[Prefatory Note: This post originated in a response to a Turkish journalist who asked me for an analysis of the Gaza Genocide. My answer two months ago is very different than what is posted below, primarily as it appears that Israel and Hamas are on the verge of accepting a ceasefire in Gaza coupled with a prisoner exchange, and some features yet to be disclosed and perhaps the explanation for continuing negotiations at this point. Even in the improbable future that a ceasefire is implemented in relatively good faith, it does not mean an end to the genocide afflicting the civilian population of Gaza since October 2023.]
In 2025 the most shocking instance of genocide since the Holocaust continues, despite already lasting over 14 months, and what is more telling, the crime was reported throughout the world by Global South media platforms
in real time as it unfolded in a series of daily, horrifying atrocities. As disturbing was the active complicity of the governments of liberal democracies of the Global West, led by the United States. Even the Arab, Islamic governments watched passively as the genocide unfolded despite the strong support of their ethnically aligned peoples with the Palestinian struggle to achieve basic rights associated with liberation. The UN found itself effectively paralyzed by the US reliance on its right of veto in the Security Council to nullify even ceasefire initiatives backed by the large majority of UN member states representing most of the world’s population. In any event, the few efforts to stop genocide by appeals to law and morality were cast aside by Israel and its backers, with such defiance being treated as a fact of life that converted this feeble global response to genocide into a macabre type of spectator sport.
Israel’s shattering evidently pre-planned reaction to the Hamas attack of October 7 was responsible for three fundamental international ruptures of minimum normative order: (1) the prolonged and collaborative commission of genocide; (2) the complicit overt facilitation of genocide by countries that claimed to possess the world’s leading moral and rule of law credentials; and (3) the disenchantment with the UN as capable of defending vulnerable peoples even when victimized by the most extreme abuses if the lead criminal perpetrators possessed geopolitical clout, and were prepared to use it.
It was also obvious that the only recourse to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC), the highest international tribunals concerned with promoting respect for internation law, were solely initiated by governments of the Global South, while Israel and its supporters of did their best to discredit recourse to the international judicial procedures which were being exclusively invoked by Global South states, most notably by South Africa’s submission to the ICJ to adjudicate the claim that Israel was acting in violation of the Genocide Convention. This effort to stop the Gaza genocide by recourse to the ICJ was undoubtedly the international law highlight of the year, and a supreme moment of institution pride in the history of this principal judicial organ of the UN System.
The ICJ interim rulings of January 26, 2024, supported by a nearly unanimous panel of judges, granted South Africa’s requests for Provisional Measures in the face of what the tribunal labeled as ‘plausible genocide’ creating a dire humanitarian crisis in Gaza was greeted with worldwide acclaim. And yet it is sad and revealing that even this encouraging response from a major organ of the established normative order could only a register a symbolic victory that was substantively scorned and defiantly ignored. In the longer run, as Israel may yet discover, eventual political outcomes of such struggle are since 1945 more often controlled by the winner of the Legitimacy War fought on symbolic battlefield than by the side dominating the military encounters. This ratio of forces was not evident until the middle of the 20th century in a series of anti-colonial wars won by the militarily weaker side. Before this, in such encounters, if the colonial side could not eliminate resistance by harsh repression, it had recourse to genocide to finish the job. Even on the eve of a ceasefire agreement this question lurks in the background: Can Israel thus finish the job? Even
in the first quarter of the 21st century? These questions, which may be decided in the Trump White House rather than by any further bloody undertakings by Israel. The prominent Israel right-wing leaders, Ben Gvir and Smotrich, are branding the ceasefire as a surrender to Hamas, and doing their best to block its formalization. Netanyahu intent on holding his coalition together and shifting blame for obstructing an end to the violent aspects of the genocide, still keeps hidden how he will play his cards.
US officials outrageously continue to insist that South Africa’s laudable initiative was ‘without legal merit,’ an unworthy contention against the weight of evidence, the clear legal language of the Genocide Convention, and the unfolding humanitarian tragedy afflicting an innocent, and long abused, civilian population. The US Government has permanently stained its reputation by refusing to grant credibility to this well-evidenced reliance on international law although there was never any prospect of Israeli compliance, or Western pressure on Israel to comply. Such a posture can either be construed as an implicit recognition that symbolic outcomes are politically significant even in the face of defiance or as a cynical and hypocritical effort to manipulate international law to serve as a policy tool against adversaries but without applicability to friends and allies.
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Unlike the Security Council, the ICJ acted professionally, finding in an Interim Judgment by a near unanimous majority of its 17 judges, that Israel’ s violence in Gaza was ‘a plausible genocide.’ Israel was ordered as a matter of law to stop immediately its interference with the delivery of humanitarian relief. As expected, Israel although participating in the legal proceedings defied the judgment and defamed the ICJ by alleging that it was institutionally a captive of antisemitism, and for this reason alone ICJ rulings deserved to be disregarded. Somewhat later in 2024 after much delay the ICC issued ‘arrest warrants’ for Benjamin Netanyahu and Goav Gallant, Minister of Defense, which gave rise to even more scurrilous attacks on the ICC by Israel’s leaders and seconded by the American president, Joe Biden. Even more so than with the ICJ, prospects for enforcement are virtually non-existent, yet again the symbolic repudiation of Israel’s behavior caused a positive stir among civil society activists, strengthening non-governmental solidarity initiatives.
In recognition of these frustrations of not being able to stop the genocide by existing legal procedures or the responsible statecraft of leading states, other initiatives have been launched or are under consideration. Despite the expected ceasefire, the genocide seems likely to persist, threatening the starvation of half of the population of Gaza. Nothing so far has caused Israel to relent or to lose the support of leading Western governments. We will see whether the apparent imminent ceasefire will bring the genocide closer to an end, which remains far from clear, with more military aid from the US on the way, Trump about to assume the presidency, and no clear Israeli commitment to cease interference with the delivery of food, medicine, and drinkable water. For the people of Gaza to continue life in tent communities during the Winter months with neither heat nor electricity guarantees a continuation of mass suffering. Whether more peacebuilding is involved in the ceasefire deal than a prisoner exchange will be the litmus test. Behind acceptance of a ceasefire, may be assurances of Washington support if Israel now takes steps to annex the West Bank, bringing the fiction of occupied Palestine to an end, while at last bringing the long obscured Zionist goal of Greater Israel into the open, implicitly achieving the erasure of Palestine as a distinct international entity.
Given the above, the despair of the children living in Gaza should come as no surprise. A recent study of 500 Palestinian children is Gaza found that 96% believed they would die soon, with 49% expressing a lack of will to live, while 100% were in need of intensive psychological treatment to restore their mental health. If the ceasefire truly holds, and humanitarian relief is forthcoming, these numbers might rapidly show improvement, but maybe by substituting a renewed will to resist for the earlier despair stemming from the precariousness and worthlessness of life itself in the face of continuing genocide.
These various facets of the Gaza Genocide led persons of conscience to reach the conclusion that only pressures from below, that is from the people, on governments could give rise to meaningful efforts to stop Israel. One such recent initiative was the establishment of a Gaza Tribunal with a primary mission of encouraging the peoples of the world to engage more actively in a symbolic Legitimacy War based on the battlefields of law, morality, and public opinion demand an end to the genocide and the denial of basic Palestinian rights. Such a tactic draws inspiration from the outcomes in the Vietnam War and apartheid South Africa. In both instances the side with the much weaker military capabilities prevailed on the symbolic battlefields, won the Legitimacy War, and eventually controlled the political outcome. The people of Gaza are winning the Legitimacy War but need a dramatic increase in
global solidarity initiatives before reaping the fruits of such a victory. In fact the winners of Legitimacy Wars waged between external intervening states and national movements have been eventually won by national liberation movements, but only after much suffering and destruction as in Vietnam in the aftermath of World War II.
The question that lingers even as the ceasefire takes hold is whether this last venture in settler colonialism will long prevail with the help of eyes-closed impassioned geopolitical support. According to reliable polls some 61% of Americans favor the end of weapons aid and trade with Israel, yet the Congress and Presidency refuse to listen to their own citizenry, heeding only the arms industry, the Israeli lobby, and their apparent resolve to sustain a white Western united front against all expressions of Islamic resurgence. The Palestinian struggle for self-determination in a region rich in energy reserves remains the decisive moral challenge of the post-Cold War era, successors to the earlier anti-racist struggle against apartheid South Africa and the still earlier struggle to liberate Vietnam from colonial France and imperial United States.
Global Justice in the 21st Century 