By Tom London

We should speak up about Gaza not only for the sake of our fellow human beings grievously suffering in the world’s best documented genocide. We should also speak up for our own sakes and for the sake of the future of humanity. 

The system of international law is dying in Gaza. This system is conspicuously flawed, but the world will be a far more dangerous place without it and without anything to replace it.

Twice, over the last 100 years, the West has set up a system of international law in the aftermath of a terrible crisis.

The League of Nations was set up after World War One, but this was ineffective and collapsed with the coming of World War Two.

The current system was set up by the West after World War Two. It was intended to stop World War Three and another Holocaust and another Hiroshima. A new set of institutions and laws was created: the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Fourth Geneva Convention, the Genocide Convention, the Refugee Convention and more.

Undeniably, this system of international law has failed many times in the last 80 years: Vietnam, Cambodia, Rwanda, Darfur, Iraq, Bosnia, Libya, Ukraine and so many other examples.

Furthermore, many people have accused the system of being selective in its operation and acting as a neo-colonialist tool of the West.

However, for all its evident faults, the system of international law is still of great value. It has survived until Gaza, which is likely to be its graveyard. 

What makes Gaza different to any of the other gross breaches is that in Gaza the world has witnessed in horror a livestreamed genocide, and simultaneously seen the West, the guardians of international law, treat that law with naked, blatant contempt. 

Consider three pillars of international law.

Firstly, at the United Nations, with barely any attempt to justify its actions, the US has repeatedly used its veto as a permanent member of the Security Council to block resolutions to end the genocide in Gaza.

Secondly, at the ‘world’s top court’, the International Court of Justice, (ICJ), Israel is on trial for genocide in a case brought by South Africa. 

In January 2024, the ICJ made a preliminary ruling that it was plausible that Israel’s acts could amount to genocide.

The ICJ ordered Israel to take all measures within its power to prevent genocidal acts and in particular to prevent:  

(a) killing [of Palestinians in Gaza] 

(b) causing them serious bodily or mental harm

(c) inflicting conditions of life to bring about their physical destruction in whole or in part

(d) imposing measures intended to prevent births.

Israel was also ordered to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance.

However, these rulings were simply ignored by Israel. 

Israel was supported in this genocidal flouting of the ICJ by the US – under Biden and then under Trump – and by other Western countries.

In the UK, first Sunak and then Starmer showed that all their rhetoric about upholding international law, which they had deployed so recently against Putin, was meaningless. 

Thirdly, the ‘world’s top criminal court’, the International Criminal Court (ICC) investigates and tries individuals for the gravest crimes.

In a glaring example of the selective nature of international law, the ICC since it was founded in 2002, has only ever convicted Africans.

In 2023, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Putin. Then on 21st November 2024, it issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu, alleging that he was, “responsible for the war crimes of starvation as a method of warfare and of intentionally directing an attack against the civilian population.”

Putin and Netanyahu are still at large.

The fundamental problem for both the ICJ and the ICC is that they do not have their own police forces, let alone their own armies. They rely on pressure, moral, military or economic or otherwise, exerted by states, to enforce their rulings. 

Netanyahu has travelled to Washington DC a number of times since the warrant against him. He has been to Hungary. Each time he has flown over European airspace undisturbed.

Trump’s US is harassing the ICC. It has imposed sanctions on the chief prosecutor and some of the judges. 

US hostility towards the ICC, goes back to its founding when it passed a law known as the ‘Hague Invasion Act’. If Netanyahu is ever taken to The Hague, we can expect US special forces to ‘rescue him’. 

So, why should we care if this often failing and flawed system of international law dies in Gaza? 

We should care because for all its manifold imperfections (and worse) the current system of international law is far better than its alternative. The alternative right now is no system at all – the law of the jungle, ‘might is right’.

According to the 17th century writer Thomas Hobbes, life of man without government or law was, “continual fear, and danger of violent death; … solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”  Hobbes was thinking about why people came together in communities, but his words are relevant to the relationships between countries.

We face existential threats that previous generations did not face: nuclear weapons, climate catastrophe and more. These threats can only be met by cooperation between states and this requires a functioning system of international law.

Trump and Netanyahu despise international law. They are happy with a world where might is right. This is not only morally repugnant but highly dangerous.

Eventually, another crisis will jolt the world back to common sense. But that crisis may be the worst the world has ever seen.

One possible crisis made more likely by the collapse of international law is a nuclear war. Albert Einstein once said, “I know not with what weapons World War Three will be fought, but World War Four will be fought with sticks and stones.” 

Tom London is an activist based in north London.

Image: Protest outside Downing Street on July 25th 2025, c/o Labour Hub.