Suppose that one day the states of Europe wearied of the prolonged slaughter, genocide and war crimes in Gaza and resolved to intervene to end the fighting and to bring about a settlement.

Weary also of America and its veto to block any accountability for the actions of Israel, these allies of convenience did not seek UN approval, as sometimes the US has done. But they undertook that the military action would be only in the old Palestine, and not over the borders of any Arab countries. With this, and the promise that they would use international tribunals to determine any war crimes, these allies successfully warned off Russia, China and India.

The plausibility of such a scenario is not so much the issue here as the question of whether Israeli politicians and officers of the Israeli Defence Force, and possibly any members of Hamas guilty of crimes against civilians, are ever likely to face justice and accountability before neutral courts. As things stand, I wouldn’t get my hopes up. But there can be no peace without it.

Israel could avoid this by coming to a cessation of hostilities, but without any terms allowing trials for war crimes or atrocities, other than, perhaps, those committed by the losers. Or as a term of a local armistice, even if international legal opinion is very firmly against such immunities. And, if nations and individuals are subject to international human rights law, or international criminal law, by taking care never to go into a jurisdiction where countries support the international legal system. Europe as a destination would be out.

But what if Israel demanded, as a condition of stopping the war against Palestinian civilians, that all ICC warrants be dropped? The Israeli lobby seems to think that the very idea of charges against Netanyahu is preposterous and because, in any event, the people of Gaza deserved what they got. The US seems to think the same – a matter that appals politicians and citizens of many other countries who have been horrified by Israel’s complete lack of restraint, its targeting of health workers, women and children, and its starvation policies.

These feelings are aggravated by the open calls among Israeli ministers and a section of Israeli society that the opportunity should be taken to drive all Palestinians forever out of Palestine. Netanyahu denies that this is the plan, but his actions suggest otherwise, as does his belligerence, denial and lack of regret about the atrocities he has ordered.

There are ICC warrants out for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a few other Israelis. The US has denounced the warrants and put sanctions on members of the ICC prosecution team, but Netanyahu must take care with his international movements to avoid arrest. He would, for example, be arrested if he came to Australia.

Netanyahu has a personal interest in prolonging the war. But Israel doesn’t

It is said that Netanyahu is in any event deliberately prolonging the war for his own political survival. When things settle down, he is supposed to face serious corruption charges. While actively “defending” Israel against aggression, he can carry on without being harassed by the charges.

Both the US and Israel originally signed the Rome Statute of the ICC 25 years ago, but never ratified it, and both have since renounced their signatures. Now that enough nations have signed, that does not exempt American or Israeli war criminals from being covered by the court.

But the US has gone from basic hostility to active efforts to destroy the ICC. It takes active sanctions against anyone, including court members, trying to put Americans or Israelis on war crimes charges. Recently it increased the number of people under such sanctions.

The US claims that ratification has US constitutional problems, including the risk that their statesmen or soldiers might be tried for actions on US soil, but it is clear that their primary objection, now wrapped up with added Trump sovereignty blather, is to the impertinence of anyone thinking that soldiers carrying out national policy could be accountable to any non-US body. The irony that it was the US that did most to propose the idea of international war crimes, both in relation to Germany’s World War II aggression and its genocidal policies against Jews, Romany people and disabled people, has not escaped critics of the US and Israel’s current policies.

Of course, any nation can try its own alleged war criminals in their domestic courts. Neither Israel nor the US — or for that matter Arab countries in the Middle East — are famous for the justice they deliver. Nor is Australia, at least with war criminals.

An inevitable part of a peace settlement involves the structure of the Israeli state; the practical apartheid and active discrimination imposed on Arab citizens and a century-long history of Israel’s making war on Palestinians and their lands. Netanyahu has focused all his rage on the events of 7 October, when members of Hamas slaughtered more than 1000 Israelis, many civilians. To Palestinians, however, the 7 October atrocities, however deplorable, fit into a continuum of continuous maltreatment, abuse of human rights, homicide and displacement by the Israeli Government and the Israeli settler movement, supported by IDF muscle.

That is a process that, now or over the past 80 years, has involved many more Palestinian deaths than attacks on Israeli settlers. Even after 7 October 2023, the Israeli retaliation has involved the deaths of at least 60 Palestinians for every Israeli killed, as well as the complete destruction of more than half the homes of Gaza and a blockade that has denied sufficient food to the population. The relentless bombing, the denial of access to observers and to aid, and the firing upon hospitals and schools, allegedly on the grounds that Hamas was operating within them, are not ordinary incidents of war, but acts of group punishment on a defenceless community.

So far, international law has been in the background. But it can’t be ignored even with US and Israeli resistance

The International Court of Justice, a body entirely separate from the ICC, has already ruled, more than a year ago, that Israel’s continued presence in the occupied Palestinian territories was unlawful and should end as soon as possible. It was, at that stage, a non-binding advisory opinion by a 15-member ICJ panel in response to a 2022 request for an opinion from the UN General Assembly. Later, a complaint by South Africa had the ICJ find “a plausible case” that Israel’s actions in Gaza could amount to genocide.

Israel denied the allegations and said those putting them forward were acting as the legal arm of Hamas. As in ripostes made recently to Australia, Canada, Britain and France in relation to recognition of Palestine, Israel insists that all its actions were reasonable responses to the 7 October actions of Hamas. Any criticism of Israel’s actions was said to be motivated by antisemitism.

While Israel has the seemingly unconditional support of the US and an open cheque book with which to replenish its weapon supplies, it can ignore international public opinion. It has nuclear weapons, and it has sometimes hinted that they would be used if the state faced military annihilation. It has a military budget, armed forces, military equipment and defensive systems much more powerful than any of its neighbours. Over the past year, attacks on Lebanon, Iran, Syria and Yemen have demonstrated Israel’s capacity to fight on many fronts at once, without ever relaxing its stranglehold over Gaza.

There is no current prospect of military defeat, or running out of the capacity to make war, unless it loses the support of the US. Although President Trump, like President Biden before him, has occasionally expressed irritation at Israel’s ignoring of international public opinion, there has been no sign of any withdrawal of support, or of its putting conditions on arms shipments.

Yet there are two types of public opinion that are having an impact on the government of Israel. The war, and its brutality, have shocked Israeli opinion and diaspora Jewish opinion. Netanyahu’s belligerence, bellicosity and unrepentant approach, including his attacks on other national leaders, have appalled many domestic political lobbies. As with his attacks on Anthony Albanese, they have probably strengthened rather than weakened their positions.

A turning point involved the starvation of women and children, and Netanyahu’s barefaced denial that this was happening. It has a negative impact all around the world, even in inspiring rare criticism of Israel by President Trump. He said the obvious, that Israel was plainly denying food to Gazans, and that they were suffering badly. Israeli diplomats, and hardline supporters of Israel, have hardly helped Israel’s cause. Nor has the entirely uncritical support of Murdoch newspapers in Australia, including the triumphalism of SKY TV, propped up the Israeli case.

Many Israelis support their government’s hard line. But there is a rising movement weary of the war, and shocked at the damage it has caused to Israel in the world. It was from the Jewish religion that concepts of social justice, human rights and the value of human life first emerged, informing later the development of Christianity and Islam. Around the world, if not conspicuously in Israel, Jewish people have taken a lead in arguing for human rights, especially for populations displaced by war, famine and colonialism. Israel has drawn heavily on this moral cheque book and raised again to new levels the question of the right of the state to exist, particularly in its present form. That is a matter quite different from the right of the Jewish people to exist, and the right of the Jewish religion to flourish.

Israel’s actions have sapped its support, even among its friends

Arguing the merits or morality of past or present actions by the state invites questions about the wisdom of attempting to conflate the Jewish desire for a national home with the political cause of Zionism. That, and a Western desire for atonement for the Holocaust, may have been in the minds of those who created Israel, but neither the Balfour Declaration in 1917 nor the UN resolution creating the state, provided the legal permission to disenfranchise and dispossess Palestinians. What is concerning to many supporters of Israel is how much its rulers, and the unreasonable and racist views of some in the electorate, have sapped even basic support for the nation.

Even in nations which once gave strong support to the state, including when it was besieged by enemies, support has plummeted. In Europe, North America and Australia, for example, this is not so much from any outbreak of antisemitism but from serious distaste and anger about Israel’s revenge mission. There has always been a reservoir of anti-Jewish bigotry, particularly on the right of politics, but there is little evidence of a marked upsurge in its incidence. Neo-Nazi groups are increasing in number, and still trade in antisemitic slogans, but their recent focus has been on excluding and expelling immigrants, simple racism against those who are not “white”, and economic nationalism. Nazi-like groups have not been campaigning about Israel.

Netanyahu considers any criticism of Israel as antisemitic. Others see criticism of Zionism as antisemitic, perhaps code for acceptably showing basic hostility to the Jewish religion or Jewish people at large. Likewise, signs of support for the legitimate aspiration of Palestinians, including symbolically wearing Palestinian scarves, is not antisemitic, though some will interpret it as such.

Australian politicians have faced pressure from two directions. They are rightly anxious about fostering social cohesion and about importing conflicts from elsewhere. They also have a quite proper horror about centuries of bigotry, pogrom and oppression of Jewish people, which culminated in the Holocaust. One cannot simply blame the people or the nation of the time, as though it did not come right from the centre of Western culture, and had not been adopted and promoted by Western cultural figures, including religious leaders. Hatred of the Jewish people, or of their religion, is now proscribed in most countries, certainly in the West. Jewish groups are naturally alert for signs of an upsurge of antisemitism, or of the delusions and conspiracy theories that found them.

Antisemitism is not at the root of anti-Israeli sentiment. Israel’s brutality is

Those who blame any criticism of Israel for its long-standing cruelty to Palestinians on antisemitism are wrong. I listen to such critical comments carefully and only very rarely hear something antisemitic. But I often hear devastating criticism of Israel’s politicians, the barbarity of the IDF, and of the cruel and selfish state Israel has become.

I know scores of Jewish people horrified at the actions of Israel. I know many others, admirers of Jewish culture, who believe they cannot stand by while a whole people have been made the victims of a murderous rage. Rather, they have come to see Israel’s actions as fundamentally lawless. Perhaps it serves an unfortunate purpose in showing that Israel, like many other states including our own, is well capable of systemic bastardry. And doesn’t seem to care much what anyone else thinks.

Sooner or later, however, the mindless slaughter must stop. There is no going back on what has happened. Palestinians and Israelis will have to make peace with each other and find a way of living together, even after all the damage that representatives of either side have visited on the other. As a former Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin said when reproached for making peace with Egypt, “You make peace with your enemies, not your friends."

I don’t know how history will regard Albanese. I suspect as weak and timorous, and slow to cease uncritical support of Israel. Netanyahu misjudges Albanese’s search for the middle, and overestimates how he himself will be seen, by the world or his own people, 50 years hence. A monster, perhaps. I very much doubt that either Netanyahu or Trump has it in them to take the two peoples back to living side by side, without rancour for the future, but a full understanding of the past. Two-nation concepts await some resolution of the obstacles, but also some accountability for what has occurred. The world will not allow the conflict to remain unresolved forever. Statesmen should be looking ahead, not behind.

Republished from The Canberra Times, August 23 2025

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.