Photo by Johannes Schenk
In the Orwellian world in which we now dwell, countries and groups that uphold international law are labeled terrorists or supporters of terrorism, while those that commit unspeakable crimes, flagrantly violating international and humanitarian laws, remain unlabeled and unpunished.
What the last year and a half in Gaza has glaringly demonstrated is how little the United States cares about upholding international law. And that its outpost, Israel, continues to operate lawlessly outside international rules and moral norms. In Palestine, Israel has been the executioner and the United States has been the executor of ethnic cleansing and genocide.
Both the Biden and Trump administrations have been breaking the law for Israel.
Unlike his predecessor, however, who attempted to hide or disguise his breach of international and U.S. laws, the Trump White House overtly and brazenly violates both.
The United States continues to provide lethal weapons for Tel Aviv’s engineered humanitarian catastrophe despite the fact that it is a signatory to the 1948 “Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,” known as the Genocide Convention, a binding treaty which established a “responsibility to protect” obligation on state parties, whether they ratified it or not.
The Convention defined genocide and definitively recognized it as crime. It also criminalized complicity and established duties on state parties to take measures to prevent and to punish perpetrators.
In addition to the above treaty, the 1945 U.N. Charter, 1949 Geneva Conventions, as well as other binding U.N. documents established a collective “responsibility to protect” against genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes and crimes against humanity. The obligation was meant to insure that the international community never again, as it did during World War II, failed to act.
History will harshly and rightly judge those countries and officials who have failed to fulfill their moral as well as their legal obligations to end the genocide. And it will heap praise on those who did.
Unfortunately, no one has asked why the United States has been battering and mercilessly penalizing countries and groups that have been faithfully upholding their obligations under Article I of the Convention to “prevent and punish genocide.”
To counteract the Orwellian distortions that frame Israel’s ongoing atrocities it is important to give recognition to those who have acted on their moral and legal obligations under international law.
In a world where powerful nations act with impunity, some have acted to end the genocide: Ansar Allah (also known as Houthis) in Yemen; Hezbollah in Lebanon; the Islamic Republic of Iran and South Africa.
Resistance to oppression has been central to their identities and it is what has united them in solidarity with Palestinian resistance movements. They have paid a great price for carrying out the mandates of international and humanitarian laws.
The United States designates any country or group that struggles against and opposes Israel terrorists.
Ansar Allah (Supporters of God) in Yemen
In response to Israel’s invasion and humanitarian blockade of Gaza, Ansar Allah entered the Gaza war on 31 October 2023. It began missile/drone attacks on commercial and military vessels linked to Israel in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. The attacks were halted when the ceasefire agreement went into effect on 19 January 2025. When Israel violated the ceasefire in mid-March and restarted its genocidal campaign and blockade of food and medicine to Gaza, Ansar Allah resumed its attacks.
Its Humanitarian Operations Coordination Center explained: “We hope it is understood that the actions taken by the [Ansar Allah military]… stem from a deep sense of religious, humanitarian and moral responsibility toward the oppressed Palestinian people and aim to pressure the Israeli usurper entity to reopen the crossings to the Gaza Strip and allow the entry of aid, including food and medical supplies.”
The U.S. corporate media has disparagingly framed Ansar Allah as a regional proxy of Tehran. They have failed, however, to report on Yemen’s historical solidarity with Palestine.
In 1947, for example, Yemeni representatives to the United Nations opposed the partition of Palestine and during the 1973 October War, the Bab al-Mandab strait was closed to ships carrying fuel to Israel. Also, the Republic of Yemen, following unification in 1990, pushed for U.S. diplomatic recognition of the Palestine Liberation Organization; and it extended the same rights and resources to Palestinian refugees as they did to their own citizens.
Hezbollah (Party of God) in Lebanon
Like Ansar Allah in Yemen, Hezbollah has been painted by the United States and the West as a terrorist organization. It is in reality a national political party and military force dedicated to the defense of Lebanon and Palestinians against Israeli expansion and aggression.
The Israeli invasions and siege of Lebanon in 1982 drove the resistance. Hezbollah officially announced its existence in 1985 in an “Open Letter to the Downtrodden in Lebanon and the World.” In the letter, they declared their intent to remove the Israeli occupiers from Lebanon, Palestine and Jerusalem. The manifesto was revised in 2009 to reflect the organization’s commitment to work within the multi-sectarian Lebanese state.
Hezbollah, in solidarity with the Palestinians, began a campaign of attacks against the Zionist regime one day after the Al-Aqsa Flood operation on 7 October. They began shelling Israeli forces in the occupied Shebaa Farms area, opening a front in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah refused to stop the attacks until Tel Aviv ended its genocide against the Palestinians. During the brief ceasefire, they paused fighting.
Israel has assassinated a number of Hezbollah leaders, including popular secretary-general, Sayeed Hassan Nasrallah in 2024, believing it could crush the resistance.
The concept of resistance has been a guiding ideology of Hezbollah. Its image in the Muslim world has been reinforced by its example of liberating Lebanese land in 2000 and 2006 through armed struggle against the Israeli occupiers, its unconditional support for the liberation of Palestine, and in its opposition to U.S.-Israeli regional hegemony.
The ideas and ideals of the 1979 Iranian Revolution have driven Hezbollah’s evolution, which Iran has supported since the group’s early days.
Islamic Republic of Iran
Iran has, since 1979, come to be defined by its culture of resistance to U.S.-Israel hegemony and its commitment to Palestinian self-determination.
“The foreign policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran is based upon the rejection of all forms of domination, both the exertion of it and submission to it, the preservation of the independence of the country…the defence of the rights of all Muslims, nonalignment with respect to the hegemonist superpowers, and the maintenance of mutually peaceful relations with all non-belligerent States.”
Additionally, Article 154, which states that Iran will refrain from interfering in the internal affairs of other nations, underscores the country’s support for “the just struggles of the mustad’affun [oppressed] against the mustakbirun [oppressors] in every corner of the globe.”
Iran has been fulfilling its responsibilities under international law to oppose Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine. Consequently, placing it at odds with U.S. administrations and under crippling economic sanctions since its history shifted from monarchy to an Islamic Republic.
Republic of South Africa
South Africa, on 29 December 2023, filed an application to institute proceedings against Israel before the judicial organ of the United Nations, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), accusing Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. It brought the case by invoking its “obligation to prevent genocide” as a signatory to the UN Genocide Convention.
In “South Africa v. Israel,” lawyers for the High Court of South Africa argued that the “The intent to destroy Gaza has been nurtured at the highest levels of the state.”
Although the ICJ ordered (26 January 2024) Israel to take all measures to prevent acts of genocide, to punish those committing such acts and to enable the provision of humanitarian assistance and basic services, Israel has never complied with the Court’s legally binding ruling.
Since its initial application, South Africa has filed three other petitions to the ICJ for additional emergency protections for the Palestinians and 13 countries have filed declarations of support.
South Africa has, furthermore, refused to be bullied by the United States. Despite threats from the current administration, including cuts to financial aid, Foreign Minister Ronald Lamola emphasized South Africa’s principled commitment to the rule of law and refusal to withdraw its case before the ICJ.
Conclusion
Ironically, while protestors on U.S. university campuses are kidnapped, illegally detained by the government for opposing the genocide in Gaza, the American president, disregarding international law, welcomes, rather than arrests, indicted war criminal, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to the White House.
The obligation under customary international law to investigate and prosecute war criminals has been firmly established. It is found in a number of treaties, in numerous resolutions adopted by the UN Commission on Human Rights, and reaffirmed on several occasions by the UN Security Council. In addition, the preamble to the Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) has confirmed “the duty of every State to exercise its criminal jurisdiction over those responsible for international crimes.”
Non-party states to the ICC, like the United States, are obliged to cooperate with the court not only in cases referred by the Security Council but also under provisions in the 1949 Geneva Conventions whereby states must “respect and ensure” deference for international humanitarian law.
With regard to the actions of Palestinian resistance movements, it should be noted that the UN General Assembly has passed a number of resolutions recognizing the legitimacy of armed resistance as a means of oppressed peoples to achieve self-determination and independence.
The official silence of the so-called civilized world, particularly the United States, regarding Israel’s campaign of terror and barbarity in Gaza and in the Occupied Palestinian Territories has set a dangerous precedent. Rather than execute its obligations under the Genocide Convention to prevent and protect Palestinians from genocide, Washington has waged war against those who have.
The United States has, to its misfortune, invested heavily in its Zionist outpost, masquerading as a law-abiding moral country. Israel has no written constitution and no defined borders; with that, it has lived outside the rules and laws of international conventions.
As a colonial entity, Israel’s leaders have known that in order to complete their supremacist aims in Palestine, they would have to operate outside international and humanitarian laws. Unrestrained, that is what it has done for more than eight decades.
The fate of Gaza, dictates the future not only for Palestinians but for Zionist Israelis and Americans as well. Most importantly, it asks the question will the new international order be one in which “might makes right” or “right makes right?”
The post Israel: Outpost or Country? appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by M. Reza Behnam.