Global Justice in the 21st Century

[Prefatory Note: The post below is in two parts, both interviews published in the Italian weekly, Il Manifesto. The first addresses the Gaza dimension of the current Palestinian ordeal now extended to the West Bank and drawing worldwide negative attention by induced mass hunger and water scarcity. These severe civilian hardships resulting from Israeli criminality have given rise to a variety of protest activities, governmental denunciations, yet continue to gain unconditional support by the United States and the UK, while drawing some mild critical drawbacks from formerly supportive  France, Canada, and Germany but without stoppage of trade or flows of vital supplies to Israel. The second part in the form of an early comment on the short Iran War, initiated by Israel, joined by the US to inflict maximum damage on Iran’s nuclear sites, dramatized by the US reliance on ‘blockbuster bombs’ of 30,000 pounds to destroy nuclear facilities built deep underground. Their initial US and Israeli claims of victorious results have been watered down by growing doubts of how much damage was actually done to Iran’s nuclear attacks. A further setback for the attackers is the widespread speculation that Iran might now decide to develop nuclear weapons unless Israel would agree, which seems highly doubtful, to dismantle their nuclear arsenal and agree to a nuclear-free monitored Middle East. These texts are slightly modified for updating and clarity.]

Patricia Lambroso Interview Questions, Richard Falk Responses, Il Manifesto (5/20/25)

1. The Gaza Peoples Tribunal (civil society tribunal) was launched in November of 2024 in London following the failure by ICJ and ICC, the international tribunals in the Hague, political leaders,  governments, protest activism around the world to stop Israel’s crimes against humanity in Gaza. The anti-war movement that arose during the Vietnam War and the worldwide anti-apartheid campaign against the racist South African government were your examples of civic mobilization that exerted pressure on governments to change their unlawful, criminal policies. Is this possible today in the setting of Gaza and with respect to the Palestinian people regarding the fulfillment of their right of self-determination?

Response: It is not entirely fair to conclude that the ICJ and ICC ‘failed’ to stop the genocidal attack on Gaza or the crimes against humanity alleged to have been extensively committed by Israel and endorsed by its political leaders and supported by the liberal democracies of the West. The ICJ accepted jurisdiction to address tje submission by South Africa alleging violations of the International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1951), and issued near unanimous interim rulings in January and May 2024 to the momentous effect that it was ‘plausible’ to regard the Israeli violence in Gaza after October 7 as amounting to genocide. The ICJ then also ordered Israel to cease altogether interfering with the international delivery to Gaza of humanitarian aid taking the forms of food, medical supplies, and fuel. Although Israel took part in the judicial proceedings, it refused to comply with these interim rulings and was supported in this non-compliant behavior by the main complicit governments, particularly the United States that blocked all UN enforcement and ceasefire efforts by exercising its right of veto. It is more accurate  to speak of an ‘enforcement gap’ in this situation that seemed to nullify ICJ action after it was clear that Israel would not act in the spirit of membership in the UN by voluntarily complying with an adverse decision and that the UN was helpless in view of the clash between the judicial outcome and the geopolitical interests of the five Permanent Members of the Security Council each of whom was vested with authority to nullify ICJ rulings. The ICJ should not be blamed, it should instead be vested with enforcement powers to ensure the effectiveness of its pronouncements on matters of international law. Until then the failure of judicial approaches to global security and the protection of human rights should be associated with the design of the UN, and world order generally, controlled and shaped by the winners of World War II in 1945 to preserve their habitual entitlement that gave precedence to strategic interests when challenged by international law.

The ICJ also issued an historically significant Advisory Opinion on July 19, 2024 that also resulted in a near unanimous outcome in responding to a General Assembly Resolution seeking guidance as to objections to Israel’s role as Occupying Power in Gaza that is legally regulated by the 4^th Geneva Convention on Belligerent Occupation.[‘Advisory Opinion on Occupied Palestinian Territory Including East Jerusalem, responding to request of General Assembly for guidance as to “Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the OPT”’]  The Advisory Opinion addressed various allegations of Israeli violations in Gaza, West Bank, and East Jerusalem. The ICJ rendered an authoritative judgment, despite the misleading label of ‘Advisory,’ concluding that Israel’s pervasive pattern of unlawfulness in administering the Occupying Territories since the 1967 War justified terminating Israel’s administrative authority and physical presence as soon as practicable, including Gaza, and within no more than a year. Further that the UN and its member governments were put under legal obligations by the ICJ to implement this authoritative assessment, and not to view implementation with the ruling as merely ‘advisory.’ This legal evaluation of the Israeli obligation in the Occupied Palestinian territory did not extend specifically to the period of time elapsing since October 7 as the GA Resolution was adopted prior to the Hamas attack.

Of secondary significance is the issuance by the ICC of ‘arrest warrants’ for the Israeli Prime Minister, Netanyahu, and the former Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant, for a variety of alleged crimes of Israel, although not genocide. As neither Israel nor the US are members of the ICC, and the ICC unlike the ICJ is not part of the UN System, the prospects for enforcement are almost nil.

 Attention should also be given to an ‘Accountability Gap’ of impunity that is supplementary to the ‘Enforcement Gap.’ The US Government actually has imposed sanctions on the Chief Prosecutor of the ICC for advocating proceedings allegedly exceeding the lawful authority of the tribunal. It simultaneously imposed sanctions on the four ICC judges that facilitated the arrest of these Israeli leaders in accord with the arrest warrants. Beyond this the US officially threatened future action in the event of any new effort to take action contrary to the political and economic interests of the US, Israel, and other allies.

Also relevant for analyzing the UN disappointing response to Israel’s prolonged genocide is a ‘Complicity Gap’ in the behavior of the ICJ and ICC. These tribunals have thus far refrained from directly examining allegations of aiding and abetting the commission of international crimes by third party actors, especially governments and corporations. It is up to UN members and international law scholars to encourage increased ICJ attentiveness to the Complicity Gap, which as here, is integral to insulating the wrongdoing actors from enforcement. In early July 2025 the UN Special Rapporteur of Occupied Palestine, Francesco Albanese, was also sanctioned for her attribution of legal responsibility to corporations for continuing their profitable relations with Israel in the face of genocide. She accompanied this assessment with a recommendation that the ICC initiate investigations with an eye toward prosecutions. Known as a dedicated and brave human rights defender, the sanctions generated widespread protests, including calls for awarding Albanese the Nobel Peace Prize and demands that the sanctioning Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, resign. This is highly unlikely to happen so long as the US treats its alliance with Israel as superior to its obligations as a law-abiding member of international society.

It might seem that international law is indeed useless in view of these gaps and the inability to protect a people victimized by international criminal conduct and a settler colonial occupation making Palestinians persecuted strangers in their own homeland. As here, even when the formal judicial outcomes are neither complied with nor enforceable, international law is important. It exerts often unacknowledged influences on many governments, the tone and substance of media coverage, and breadth and depth of civil society activism. In some settings these informal implementations of international law achieve some degree of justice even in the context of the prolonged commission of ‘the crime of crimes,’ genocide, as has been the experience of the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza for more 21 months.

Disregarding international law because of these flaws in the global normative order would be a mistake. Even when not enforced, or its findings repudiated, the outcomes of legal controversy can exert a defining influence on public perceptions of legitimacy, that is, in the dynamics  of configuring of the legal and moral high ground in an underlying political conflict. Contrary to the beliefs of ‘political realists’ who control the foreign policy processes of most governments, relative military capabilities are no longer reliable predictors of which side will prevail in an armed political struggle. This should have been the core message derived by the United States from the Vietnam War during which it militarily prevailed on the battlefield and yet went on to lose the war. This pattern was repeated in most colonial wars fought during the latter decades of the 20^th century. The agency of military superiority has declined in relation to many 21^st century conflict situations, especially in nationalist resistance to foreign intervention, regime change and state rebuilding projects, settler colonial stabilization repressive policies and practices.

 The Gaza Peoples Tribunal was formed in2024 with this background in mind. It was conceived exclusively as an initiative of global civil society with the dual objectives of helping swing the balance in the Legitimacy War between Israel and the Palestine as well as encourage nonviolent solidarity initiative supportive of the Palestinian struggle. Israel’s violent assault on Gaza that started shortly after the attack on Israeli border villages on October 7, resisted in the months that followed repeated calls for an Israeli ceasefire. Israel also rejected the option of complying with international law defying ICJ and ICC rulings. Such postures amid an r extremely one-sided conflict gave rise to an intensifying moral outrage among the peoples of the world, and eventually among more and more governments, especially in the Global South. The GPT is gathering evidence and assessments from an assortment of qualified survivor witnesses, experts, as well as from three chambers each composed of about 10 specialists documenting the relevance of international law and world politics in its several dimensions bearing on the situation in Gaza. The compilation of testimony and documentation will be presented to a Jury of Conscience composed of persons of diverse experience reflecting prominence in law, political science, and cultural expression who are made responsible for the preparation of oral and written short substantive reports. The distinctiveness of the Gaza Peoples Tribunal (as compared to the ICJ and ICC) is premised on the primacy of justice rather than the primacy of law or the primacy of geopolitics. GPT makes no pretense of being a normal court of law bound to give the accused state and non-state actors of opportunities to mount a legal defense of their behavior. In past peoples tribunals when such a defendant actor is invited to present a defense, it has always been rejected, presumably because the overall outcome of the judicial process is predetermined.  

The GPT does not attempt to mimic judicial tribunals that operate technically and over long durations of time. It is openly partisan although objective with respect to evidence, seeking to add leverage to those engaged in the Legitimacy War. GPT prides itself on being responsive to the urgency of the Gaza humanitarian emergency, and seeks above all to stimulate solidarity on the level of action. The GPT relies on a variety of civil society initiatives to exert pressures on governments to close the enforcement, accountability, and complicity gaps. It also supports a range of nonviolent solidarity initiatives by civil society, including boycotts of sporting and cultural events that have Israeli participants; arms, trade, and investment embargoes; protest activity of all varieties, including act of civil disobedience expressive of the conscience of engaged citizens.     

2. The silence and complicity of Europe on this massacre for extinction of Gaza population today and beside hypocritical condemnation and people demonstrations in Italy and France Why? How the Holocaust  is weaponized  by some like Germany to be accused of antisemitism, but France and Italy have a different history (Vichy and Mussolini and Nazi fascism)?

Response: As your question suggests, history helps us understand and explain the complicity of democratic governments in Europe with Israel’s recourse to genocide and crimes against humanity in Gaza. There are two principal lines of explanation. The first, and most obvious, is embedded sentiments of guilt about the long tradition of European antisemitism, culminating in the Holocaust. Especially, Germany, and to a lesser extent Italy, are acutely sensitive to this allegation. The governments and citizenry of such countries have unfortunately adopted the view that to overcome the disgraces of their past it is better to stand with Israel than to side with the Palestinians who like the Jews of the Hitler period are enduring a horrific genocide. In other words, the ‘never again’ renunciation of genocide pertains exclusively to the past victimized people, the Jews, rather than to a repudiated pattern of behavior, genocide, regardless of the identity of the victim.

The second strand of explanation, implicit on the right end of the political spectrum in Europe, insists that the Nazi genocide was also a matter of racial purification and religion, not just Jewish identity. In this sense, the Jews in relation to the Islamic world of the Middle East are bearing the torch of white supremacy and Western civilizational superiority, a reenactment of the Crusades under different flags in the context of modernity. In this post-Cold War period Israel is situated on the Islamic containment fault line of ‘a clash of civilizations,’ in effect enacting ‘a second coming of Samuel Huntington.’ In this sense, the real ‘enemy’ of these European countries is Iran, a non-Arab country that manifests hostility to the regional encroachment of the white and secular West. For opposite reasons to the Western alliance with Israel, Iran regards Israel as its principal adversary.

 3. Trump touring the Gulf States could have political consequences for Gaza?

Response: There is no doubt that Trump’s May visit to the Gulf States has had adverse consequences for Gaza, but their exact nature remains obscure beyond giving Israel further time to impose its will on the helpless Palestinian civilian population. On one side, it could have been the first stage of a more transactional US relationship with Israel than the kind of unconditional support given during the Biden presidency.

In this sense an altered posture toward regional war prevention might have resulted in a greater willingness to forego the dangerous attack on Iran, and a greater readiness to seek a negotiated solution to Western objections to their nuclear program. Such a course of action would been a challenge to Netanyahu’s Israel. It might even have shaken Israel confidence in receiving unlimited support for their preferred endgame scenarios in Gaza. It might also encourage Netanyahu to lend support, which he has recently done, to Trump’s patently surreal candidacy for a Nobel Peace Prize, supposedly among his narcissistic phantasies, and concretely allow Israel to get on with the genocidal assault on Gaza, and bury once and for all the zombie two-state endgame that while delusional, subverts Israel’s manifest ambition to terminate the Zionist Project triumphalist solution with a single Israeli one-state incorporating the whole of mandate Palestine.

In retrospect, judging by what has happened since, the trip to the Middle East seems to have convinced Trump that he could combine positive relations with the Gulf monarchies and yet give Netanyahu all the support that he wants in Gaza. There is reason to believe that the main Arab leaders share Israel’s goal of destroying Hamas for the sake of their repressive stability.  Many of these Arab regimes might in the future be persuaded to join hands with the US, and even Israel, by adopting a common counter-terrorism orientation. This posture might prove compatible with Israel’s coerced displacement of Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank, persons to be ideally to be dumped in a remote African country where the hope is that in time they will give up their dreams of liberating Palestine.

Israel has in recent months increasingly lost legitimacy by carrying their attack on the civilian population of Gaza to cruel extremes of starvation and by making aid distribution sites into death traps. Israel’s pariah identity will be hard to overcome with the peoples of the world, including an increasing proportion of citizenries of the once liberal democracies in the Europe and North America. Trump’s trip momentarily sidelining Israel diplomatically, and Netanyahu’s arrogant launch of Gideon’s Chariot, the name given Israel’s latest military operation in Gaza has not led to a more problematic phase in Israel/US relations. It is uncertain at this time whether maintaining harmony with Israel, despite the continuing genocide, strengthens or weakens the Trump agenda of the next few years. Given the singling out of Palestinian Support on American campuses as a target for the ultra-right agenda of Project 2025 I would still expect that these demeaning ties with Israel, including complicity with Israel’s resolve to control ‘the day after negotiations’ will continue come what may in Gaza, a sad commentary on the suppression of liberal values whenever upholding the rule of law and minimal morality stand in the way of ideological and strategic goals, including civilizational unity. With the political advent of MAGA Trumpism liberal pretensions within the US have been buried as deep underground as Iran’s nuclear sites and seemingly as indestructible.    

R. Falk Comment for Il Manifesto on US Attack on Iran’s Nuclear Facilities 6/22/25, in response to request by Patricia Lombroso

Once again, the world is moving once again closer to the brink of major war in the Middle East, with Israel doing most of the dirty work relative to Western post-colonial imperialism under the joint Israel/US auspices. The US actively joined Israel’s unprovoked aggression to the extent that Israel needed its help to complete a military operation against Iran’s nuclear sites. The US and Europe keep continuing to evade scrutinizing the ongoing genocide in Gaza and give Israel a totally free hand of impunity to embark upon either the mass forced departure of Palestinian from the Occupied Palestinian Territories of Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem.  even from pre-1967 Israel itself, or a plan B of constructing death camps in the devastated city of Rafah to confine Palestinian survivors in Gaza. The immoral audacity of Israel is exhibited by naming such morbid arrangements as constituting ‘a humanitarian city.’

To complete the mission of destroying or significantly delaying the completion of Iran’s nuclear enrichment capabilities, Israel needed more than US complicity as it lacked blockbuster bombs and B-2  bombers (alone capable of delivering such massive bombs) to destroy or heavily damage Iranian deep underground facilities at  Fordow and Natanz, and its surface nuclear site at Isfahan. It remains undetermined whether Israel used the pretext of a nuclear threat posed by Iran as a justification for its post-October 7 policy of mounting devastating military attacks throughout the region to destroy hostile movements and weaken potential adversary states such as Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and Iraq. In the Iran unprovoked attacks, part of the incentive for striking in June 2025 was undoubtedly to divert attention from the growing international opposition from its continuing genocidal policies in Gaza, most recently including luring starving Palestinians to supposed humanitarian food distribution sites, which acted as horrifying death traps.

An irony is that these June 21 US attacks on three main nuclear facilities gave Iran an airtight international law argument for the validation of claims to retaliate by relying upon its right of self-defense against the prior Israel and United States acts of aggression that violated Iran’s territorial sovereignty. The Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei, vowed to retaliate and did so to a limited extent that penetrated Israel’s layered defenses sufficiently to discredit its claims of invulnerability to air and missile attack. It remains uncertain whether Khamenei’s warning will be fully carried out at some future time in the event that the present ceasefire arrangement lapses, Israel again provokes, and combat resumes.

As a result, the threat of war between Iran and Israel as supported strongly by the US and rather weakly by the European Union casts a dark shadow of potential war throughout the region at this time.  The outbreak of war probably depends on whether Iran is perceived to possess deterrent capabilities taking the form of launching a sufficiently effective attack on US strategic assets, especially against its minimally defended numerous military bases spread around the region. Prior to the ceasefire the Iranian response was measured and cautious, designed to demonstrate that it possessed the military capabilities to inflict heave damage on any adversary in the future. Iran’s show of force was undertaken despite a near certain expectation of an even a more devastating US attack. Such a response would likely be accompanied by a direct and explicit promotion  of regime change in Tehran promoted by mobilizing internal opposition forces, encouraged by pledges of substantial external material encouragement, and even carrying out an assassination of Iran’s Supreme Guide, Ayatollah Khamenei. It is quite possible that Israel will keep pushing tactics designed to promote Iranian regime change although on an ambiguous basis of deniability and covert support for the internal Iranian opposition.

A political complexity facing Iran from a legal perspective arises from the reality that US strategic targets in the region are concentrated in Arab countries currently at peace with Iran. The governments of such states would have a self-defense claim against Iran for forcibly violating their territorial sovereignty. It could also lead to questions in the US about the costs of maintaining its Middle Eastern force structure. It also could lead Arab government to question whether their security and stability is being reliably upheld by the acceptance of visible American military assets on their sovereign territory. Such questioning would almost certainly accompany a Second Arab Spring in the region should it take place.

Whether the world would continue to stand aside while the US and Israel, in apocalyptic interaction with Iran, plunge the world into a new world war is uncertain. This uncertainty exists despite the likely results of threats and even uses weapons of mass destruction. With Trump and Netanyahu calling the shots, there is the prospect of a dramatic further expansion of the combat zone, with few policy guard rails to discourage nuclear threats and their implementation. There is much public pressure in the US to wage wars of choice in a politically acceptable manner that avoids ‘boots on the ground’ so as to minimize American casualties, thereby weakening citizen opposition to wars disconnected with direct threats to national sovereignty. This option of relying on missiles, bombers, drones has made it tempting for the US/Israel leadership to gamble on mounting a credible threat to secure its desired outcome in Iran even, if necessary, by demonstrating the willingness to use nuclear weapons if needed to achieve its strategic objectives. Stumbling into an unwanted nuclear Armageddon may not be expected by war hawks, and certainly not wished for, but the stage is being set for such a catastrophic future. As scholarship has shown, the world was extremely lucky to escape nuclear war back in 1961 during the Cuban Missile Crisis. It might not be as lucky this time when much less prudent leaders than Kennedy and Khruschev are in control of warmaking by the antagonistic governments of current geopolitical actors (US, China, Russia).

We should not forget that while this Iranian drama plays out, Israel is freed from media and governmental scrutiny as its war machine speeds up the Zionist master plan of completing the work of Palestinian erasure, Israeli leaders have been increasingly emboldened to proclaim their preferred solution to the conflict by way of a one supremist Jewish state that has now become a de facto political reality. It remains somewhat obscured by the remarkable continuing Palestinian resilience and resistance. Israel has made no secret of its priority as a sequel to genocide, which is the forced disposition of Palestinians living under occupation as a repetition of earlier instances of ‘ethnic cleansing’ (Nakba, 1948; Naksa, 1967) or its grisly alternative of confining Palestinians to a so-called ‘humanitarian city’ currently under construction. The Trump presidency has given many blessings to this Israeli vision of victory over the struggle of Palestinians to sustain their struggle no matter the extremity of the human suffering.

Whether Israel has been decisively weakened by the steady erosion of its legitimacy through its defiance of the most basic norms of international law, by repeated condemnations in sharply worded UN General Assembly resolutions reflecting the views of a majority of the world’s people and governments, and by a hostile turn of world public opinion remains to be seen. It will also be reflected on how civil society in the West responds, facing at present repression at home and impunity-free defiance by Israel.

A decisive question for those seeking a denuclearized Middle East is when will the awkward issue of dismantling Israel’s long hidden nuclear weapons arsenal is at last put on the diplomatic agenda for all to see. It has been one of the geopolitical triumphs of the US and Europe to keep Israel’s opposition to a nuclear-free Middle East from affecting the approach to regional stability and world peace. The major Arab countries and Iran have long favored regional denuclearization, but such a goal has been effectively thwarted by Israel and its closest allies.

Tags: Gaza, Gaza Peoples Trivunal, genocide, Iran, Iran War, Israel, nuclearism, Palestine, Politics