Global Justice in the 21st Century

[Prefatory Note: Over time, the role of the Special Rapporteur as established by the UN Human Rights Council to investigate and report upon Israel violations of human rights in Palestinian Territories Occupied since 1967, has gradually assumed increasing importance as a source of reliable information and enlightening analysis. The position of SR is both unpaid and demanding, and is aggravated recently by often harmful and always hurtful defamatory attacks from pro-Israeli NGOs, most notably UN Watch based in Geneva and NGO Monitor with headquarters in New York City. It is a fact that the SR influence has grown over time as have the intensity of these attacks on the SR truth-bearing messengers. The mean spirited attacks seem to have as their main purpose a diversion of attention away from the message. Ms. Albanese’s experience was preceded by that of the SR signatories of the support letter below. Our milder although similar experience of defamation is set forth in the course of a book entitled Protecting Human Rights in Occupied Palestine: Working Through the United Nations, Clarity Press, 2022,  with a forward by Ms. Albanese.

This double dynamic has reached its climax during the first three-year term of Francesca Albanese tenure as SR that happened to coincide with Israel’s genocidal response to the October 7 Hamas-led attack, which instead of opposition elicited the active complicity of North American and leading European governments and the passive complicity of Arab and many other governments around the world, with a few notable exceptions, including South Africa, Colombia, and Chile. In this period, the excellence of Ms. Albanese’s SR reports made a major impact on civil society awareness. They added professional competence as to why allegations of Israeli genocide were well-grounded in law and fact. Her energetic and courageous high visibility talks in all parts of the world at the invitation of a great variety of organizations made her a prime target of vicious smears by Zionist support groups, especially in the West, characterizing her without a shred of evidence as ‘a notorious antisemite.’ As with Israeli bombing of Gaza, Israel’s acknowledged intention is not to be accurate but to inflict maximum damage. In this case, the battlefields are symbolic yet the blood of victims spills.

This pattern of increased reliance on SR reports also reflects an awareness of Israel’s formidable, sophisticated, and well-funded efforts to shape the public discourse on Israel/Palestine, and the acceptance by the most influential Western media platforms of a one-sided approach that gives consistent priority to Israel’s spin on developments in Gaza and the West Bank. The separate reports of the SR to the Human Rights Council and General Assembly each year have become the go-to source trustworthy relevant information and analysis for anyone seeking objective assessments of the ongoing  Palestinian ordeal, now reaching a peak with the connivance of the Trump presidency and a totally subservient Congress.

We welcome this opportunity to congratulate Francesco Albanese on the renewal of her second three-year term, and take note of the shameful effort of Israel, US, Germany, and a few other UN members to end the Mandate concerned with Occupied Palestine altogether. Given the personal abuse to which she was subjected, it is a tribute to Ms. Albanese commitment and courage that she is willing to endure further abuse for another three years.

We celebrate her achievements, and join with those who feel that a Nobel Peace Prize would be a highly deserved recognition of her contributions to peace and justice to so recognize her achievements. Some are even suggesting that her credentials of service to the UN while under fire make her an ideal candidate to become the first female Secretary General of the Organization. The UN needs a person that can take the heat of abusive criticism at a time when the UN’s most powerful member is an undisguised opponent of internationalism and even cooperative problem-solving on a global scale. Given these realities it is almost inconceivable that such an inspirational choice will be made at the UN any time soon. Among other hurdles, it would only become technically possible in the highly unlikely event that the five permanent members of the Security Council gave their approval.

Should I ever be asked, Francesca would certainly receive my vote based on her extraordinary performance but also as an expression of my hopes for a stronger, more relevant UN in the future when called upon with a sense of urgency to stop genocide and uphold global security in the manner set forth in the UN Charter.]

\\\*****////SR Letter to Jürg Lauber\\\*****///

3 April 2025

To your excellency, Jürg Lauber, President of the Human Rights Council;

We write as former Special Rapporteurs of the Palestinian Territories Occupied since 1967 with reference to the reappointment of Francesca Albanese to this position. We are conversant with her work since becoming Special Rapporteur, which we commend, and for Jürg Laubers the basis for this message of enthusiastic support for her reappointment, which we understand is scheduled to be voted on 4 April 2025.

We have learned that a small number of governmental members of the HRC have indicated their intention to vote against Ms. Albanese. We find this show of opposition to be irresponsible and harmful to the United Nations, which stands for excellence of performance combined with accuracy and objectivity of analysis. Ms. Albanese has been confronted with extreme behavior on the part of Israel, including flagrant instances of disregard of basic provisions of international humanitarian law, international human rights law, and the Genocide and Apartheid Conventions, as well as those obligations incumbent on an Occupying Power to extend protection to the civilian population of the Occupied society in all circumstances. With insight and careful research Albanese has called world attention to these patterns of wrongdoing as is her duty as Special Rapporteur.

Against this background of Israel’s lawlessness, Ms. Albanese, by her reports and public appearances has brought these patterns of Israeli violation of international law to the attention of millions all over the planet. She is trusted by the many of the most influential media platforms and is a frequent participant in webinars, academic conferences, and media events. Under the most difficult of circumstances, she is doing exactly what she is supposed to do as a UN SR. Having ourselves been attacked unfairly and inaccurately when similarly acting on behalf of the UN we feel great sympathy for our friend Francesca who has been mercilessly smeared and misrepresented in this unseemly effort by Israel and its partisans to shift attention from her message to her alleged lack of credibility as a messenger due to the diversionary slur of being a ‘virulent antisemite.’

As suggested, we not only ardently support reappointment, but believe the work of Ms Albanese should be formally acknowledged and praised by the top echelons of UN officials. In our judgment, she has received in the past insufficient support in carrying out difficult missions on behalf of the UN in her unpaid role as SR operating in a particularly dangerous atmosphere. She has the right to expect to be insulated from such irresponsible and false invective. We hope that you will be able to congratulate Francesca Albanese after she is reappointed tomorrow.

Respectfully yours,

John Dugard, Richard Falk, and Michael Lynk

\\\******///

Tags: Gaza, genocide, Human Rights, Israel, Palestine

[Prefatory Note: The post below is based on my responses to Murat Sofuoglu, a journalist working for TRT World in Turkey devoted to the Reappointment of Francesca Albanese, published on 4/3/25. Although the article relies on the interview, its tone and content are quite different. This is another pivotal moment for the UN, and specifically for its Human Rights Council, raising the question whether the Organization is subject to geopolitical manipulation in addressing controversial issues that test the UN’s political independence. Tomorrow the UN Human Rights Council Assembly of Governments will vote on whether to reappoint Francesca Albanese as Special Rapporteur for Occupied Palestinian Territories for a second term of three years. She has been accused of ‘virulent antisemitism’ in carrying out this controversial role.]

Will the UN Pillory Francesca Albanese?

1. How do you feel about her mandate extension vote on April 4?

The renewal of a Special Rapporteur mandate after three years for an additional and final term of three years completes six years of unpaid voluntary service to the UNHuman Rights Council. Having known many SRs, especially during my own six years as SR for Occupied Palestine (2008-2014), I encountered not a single case of non-renewal for a second term as SR. Unlike the initial appointment, which is by consensus, that is, there must be no dissenting votes by governments that are members of the Human Rights Council, the second three-year term is by majority vote.

In the case of Francesca Albanese, the argument for her approval is overwhelmingly strong. She has displayed great energy and commitment in meeting the challenge of this sensitive position despite encountering irresponsible opposition since day one to her performance at every turn led by the Israeli partisan civil society organization, UN Watch. She has been repeatedly attacked as an antisemite, which is totally a totally defamatory smear that has been repeated by Israeli media and lobbying organizations around the world even influencing Western governments to varying degrees. Similar attacks, although less ferocious, have been directed at each of the three SRs that preceded Francesca Albanese. Knowing her well, I can affirm that she is a person of the highest moral character, a true champion of human rights, and someone who is entirely free from prejudice against any ethnicity, including of course the Jewish people. At the same time, she is an unsparing critic of Israel as a state guilty of settler colonial policies and practices that made the Palestinian people suffer extreme harm and hardships since 1948. Isreal and its minions around the world have increasingly relied on a ‘politics of diversion,’ which has meant in this setting to shift as much attention as possible away from the message and toward the credibility of the messenger.

2. Do you believe that she will be reappointed as Special Rapporteur by the UN Human Rights Council?

If Albanese is not reappointed it will be greatly damaging to the reputation of the UN, and particularly the Human Rights Council as it would represent a punitive response to her courageous diligence and overall competence that warrants praise and unconditional support given the surrounding circumstances. She has produced the most widely read and influential SR reports in the entire history of the HRC during her first term, which coincided with a period of Israeli behavior widely condemned by world public opinion as an instance of transparent genocide reported to the world in real time by virtue of digital age communications. Her two reports on Israeli genocide are carefully researched and presented in accord with the highest scholarly standards and widely discussed in the media and academic gatherings. Instead of her appointment coming under special scrutiny, her performance should be celebrated as contributing to a knowledge-based understanding of the relations between state violence and international criminal law in the context of allegations of genocide.

3. How do you see pro-Israeli opposition against her reappointment?

It seems likely that Israel, although not a member of the HRC, will go all out in denouncing Albanese, and treat her as the poster child of UN antisemitic hostility to Israel, a country that Israeli supporters argue is being held to higher standards than any other country in the world only because it is a self-proclaimed Jewish state. Such a propagandistic contention ducks the substantive question as to whether Israel has responded to the October 7 Hamas attack by engaging in practices that violate the Genocide Convention.

It is quite likely, although far from certain, that the heavy load of opposing Albanese will be carried by UN Watch, a notorious NGO that unconditionally defends every Israeli atrocity by engaging in repeated character assassinations of those like Albanese are brave enough to mount fact- and law-based criticisms. The recent withdrawal of the US from the HRC is probably helpful from the perspective of weakening pressure on Western governments to oppose her reappointment, although a few European states have expressed opposition to the reappointment of Albanese and indicate that that they might vote against her. It is possible that unconvincing allegations of receiving funding and paid travel in violation of UN rules could be brought up in the HRC debate to discredit her in the course of a debate prior to the vote.

It is also possible that Israel will see the writing on the wall, and not further tarnish its own reputation by openly opposing such a qualified candidate for reappointment, but doubtful. Israel is more likely to seize the occasion as one more way to castigate the UN for spreading venomous slander by shielding anti-Israel personnel and promoting their racist attitudes. This is shameful, of course, in view of Israel’s own criminal behavior being convincingly condemned by the International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court in several near unanimous authoritative decisions.

4. During her first term, her outspokenness against Israeli policies and genocide in Gaza has marked an extraordinary period in UN history and even for human rights struggle in world history. How do you reflect to support and opposition she has received during this period?

The overwhelming majority of people in the world endorse the views professionally set forth in Francesca Albanese’s fine reports to the HRC that have activated the moral conscience of the world to endorse allegations of genocide and other crimes that she has documented and denounced. On the basis of such reports, it is a source of widespread disappointment that the UN and leading states have failed to enforce international law in ways that protect the long-suffering Palestinian people against such flagrant unlawful and unjust treatment. Palestine have been victimized and persecuted in their own homeland ever since Israel was established in 1948. International law has been authoritatively declared. What is missing is its ‘enforcement.’

This ‘enforcement gap’ must be closed if the human rights of vulnerable people are to be protected. This involves more than ending impunity for Israel. It requires UN reform, especially limiting the role of the veto power given to the five winners of World War II in the Security Council and empowering the General Assembly to enforce international law whenever the Security Council is somehow blocked in the future from carrying out its basic undertakings, especially as here where apartheid, genocide, ecocide, as well as flagrant collective punishment are at stake.

In the immediate instance of this crucial reappointment vote on April 4th, it is essential that the UN meets the challenge of supporting a brave, dedicated, and talented SR who has persisted in her role despite receiving little by way of support from the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and other high level UN civil servants, including the High Commissioner of the HRC, Volker Türk. There have been unanswered calls from her removal from the SR position by members of the US Congress and in an unverifed public statement by the former US Special Envoy on Antisemitism, Deborah Lipstadt, that the UN Secretary General called Albanese ‘a horrible person’ in private conversation. [Times of Israel, Jan. 15, 2025] Not to be outdone, Hillel Neuer, longtime director of UN Watch, submitted a 55 page document to the SG that outlined Albanese’s violations of the UN Code of Conduct that is applicable to those who serve the UN. His wider view was unrelenting view that Albanese was disqualified for reappointment because of the consistent antisemitism she exhibited in carrying out the UN mandate on Occupied Palestinian Territories.

This test case at the HRC tomorrow will cast another dark  shadow over the UN reputation should a majority of HRC member states vote against Albanese’s reappointment. It would create a terrible precedent for the future as well as render a grave personal injustice in the present. It would discourage many persons of conscience from taking on these voluntary positions at the UN that are neither compensated nor insulated from the whiplash of geopolitics and the dangers of being unprotected by the UN in the face of threats and disgraceful insults.

Tags: Gaza, genocide, Human Rights, Israel, Palestine

[Prefatory Note: This post is modified version of a keynote presentation at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul at the start of an excellent two-day conference entitled :Rethinking International Law After Gaza on August 3-4, 2024.]

Israel’s Recourse to Genocide: Overt Yet Denied

Friends, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen:

It is my great privilege to take part in this important gathering. This conference promises to be the most comprehensive and perceptive attempt to understand the relationship of international law to the horrific happenings in Gaza over the last 10 months. It is most unfortunate for the people of Gaza that the theme of this conference, ‘after Gaza’ was far too optimistic and premature. It’s really during this prolonged ordeal experienced by the whole of Gaza that makes it more appropriate for us to speak of the successes and failures of international law, ‘in light of Gaza’, or ‘with reference to Gaza’ but not wait until “after Gaza” becomes a reality to make a final assessment of ‘international law after Gaza.’

It is with extreme regret that an objective observer is compelled to acknowledge that the genocide continues even during the ceasefire, posing increased threats of wider destructive political violence in the region, which is directly linked to Gaza, and has become an increasing concern and worry as genocide approaches a culminating phase. Before I get to the topic I had been asked to talk about, which is the dismissal of international law as a misleading and useless deception in circumstances of this sort, let me mention a widely circulating misconception, which is an understandable cynicism about the value of international law arises because Israel has so flagrantly disregarded authoritative judgments without adverse consequences. Had Israel complied it would have stopped the genocide in its tracks, and as well, would have ended the occupation of not only Gaza, but the West Bank and East Jerusalem as a near unanimous majority of the International Court of Justice decreed in its historically important Advisory Opinion July 19, 2024.

The international community reflecting the documented views of the leading international Human Rights NGOs had concluded several years ago that the Israeli administration of the Occupied Territories of Palestine commencing after the 1967 War had the adopted the policies and practices of an  apartheid regime, and thus the Occupation constituted an international crime associated with racist domination and subjugation. This apartheid assessment suggests further that Palestine and its peoples were being victimized by a form of settler colonialism, suggesting comparisons with the experience of the breakaway British colonies: the United States, Canada, Au\stralia, New Zealand, which had premised their state-building processes and societal stability on systemic racial domination in relation to the resident native peoples, which amounted to apartheid before the crime existed, in effect, ‘apartheid before apartheid.’ .

To the extent that patterns of control didn’t succeed in overcoming resistance to the colonizing project, each of these colonial undertakings increased the severity of their efforts to displace the native population and take advantage of its economic resources. This dynamic generally led to increased resistance, generating a cycle of action and reaction that led to a harsher form of apartheid, and after that if resistance persisted, to a systemic inflection point that in rare instances gives up its criminal path as South Africa surprisingly did, or the regimes supersedes apartheid by recourse to genocidal tactics of dehumanization and mass killing as Israel has done after the Hamas expression of armed resistance that occurred on October 7, and was accompanied by its own commission of war crimes..

In other words, in situations of settler colonialism genocide often becomes a sequel to apartheid in a situation such as existed in Palestine. The historical context has changed. Unlike many earlier genocides, including the Holocaust, the Palestinian experience occurs in a post-colonial, historical atmosphere in which both apartheid and genocide have been criminalized, and a series of anti-colonial wars have brought victory to the resisting native or national population. This historical contextualization is crucial conceptually to enable adequate appreciation of how this reversal of outcomes in encounters between the natives and the colonizers has come about. It also explains the emergent critical reinterpretation of the initial mainstream Western decontextualized interpretations supportive of Israel after the Hamas attack of October 7 with the effect of obscuring the settler colonial dimensions of events on that fateful day.

It was widely observed in the West that the Netanyahu coalition government that took over in January of 2023, was called the most extreme government in Israel’s history. What made it extreme was that it made no secret of its commitment to displace Palestinians from the West Bank by whatever means necessary, and subsequently from Gaza, as well. Always, the West Bank was the prize that the Zionist Project coveted. It never gave up the objective of eventually incorporating the West Bank into Israeli sovereignty. This makes it important to observe the reaction of Israel and the West to October 7 through a settler colonial optic. It also makes relevant an assessment of why the Israeli government ignored the reliable  warnings from multiple sources, including the US Government and the Egyptian intelligence services. It also almost impossible to believe that Israel’s sophisticated surveillance capabilities would not have detected the signs of an impending Hamas attack, strengthening still further the conclusion that Israel let October 7 happen so as to have a sufficient rationale for its genocidal response.

It seems reasonable to conclude that Israel let the attack happen or chose to respond in a very tepid way and/or feeble responses on the day of the attack. And what followed cannot be justified by appeals to self-defense or Israeli security, which could have been upheld more efficiently with much less devastation of Gaza’s infrastructure and far fewer Palestinian deaths, injuries, disease, and traumatizing of survivors. So, in other words, what I’m suggesting is that October 7 provided a pretext for what this Netanyahu government already prior to the attack wanted to achieve by way of ethnic cleansing, forcible evacuation and unregulated settler violence, which was given a green light from the day that Netanyahu resumed control of the Israeli government. Settler violence in this pre-October 7 period was often accompanied in by a message pinned to Palestinian cars on the West Bank, ‘leave or we will kill you.’ This is a chilling message for Palestinians already living under an abusive occupation to receive. Such toxic sentiments were given additional credibility by ferocity of settler violence, burning a village and making life miserable for the Palestinians who were supposed to be protected by international humanitarian law against Occupier abuse.

The proper contextualization of what happened in this period preceding Israel’s recourse to genocidal violence is, in my view, very relevant. It gives a territorial rationale for the dehumanizing the Palestinian people as a people. Throughout history there has rarely been such an explicitly undertaken genocide in which the leaders themselves supplied overwhelming evidence of specific intent by their own political language, including its grisly confirmation by Israel’s Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant, in the form of formally and publically ordering a total embargo on all Gaza imports of food, fuel, and electricity. Netanyahu’s approving reference to the Amalek passage in The Bible, which proposed killing an adversary of biblical Israel, including every adult, child, and even the animals that were possessed by The Amalek people. This amounts to invoking a genocidal precedent to serve as both a justification for and confession of the nature of the Israeli response.

The Performance of International Law: Disappointing Yet Significant

Turning to what is widely believed in response to the very natural concern as to how one can accept any serious role for international law in this area of global security, war prevention, and international crime after observing how systemically it has been disregarded during this  period of time after October 7. This disregard was exemplified by the behavior of the leading Western liberal democracies that profess a fundamental commitment to extending the rule of law to international relations. In the case of Gaza, despite authoritative rulings of the most respected international institutions, leading governments and influential media in the West have refused to grant validity to authoritative judicial rulings by the most respected international tribunals. If you compare the response of complicit countries. especially my own, the US, to Israel’s onslaught against Gaza, with the outraged Western reaction to the Russian attack on Ukraine that relied on a self-righteous invocation of international law in relation to the UN Charter. This appeal to international law in the Ukraine context was reinforced by a Western attempt to involve the International Criminal Court from day one In bringing coercive action against Russian leaders.

Such a position contrasts with the effort to argue that reliance on international law on behalf of the Palestinian people being subjected to this kind of genocide was ‘without legal merit,’ to recall the cavalier dismissal of South Africa’s recourse to ICJ by the American Secretary of State, Antony Blinken. Such double standards is not only an expression of moral hypocrisy, but also represents an irresponsible tendency to convert international law into a policy instrument useful against adversaries, but unacceptable if invoked against friends. In a very real sense, this amounts to the distinction in the influential fascist jurisprudence developed by Carl Schmitt who denigrated international law unconditionally, and forthrightly conceived of international relations as determined by interactions between ‘friends and enemies.’ Such an outlook viewed norms of moral and legal restraint as applicable only to relations among friends. In dealing with enemies, there are no rules, but only tactics designed to gain victories or avoid defeats. Conflict of a serious kind are resolved by superior displays of hard power.

To be sure, this is a very nihilistic view of international society and the way in which its normative order operates. If there is to be an effective law in the domain of security, it has to have an imperative principle of treating equals equally. The practice of double standards in judgment and action is just the opposite, that is, treating equals unequally based on strategic and geopolitical priorities. This tension between contradictory roles of international law is in the background of statecraft. Reliance on the primacy of geopolitics and disregard of international law is most troubling in this most explicit challenge of this kind faced since the end of World War II.  Having so concluded and adding that what however authoritative the judgments and opinions of the International Court of Justice are, there is a near zero prospect that Israel will comply, or that sufficient political will is present to enforce the judgments. It is a critical situation where there exists a first-order humanitarian emergency, and yet the organized international community fails to respond despite the clarity of the law. This failure constitutes “a crisis of implementation.” A clear legal path exists alongside the equally clear geopolitical path, and the latter path has been chosen despite the humanitarian disaster that unfolded.

Despite All, International Law Matters

The dismissal of international law that results from the US and Israel choosing the geopolitical path has been a disaster for the reputation of the liberal democracies of the West, highlighted by the disgraceful welcoming of Netanyahu in 2024 to a joint session of Congress openly honoring one of the worst war criminals since Hitler. So far, I have highlighted the negative experience in the course of the Gaza genocide with respect to the role of international law. It tempts an acceptance of the cynical view that international law doesn’t matter, or it has no positive role to play in international life. I reject this nihilistic interpretation. I want to insist very briefly that despite these serious disappointments and failures, deficiencies, international law continues to matter. It matters for several reasons.

First of all, during the Gaza genocide it was demonstrated that trust in the professionalism of the International Court of Justice can be depended upon in even politically sensitive cases. And further, that ICJ interpretations of the relevance of international law are not subject to political manipulation by backroom interference. In this way, the ICJ can be contrasted with the operational realities of the Security Council and General Assembly, which are explicitly political institutions. Also impressive was the size of the majority at the ICJ that condemned the genocide, calling it ‘a plausible genocide’ in its Interim Judgment and additionally ordering Israel to cease all acts that have a potential genocidal impact. Particularly impressive was the composition of the majority vote that included several Western judges who voted against their country’s political positions on the issues. In other words, the ICJ in this historically important moment demonstrated both professional competence and independent identity, earning widespread public respect as a preferable way of resolving even the deepest international conflicts. This greatly helps establish the ICJ as an important resource for the future and for international juridical development overall.

Furthermore, and particularly with reference to the July 2024 Advisory Opinion on the legality of Israel’s occupation that commenced in the aftermath of the 1967 War the ICJ delivered an authoritative legal assessment. This highest and most revered international judicial tribunal concluding that Israel was systematically and flagrantly in fundamental violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention and International Humanitarian Law with respect to its legal duties as the Occupying Power. It called upon the UN and international member states to ensure Israel’s conduct should result in the termination of its administrative rights in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem and its legal obligation to withdraw its presence from Occupied Palestine as rapidly as possible.

A third level of positive contribution by international law in this kind of situation that is often overlooked. It is that such an authoritative rendering of international law lends legitimacy to solidarity initiatives such as the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement and other forms of civic action putting pressure on Israel to change its ways. International law condemnation of Israel lends a legal foundation for the advocacy of an arms embargo and gives symbolic support to ways of civil society chooses to give policy effects to a growing delegitimation of Israeli behavior. This kind of global civil society activism proved instrumental in the South African context of the successful struggle against apartheid and helped sway the engagement of the US government in the Vietnam War, bringing peace and victory to the militarily weaker military side.  

A fourth reason for adopting a more positive view of international law is, what I would call, its pedagogical value in teaching students and concerned citizens around the world what international law prescribes in situations of this kind and why it is important to shape foreign policy by law rather than by military power. And, it builds, in my view, a political consciousness that is much more responsive to law-governed behavior and the future increased influence of a world order perspective that displaces geopolitics in favor of law.

A Concluding Remark

Depending on subsequent developments, Gaza could prove to be a turning point from adherence to a Schmittian worldview of friends and enemies using international law strategically and generate a much stronger effort to make international law an effective regulative framework. Such effectiveness in global security policy domains would then become similar to the manner in which law has long operated in many other sectors of international life, including international diplomacy, the maintenance of stability in the oceans and space, and high levels of compliance in most economic relationships. So, it’s wrong to think of this dismissal of international law extends beyond the boundaries of its supposed role in war prevention, human rights, and the management of global security.

Leaving war prevention and the management of global security to the discretion of   winners of World War II is something that was decided back in 1945, and perhaps the biggest mistake in the peace-building approach that prevailed in the aftermath of that most significant of international wars. What we are observing in Gaza is part of the deferred legacy of leaving world peace and the observance of human rights within domain of geopolitics rather than seeking to accept an international law framework binding on the strong as well as the weak.

d Tokyo at the end of World War II. The losers were held accountable by punishing through the judicial processes those accused political, military, and corporate figures that physically survived. while giving impunity to the crimes of the winners, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This whole post-1945 normative order was built on a solid foundation of double standards and moral hypocrisy. We must promote international law as a regulative instrument that binds all members of international society, regardless of the outcome of wars, and repudiate this kind of flirtation with the fascist insistence on linking justice to power. Universities around the world have a momentous potential opportunity to motivate engaged citizenship, and a vocational dedication for justice through law in this time of unprecedented jeopardy for the human species.

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Tags: Gaza, genocide, Human Rights, Israel, Palestine

[Prefatory Note: The post below was published in Middle East Eye on 29 January 2025,

representing my latest attempt to express support for the Gaza Tribunal Project seeking

civil society enforcement of international law given the neutering of the global normative order.]

Amid fragile ceasefire, the Gaza tribunal on genocide will bring us closer to justice

Richard Falk

In 1 November 2024, a coalition of concerned individuals and organisations launched the Gaza Tribunal (GT) in London in response to the international community’s failure to halt the genocide in Gaza.

After more than a year of carnage, its convenors launched this civil society initiative with an urgent mission: to stop the killing in Gaza and establish a permanent, reliable ceasefire – something the United Nations and other parties involved failed to do.

The guiding aspiration of the tribunal was to represent the peoples of the world in their endeavour to overcome this horrifying spectacle of daily atrocities in Gaza and resist the temptation to accept our collective helplessness in the face of such totalising devastation.

It also seeks to hold Israel – along with complicit governments, international institutions and corporations – accountable for their roles in the violence.

In line with this mission, the GT has worked to ensure political independence from governments and active politicians, refusing to accept governmental or compromised funding.Top of Form

Bottom of Form

With the three-phase ceasefire agreement now being implemented, the tribunal remains more critical and relevant than ever.

Complementary role

From the start, a key question facing the tribunal was what particular role it would play, given that both the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC) were already investigating criminal charges against Israel.

How could a civil society tribunal add anything to the work of this respected judicial process, an organ of the UN enjoying a preeminent status when called upon to resolve legal disputes among governments?

The tribunal is not seeking to compete with the ICJ but rather to play a complementary role that appreciates the ICJ’s contributions while offering its own distinctive impact

What could be our added value? Who the hell did we think we were?

In response to the perception of irrelevance, the tribunal views its function as distinct from these international bodies.

Through its operations, the tribunal will reach conclusions about the central issue of genocide and related criminality much faster than the ICJ, which is expected to take several years to issue a final judgment.

A key justification for this type of tribunal is its freedom from legalistic rules that limit the scope of inquiry, allowing it to address underlying questions of justice directly.

Additionally, the GT will produce accessible and readable texts that are informed by international law but not burdened by its technicalities, making them far more

accessible to the public through media outlets and political gatherings.

In sum, the tribunal is not seeking to compete with the ICJ but rather to play a complementary role that appreciates the ICJ’s contributions while offering its own distinctive impact that addresses some of the limitations of a strictly legal approach, however authoritative.

Continued relevance

An additional concern, along similar lines, arises from the ceasefire process, which, if upheld, will be seen as the end of the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza by many but as the beginning of a fragile and ambiguous future by the convenors of the tribunal.

The issues of continued relevance in light of the ceasefire are different and can be summarised as follows: issues of accountability, complicity and the fulfilment of the basic rights of the Palestinian people are outside the scope of the ceasefire.

The ceasefire itself is fragile, and the right wing of the Israeli cabinet appears confident that the genocidal war will resume after the return of the first batch of hostages, with no concern for the further promised release of Palestinian prisoners.

As with the Oslo diplomacy of the 1990s, Israel often upholds the first phase of promising peacemaking that serves its interests – only to then scuttle the remainder, which would require agreeing to some form of co-existence.

There are already signs of Israeli non-compliance, highlighted by the lethal shooting of Palestinians in Rafah and deadly raids in Jenin and Nablus in the occupied West Bank.

Additionally, US President Donald Trump and his Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, have both floated proposals of ethnic cleansing, suggesting that the return of hostages could be coupled with the transfer of a portion of the surviving Palestinian population in Gaza to neighbouring countries and other Muslim states, including Indonesia.

Like previous civil society tribunals that have addressed violent conflict, civic efforts to establish such a tribunal are undertaken only when formal structures of authority in international relations fail to stop the violence and related criminal actions.

Civil society approach

Perhaps the most important – yet least understood – aspect of the Gaza Tribunal initiative is its deliberate political nature in both the proceedings and the goals being pursued.

This civil society-driven approach to its judicial framework differs significantly from the analogous frameworks found in intergovernmental or national courts.

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The tribunal begins with the premise that the policies, practices and politicians of the accused state are guilty of severe wrongdoing – ethically, legally and, in a profound sense, spiritually.

Unlike government-established courts, this tribunal does not extend due process or presumptions of innocence to governments or individuals accused of criminal actions.

This contrasts with conventional court proceedings, which are generally considered unfair or invalid unless defendants are provided a sincere and adequate opportunity to defend their actions.

In this sense, the Gaza Tribunal’s approach differs markedly from the Nuremberg trials, where due process rights were granted to surviving Nazi political figures and military commanders after World War Two.

While these trials sought to deliver justice, they were criticised as “victors’ justice”, as the crimes of the victors were neither investigated nor prosecuted.

The GT operates from a presupposition of guilt, grounded in available evidence and perceptions.

It is motivated by two main objectives: to document criminal wrongdoing as authoritatively as possible and, perhaps more importantly, to mobilise individuals and groups worldwide. This mobilisation draws on moral and cultural authority figures – such as the UN secretary-general, the pope, and Nobel Peace Prize laureates – as well as faith-based groups, labour unions and human rights organisations.

‘People power’

The tribunal can be seen as a form of ethical or advocacy jurisprudence, a kind of lawmaking not typically taught in even the most prestigious law schools in the world’s most democratic societies.

Despite this, it remains an indispensable tool for resisting unchecked evil, of which genocide is widely regarded as the “crime of crimes”.

Unlike the ICJ or the ICC, the Gaza Tribunal encourages enforcement through civic activism in various forms without relying on governments to provide enforcement capabilities, which has yet to happen.

To clarify, the primary goal of the tribunal is action, not judgment, and this holds true even after a ceasefire.

Its focus is on “people power”, not institutional authority.

Its success will be measured by its societal impact, particularly in terms of the intensity and quality of solidarity movements around the world, akin to the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign in relation to the Palestinian struggle.

Similar non-violent solidarity movements played a key role in dismantling apartheid in South Africa, helping transform it from a regime of racial governance to a constitutional democracy with equal rights for all citizens.

A generation earlier, the anti-Vietnam War movement also demonstrated the power of a mobilised global citizenry – especially in the US and France – to end the interventionist policies of the most powerful nation in the world.

This effort gave rise to the first civil society tribunal, sponsored by the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation in the UK, led by the great philosopher Bertrand Russell, with participation from leading intellectuals of the time, such as Jean-Paul Sartre.

‘Legitimacy war’

Public opinion today is largely shaped by the modern state, which exerts indirect influence over corporatised mainstream media.

In turn, powerful special interests and their well-funded think tanks ensure that governmental institutions remain aligned with their agendas.

The tribunal can be seen as one symbolic battleground in the legitimacy war that has been ongoing for more than a century between Israel and Palestine

This dynamic has perpetuated the misleading belief that military power remains the decisive factor in global conflicts post-World War Two.

However, historical records contradict this belief: every significant conflict since World War Two, including anti-colonial wars, has been won by the weaker side militarily.

Israel appears to be an exception to this trend, but its wars should be understood as part of an ongoing and unresolved struggle over sovereignty and control of historic Palestine.

The outcome in Palestine is still undecided, and despite the horrific violence in Gaza, Israel is losing the all-important “legitimacy war” – a symbolic battle for control over law, morality and public opinion.

Except in rare cases – such as Western Sahara, Kashmir and Tibet – the winner of a legitimate war ultimately controls the political outcome.

However, even the winning side may suffer significant losses over the prolonged struggles required to achieve that victory.

The Gaza Tribunal can be seen as one such symbolic battleground in the legitimacy war that has been ongoing for more than a century between Israel and Palestine.

Measure of success

If it succeeds, the tribunal will account for both the success or failure of the ceasefire while also creating a comprehensive archive documenting Israel’s criminality.

Moreover, it will foster worldwide solidarity, encouraging global militancy for justice.

The tribunal also contributes to the legitimisation of an alternative paradigm of international law, one that derives its authority from people and their sense of justice rather than relying solely on governments and their institutions.

The Gaza ordeal should awaken the conscience of people worldwide, making them more receptive to civil society initiatives like the tribunal.

By doing so, it acknowledges the complementary role of civil society in educating and mobilising citizens to embrace the view that the future of international law and justice often depends on their direct engagement in current political struggles.

In this way, this populist backstop of morally and legally driven activism has the potential to help humanity meet mounting global challenges effectively and fairly.

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

Tags: Gaza, genocide, Human Rights, Israel, Palestine