A Fantasy Called Law

The U.S. must also be credited with introducing the doctrine of ‘Unable or Unwilling,’ under which military actions are allowed against those states where terror groups are harbored and the governments of the day are unable to act. Similarly, the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), whose first victim was perhaps Muammar Gaddafi of Libya, was applied when states were found failing to protect their own citizens. All these additions were merely intended to disempower the Geneva Convention.

Whatever Israel is doing in Gaza is tactics borrowed from the strategic lexicon of the U.S., as they have constantly paraphrased the Gaza massacres as an act of self-defense. However, the fact is that these Israeli actions are poised to vacate Gaza of its inhabitants forever. Israeli President Isaac Herzog himself said that everyone in Gaza is Hamas and all targets are legitimate.

What is happening in Gaza today is the culmination of the gradual corrosion of the basic principles of international human rights, which began with the US-led War on Terror.

Gaza seems to have become a horror story amidst the apathy of the international community and complete disregard for international law. Today, situations on the ground seem as if there has never been a law that could stop ongoing genocide or bring Israel to justice for its unabated act of devastation.

Even the ruling of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) seeking the Israeli government to take all measures to prevent the genocide after the government of South Africa filed the lawsuit was termed by Israel as outrageous. Like inventories of Self-defence, Pre-Emptive Strikes, Unable or Unwilling doctrine, or Responsibility to Protect, Israel at the ICJ used the concept of Dual Use Objective by claiming that Hamas is using civilian spaces in Gaza for military purposes and hence Israel reserves all rights to target hospitals and schools.

Twelve members of the U.S. Congress and Senate, in a letter, have threatened the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Karim Khan, with dire consequences if the arrest warrant was issued against Prime Minister Netanyahu or any of the Israeli officials. They also said that any warrant against Netanyahu would be a threat not only to the sovereignty of Israel alone but to the U.S. as well. This dismissal and threat are grim reminders of 2020, when U.S. President Donald Trump had sanctioned ICC judges and lawyers for having investigated whether the U.S. had committed war crimes in Afghanistan.

The response of Israel and the U.S. is not only an account of blunt violation of international laws in full view of the global community but also disrespect to global institutions. It also explains how few are controlling the global institutions and how laws are applied selectively, as President Joe Biden had welcomed the ICC’s arrest warrant against President Vladimir Putin but completely played down the Gaza massacre.

The story did not stop here, but within days of ICJ’s ruling, the U.S. and other Western countries stopped funding for UNRAW, and one U.S. Republican, Brian Mast, said, “We want to see them die of hunger, as no one is innocent in Gaza.” The violation of norms of war designed for a civilized world has transcended all the confines of immorality after the people of Gaza are called animals in human form. There seems to be a complete mismatch between laws to be enacted for Israel-like actions and laws made inside Israel for the people of Palestine. What the world has witnessed since October 7 has transformed liberalism into tribalism, where Anglo-Saxon tribes are flocking behind Israel to cheer up for their actions.

Israel must understand that its stated military objective of destroying Hamas has wrought an overwhelming cost to civilians and infrastructure, which amounts to a grave violation of international law. Instead of defending Israel, the US has passed a series of laws in recent weeks to provide a legal shield to Israeli brutality and widen the orbit of anti-Semitism. It has made the slogan, ‘From River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free,’ an anti-Semitic act under International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The country has also passed a law prohibiting the Gospel reference about the killing of Christ by the Jews. Some states in the U.S. have banned the wearing of Palestinian Keffiyeh. Despite global outrage against the Gaza genocide, the State Department has recently committed a fresh package worth US$ 17 billion to oil the Israeli killing machine rolling over in Gaza. However, it is a different story that the U.S. has constantly denied Israel’s use of American weapons in its violation of international laws.

Today, it seems that great lessons learned during the Second World War and Holocaust have been forgotten along with the very core of the ‘Never Again Principle’, and the notion of absolute universality has been buried under the debris in Gaza. The carnage in Gaza and the West’s apathy has already inaugurated an end to the rule-based international order. In the past, we have seen the likes of Vietnam, Rwanda, Cambodia, and Yugoslavia, but those were more rooted in the politics of the Cold War. Today, one is witnessing the ushering of chaotic and anarchic global politics, hastening the destruction of a rule-based order. The current realm of global politics has proved that the Orwellian era is not near, but it is very much here where the law is a fantasy. If it even exists for name’s sake, it is only for the powerful who have monopolized all the rights to re-interpret and modify it to suit their political and military objectives.