden delivered a speech conveying what he termed an “Israeli proposal” to end the war. After some delay, Hamas accepted the proposal, but Israel rejected it. In his rejection, Netanyahu referred to Biden’s speech as “incorrect” and “incomplete”. Strangely, but also unsurprisingly, the White House blamed the Palestinians for the failed initiative.

Losing faith in the American leadership, some European countries began changing their foreign policy doctrines on Palestine, with Ireland, Norway and Spain recognizing the State of Palestine on 28 May. The decisions were largely symbolic but indicated that western unity around Israel was faltering.

Digital Image.

Israel remained unfazed and, despite international warnings, invaded the Rafah area in southern Gaza on May 7, seizing control of the Philadelphi Corridor – a buffer zone between Gaza and the Egyptian border that extends for 14 kilometers.

Netanyahu’s government insisted that only war can bring their captives back. There was very little success in that strategy, however. On June 8, Israel, with logistical support from the US and other western countries managed to rescue four of its captives held in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza. To do so, Israel killed at least 276 Palestinians and wounded 800 more.

In August, another heart-wrenching massacre took place, this time in the Al-Tabaeen school in Gaza City, where 93 people, mostly women and children, were murdered in a single Israeli strike. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, women and children were the main victims of the Israeli genocide, accounting for 70 per cent by 8 November.

An earlier report by the Lancet Medical Journal said that if the war stopped in July, “186,000 or even more” Palestinians would have been killed. The war, however, went on. The rate of genocide in Gaza seemed to maintain the same killing ratio, despite the major regional developments including the mutual Iranian-Israeli tit-for-tat strikes and the major Israeli ground operation in Lebanon.

In October, Israel returned to the policies of targeting or besieging hospitals, killing doctors and other medical staff, and targeting aid and civil defence workers. Still, Israel would not achieve any of its strategic goals of the war. Even the killing of Hamas’ leader, Yahya Sinwar, in battle on 16 October  would not, in any way, alter the course of the war.

Israel’s frustration grew by leaps and bounds throughout the year. Its desperate attempt to control the global narrative on the Gaza genocide largely failed. On 19 July, and after listening to the testimonies of over 50 countries, the ICJ issued a landmark ruling that “Israel’s continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is illegal.”

That ruling, which expressed international consensus on the matter, was translated on 17 September to a UN General Assembly resolution “demanding an end to Israel’s occupation of Palestine within the next twelve months”.

All of this effectively meant that Israel’s attempt at normalizing its occupation of Palestine, and its quest to illegally annex the West Bank was considered null and void by the international community. Israel, however, doubled down, taking its rage against West Bank Palestinians, who, too, were experiencing one of the worst Israeli pogroms in many years.

According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, by 21 November, at least 777 Palestinians have been killed since 7 October 2023, while thousands more were wounded and over 11,700 arrested.

To make matters worse, Smotrich called, on November 11, for the full annexation of the West Bank. The call was made soon after the election of Donald Trump as the next US President, an event that initially inspired optimism amongst Israeli leaders, but later concerns that Trump may not serve the role of the saviour for Israel after all.

On 21 November, the ICC issued its historic ruling to arrest Netanyahu and his Defence Minister Yoav Gallant. The decision represented a measure of hope, however faint, that the world is finally ready to hold Israel accountable for its many crimes.

2025 could, indeed, represent that watershed moment. This remains to be seen. However, as far as Palestinians are concerned, even with the failure of the international community to stop the genocide and reign in Israel, their steadfastness, sumoud, will remain strong until freedom is finally attained.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.

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“I hope we’ll have a great opportunity with the new US administration to create full normalisation [of the Israeli occupation],” he was quoted as saying by Israeli media. This is not the first time that Smotrich, along with other Israeli extremists, has made the connection between Donald Trump moving back into the White House and the illegal expansion of Israel’s nominal borders.

Two things make Israel’s far-right optimistic about Trump’s return to the Oval Office: the Israeli experience during Trump’s first term in office, when the US president allowed the occupation state to claim sovereignty over illegal settlements, the Syrian Golan Heights and occupied East Jerusalem; and Trump’s more recent statement in the run-up to the elections.

Israel is “so tiny” on the map, said Trump when addressing the pro-Israel group Stop Anti-Semitism at an event in August, asking aloud: “Is there any way of getting more?” The statement, absurd by any definition, prompted joy among Israeli politicians, who understood it to be a green light for further annexation of Palestinian land.

Israel’s aims for colonial expansion have also received a boost in more recent days.

Following the fall of Bashar Al-Assad’s regime in Syria, Israel immediately invaded large swathes of the country, reaching as far as the Quneitra governorate, less than 20 kilometres from the capital, Damascus. What is taking place in Syria serves as a model of what to expect in the West Bank in coming months.

Israel occupied nearly 70 per cent of the Syrian Golan Heights in 1967. It cemented its illegal occupation of the Arab region by formally annexing it in 1981 through the so-called Golan Heights Law. That illegal move came shortly after another illegal annexation, that of occupied Palestinian East Jerusalem the previous year.

Although the West Bank was not formally annexed, the boundaries of East Jerusalem have been expanded well beyond its historic borders, thus swallowing large parts of the West Bank. Like East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, the West Bank is also recognised as illegally occupied under international law. Israel has no legal basis to maintain its occupation, let alone annex any Palestinian or Arab land. It is allowed to do so, however, due to US-Western support and international silence.

But why is Israel keen on annexing the West Bank now?

Aside from the “great opportunity” linked to Trump’s return to power, Israel feels that its ability to sustain a genocidal war on Gaza without any international intervention to bring the extermination to an end, would make the annexation of the West Bank a far less consequential matter on the international agenda.

“King Smotrich,” Dream / Dreamland v.3 / Clip2Comic, 2024

Even though the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued a decisive ruling on the illegality of the Israeli occupation on 19 July, followed by the issuance of arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on 21 November, no action was taken to actually hold Israel accountable. The annexation of the West Bank is unlikely to change that, especially as Israel conducts its wars and illegal actions with direct US support.

The Democratic administration of Joe Biden has financed and supported all Israeli wars, including the current genocide. Trump is expected to be equally generous, or at the very least, not at all critical.

With all of this in mind, the annexation of the West Bank in the coming weeks or months is a real possibility. In fact, Smotrich has already informed “workers of the Defence Ministry body in charge of Israeli and Palestinian civil affairs in the West Bank” about his plans to “shut down the department as part of an envisioned Israeli annexation of the area,” the Times of Israel reported on 6 December.

While such annexation will not change the legal status of the West Bank under international law, it will have dire consequences for the millions of Palestinians living there, as annexation is likely to be followed by a violent campaign of ethnic cleansing, if not from the whole of the West Bank, certainly from large parts of it.

Annexation will also render the Palestinian Authority legally irrelevant.

It was created following the Oslo Accords to administer parts of the West Bank in anticipation of a future sovereign state, which has never materialised. Will the PA agree to remain functional as part of the Israeli military administration of a newly annexed West Bank?

Palestinians will certainly resist, as they always do. The nature of the resistance will prove critical in the success or failure of the Israeli scheme. A popular Intifada, for example, will overstretch the Israeli military, which will likely use an unprecedented degree of violence to suppress Palestinians, but is unlikely to succeed.

Annexing the West Bank at a time when Palestine — in fact, the whole region — is in turmoil, is a recipe for perpetual war. From the viewpoint of Smotrich and his ilk, that will be another “great opportunity”, as it will secure their political survival for years to come.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.

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Long before the current devastating war on Gaza and the escalation of Israeli violence and repression in the Occupied West Bank, Palestinian and pro-Palestinian voices have been censored.

Some date the censorship to an agreement in 2016 that, according to the Israeli government, sought to “force social networks to remove content that Israel considers to be incitement.”

This was translated, almost immediately, to the shutting down of thousands of accounts and the barring of many social media influencers, with the hope of slowing down the vastly growing pro-Palestinian tendencies in all Meta-linked platforms.

The war on Gaza, however, has escalated the censorship. In a report submitted to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression, Human Rights Watch noted that the documented restrictions on freedom of speech “undermine the fundamental human rights to freedom of expression and assembly.”

The censorship became so sophisticated and increasingly involved a direct Israeli role. To ensure that ‘offenders’ to Israeli sensibilities were eliminated in large numbers, Meta began censoring specific words, thus deeming entire contents offensive, racist and anti-Semitic.

But Meta was not the only social media network involved in this practice. On 17 November, 2023, the X platform (previously known as Twitter) declared that users who write terms like “decolonisation”, “from the river to the sea”, or similar expressions would be suspended.

One year later, the social media platform Twitch followed suit by revising its ‘Hateful Content Policy’ to include “Zionist” as a potential slur.

Not only do these decisions, and many others, directly impair the freedom of speech and press, but they also confuse rational conversations with anti-Jewish sentiments.

The word ‘genocide’, for example, is not a swear word, but a common term, embraced by numerous countries around the world, accusing Israel of carrying out acts of genocide, meaning the “systematic destruction of a group of people because of their ethnicity, nationality, religion, or race”.

Under pressure from many countries, and after presenting a powerful case at The Hague, South Africa managed to compel the International Court of Justice to investigate Israel’s acts of genocide in the Gaza Strip in violation of the 1948 Genocide Convention.

In other words, this is not a matter for Mark Zuckerberg or any other social media company to decide, based on direct consultations with those carrying out the mass killings in Gaza.

The same applies to Zionism, an ideologically situated political movement that traces its history to 19th-century Europe, thus, neither to a specific race nor a religious text.

While many are, rightly, outraged by the fact that this kind of widespread, and growing, censorship directly challenges the main tenets of democracy, the actual harm for Palestinians is much bigger.

According to a November 2024 report by the Sada Social Centre for Digital Rights, the surge in digital violations targeting Palestinian content could not come at a worse time.

According to the organisation, “Meta platforms accounted for the largest share of violations at 57 per cent, followed by TikTok at 23 per cent.” YouTube and X follow at 13 and 7 per cent respectively.

“Palestine Exception,” Digital, ChatGPT, 2024.

This censorship, according to Sada, includes the shutting down of WhatsApp accounts, another Meta-owned platform that is also tightly controlled.

Unlike most of us, Palestinians in Gaza use these platforms to communicate with one another, to know who is dead and who is alive, and to raise awareness of certain massacres, often taking place in isolation, especially in the northern Gaza Strip.

Regarding northern Gaza, Sada Social spoke of a ‘digital blackout’, which has compounded the horror of that region – famine, mass killing, destruction of all hospitals, etc.

In the specific case of social media censorship in Gaza, lives are literally being lost as a result of politically motivated decisions.

HRW was one of many rights groups that have routinely spoken about the ‘systematic censorship’ by Meta. A December 2023 HRW report identified the following recurring patterns of censorship: removal of content, suspension of pro-Palestinian accounts, the reduction of visibility, known as ‘shadow-banning’, the restrictions on engagement, and the deliberate misuse of policies on hate speech and graphic content.

The danger of this kind of censorship is multilayered. It is a direct threat to one of the most basic freedoms guaranteed under the law in any democratic society. In the case of Gaza, the censorship takes a dark, deadly turn as it could make the difference between people dying under the rubble of their homes or receiving assistance.

Additionally, censorship of this magnitude often creates precedents and often leads to other forms of censorship that, in fact, are already taking place against other vulnerable communities, whether on a national stage or globally.

While the international community is yet to translate its verbal solidarity with Palestinians into any meaningful action, the least we could do is to give Palestinians their full rights to express their views, share their pain, and raise awareness of their collective plight. The world owes them that much, and no social media company should be permitted to hinder such a simple and reasonable demand.

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The above assertion is critical, both for ending the Israeli occupation of Palestine and achieving Palestinian freedom. This is why.

In all past wars and related war crimes, Israel has managed to push the reset button in its relationship with occupied Palestinians. Following each war, the Israeli hasbara — propaganda — machine, clicks into overdrive, utilising the ever-willing Western mainstream media, to paint Palestinians in a negative light and to present Israel as the perpetual victim in a permanent state of self-defence, or even the lone defender of Western civilisation.

This campaign always runs parallel with the whitewashing of Israel in popular entertainment, from Hollywood movies to TV sit-coms and magazine covers with such headlines as “Gorgeous Photos Capture The Unseen Lives Of Female Soldiers In Israel”. Generally, Western politicians of varied ideologies, along with intellectuals, talking heads on news bulletins and church leaders, all praise the “miracle” that is Israel.

At the beginning of Israel’s genocidal war in October 2023, for example, British playwright Tom Stoppard said that, “Before we take up a position on what’s happening now, we should consider whether this is a fight over territory or a struggle between civilisation and barbarism.” He, of course, leaned towards the latter.

This Israeli tactic always includes the demonisation of Palestinians, where the victim becomes the “terrorist” and those under siege become the besiegers. This last claim, in particular, was expressed in the words of former US Secretary of State Madeline Albright who said, in an August 2000 interview with NBC, that, “The Israelis feel under siege from the Palestinian rock throwers and the various gangs that have been roaming around.”

Why will such Israeli tactics fail this time?

Because they will fail, but not due to a lack of trying. In fact, Israel is already bracing for the hasbara fight of a lifetime.

One new tactic that Israel is already employing in “friendly” countries, like the United States, is to push its bought and paid for elected politicians to pass laws to block any and all conversations about the Israeli genocide in Gaza. Israel, alone, must have exclusive access to the American public through the media and political discourse.

On 14 November, the US House of Representatives passed two bills: H.R.6408 and H.R.9495. The latter, in particular, is aimed at giving the Treasury Secretary the authorisation to revoke an organisation’s tax-exempt status and decide when the designation might end. Once these bills pass the Senate and are approved by the president, the most democratic and peaceful expressions of rejecting the Israeli occupation of Palestine and demanding a sensible US foreign policy will be equated with a direct violation of the law and, in some cases, to terrorism, as defined by the Treasury Department, and at the behest of the pro-Israel lobby.

However, even these desperate attempts will not quell public anger or distract attention from the need for such open conversations about what is being done in occupied Palestine (much of it courtesy of US tax dollars). Here’s why: Not only is Israel committing genocide in the Gaza Strip, but this genocide is also being investigated and is acknowledged by the world’s highest legal institutions, namely the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC).

“Palestine Exception,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3, 2024

Unlike previous investigations — the Goldstone Report probing the 2008-09 war on Gaza, for example — the international community has already taken some practical steps to hold Israeli war criminals to account. The ICC has issued warrants for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.

Moreover, those who routinely come to Israel’s defence, such as the US and other Western governments, are now clashing directly with the same canon of international law that they helped articulate after World War II, depriving them of any credibility as “neutral” parties in this issue. For example, US President Joe Biden called the warrants “outrageous”, while the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs claimed that Netanyahu and other ministers enjoy immunity since Israel is not a party to the ICC.

There is also the fact that, despite the inherent pro-Israel bias of Western media, Palestinian journalists, isolated and killed in large numbers, have still been able to communicate details of the genocide to the rest of the world, making it impossible for Israel to hide its crimes.

Indeed, many Israeli soldiers have posted videos and photos of themselves committing war crimes on social media.

The impact of the Israeli genocide on Gaza has thus already penetrated many layers of public opinion, a fact which is unprecedented in history.

Until now, the conversation on Palestine has generally been confined to specific strata of society, reaching academics, social justice activists and other groups interested in politics and global issues. Today, though, ordinary people have been made aware of the conversation, to the extent that it is believed widely that anger over Gaza has contributed towards determining the outcome of the latest US presidential and other elections.

In Africa, the growing political and public interest in the Palestinian struggle has re-enlivened the spirit of anti-colonial, liberation struggles on the continent, bringing many countries, from South Africa to Algeria, back to the front lines of global solidarity.

No amount of Israeli propaganda, unjust laws, unfair categorisations of Palestinians or claims about Israel’s “most moral army” will ever succeed in reversing these realities. There can be no reset buttons. Rather, the global momentum of Palestine’s liberation will accelerate in the coming months and years.

The price exacted from the Palestinian people for this earth-shattering moment has been high and painful, but the history of all national liberation struggles, Palestine included, demonstrates that freedom doesn’t come cheap.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.

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But a term that many seem to agree on is that the warrants represent an earthquake, though many are doubtful that Netanyahu will actually see his day in court.

The pro-Palestine camp, which as of late represents the majority of humankind, is torn between disbelief, skepticism and optimism. It turned out that the international system has a pulse, after all, though faint, but is enough to rekindle hope that legal and moral accountability are still possible.

This mixture of feelings and strong language is a reflection of several important and interconnected experiences: one, the unprecedented extermination of a whole population which is currently being carried out by Israel against Palestinians in Gaza; two, the utter failure of the international community to stop the grisly genocide in the Strip; and, finally, the fact that the international legal system has historically failed to hold Israel, or any of the West’s allies anywhere, accountable to international law.

The real earthquake is the fact that this is the first time in the history of the ICC that a pro-western leader is held accountable for war crimes. Indeed, historically, the vast majority of arrest warrants, and actual detention of accused war criminals seemed to target the Global South, Africa in particular.

Israel, however, is not an ordinary “western” state. Zionism was a western-colonial invention, and the creation of Israel was only possible because of unhindered, die-hard western support.

Since its inception on the ruins of historic Palestine in 1948, Israel has served the role of the western-colonial citadel in the Middle East. The entire Israeli political discourse has been tailored and situated within western priorities and supposed values: civilisation, democracy, enlightenment, human rights and the like.

With time, Israel became largely an American project, embraced by American liberals and religious conservatives alike.

America’s religious crowds were motivated by the biblical notion that “whoever blesses Israel will be blessed, And whoever curses Israel will be cursed.” The liberals, too, held Israel within a spiritual discourse, although disproportionately favoured the classification of Israel as the “only democracy in the Middle East”, constantly emphasising the “special relationship”, the “unbreakable bond” and the rest.

Thus, it would not be an exaggeration to claim that the ICC’s indictment of Netanyahu, as a representative of the political establishment in Israel, and Gallant, as the leader of the military class, is also an indictment of the United States.

It is often reported that Israel would not have been able to carry on with its war – genocide – on Gaza without American military and political support. According to the investigative news website ProPublica, in the first year of the war, the US shipped over 50,000 tonnes of weaponry to Israel.

Mainstream American media and journalists are also culpable in that genocide. They elevated the now war criminals Netanyahu and Gallant, along with other Israeli political and military leaders, as if they were the defenders of a “civilised world” against the “barbarians”. Those in the conservative media circles portrayed them as if they were prophets doing God’s work against the supposed heathens of the South.

“ICC Warrant,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3, 2024

They, too, have been indicted by the ICC, the kind of moral indictment, and “hard stigma”, that can never be eradicated.

When Karim Khan, the ICC’s chief prosecutor, originally filed for arrest warrants in May, many were in doubt, and justifiably so. The Israelis felt that their country commanded the needed support to disallow such warrants in the first place. They cited previous attempts, including a Belgian court case where victims of Israeli brutality in Lebanon attempted to hold former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon accountable for the Sabra and Shatila massacre. Not only was the case dropped in 2003, but Belgium was pressured by the US to change its own laws so that they do not include universal jurisdiction in the case of genocide.

The Americans, too, were not too worried, as they were ready to punish ICC judges, defame Khan himself, and, according to a recent social media post by US Senator Tom Cotton, ready to “invade the Hague”.

In fact, this is not the first time that Americans, who are not signatories of the Rome Statute, thus not members of the ICC, flexed their muscles against those who merely attempted to enforce international law. In September 2020, the US government imposed sanctions on then-Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and another senior official, Phakiso Mochochoko.

Even those who wanted to see accountability for the Israeli genocide were in doubt, especially as pro-Israeli western governments, like that of Germany, stepped forward to prevent the warrants from being issued. Unreasonable delays in the proceedings contributed to the skepticism, especially as Khan himself was suddenly being paraded for supposed “sexual misconduct”.

Yet, after all of this, on 21 November the arrest warrants were issued, charging Netanyahu and Gallant with alleged “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity” – the other punishable offenses within the ICC jurisdiction being genocide and aggression.

Considering that the world’s highest court, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), has already found that it is plausible that Israel’s acts could amount to genocide and is currently investigating the case, Israel, as a state, and top Israeli leaders have suddenly, and deservingly so, become the enemies of humanity.

While it is right and legitimate to argue that what matters most is the tangible outcome of these cases – ending the genocide while holding the Israeli war criminals accountable – we must not miss the greater meaning of these earth-shattering events.

The ICJ and the ICC are essentially two western institutions created to police the world by reinforcing the double standards resulting from the post-World War II western-dominated international system.

They are the legal equivalent of the Bretton Woods agreement, which regulated the international monetary system to serve US western interests. Though, in theory, they championed universally commendable values, in practice they merely served as tools of control and dominance for the western order.

For years, the world has been in a state of obvious and irreversible change. New powers were rising and others were shrinking. Political turmoil in the US, Britain and France were only reflections of the internal struggle in the west’s ruling classes. The incredible rise of China, the war in Europe and the growing resistance in the Middle East were outcomes and accelerators of that change.

Thus the constant call for reforms in the post-WWII international system to reflect in a more equitable way the new global realities. Despite American-western resistance to change, new geopolitical formations continued to take place, regardless.

The Gaza genocide represents a watershed moment in these global dynamics. This was reflected in Karim Khan’s language when he requested the arrest warrants, stressing on the credibility of the court. “This is why we have a court,” he said in an exclusive interview with CNN on 20 May. “It’s about the equal application of the law. No people are better than another. No people anywhere are saints.”

The emphasis on credibility here is a culmination of the obvious loss of credibility on all fronts. This should hardly be a surprise as it was in the west, the self-proclaimed champion of human rights, the very political entity that championed, defended and sustained the Israeli genocide.

While one would like to believe that the ICC’s arrest warrants were made exclusively for the sake of the victims of the Israeli genocide, plenty of evidence suggests that the unexpected move was a desperate western attempt at salvaging whatever little credibility it had maintained up to that moment.

The US government, an unrepentant violator of human rights, has maintained its strong position in defence of Israel, shaming the ICC for the warrants, not the Israeli war criminals for committing the genocide.

The conflict in Europe has been much more palpable, however, reflected in the position of Germany, which said it would “carefully examine” the arrest warrants but that it is “hard to imagine that we would make arrests on this basis”.

One remains hopeful that the shifts of global powers will eventually save international law from the hypocrisy and opportunism of the west. But what is clear for now is that the west’s own conflict will only gain momentum. Will those who created the Zionist Israeli menace be the very powers that demolish it? One is doubtful.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.

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“Is it possible that after 42,000 people killed, you cannot empathise with the Palestinians?” Albanese said in her statement about the need to “recognise (Israel’s war on Gaza) as a genocide”. “Those of you who have not uttered a word about what is happening in Gaza demonstrate that empathy has evaporated from this room,” she added.

Was Albanese too idealistic when she chose to appeal to empathy which, in her words, represents “the glue that makes us stand united as humanity”?

The answer largely depends on how we wish to define the role being played by the UN and its various institutions; whether its global platform was established as a guarantor of peace, or as a political club for those with military might and political power to impose their agendas on the rest of the world?

Albanese is not the first person to express deep frustration with the institutional, let alone the moral collapse of the UN, or the inability of the institution to effect any kind of tangible change, especially during times of great crises.

The UN’s own Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, himself had accused the executive branch of the UN, the Security Council, of being “outdated”, “unfair” and an “ineffective system”.

“The truth is that the Security Council has systematically failed in relation to the capacity to put an end to the most dramatic conflicts that we face today,” he said, referring to “Sudan, Gaza, Ukraine”. Also, although noting that “The UN is not the Security Council”, Guterres acknowledged that all UN bodies “suffer from the fact that the people look at them and think, ‘Well, but the Security Council has failed us.’”

Some UN officials, however, are mainly concerned about how the UN’s failure is compromising the standing of the international system, thus whatever remains of their own credibility. But some, like Albanese, are indeed driven by an overriding sense of humanity.

On 28 October, 2023, mere weeks after the start of the war, the Director of the New York office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights left his post because he could no longer find any room to reconcile between the failure to stop the war in Gaza and the credibility of the institution.

“This will be my last communication to you,” Craig Mokhiber wrote to the UN High Commissioner in Geneva, Volker Turk. “Once again we are seeing a genocide unfolding before our eyes and the organisation we serve appears powerless to stop it,” Mokhiber added.

The phrase “once again” may explain why the UN official made his decision to leave shortly after the start of the war. He felt that history was repeating itself, in all its gory details, while the international community remained divided between powerlessness and apathy.

The problem is multi-layered, complicated by the fact that UN officials and employees do not have the power to alter the very skewed structure of the world’s largest political institution. That power lies in the hands of those who wield political, military, financial and veto power.

“UN in Gaza,” Digital, Midjourney / Clip2Comic, 2024.

Within that context, countries like Israel can do whatever they want, including outlawing the very UN organisations that have been commissioned to uphold international law, as the Israeli Knesset did on 28 October when it passed a law banning UNRWA from conducting “any activity” or providing services in Israel and the Occupied Territories.

But is there a way out?

Many, especially in the Global South, believe that the UN has outlived its usefulness or needs serious reforms.

These assessments are valid, based on this simple maxim: The UN was established in 1945 with the main objectives of the “maintenance of international peace and security, the promotion of the well-being of the peoples of the world, and international cooperation to these ends.”

Very little of the above commitment has been achieved. In fact, not only has the UN failed at that primary mission, but it has become a manifestation of the unequalled distribution of power among its members.

Though the UN was formed following the atrocities of WWII, now it stands largely useless in its inability to stop similar atrocities in Palestine, Lebanon, Sudan and elsewhere.

In her speech, Albanese pointed out that, if the UN’s failures continue, its mandate will become even “more and more irrelevant to the rest of the world”, especially during these times of turmoil.

Albanese is right, of course, but considering the irreversible damage that has already taken place, one can hardly find a moral, let alone rational justification of why the UN, at least in its current form, should continue to exist.

Now that the Global South is finally rising with its own political, economic and legal initiatives, it is time for these new bodies to either offer a complete alternative to the UN or push for serious and irreversible reforms in the organisation.

Either that or the international system will continue to be defined by nothing but apathy and self-interest.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.

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