The assault on an aid flotilla headed for Gaza broke all kinds of laws, but then again, laws have never stopped Israel
The long-anticipated, yet unequivocally criminal, event has recurred: Israel’s navy forcibly intercepted the Gaza-bound Sumud Flotilla, stopping nearly 50 boats and, in essence, abducting hundreds of their crews and passengers.
—laws which, of course, are never truly enforced against Israel—everything is exceedingly clear: The Sumud Flotilla was a volunteer initiative aimed at delivering humanitarian aid to Gaza, a region that has been subjected to Israeli genocide for nearly two years. .
But then what else is to be expected from what is depicted as the world’s most aggressive rogue state, a nation not “only” perpetrating genocide, but also waging regional wars of aggression and executing terrorist assassination campaigns in full global view? And Israel, predictably, has a well-established history of this type of piracy, having halted several attempts to transport aid by sea since 2010, .
Stopping the Sumud Flotilla was not merely criminal but criminal in every aspect lawyers could possibly conceive, a quintessential display of Israeli legal nihilism: Israel attacked the flotilla’s ships in international waters where it holds no jurisdiction. Even if the vessels had approached closer to the Gaza coast, they would, incidentally, still not have entered any Israeli territorial waters because no such waters exist off Gaza, over which Israel possesses no sovereignty, as explicitly confirmed by the International Court of Justice last year. What actually lies off the coast of Gaza are Palestinian territorial waters.
The blockade of Gaza, which has persisted not “merely” for the duration of the current high-intensity genocide and ethnic cleansing campaign but for almost two decades now, is illegal. Because the blockade has been in place for such an extended period, Israel is simply fabricating—surprise, surprise—when it asserts that it is a short-term measure covered by the , which outline “International Law Applicable to Armed Conflicts at Sea.” And even if those rules applied, under them as well, Israel would be obliged to allow humanitarian aid to pass through.
Finally, as Israel has attacked ships and citizens belonging to over 40 countries, Israel has committed aggression under international law against all of them and, a less obvious but factual point, also crimes under each of these countries’ domestic laws, as these laws apply on board those ships.
So much for the law, but then again, Israel is de facto beyond and above the law. This much has been known for a long time. For Israel, lawlessness and impunity are not privileges but vital necessities.
The reason it has been able to operate in this manner is also widely known: It is protected and, particularly, by the US. The latter is Israel’s single worst co-perpetrator, facilitating its crimes like no other state on Earth. Soon, for instance, against Iran will likely be followed by a second, even more severe assault.
In this respect, what transpired with the Sumud Flotilla served as a test: Evidently, recent actions by various Western governments, including the UK, France, and Australia, to “recognize”— whether genuinely or superficially—a Palestinian state and offer some cautious rhetorical criticism of Israel make no difference to their absolute practical deference to both Israel and its supporters in the US.
What briefly seemed like a glimmer of hope, the appearance of warships from various nations seemingly escorting the humanitarian flotilla, has been exposed as just another humiliation: the escort abandoned their charges well in time to grant Israel unhindered access.
The same Western leaders responsible for this cowardly retreat ceaselessly prevaricate about the necessity not to “reward the aggressor,” while simultaneously intensifying war hysteria against Russia, as they have been vigorously doing again recently, from to to discussions of .
How about, for once, not rewarding the genocider for a change? But that’s difficult, isn’t it? Given that all Western governments are accomplices of Israel.
The Sumud Flotilla will not be the last attempt to breach both Israel’s genocidal blockade and its aura of impunity. There is hope, because even in NATO-EU Europe and the US, awareness is growing about what Israel truly is and what it truly does: a settler-colonial apartheid state that will not cease committing genocide and ethnic cleansing. Israel’s systematic campaigns of propaganda and information warfare are escalating in response, as the TikTok case has just illustrated. But even Israel and its American allies cannot reverse history and the experience that the whole world has undergone. The Gaza Genocide is an established fact. It will not be forgotten. The resistance to Israel will never cease.