Listen here: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Youtube
In the wake of Israel’s obliteration of Gaza, it is easy to conclude that international law has failed. South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, filed almost three years ago, is still a long way from reaching a final judgment, while warrants issued by the International Criminal Court against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant have yet to produce arrests.
The obvious conclusion is that the courts move too slowly, lack meaningful enforcement mechanisms, and are incapable of stopping atrocities as they unfold. But what this critique misses is a deeper problem: that international law is not merely failing to prevent mass violence, but that states often wield its language and principles to justify that violence — further weakening the entire project.
This is the quandary that Israeli scholar Neve Gordon helps us unpack on this episode of The +972 Podcast. Gordon, a professor of International Law and Human Rights at Queen Mary University of London, points to Israel’s use of such legal concepts as “human shielding” and “unlawful combatants” to construct a legal rationale for its genocide in Gaza, alongside its efforts to erode the very notion of a “Palestinian civilian.”
Gordon also discusses how human rights advocacy has been transformed — from a political struggle against domination to an increasingly professionalized project led by lawyers and experts, often at a distance from the people experiencing those abuses. And as he notes, the universal language of human rights itself is flexible enough to be co-opted and then inverted — such that the settler right can hijack it to advance annexation and Palestinian dispossession.
Finally, Gordon considers what international law can offer those struggling for Palestinian liberation given the culture of impunity we live in. While a favorable ruling in the South Africa case matters, he argues, “the law will not liberate Palestinians from the yoke of colonialism”. That, he says, will require new forms of collective action and solidarity.
