Seeing video evidence this week of the physical and psychological mistreatment of the great Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti sickened me.

I have written a number of articles about Marwan. Researching and writing builds knowledge and empathy and I am one of those who believes, given the opportunity, he really could be the Palestinian Mandela. How should you and I respond to this criminality by the Israeli state?

A video clip posted by the Israeli minister Itamar Ben Gvir on 15 August shows the bully taunting and intimidating a frail Marwan Barghouti. It sparked international condemnation.

His own wife did not recognise him

Marwan’s wife and human rights activist, Fadwa Barghouti, was shocked to see the heavy toll the Israelis had inflicted on a man legendary for his indomitable spirit.

“I didn’t recognise you or your features, and maybe part of me doesn’t want to admit everything your face and body express about what you and the prisoners have endured,” she wrote in a public message to her husband.

“They are still, Marwan, chasing you and pursuing you even after 23 years in prison and in the solitary cell you’ve been living in for two years.”

She added: “I know that the only thing that hurts you is the inability to protect Palestinian children.”

International protocols on prisoner treatment

The mistreatment of prisoners like Marwan Barghouti is a crime under international law; the relevant international protocols include: Geneva Convention IV (1949) – Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War; Common Article 3 (minimum protections including bans on torture, cruel treatment, and “outrages upon personal dignity”); UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (Nelson Mandela Rules). These establish prohibitions against torture, degrading treatment and requirements for humane conditions of detention. Look at Marwan Barghouti and weep that we support Israel, a state that has defecated on the Geneva Convention, the Genocide Convention and every memorial to the victims of the Shoah.

The Israelis, our allies, have committed rape-murders of prisoners (documented in their own posted videos), killed countless Palestinian leaders and hold thousands of hostages in gruesome captivity – even as they commit ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and forced starvation in Gaza. Barghouti, who would win any free and fair elections in Palestine in a landslide, has, since 2023, according to human rights organisations, been repeatedly assaulted and subjected to Abu Ghraib-style treatment, had joints dislocated and other forms of torture while our governments turn a blind eye and work day and night to provide the Israelis with the political cover needed to pursue the Greater Israel project.

Terrible news from Yousef Aljamal

I also received terrible news this week that my friend Yousef Aljamal had suffered yet another horror at the hands of the Israelis: his sister Somaiya (35), her husband Anas (35), and their daughters Hoor (13) and Sham (9) had been killed in an Israeli missile attack earlier this month as they slept. A third daughter, Noor (14), was injured and is now the family’s sole survivor.

I interviewed Yousef in my home in Wellington a few weeks ago; it was a privilege and an education to spend time with the distinguished Palestinian writer. As I said in the subsequent article, the encounter made visceral for me that word genocide. Sitting opposite me in my study in my serene Wellington coastal suburb, Yousef told me of the 40 members of his family who had been murdered by the Israelis. Now four more have been taken. These are people like us, with feelings like us. They are not the Hated Others so long painted by our mainstream media as unworthy of naming, unworthy of human dignity.

The collective West is responsible under law

The Israelis have turned Gaza into a hellscape that would shock Dante Alighieri. More than two million people are being tortured in the cruellest way every day and our governments refuse to intervene in powerful and meaningful ways.

According to whistleblower US Green Beret Lt. Colonel (ret) Anthony Aguilar, the Israelis and the American GHF contractors use pepper spray and gunfire instead of signs to direct the human traffic. Waves of suffering humanity are tossed hither and thither on a sea of diabolical inhumanity. Thousands of starving innocents have been gunned down while seeking food.

To be blunt: If the Israelis don’t want to be likened to the Nazis, they should stop acting like Nazis.

The responsibility to prevent and punish

This evil is supported to astonishing lengths by the morally empty governments of Australia, New Zealand, Canada and, of course, the great arsenals of genocide, the US, UK and Germany. The leaders of the powerful Western countries are fully aware of what is being done and allow it to continue – and, therefore, represent the moral nadir of our species. Leaders like Anthony Albanese, Christopher Luxon and Keir Starmer make corporeal the term Banality of Evil. They calculate, they mumble and equivocate, then they comply with the Americans. “Genocide enabler” should be their sole epitaph.

Our countries are signatories to the Genocide Convention, the first Article of which states: “The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish.”

Prevent and punish. Legal scholars and the ICJ’s opinions affirm that states providing military, financial, or political support, with knowledge of likely genocidal acts, risk being found complicit. Our governments have failed to reach the lowest bar of human decency or fulfil this fundamental duty. It is up to us to act. If it was right to oppose Nazism in World War II, it is most certainly a moral imperative to oppose the brand of Nazism the Jewish State of Israel has created today. We must find the courage to oppose them.

The International Court of Justice ruled in 2007 in the ICJ Bosnia Genocide case that Serbia was guilty of breaching its duty to prevent the 1995 genocide in Srebrenica. Countries like the UK, Germany, New Zealand and Australia would likely, if international law was applied evenly, be found similarly culpable for failing to prevent genocide by Israel and the US. This is the legal concept of erga omnes partes, the collective responsibility that signatory states share.

On 26 January 2024, the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel faces credible allegations of genocide in Gaza and imposed urgent, legally binding measures, including an obligation to allow humanitarian access and prevent genocidal acts. All our states are fully aware Israel has defied this ruling.

War crimes tribunals on the Palestine genocide will be essential to restore international law. War criminals, whether in Tel Aviv, London, Canberra or Wellington, must one day face justice.

In a recent article, I described Stéphane Hessel, a leading member of the French Resistance, who survived time in Nazi concentration camps, including Buchenwald. After the war, he was one of the co-authors of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), a pillar of international law to this day. The Declaration affirms the inherent dignity and equal rights of all humans. In later years, Hessel (d.2013), who was Jewish, saw the treatment of the Palestinians as an affront to this and repeatedly called out Israel for crimes against humanity.

Hessel argued people needed to be outraged just as he and his fellow fighters had been during the war. In 2010 he said: “Today, my strongest feeling of indignation is over Palestine, both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The starting point of my outrage was the appeal launched by courageous Israelis to the Diaspora: you, our older siblings, come and see where our leaders are taking this country and how they are forgetting the fundamental human values of Judaism.” Imagine what action he would call for today.

Aaron Bushnell’s challenge to us

So, back to the core challenge I posed at the beginning. Are we willing to do what it takes to save Marwan Barghouti, to save our brothers and sisters in Palestine?

As Aaron Bushnell, the active duty US serviceman, said the day he self-immolated in front of the Israeli Embassy in Washington last year to protest the genocide against the Palestinian people:

“Many of us like to ask ourselves ‘What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?’ The answer is, you’re doing it. Right now.”

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