Global Courant
However it turns out, South Africa’s lawsuit at the International Court of Justice alleging Israel violated the Genocide Convention will go down in history. It will either be remembered as the first step toward finally holding a rogue state accountable for repeated, long-standing violations of international law; or as the last, dying breath of a dysfunctional Western-led international system.
For the hypocrisy of Western governments (and the Western political elite as a whole) has ultimately brought the so-called ‘rules-based world order’ they claim to lead to a point of no return. Full Western support for Israel’s genocidal rampage in Gaza has truly exposed the West’s double standards in human rights and international law. There is no turning back, and the West can only blame this on its own arrogance.
The litany of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Israel in Gaza are clear as day to anyone with access to a smartphone. Social media feeds are full of video clips of hospitals and schools being bombed, fathers pulling the lifeless bodies of their children from under destroyed buildings, mothers crying over the corpses of their babies. And yet, in addition to seemingly limitless military and political support, the response of Western governments has been to label any criticism of Israel as anti-Semitism and to attempt to outright ban any expression of solidarity with the Palestinian people.
Despite this oppression, tens of thousands of people take to the streets day after day to express their disgust at Israeli atrocities and Western complicity. Western governments (including the US) are desperate for some semblance of credibility and have recently become marginally critical of Israeli attacks. However, it is too little and too late. Western credibility has been irrevocably shattered.
Of course, Western hypocrisy is nothing new. According to Western governments, the world should revolt against Russian aggression, but be perfectly happy with Israeli brutality and disregard for international norms. Ukrainians who throw Molotov cocktails at the Russian occupation forces are heroes and freedom fighters, while Palestinians (and others) who dare to speak out against Israeli apartheid are terrorists. White-skinned refugees from Ukraine are more than welcome, while black and brown-skinned refugees from conflicts in the Middle East, Asia and Africa (much of which the West supports) can go to the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea sink. The Western attitude has really been: rules for you, not for me.
The Western attitude towards China shows the same insincerity. China is virtually surrounded by American and allied military bases, which are armed to the limit. Yet it is China that is guilty of… what? Unable to pinpoint any concrete violation, Western governments and media can only accuse China of “increased assertiveness,” i.e., ignorance of its assigned submissive place in the Western hegemonic order.
International justice has become a sick joke. If the International Criminal Court (ICC) were functioning effectively, Israel’s leaders would be on trial right now, and there would have been no need for South Africa to approach the International Court of Justice. But in its current form, the ICC did not indict Africans until 2022, when it announced an investigation into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine less than a week after starting. The ICC has filed charges in less than a year, including against Russian President Vladimir Putin. Conversely, it took more than six years for the ICC to open an investigation into the situation in Palestine, and even now, years later, meaningful action has yet to be taken. As Israel continued its orgy of violence against the people of Gaza, Karim Khan, the British Chief Prosecutor of the ICC, visited Israel and emphasized the need to prosecute Hamas’ crimes, while speaking softly about Israeli crimes. No wonder that many civil society organizations are calling for his resignation.
Of course, Western hypocrisy is nothing new. From the beginning, international legal norms were intended to apply only to so-called “civilized” – read white – peoples. The savages did not count, and the powerful Western states could – and did – do with them as they pleased. The indigenous people certainly did not ‘own’ land or natural resources, and colonial powers were free to steal and exploit them as they pleased. Zionism was also based on such racist views – attitudes that remain at the core of Israeli policy to this day.
These double standards are evident when it comes to the right to national self-determination – the fundamental right of all peoples to choose their own political system and control their own natural resources. After the First World War, US President Woodrow Wilson emphasized that self-determination should be the guiding principle of the new world order – but of course only for Europeans. Palestinians and other Arab peoples found out the hard way that colonialism was alive and well: they were subject to League of Nations mandates, which justified colonial rule over “peoples not yet capable of standing on their own.” The United Nations Charter also contained provisions on trusteeship, essentially along the same lines as the League Mandates.
The wars of independence in Asia and Africa put an end to this. The newly independent countries successfully demanded that self-determination be made a right for all. The two international human rights treaties, adopted in 1966, both establish the right of all peoples to self-determination in their common Article 1, and make clear that only with political and economic self-determination can any other human right have meaning.
The discussion about the right to self-determination continued, to the annoyance of Western governments. The UN General Assembly has repeatedly declared that the armed struggle (including that of the Palestinian people) against colonial rule is legitimate. And the 1977 Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions, on the laws of war, also stated that the struggle against colonial and racist regimes is valid. International law has definitely developed in the right direction.
Yet systems for implementing international law remain weak. This is by design and it allows powerful countries to act with impunity and protect their protégés – as we see with the US and Israel. Even if the International Court of Justice issues a preliminary injunction to Israel to stop its violence, and even if years later it finds Israel guilty of genocide, without any enforcement, Israel can (and will) simply ignore these decisions. That would certainly mean the end of the current world order, as any facade of fairness would collapse.
The enforcement of international law is in the hands of the UN Security Council, but with its veto power for the five countries that happened to be on the winning side in 1945, that body has proven time and time again that it is unable to fulfill its mandate. The General Assembly does not have any enforcement powers. And the UN, the ICC and most other international organizations are persistently underfunded, meaning they rely heavily on voluntary contributions from states. This makes them vulnerable to undue influence from the rich and powerful: in other words: the rich Western countries.
At a more fundamental level, these international institutions are not representative. While civil society organizations can contribute to most debates, only governments have a say in the decision-making process – despite the fact that, as we see in the case of Gaza, even the governments of ostensible democracies do not necessarily represent the will. of their people.
Israeli aggression and colonization must stop, and human rights violators in Palestine must be held accountable – including Western leaders who are complicit in genocide. However, we should not stop there. We must demand a revolutionary reform of the international institutions. They must be made truly democratic and egalitarian. They must reflect the voice of the people, through civil society organizations and other democratic forms of representation – and not governments that too often find themselves in the pocket of rich and powerful interests.
Creating a world order that guarantees justice and equal rights for all will not be easy. It will require sustained efforts on the part of the world’s citizens, putting pressure on governments and international organizations for change. However, it is the only way to ensure that ‘never again’ becomes a reality.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.
