For many years, Gaza was an open prison housing two million people, including a high percentage of children, but now it has become rubble and devastation, under its rubble lies international humanitarian law, which has become a metaphor for stripping the world of its humanity, in what is considered a huge step backwards for this right that has been established. Through pain since the end of the nineteenth century.
From this introduction, lawyer William Bourdon started – in an article in Liberation newspaper – in which he considered that the process of stripping the victims of war crimes and crimes against humanity of their humanity, which had been going on for decades, accelerated to reach its peak after the seventh of October, with the start of the Israeli war. On Gaza.
Although international humanitarian law was established to confront the atrocities of mass crimes, it remained unable to stop the crimes committed in the 20th century, nor did it prevent, despite its strengthening by the four Geneva Conventions, the crimes of colonialism or others, because the mockery of political leaders and the madness of great tyrants made it a piece of paper they loved to sign. Then they would trample her.
Double standards
The lawyer pointed out that the world rejoiced in the establishment of the first two tribunals designated for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and lived a moment full of hope with the establishment of the International Criminal Court, and considered it the beginning of a new era that marks the end of impunity for the greatest blood criminals.
However, the work of this new globalized justice seemed modest and mysterious – according to the writer – because this tool against tyranny and barbarism is despised and sabotaged by the powerful of the world who bear the greatest amount of bloodshed, such as the Americans, Russians and Chinese, all of whom are members of the United Nations Security Council.
Over the course of 20 years, the International Criminal Court has focused on crimes committed in Africa, and more recently on those crimes committed by Russia in Ukraine, which has reinforced in the consciences of the citizens of the Far South the feeling of a continuing double standard, especially with the waiting and waiting since the opening of a preliminary investigation in 2021 into the crimes. Committed by Israel and Palestine, according to the writer.
In this context, the writer referred to the legislation adopted by the administration of former US President George W. Bush after the events of September 11, 2001, to free itself from the global legal heritage, which caused the gradual erosion of the principles that protect human dignity as well as public freedoms, in the name of the war on Terrorism, which Europe was not spared from adopting.
Hypocrisy and duplicity
The “War on Terror” has opened an unlimited field of political exploitation, facilitated the criminalization of dissenting voices, and has become an indisputable excuse for states to liberate themselves from the global legal heritage.
Thus, international law fell under the rubble of Gaza and is in pain – as the lawyer says – after the “animalization” of the civilian population in the Gaza Strip by one of Benjamin Netanyahu’s ministers reached the peak of depriving the population of their humanity in order to legitimize beating or killing them.
On this basis, the dignity that constitutes the essence and universality of the human being is destroyed without affecting those who should be its guardians, as Israel considers that when the law protects others, it is an obstacle to what it wants, a position that Washington and Paris ratified before qualifying it by calling for not targeting Civilians.
The writer concluded that the hypocrisy and duplicity of the leaders and their merchant friends hastened the law’s end, and that Western countries, by encouraging Israel in the battle that they present as “civilized,” have harmed the common values of humanity.
