The impunity with which the Israeli regime commits its war crimes throughout West Asia has proven every legal mechanism and international body faulty. In doing so, it has rewound the clock to the standards of the Second World War, for which the United Nations (UN), Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and international law were created to overcome. 

On March 22, 2004, the Israeli military used an Apache helicopter to assassinate Hamas leader, Ahmed Yassin. In order to do so, a hellfire missile was used, killing Yassin, along with his bodyguards and 9 civilians in Gaza.  At the time, US President George W. Bush condemned that assassination due to the high civilian death toll.

Fast forward to September 27, 2024, when “Israel” used a range of fighter jets to assassinate Hezbollah Secretary-General, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, dropping at least 85 tonnes of explosives on a densely populated civilian neighbourhood in Beirut's Southern Suburb in Lebanon, the Israeli military openly announced it had calculated that 300 estimated civilians were going to die as “collateral damage”. At the time, US President Joe Biden praised the assassination.

Only 20 years ago, it was deemed wrong to kill 9 civilians in order to assassinate a leader of a military movement. Now, we have entered an era where 300 civilian deaths are considered acceptable “collateral damage”. Why is this so important? Because this is now the standard set for the entire world.

A threshold has been surpassed, red lines have been crossed, and any country around the world that locates a high-value target will open fire regardless of how many innocent civilians are going to die as a result of it. It is a similar idea to the deployment of nuclear weapons; once one power does it, you open Pandora's box.

The 'targeted assassination' of the international community

Following World War 2, nations across the world came together under a joint project to steer humanity clear of the horrors that befell it during that awful conflict. From the extermination of European Jews to the nuclear bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there was a desperate need to ensure that none of these horrors could be repeated again.

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Although the United Nations (UN), international courts, and “human rights” did not work to prevent a large range of atrocities around the world, the ideals pushed forth through these universalistic endeavours remained embedded in the collective global consciousness as if they were sacred. This has now died, along with some 20,000 children, in the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli genocide in Gaza is the world's first live-streamed genocide, a holocaust in which the global public watches on as a steady stream of shredded and beheaded children fills their social media feeds on a daily basis. This genocide, where everthing from rape and starvation to the execution of medical teams and beheading of babies, has been ongoing for 18 months without any justice.

When anyone stands up to help the people of Gaza, they are also subjected to a smaller dose of the same punishment. In Lebanon, Hezbollah tried to play a supporting role to the Palestinians, and for it, the Zionist regime murdered 3,000 people in their country, after detonating thousands of explosive pagers across the country in an act described by former CIA director Leon Panetta as an act of terrorism. 

The other major actor to have fought for the Palestinian people, Ansar Allah in Yemen, has been subjected to a war of aggression launched by the United States military, a war that is being fought so that the Israeli regime can continue its genocide in Gaza unchallenged.

Iran, which has been financially, diplomatically, and militarily supporting the Palestinian Resistance, has also come under attack. The Israeli regime launched airstrikes against the Iranian embassy in Syria, an unprecedented move that triggered retaliatory strikes. Yet, the Zionist entity was not finished there and decided to carry out an assassination in the heart of Tehran.

Upon the fall of the Syrian government, the Israelis launched an illegal invasion of the country, occupied more of its territory, and conducted their largest ever air campaign. On a daily basis, the Israelis attack the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria. They violate the sanctity of the Muslim and Christian Holy Sites in occupied al-Quds, while ethnically cleansing the indigenous population of the city.

For eight weeks straight, they have been denying Gaza all food and medical aid, while bragging about the suffering they are causing. And for 18 months, their whole society, from the Prime Minister down to the settlers in the occupied streets of Yafa, has openly uttered genocidal statements against Palestinians.

All of this is happening as the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has ruled the Zionist entity is committing a plausible genocide and ruled against its occupation, and as the International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and his prime accomplice Yoav Gallant. All of the UN condemnations, human rights reports, and international court rulings have come to no avail as the US shelters its Zionist allies from any accountability.

Now, across the West, if you dare organize a university protest or become too vocal about Israeli war crimes, you may be imprisoned, beaten, or deported. Your freedom of speech is being taken away from you if you stand up against this holocaust and the genocidal settler entity committing it.

The question you have to ask yourself is this: If the Israelis get away with committing just about every crime imaginable, what is stopping everyone else from doing the same? You either have the law or you don’t. We no longer have a UN, international law, or human rights; those ideas are soaked in the blood of Palestinian children and buried in the sands of Gaza.