After two cataclysmic world wars, over fifty nations gathered in San Francisco in April 1945 to create a new international organization, known as “the United Nations.” After two months of hard work, the UN Charter was written, which specifically called for the formation of three main bodies: a General Assembly, a Security Council, and an Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). It was ECOSOC that mandated a committee to draft a document that would clearly define the notion of human rights, spell them out, and then serve as a basis for future work to establish a body of international law.
Three years later, the text of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was adopted by the General Assembly, with 48 members voting yes and none opposing it—though eight nations abstained. The very first paragraph of the UN Charter had been honored:
We the peoples of the United Nations determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom . . .
The concept of international law goes back to treaties between nations of the ancient Middle East, but as a legal system, the idea was first developed by the Romans. Still, the notion of a world system consisting of sovereign states working together on some common rules and norms didn’t appear until the European Renaissance. Yet these discussions were mostly limited to questions of war, non-belligerence, and peace. Today’s concept of international law, as seen from the above quote, begins with the idea of human rights, “the dignity and worth of the human person,” which extends to “nations large or small,” and covers questions of justice and mutual respect along with a global effort to expand human flourishing. This was the great push for international development when decolonization was happening in real time.
What is known as the International Bill of Human Rights comprises the 1948 UDHR and the two treaties or covenants adopted by the UN General Assembly in December 1966, the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Nations that have ratified these covenants are obliged to respect, protect, and fulfill these individual rights. Examples of negative rights would be that the State may not torture you or force a particular job on you; or stop people, businesses or political parties from using hate speech against you or your group. Examples of positive rights would be that the State holds private firms accountable to pay their employees a fair wage for their work and to pay men and women the same salary for the same work. Maybe one reason nations like the United States never ratified the ICESCR, is that it stipulates that the State “must provide budgets to make sure everyone can access medicines” and be able to afford decent housing.
The Swiss businessman Henri Dunant personally witnessed the carnage of the 1859 Battle of Solferino in Italy, which led him to found the International Red Cross and rally people behind a conference to draw up rules for modern war. This became the first Geneva Convention (1864), “for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded in Armies in the Field.” Another Geneva Convention in 1929 dealt with the treatment of prisoners of war, but all of this was updated and expanded in the 1949 Geneva Conventions ratified by 196 nations. It includes four conventions (treatment of the wounded; the victims of maritime warfare; treatment of prisoners; and for the first time, the treatment of civilians in wartime).
You may be wondering how all of this connects to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. After the May 14, 1948 Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel, a shaky coalition of fighters from Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon decided to invade. Deeply divided among themselves and distrustful of the Palestinian leadership, they were defeated by the Israelis in the matter of months. The resulting armistice agreements of 1949 allowed Israel to hold most of the British Mandate territory, while Egypt took over the administration of Gaza and Jordan that of the West Bank.
When hostilities heated up again with its Arab neighbors, Israel preempted their attack in June 1967 and won a decisive victory in 6 days (hence, “The Six-Day War” from their perspective). This time, Israel decided to hold on to Gaza and the West Bank and the small territory belonging to Syria, the Golan Heights. Then on November 22 of that year, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 242, calling on the Israelis to withdraw from these territories they now occupied militarily. Six years later, after the so-called Yom Kippur War (the Arabs attacked by surprise on the Jewish Day of Atonement, or Yom Kippur), which Israel nearly lost, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 338, calling Israel to withdraw from those territories a second time.
Significantly, Resolution 242 asserted “the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and the need to work for a just and lasting peace in which every State in the area can live in security.” Besides scores of resolutions over the years by the UN General Assembly and the UN Human Rights Council condemning Israel’s actions in the Occupied Territories (this was not possible in the UN Security Council, as the US routinely vetoes any resolution condemning Israel), the General Assembly adopted a resolution drafted by the Palestinians in September 2024, calling on Israel to end “its unlawful presence in Occupied Palestinian Territory” within 12 months. It passed with 124 votes in favor, 14 against, and 43 abstentions. This means almost two-thirds of the world’s nations favor a two-state solution to this ongoing crisis.
But it is not just continued military occupation that contravenes international law in the case of Israel (57 years so far), it’s also the transfer of its own population into that territory—this Amnesty International page provides a useful summary on the issue of Israeli settlements. In particular, it cites Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention: “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” It also prohibits the “individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory.” The list of human rights violations and actions by the Israeli military that routinely breach international law on this page is breathtaking. We lived as a family in the West Bank for three years in the 1990s and I can attest as an eye witness to many of these indignities done to Palestinians. And these have only intensified and multiplied over the years.
But the barbarity of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) in the current war in Gaza goes beyond anything all of us could have imagined. The atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7th, 2023, cannot justify in any way the collective punishment of a whole population by continuous bombing of civilian areas and dozens of forced transfers in various parts of Gaza since that day. Close to 90 percent of Gaza’s buildings have been reduced to rubble—rubble that covers up thousands and thousands of bodies yet uncounted.
But there is more. Prof. Boyd Van Dijk, an Oxford University professor and author of Preparing for War: The Making of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, wrote a piece in Foreign Affairs in April 2025, entitled “Israel, Gaza, and the Starvation Weapon.” Writing as I do at the end of July 2025, the international community as a whole is increasingly outraged by pictures of starving children and adults in Gaza. Most of the 140 who died of starvation so far (88 of those children), have died in the last two weeks. One third of the population is in the fifth stage of starvation, the last stage before death. How can one not conclude that this massive, unfolding wave of starvation is precisely the intent of the occupier? Even the American State Department has concluded that there is no validity in the Israeli allegation that Hamas is stealing the aid from its people.
Yet already in November 2024, the International Criminal Court (established by the 1998 Rome Statute) “issued international arrest warrants not only for the leaders of Hamas but also for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
Why? The prosecutor, Karim Khan, accuses them of a rarely invoked war crime, mentioned in the Rome Statute as including “intentionally using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare” and in particular, by “willfully impeding relief supplies.” The total blockade of Gaza since March, apart from just a trickle of aid at seemingly random points by an aid organization set up exclusively by Israel and the US, while IDF soldiers shoot at them (over a thousand killed so far), has led to massive starvation that worsens every day.
One small ray of hope today: because of the international outcry, the IDF says it will stop its attacks for several hours in different areas every day and let more international aid come in. But you cannot blame this Gazan journalist’s disbelief. Mohammed Mohisen posted this today: “Gaza is drowning in aid in the media. On the ground, starvation endures.” Why?
- Israel controls every step of the process for the food in these trucks to actually reach hungry people; the red tape is phenomenal and most of it rotted in the past few months, giving the Israelis the excuse to destroy it.
- Israel in most cases doesn’t allow any military protection of the aid convoys coming in. As Mohisen points out, “the trucks follow the same known paths familiar to every thief and gang in the area.” Today, he writes, “only a handful of trucks reached the storage centers. From the outside, people think the borders are open and Gaza is being fed. The starvation is as brutal as ever. Each truck is stolen with Israeli approval or collusion.” Read on, and especially about how some luxury fruit like mangoes and bananas are sold in the market for $100 a pound. All the prices are exorbitant, affordable only by the few rich and those in organized crime.
- This is all “a media trick,” while people cannot afford flour, sugar, milk and infant formula. Yet the doctors, the few journalists left (they have been Israeli targets from the start), and a few others are speaking out, taking pictures (like the one at the top) to expose Israeli propaganda for what it is.
In my next post, I will show that the dehumanizing of Palestinians and a violent campaign to terrorize them and drive them out formed an integral part of the Zionist plan, almost from the beginning. Just as I have written with candor in this blog about our American genocide of the native population in our country and our shameful treatment of the Africans we brutally enslaved and then oppressed through Jim Crow laws, and, despite the Civil Rights Act, continue to discriminate against by allowing a network of systemic racism to stand—I believe we must speak the truth if we want to see justice, peace and reconciliation to happen. And thankfully, many Israeli historians and activists today are speaking out.