A Palestinian girl struggles to obtain donated food at a community kitchen in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, May 9, 2025
ANSELM ELDERGILL draws attention to a legal case on Tuesday in which a human rights group is challenging the government’s decision to allow the sale of weapons used against Palestinians
A FOUR-DAY High Court hearing begins on Tuesday in which Al-Haq, a Palestinian human rights organisation, is challenging the government’s decision to continue granting licences to sell F-35 fighter jet components and other weapons to Israel. Oxfam, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have intervened in the case.
Public statements by Israeli officials make it clear that F-35s are regularly used in military attacks on Gaza. The British government accepts there is a “clear risk that the items might be used to commit or facilitate serious violations of international law.” It has also admitted that Israel is not committed to complying with international humanitarian law. However, it says that stopping the F-35 licences would “cause disruption to the global supply chain,” which will have a profound impact on international peace and security.
Al-Haq considers that this is an extraordinary position to take. According to its general director, “Gaza is destroyed, it is unliveable. Palestinians in Gaza have been killed and erased by weapons whose components are supplied to Israel by the British government, acting in full knowledge of the consequences.”
The Arms Trade Treaty of 2014 regulates the international trade in conventional arms. Authorising the export of weapons and related items is prohibited if a government knows that the arms or items would be used in the commission of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 or attacks on civilian objects or protected civilians.
UK Labour Party government Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are participants and complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide providing Israel with army and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.UK Labour Party Shadow Foreign Secretary repeatedly heckled at a speech to the Fabian Society over his and the Labour Party’s support for and complicity in Israel’s genocide of Gaza.Keir Starmer wanted for Genocide and war crimes
Original article by Middle East Monitor republished under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Wounded Palestinian kids receives medical attention at Nasser Medical Complex after an Israeli airstrike struck a residential home in the Khan Yunis refugee camp in southern Gaza on April 19, 2025 [Hani Alshaer/Anadolu Agency]
Nearly 600 children have been killed in Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip since last month, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said on Monday, Anadolu reported.
Citing figures released by the UN children’s agency (UNICEF), UNRWA said that over 1,600 other children have also been injured since Israel resumed its assaults on 18 March.
“The humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip is now likely at its worst point since October 2023,” it added.
The Israeli army resumed its deadly offensive on the Gaza Strip on 18 March and has since killed 1,864 people and injured nearly 4,900 others despite a ceasefire and prisoner exchange agreement that took hold in January.
More than 51,200 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza in a brutal Israeli onslaught since October 2023, most of them women and children.
Last November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave.
Original article by Middle East Monitor republished under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Mourners gather around the bodies of 8 Red Crescent emergency responders, recovered in Rafah a week after an Israeli attack, as they are transported for burial from a hospital in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip, March 31, 2025
The massacre of Red Crescent and civil defence aid workers has elicited little coverage and no condemnation by major powers — this is the age of lawlessness, warns JOE GILL
IT IS difficult to be shocked after 18 months of Israel’s genocidal onslaught on Gaza.
Brazen crimes against humanity have become the norm. World powers do nothing in response. At best, they put out weak statements of concern. Now the US does not even bother with that. It is fully on board with genocide.
Israel and the US are planning the violent ethnic cleansing of Gaza, knowing full well that no-one will stop them. The International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court are sitting on their hands, despite what appeared to be significant rulings last year on Israeli war crimes by the ICC, and on the “plausible risk” of genocide by the ICJ.
As Israeli anti-zionist commentator Alon Mizrahi wrote this week:
“As Israel and the US announce and begin to enact plans to ethnically cleanse Gaza of Palestinians, let’s remember that the International Court of Justice has not even convened to discuss the genocide since May 24 2024, when it was using very blurry language about the planned Rafah action. Tens of thousands have been exterminated since then, and hundreds of thousands have been injured. Babies starved and froze to death, and thousands of children lost limbs. Not a word from the ICJ.
“Zionism and US imperialism have rendered international law null and void. Everyone is allowed to do as they please to anyone. The post-World War II masquerade is truly over.”
Under the Joe Biden administration, secretary of state Antony Blinken and the smirking US spokesperson Matt Miller would make performative statements about “concern” over the killing of Palestinians (they would never use a word as clear as “killing,” always preferring the perpetrator-free “deaths”).
Today, under the Donald Trump regime, the mask of respect for the rituals of international diplomacy has been thrown aside. This is the law of the jungle, and the winner is the government that uses superior force to seize what they believe is theirs, and to silence and destroy those who stand in their way.
In the aftermath of the Iraq war, several attempts were made to establish an inquiry surrounding the conduct of British military operations. Published in 2016, the Chilcot inquiry found serious failings in the British government, which ignored the warnings of millions of ordinary people over its disastrous decision to go to war.
History is repeating itself. Today, the death toll in Gaza has reportedly exceeded 61,000. Two Israeli officials are wanted by the international criminal court for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Britain has played a highly influential role in Israel’s military operations, including the sale of weapons, the supply of intelligence and the use of Royal Air Force bases in Cyprus.
Transparency and accountability are cornerstones of democracy. Therefore we are demanding an independent, public inquiry into the UK’s involvement in Israel’s military assault in Gaza. This inquiry should establish exactly what decisions have been taken, how they have been made and what consequences they have had. Any meaningful inquiry would require the full cooperation of ministers involved in decision-making processes since October 2023.
Many people believe that the government has taken decisions that have implicated officials in the gravest breaches of international law. These charges will not go away until there is an inquiry with the legal power to establish the truth.
Jeremy CorbynIndependent Alliance, Brendan O’Hara Middle East spokesperson, Scottish National party, Carla Denyer Co-leader, Green party, Brian LeishmanScottish Labour, Diane AbbottLabour, Zarah SultanaIndependent, Richard Burgon Labour
UK Foreign Minister David Lammy confirms that UK government and military are active participants in Israel’s genocides and that the F-35 parts that they suspended from supplying to Israel are instead simply diverted via the United States. He says see https://youtu.be/QILgUHrdWRE
Protesters demonstrate demanding justice for drug war victims, after the arrest of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte, in Quezon City on March 11, 2025. (Photo: Earvin Perias / AFP)
“Duterte’s arrest on an ICC warrant… shows that suspected perpetrators of the worst crimes, including government leaders, can and will face justice,” said one human rights advocate.
On Tuesday, former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte was arrested by local authorities at Manila’s international airport after the International Criminal Court issued a warrant accusing him of crimes against humanity. News of his arrest prompted some observers to urge the arrest of another public figure who faces ICC charges: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Duterte case will pose a test for the court, according to The New York Times. In the past six months, the ICC has issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu, former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and Min Aung Hlaing, the head of the military junta in Myanmar.
Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, wrote “Perhaps Netanyahu and Gallant will be next…” in response to the news. Danny Shaw, a professor at City University of New York, posted a video of Duterte’s arrest and wrote: “Why don’t they arrest Netanyahu?”
Wim Zwijnenburg, a project leader at the Dutch peace organization PAX, wrote, “now do Netanyahu.”
On Tuesday night, Duterte was placed on a plane that was bound for The Hague, where the court is headquartered, per the Times, citing two people with knowledge of the matter.
The ICC has accused Duterte of crimes against humanity during his time as president and when he was the mayor of the city of Davao. During his tenure as president, from 2016 to 2022, Duterte’s security forces carried out thousands of killings that his government cast as drug-related cases. In a 2017 report, Human Rights Watch described his “war on drugs” as effectively “a campaign of extrajudicial execution in impoverished areas of Manila and other urban areas.” Philippine National Police officers and unidentified “vigilantes” killed over 7,000 people between the start of his term and the release of that Human Rights Watch report, according to the group.
In 2017, Duterte earned praise from U.S. President Donald Trump, who told him in a phone call that he was doing “an unbelievable job on the drug problem,” according to reporting at the time.
“Duterte’s arrest on an ICC warrant is a hopeful sign for victims in the Philippines and beyond. It shows that suspected perpetrators of the worst crimes, including government leaders, can and will face justice, wherever they are in the world,” said Agnes Callamard, secretary general of the human rights group Amnesty International, in a statement Tuesday. “At a time when too many governments renege on their ICC obligations while others attack or sanction international courts, Duterte’s arrest is a huge moment for the power of international law.”
Duterte’s former chief legal counsel and presidential spokesperson, Salvador Panelo, said that the “ICC has no jurisdiction in the Philippines,” in part because “the country withdrew as an ICC member state in 2018,” according to a post on social media.
According to the Times, the court says the case only considers alleged crimes from the time when the country was still part of the court.
According to a copy of he warrant, which was obtained by the Times, three judges of the ICC said they believed Duterte “was responsible for the drug war killings that took place when he was president and mayor of Davao, and that there were reasonable grounds to believe that these attacks were ‘both widespread and systematic.'”
The government itself, in 2022, said that over 6,200 “drug suspects” were killed during Duterte’s war on drugs starting in 2016. Rights groups put the total number of people who died much higher, in the tens of thousands, according to PBS.
A Palestinian girl struggles to obtain donated food at a community kitchen in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, May 9, 2025
