Global Outrage Isn't the Only Thing Driving Israel's Shift on Aid to Gaza
Israel's relative invulnerability to international opprobrium has been largely due to two key factors. Politically, the U.S.—its great power patron—has remained willing to provide untrammeled support, in part for domestic political reasons but also to protect Washington's regional interests. And rhetorically, both the memory of the Holocaust and Israel's existential regional threat horizon allows its leaders to assert righteous victimhood in ways that whitewash their own atrocities, which Israel is careful to justify as being just within the bounds of the actual law. This resonates just enough with just enough audiences just enough of the time to hold domestic opposition among Israel's partners in check and prevent the institutional consensus at the United Nations required for a more robust global response.
All of this helps explain why it has been difficult for the world to respond appropriately or do more than watch in horror while an entire population is being slowly starved to death on live television. Until now, international responses have been largely symbolic. But in recent weeks, those symbolic efforts have been on the uptick. Last week, France announced that it will become the first G7 country to recognize Palestine, with the official ceremony scheduled to take place at the U.N. General Assembly. And two weeks ago, 30 countries from the Global South calling themselves The Hague Group met in Bogota, Colombia, to organize a sanctions regime against Israel and plan a massive campaign to attract adherents in the run-up to the General Assembly. Those efforts have also been buoyed by a recent flood of media attention and calls to action from moral leaders to do something.
This all may be having some effect. This past week, the surge of moral outrage caused the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to at least pay lip service toward providing aid to civilians in Gaza: Airdrops of supplies resumed in parts of the territory, and World Central Kitchen—a humanitarian organization providing food to Gazans—was able to resume cooking meals again after being forced to shut down earlier in the week.
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To be sure, Israel's qualified policy shifts are, as aid groups insist, grossly insufficient. Airdrops are an inefficient way to deliver food and present a danger to civilians on the ground. Instead, aid groups want Israel to stop impeding ground convoys from entering Gaza, stop ordering troops to shoot civilians in cold blood at aid distribution points, and return coordination of the relief efforts to the U.N. Office of Humanitarian Affairs.
But Israel's decision to at least pay lip service to humanitarian norms by loosening restrictions on food aid suggests that it now feels more vulnerable to political pressure than it has seemed to in recent months, to the point that it must bolster the appearance of compliance with international standards. Even Israel, it seems, can be sensitive to the power of international law.
Why the sudden difference? The answer gives clues for how to hold states more accountable under international law for their actions in armed conflicts, even those least vulnerable to social sanction.
One shift has been that an increasing number of global authorities are referring to the events in Gaza specifically as a genocide. Earlier this month, a U.N. Human Rights Council report found that not only Israel and its partner states but also numerous private firms are complicit in what it refers to as genocide. Renowned Israeli genocide scholar Omar Bartov published a widely circulated essay arguing that what is happening in Gaza is indeed a genocide, a position increasingly taken by genocide scholars, including those from Israel. This week former U.N. aid chief Martin Griffiths referred to Israel's actions as 'genocide.' Even Israeli rights groups are using the term.
A more important factor in ramping up pressure on Israel may be the increasing willingness of Israeli military officials to speak out in ways that highlight the systematic nature of the atrocities committed in Gaza.
But as political scientist Steven Saideman writes, the genocide label, while accurate, is politically complicated when it comes to applying it in Gaza. Israel claims it is actually fighting a genocidal force in Hamas, which has never explicitly accepted Israel's right to exist. In the United States, university professors are feeling pressure from administrators to avoid teaching honestly about Israel's actions, lest they run afoul of new guidelines on countering antisemitism that the administration of President Donald Trump is seeking to impose on federally funded schools for what many see as domestic political purposes. And many pundits, like New York Times op-ed columnist Bret Stephens, argue that the fact that Israel has 'only' killed tens of thousands of Gazans, rather than hundreds of thousands, proves a lack of genocidal intent.
In light of all this, it is possible that debates over the genocide label have become a distraction that empowers Israel by further dividing the opposition to its actions in Gaza. What's more, there is little evidence that the genocide label, when it is used, actually galvanizes the world to act. Governments have sometimes withheld use of the term for fear they would be required under international law to intervene, as the administration of then-U.S. President Bill Clinton infamously did in 1994 while the genocide in Rwanda unfolded. But the converse has also occurred, as in 2007, when the administration of then-President George W. Bush acknowledged that a genocide was taking place in Darfur but did little to stop it.
Nor should the genocide threshold be determinative. After all, crimes against humanity—including widespread, systematic attacks on civilians—are plenty bad enough. Whether or not the legal threshold for genocide has been crossed, the mass starvation campaign in Gaza certainly rises to that level, as starvation is a weapon that targets children the hardest and quickest, underscoring its civilian-focused nature.
In truth, a more important factor in ramping up pressure on Netanyahu's government than the global rhetoric around genocide and the outrage from the international community may be the increasing willingness of Israeli military officials themselves to speak out in ways that counter the government's narratives and highlight the systematic nature of the atrocities committed by Israeli forces in Gaza.
For example, it was internal concerns about starvation shared by three Israeli defense officials with journalists in May that prompted Israel to end a total food embargo it had put in place since March. It was Israeli troops who broke the story to the press about being ordered to routinely shoot Gazan civilians attempting to access food at distribution sites. And it was Israeli military officials who reported to the press this week that there has never been any proof that Hamas routinely steals food shipments and profits off of humanitarian aid, as the Netanyahu government has long maintained as justification for limiting aid deliveries.
These officers and the Israeli military as an institution are right to be concerned about participating in a policy of mass starvation for moral reasons, but also for pragmatic ones. Members of the military are uniquely at risk of prosecution not just for genocide but for war crimes and crimes against humanity under the doctrine of individual criminal responsibility. Since the Nuremberg war crimes trials following World War II, the legal defense of 'following orders' cannot be used for these crimes. Even if the Israeli government is not spooked by the increasing global outcry over the Israeli military's actions in Gaza, it is reasonable that Israeli military officials would be.
And this is even more likely to have an effect on Israeli civilian policymakers—something we may already be seeing—than any outcry from the global community about genocide, for two reasons. First, political science research shows that human rights shaming is often the most robust when the shaming comes from diasporas or domestic critics rather than the international community. Further research found that advocacy by actors who are 'least likely' to be critics can also have an outsized impact: In times of war, military officers who openly speak out capture peoples' attention more than human rights NGOs.
Second, military officers and personnel are important moral messengers in societies more generally. Active-duty and former military personnel are often uniquely able to speak to right-wing constituencies in particular, which may have created some of the political space now being seized by other Israelis to oppose their government's policies in Gaza. The increasing refusal of Israelis to serve in the military and the resignation of 41 officers in June in protest of illegal orders is also a telling form of resistance, not just symbolically but practically: Without the military's acquiescence, a civilian government simply cannot carry out atrocities.
Far from showing the weakness of international law, this is one of the mechanisms by which indictments of political leaders by international criminal tribunals—such as the arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court for Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant—are said to work: by clarifying international standards and creating the concern among generals, lower-level military officials and even troops that they too could be caught up in a reckoning.
Regardless, the real test now will be actual action. Words, testimonies and refusal to participate can make some difference at the margins. But concrete actions by the international community will matter more. Will other nations, including France or other G7 members, join the Hague Group and actually stop trading with Israel in the runup to the U.N. General Assembly this year? Will political will emerge for a diplomatic solution and a U.N. peacekeeping presence in Gaza?
And to spur these efforts, will more of the Israeli military begin conscientiously disobeying orders as well as refusing service? Would members of the U.S. military refuse to follow orders if asked to assist in a displacement campaign against Palestinians such as that threatened by Trump? If so, could this lead Trump to take a harder hand with Israel?
Ultimately, the lives of the Palestinians currently being starved to death by Israel in Gaza may depend on the answers to these questions.
Charli Carpenter is a professor of political science and legal studies at University of Massachusetts-Amherst, specializing in human security and international law. She tweets at @charlicarpenter.
The post Global Outrage Isn't the Only Thing Driving Israel's Shift on Aid to Gaza appeared first on World Politics Review.
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