electronicintifada.net

“Forgive me, mother, this is the path I chose – to help people.”

These were among the last words of Palestinian emergency response medic Rifaat Radwan recorded in the moments before he was recently killed, along with 14 of his colleagues, by Israeli troops in Gaza.

This is another atrocity committed by the Israeli military in the Palestinian territory since October 2023.

UN agencies, human rights and humanitarian organizations have released numerous reports in the past 19 months warning of the worsening humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip. However, they have mostly been ignored by the international community as Israel continues bombing and preventing essential assistance from reaching the besieged Palestinian population.

Israel’s actions have threatened the foundations of international humanitarian law.

For more than 30 years, Western donor nations have devoted hundreds of millions of dollars to integrate the principles of human rights and international law into educational training programs and government institutions across the Middle East. They have insisted on their implementation and incorporation into local laws.

In Gaza, however, Western policymakers have continued to ignore Israel’s blatant disregard for international law and violations of Palestinian human rights.

Ignoring Netanyahu warrant

Like the Biden administration, the Trump White House is ignoring the arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued by the International Criminal Court in November 2024. US President Donald Trump also sanctioned the ICC and lead prosecutor Karim Khan over the warrant.

America’s continued support for Israel’s genocide and hostility toward the ICC has further eroded international law.

The past 19 months of genocide have not only demonstrated the double standard imposed on Palestinians in Gaza but also that there is no standard at all.

This was documented by Amnesty International in its December 2024 report You Feel Like You Are Subhuman. Amnesty detailed the genocidal acts committed by Israel in Gaza prohibited under the Genocide Convention.

These acts were deliberately intended to bring about the total destruction of Palestinian life in Gaza. They were accompanied by dozens of statements by Israeli officials that dehumanized Palestinians.

The 1949 Geneva Conventions and their two additional protocols were intended to protect civilians in times of war. They afforded a special status to civil defense and relief teams while carrying out their humanitarian duties as well as to medical personnel, the wounded and populations sheltered by international humanitarian organizations.

Instead, Israel has shredded the applicability of the conventions toward Palestinians in Gaza. The Israelis have insisted, with support from the Biden and Trump administrations, that accountability lies with the Palestinians.

Aid workers’ peril

As of the end of March, more than 400 humanitarian and relief workers have been killed in Gaza. More than half were staff members with the UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA).

Israel has also killed more than 742 Palestinians in UNRWA shelters. It has also destroyed over 310 facilities to date, even though they are protected under the Geneva Conventions.

Israel keeps claiming that these were acts of “self-defense” and the United States and its European allies agree.

In the recent case of the killing of 15 Palestine Red Crescent Society personnel, the Trump administration insisted that Hamas was at fault. This assertion was made even though the men were killed by Israeli forces after they responded to a call to evacuate the wounded and injured from Rafah.

The workers were executed with their feet bound and buried, along with their vehicles, in the sand. In the recovered video from Rifaat Radwan’s phone, the vehicles were clearly marked as ambulances, and their emergency lights were active.

Israel abducted one of the medics, Asaad al-Nsasrah, whose current status is unknown.

This is not the first case of Israel deliberately targeting humanitarian workers. In January 2024, Israel killed two paramedics who attempted to rescue 6-year-old Hind Rajab.

Although the case received widespread attention because Hind’s tearful phone call to emergency services and final moments were circulated on social media and in the mainstream press, it was not an isolated incident.

Four months later, Israel’s military killed seven aid workers from the World Central Kitchen. Although there was negative media coverage at the time, Israel’s assault continued, and more medical and humanitarian aid workers were killed, including workers from Doctors Without Borders.

These are just the most prominent cases because they received media attention; other paramedics and medical staff have been killed while transporting or treating patients. Israel has treated these humanitarian organizations as legitimate military targets as Daphné Charlotte points out in the online magazine of the Brussels-based Royal Institute for International Relations.

Gaza represents the limits of international humanitarian law as well as its legitimacy. Although protections for civilians and humanitarian workers in wartime are essential, they are only selectively applied.

Gaza’s mass graves are evidence of the world’s failure to apply its own standards. Netanyahu’s visits to world capitals in defiance of an ICC arrest warrant demonstrate that there is no standard at all.

The genocide in Gaza has revealed how hollow the West’s claims of morality and the sanctity of the rule of law truly are.

And we should never allow its leaders to lecture us again.