Israel Cries “War Crimes” as a Hospital is Hit by Iran, While Sickeningly Ignoring its Genocidal 20-Month “War” on Gaza’s Hospitals

20.6.25

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Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, the largest hospital in the Gaza Strip, attacked by the Israeli military in November 2023, and, again in March 2024, when it was almost completely destroyed. Throughout the last 20 months, all of Gaza’s 36 hospitals have been attacked, often on numerous occasions, and many have been completely destroyed. At the time of writing, only one facility, Nasser Hospital, remains functional, although it is perilously short of medical supplies and fuel, as well as milk for the many premature babies its doctors are caring for. (Photo: Omar al-Qattaa).

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In Iranian attacks on Israel yesterday, as part of its ongoing retaliation for Israel’s initial unprovoked attacks a week ago and its repeatedly ongoing aggression, an Iranian missile reportedly struck the Soroka Hospital in Beersheba, the largest hospital in southern Israel.

Iranian sources claimed that, rather than striking the hospital, they had struck two military targets nearby, “the Israeli Defense Forces’ Command and Intelligence (IDF C4I) headquarters, as well as a military intelligence facility located in the Gav-Yam Technology Park.” The hospital is located between the two sites, and, according to Iran, “sustained minor damage from the blast shockwave.”

Israel disputed this, claiming that it was a direct attack, and footage showing a plume of smoke rising from the caved-in top of the building would seem to vindicate their analysis.

However, even if the hospital was directly hit, a third possibility has not been addressed. According to reports, a barrage of 20 to 30 Iranian missiles were aimed at the Beersheba area and other targets, so it may be that, while targeting and hitting the military targets, another missile inadvertently fell on the hospital.

According to Israeli reports, 40 people were wounded in the attacks, but as the Jerusalem Post conceded, although the hospital suffered “serious physical damage”, there were “no deaths or serious injuries.”

Nevertheless, Israel’s leadership responded with hysteria and astonishing hypocrisy. Visiting the hospital, Benjamin Netanyahu stated on X, “We are hitting with precision the targets of the nuclear and missile programs, and they’re hitting a hospital, where people can’t even get up and run away. They’re hitting not far from here — there’s a children and babies ward here.”

He added, “That’s the whole difference between a democracy taking lawful action to save itself from these murderers — and these murderers whose aim is to destroy every one of us. Each and every one of us, until the very last one among us. I think that tells you everything.”

Meanwhile, Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, stated, “Khamenei openly declares that he wants Israel destroyed — he personally gives the order to fire on hospitals. He considers the destruction of the state of Israel to be a goal. Such a man can no longer be allowed to exist.”

Katz also called the hospital attack “war crimes of the most serious kind — and Khamenei will be held accountable for his crimes.”

Attacking a hospital is indeed a war crime, but it is astonishing that, as we are encouraged, rightly, to condemn Iran if the attack on Soroka Hospital was deliberate, we are meant to ignore the irrefutable fact that, for the last 20 months in Gaza, Israel has been engaged in the deliberate targeting and destruction of the entire healthcare sector, including severe damage to, or the complete destruction of all of its 36 hospitals.

Israel’s relentless genocidal attacks on Gaza’s hospitals

The relentless and systematic attacks on Gaza’s hospitals and its entire healthcare system has been so severe that, in October last year, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel issued a devastating report, which I wrote about in detail here, in which it found that “Israel has perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system as part of a broader assault on Gaza, committing war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination with relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities”, as it described in an accompanying press release.

The report cited statistics from the World Health Organization (WHO), which noted that, “between 7 October 2023 and 30 July 2024, Israel carried out 498 attacks on health-care facilities in the Gaza Strip. A total of 747 persons were killed directly in those attacks and 969 others were injured, and 110 facilities were affected.”

The Commission also noted that the Israeli security forces “attacked these facilities in a similar manner, suggesting the existence of operational plans and procedures for attacking health-care facilities”, and demolished Israel’s claims that the “justification” for the attacks “was that Hamas was using hospitals for military purposes, including as command-and-control centres.” As the Commission noted, although “Israeli security forces asserted that over 85 per cent of major medical facilities in Gaza were used by Hamas for terror operations”, they “did not provide evidence to substantiate that claim.”

In addition, at least 1,400 healthcare workers have been killed by Israel, and 297 detained in Israel’s grotesque prisons for Palestinians, where at least three doctors have been killed — one, the renowned and respected orthopedic surgeon Dr. Adnan Al-Bursh, reportedly dying after being raped. The Guardian published a detailed profile of many of those detained in February this year, when, at the time, 162 medical staff were still detained, including Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, who held out for months at the end of last year, keeping the hospital operating, as the whole of northern Gaza was violently besieged.

Everyone, I’m sure, has their own particular horror stories of watching as Israeli forces committed the vilest atrocities against Gaza’s hospitals, their patients and their medical staff.

Prominent, for me, is the story of premature babies who died in November 2023 after the fuel for their incubators ran out because of the “complete siege” of all supplies into Gaza that Israel declared after the October 7 attacks, which I wrote about here and here. I also recall, horrifically, the decomposed premature babies found in in Al-Nasr Children’s Hospital, after the entire staff had been forced to leave, which were discovered during the brief week-long pause in Israel’s genocidal attacks at the end of November 2023.

A screenshot (details blurred) of Emirati TV channel Al-Mashhad’s coverage of the dead premature babies found in Al-Nasr Children’s Hospital in northern Gaza in November 2023.

Israel’s assault on Gaza’s hospitals has been so relentless that it’s difficult even to remember all the details of the 36 hospitals being attacked, which were shut down, which were destroyed, and which were bravely rebuilt, at least in part, only to be attacked again. The most prominent was Al-Shifa Hospital, the largest in Gaza, where the most outrageous lies about it being a Hamas “command and control centre” were told.

The hospital was violently besieged, invaded and occupied in November 2023, and again in April 2024, when Israeli forces only withdrew after having completely destroyed it, leaving in their wake mass graves, to be discovered later. In these graves, and in similar mass graves at Nasser Hospital, which was also attacked, “392 bodies, including those of women, children and the elderly”, were found, which “showed signs of torture and executions”, according to local spokespeople, who also noted that “Ten of the bodies were found with bound hands while others still had medical tubes attached to them, indicating they may have been buried alive.”

Nasser Hospital was also partly revived, and, after recent attacks on the handful of other revived hospitals, is now the only surviving functional hospital in the whole of the Gaza Strip, although it is not, of course, fundamentally safe, because nowhere in Gaza is.

The imminent collapse of Nasser Hospital, Gaza’s last surviving hospital

Recently, Nasser Hospital has been overwhelmed by the victims of Israel’s unprovoked attacks on civilians gathering for food deliveries, and, just two days ago, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), noted that, although the WHO had managed to deliver “a minimum amount of fuel” to the hospital, it was only “enough to sustain just five more days of operation”, and that, “Without additional fuel, services will begin shutting down.”

He also pointed out what that would mean, explaining that, on June 17, “the hospital received over 300 injured people, reportedly linked to two incidents near non-UN militarized food distribution sites where 75 people died, including 11 children. 590 patients are currently hospitalized — almost double Nasser’s capacity. and 51 patients are intubated. A WHO-supported tent, meant for pediatric and surgical care, now serves as an overcrowded trauma ward with 100 beds — despite being built for 88. The hospital is unable to increase its capacity due to lack of ventilators, monitors, beds and staff.”

In addition, two days ago, Dr. Ahmad Al-Farra, the director of the Tahrir Building for Pediatrics and Maternity, issued an ever starker warning from the hospital, stating that, “Within 48 hours, we may begin losing the lives of premature and newborn babies due to the depletion of their essential milk supply.” Another doctor, Dr. Mohammad Hamad, stated that hundreds of babies and children were affected, and that the milk “is unavailable in the hospital, in markets, or at institutions”, because of the renewed siege that Israel imposed three and a half months ago. The babies are also, of course, on the frontline of the hospital’s fuel crisis; if it runs out, their incubators will go dark, and their very survival will hang in the balance.

A premature baby in Nasser Hospital on June 19, 2025. (Photo: Doaa Albaz, Anadolu Agency).

At the time of writing, as Israel seeks the assassination of Ayatollah Khameini for an attack on one Israeli hospital, which may not even have been deliberate, and which led to no deaths, the catalog of horrors above is hopefully more than sufficient to demonstrate the unparalleled extent of Israel’s solipsistic depravity.

Israeli attacks on hospitals in Lebanon and Iran

As well as engaging in the most sickening war crimes and extermination in its still-ongoing “war” on Gaza’s hospitals, Israel has also repeatedly engaged in war crimes against Lebanon’s healthcare facilities, during its attacks after October 7, and particularly during its illegal invasion and an accompanying escalation of attacks last year. As Amnesty International reported in March, “According to the Lebanese Ministry of Health, between October 2023 and November 2024 the Israeli military attacked 67 hospitals, 56 primary health care centres, and 238 emergency medical teams, killing at least 222 medical and emergency relief workers.”

And finally, just days ago, on June 16 and 17, Israel targeted and bombed two hospitals in Iran, the Hakim Children’s Hospital in southern Tehran, and Farabi Hospital, in Kermanshah, in western Iran. As the Iranian commentator kev joon asked, “Does attacking medical facilities and children’s hospitals look familiar to anyone?”

NBC News was one of the few western outlets to report the attack on Farabi Hospital, which “badly damag[ed] its facilities, according to the Iranian Red Crescent.” In the video, an eye-witness reported that “a specialized ward and the hospital’s intensive care unit were severely damaged”, and, according to Iranian media, “several patients were injured in the attack.” The strike on the children’s hospital also “caused significant damage to the facilities and injured patients and staff”, according to Iranian officials, who “condemned these attacks as violations of international law, emphasizing that hospitals are protected sites under international humanitarian law.”

Protected, indeed — unless you’re the State of Israel, in which case there are no longer any “protected sites” or even “protected people” in any military context. We can all agree that what happened at Soroka Hospital was wrong, but if we don’t also condemn Israel for what it has done to hospital and healthcare facilities in Gaza for the last 20 months, on a scale unparalleled in history, it means that we willingly join Israel in the most depraved depths of civilian slaughter that it has carved out for itself, which have unmoored it permanently from our shared humanity, never to be forgiven.

* * * * *

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer (of an ongoing photo-journalism project, ‘The State of London’), film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers, whose music is available via Bandcamp). He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign (see the ongoing photo campaign here) and the successful We Stand With Shaker campaign of 2014-15, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo”, which you can watch on YouTube here.

In 2017, Andy became very involved in housing issues. He is the narrator of the documentary film, ‘Concrete Soldiers UK’, about the destruction of council estates, and the inspiring resistance of residents, he wrote a song ‘Grenfell’, in the aftermath of the entirely preventable fire in June 2017 that killed over 70 people, and, in 2018, he was part of the occupation of the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Deptford, to try to prevent its destruction — and that of 16 structurally sound council flats next door — by Lewisham Council and Peabody.

Since 2019, Andy has become increasingly involved in environmental activism, recognizing that climate change poses an unprecedented threat to life on earth, and that the window for change — requiring a severe reduction in the emission of all greenhouse gases, and the dismantling of our suicidal global capitalist system — is rapidly shrinking, as tipping points are reached that are occurring much quicker than even pessimistic climate scientists expected. You can read his articles about the climate crisis here. He has also, since, October 2023, been sickened and appalled by Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and you can read his detailed coverage here.

To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s new Substack account, set up in November 2024, where he’ll be sending out a weekly newsletter, or his RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter and YouTube. Also see the six-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, The Complete Guantánamo Files, the definitive Guantánamo habeas list, and the full military commissions list.

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24 Responses

  1. Andy Worthington says...

    When I posted this on Facebook, I wrote:

    When an Israeli hospital was struck by a missile yesterday — whether deliberately or not is difficult to ascertain — it nevertheless prompted a wave of hysteria and unparalleled hypocrisy in Israel. Even though no one was killed in the attack, Netanyahu spoke about how Iran’s aim was “to destroy every one of us”, and defense minister Israel Katz said that Ayatollah Khameini “can no longer be allowed to exist”, and called the hospital attack “war crimes.”

    Attacking a hospital is indeed a war crime, but nowhere in Israel’s response to the attack was there even the slightest scintilla of recognition that, if the attack on the Soroka Hospital was a war crime, Israel’s war crimes in relation to hospitals in Gaza are of a magnitude that is so much greater that it is almost incalculable.

    Last October, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory found that “Israel has perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system as part of a broader assault on Gaza, committing war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination with relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities.”

    Over the last 20 months, Israel has attacked all 36 hospitals in Gaza, often repeatedly, destroying many, and decommissioning all but one, Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, which is now the last surviving hospital for 2 million people, although it too is on the verge of collapse.

    As Israeli officials were whining, the WHO warned that, even as Nasser Hospital is overwhelmed with casualties from the ongoing aid massacres, fuel will run out within the next few days, with premature babies on incubators particularly vulnerable, not only because of the need for fuel for their incubators, but also because the hospital is running out of milk for them because of Israel’s ongoing siege.

    As I also note, Israel has also attacked hospitals and healthcare facilities in Lebanon, and, in the last week, has also attacked two hospitals in Iran.

  2. Andy Worthington says...

    Ward Reilly wrote:

    I mean, we are talking about over 2000 kilometers between the 2 countries. Not too easy to be precise at that range.

  3. Andy Worthington says...

    There’s obviously a certain truth to that assessment, Ward, although Israel certainly possesses missiles that are capable of devastating precision, as revealed in this photo of one of their opening attacks on Iran, when they specifically targeted and killed scientists and Iranian officials. As commentators noted immediately, however, if they were capable of this in Iran, why not in Gaza, to which the answer, of course, is that the attacks on Gaza have almost always been the opposite of targeted attacks, involving the destruction of entire apartment blocks if a suspected Hamas operative lived there. And as has also been revealed, in Gaza Israel has also made extensive use of imprecise, unguided “dumb bombs” for the same reason – to kill as many civilians as possible: https://edition.cnn.com/2023/12/13/politics/intelligence-assessment-dumb-bombs-israel-gaza

  4. Andy Worthington says...

    Ward Reilly wrote:

    Well, for what it’s worth, Andy, Israel had smuggled their drones and missiles into Iran, so they had “close range” targeting when they started bombing innocent Iran.

  5. Andy Worthington says...

    Ah yes, that’s a good point, Ward. I’d seen reference to that, but I’d overlooked it. https://www.arabnews.com/node/2604799/middle-east

  6. Andy Worthington says...

    Sihaam Khan wrote:

    It is also absurd that Israel now turns to the UN to complain that Iran bombed a hospital, decrying breach of international law. This is same UN that they have basically ignored every which way to Sunday since forever.

  7. Andy Worthington says...

    Yes, exactly, Sihaam. Throughout almost the whole of the UN’s history, Israel has been its dark mirror, undermining, with US support, the very heart of its foundational principles.

  8. Andy Worthington says...

    Don Anderson wrote:

    😠😡🤬Hypocrisy in action … Israel has been doing this to Palestinian hospitals and clinics for years, along with food distribution centers, etc.
    Israel’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Gideon Sa’ar said that Iran’s missile strike, which damaged Soroka Hospital in in Be’er Sheva, was “clearly a war crime.” (Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs)

  9. Andy Worthington says...

    Yes, both Gideon Sa’ar and Israel Katz had the nerve to refer to war crimes, Don, as though that can only ever apply to someone else, and never Israel.

    As for hospital attacks in Gaza, you’re absolutely correct to note that Israel’s crimes preceded Oct. 7, although as with every aspect of the last 20 months, the scale of destruction since Oct. 7 almost defies belief.

    As the WHO explained, and as was noted by the UN in its report last October, “between 7 October 2023 and 30 July 2024, Israel carried out 498 attacks on health-care facilities in the Gaza Strip. A total of 747 persons were killed directly in those attacks and 969 others were injured, and 110 facilities were affected.”

    And that was before the implementation of the “General’s Plan” in northern Gaza, when all the hospitals in the north were attacked and decommissioned, ending with Kamal Adwan (and the surrender of Dr. Hussam Abu Sufiya), as well as the further destruction of hospitals over the last three months.

  10. Andy Worthington says...

    Melissa Welch wrote:

    Bullying people and then acting like a victim seems to have been their go-to strategy for years. It’s more than gross.

  11. Andy Worthington says...

    As the great anti-Zionist American Jewish lawyer Stanley Cohen has stated, Melissa:
    https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10163659076578804&set=p.10163659076578804&type=3

  12. Andy Worthington says...

    أمير الجزائري wrote:

    Hypocrisy is the essence of them drinking from the same cup that the people of Gaza drank from, even if it is not as bitter.

  13. Andy Worthington says...

    Thank you for your comment أمير الجزائري . A very poetic analysis.

  14. Andy Worthington says...

    This is significant. On X, the anti-Zionist Israeli activist B.M. reports that Soroka Hospital, the hospital hit yesterday in Israel by an Iranian missile, “has a whole floor which is an actual military base”, run by the IDF and only for soldiers: https://x.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1936139720381104493

  15. Andy Worthington says...

    The latest heartbreaking report from Dr. Ezzideen in Gaza, still the most important writer in the world right now:

    Yesterday, the last warning came from Nasser Hospital: “In 24 hours, there will be no formula left for premature infants.” Not a metaphor. Not exaggeration. A clinical fact. And the response? Silence. Not one truck. Not one crate. Just the silence of steel-hearted men, satisfied with the mathematics of infant death.

    That evening, a mother was brought to the clinic. Thirty-three years old. Unconscious. Skin cold. Breath shallow. A body so thin I could see the outline of her bones as I placed the IV. Her baby still clung to her, unaware that the breast it suckled had nothing left to give but the scent of death.

    Diagnosis? Dehydration. Acute malnutrition. But in truth, she suffers from something medicine cannot cure: abandonment.

    We administered fluids, stabilized her vitals. On paper, it will look like we helped her. We did not. We postponed the inevitable. She will return, again and again, until she dies or the world wakes up. And I am not sure which will come first.

    My colleague, still untouched by this hell, whispered that she should stop breastfeeding. “She must regain her strength,” he said. I did not answer. What could I say? That formula is no longer a product here, but a dream? That a can of powdered milk now costs more than a month’s worth of food, if there were food?

    She cannot buy bread. She cannot buy air. And yet we speak to her as if she had choices. This is the cruelty of war: not just the bombs, but the absurdity of giving advice to the damned.

    When she left, I saw her husband standing outside. He looked at me with the eyes of a man who has already buried too much. I gave him the money in my pocket. It will not save her. It might buy two loaves of bread. It might buy her three more days of life.

    But she will return. And when she does, we will treat her again with our empty hands, with our useless medicine, and our unbearable guilt.

    This is not medicine. This is triage in a mass grave that has not been dug yet.

    Do not mistake this for a humanitarian emergency.
    This is not a famine. It is a siege.
    It is not collapse. It is calculation.
    It is not neglect. It is intent.

    And intent, cold and deliberate, makes it a crime.

    The women who collapse in my arms are not statistics. They are executions carried out in slow motion.

    And what is the world’s role?
    It does not pull the trigger. It simply watches the gun fire, again and again, and calls it “complicated.”

    But I will tell you what is simple:
    Hunger kills. Thirst kills. Silence kills.

    And here, in Gaza, all three work together with perfect efficiency.

    https://x.com/ezzingaza/status/1936158826765353443

  16. Andy Worthington says...

    David Barrows wrote:

    Israel is a twisted hypocrite. It has attacked if not destroyed all 36 hospitals in Gaza and denied them medicine, antibiotics, and anaesthesia.

  17. Andy Worthington says...

    Yes, absolutely, David – hence my outrage. I’m not sure it’s possible to even conceive of greater self-absorbed and self-righteous hypocrisy, and especially as Nasser Hospital, the only functioning hospital left in Gaza, is running out of fuel and baby formula – a death sentence, it would seem, for its surviving premature babies, as well as numerous other patients.

    And still no world leader anywhere does anything, and the mainstream media don’t care.

  18. Andy Worthington says...

    A troubling report that Israel has just directly attacked Nasser Hospital, the last still-functioning hospital in Gaza, with strikes hitting near the emergency room. “No corporate media reports or outrage over this strike, nor for the bombing of 36 hospitals in Gaza”, as Robert Inlakesh says.
    https://x.com/falasteen47/status/1936166901266489821

  19. Andy Worthington says...

    Rebecca Fusco wrote:

    what nerve …

  20. Andy Worthington says...

    Yes, Israel’s leaders – and its right-wing media channels – live in another world, Rebecca. Imagine lacking the awareness to recognize that they have done anything wrong in Gaza, to insist, in their own concocted narrative, that everything they have been doing has been to combat Hamas, and that there has been very little collateral damage.

    I was glad to see that Netanyahu is so detached from the lives of ordinary Israelis that he was widely criticized within Israel when he suggested, after the hospital bombing, that he too had “suffered”, because his son’s wedding had had to be postponed.

    Anat Angrest, whose son Matan is a hostage in Gaza, observed that the suffering “didn’t go unnoticed by my family either.” Summoning up her son’s situation, she said “I have been in the hellish dungeons of Gaza for 622 days now.”

    Meanwhile, Knesset member Gilad Kariv called Netanyahu a “borderless narcissist.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/19/netanyahu-son-wedding-comments-israel-backlash

  21. Andy Worthington says...

    Aadila Boda wrote:

    I can’t fathom their response. No self awareness or just plain depraved. 0 sympathy.

  22. Andy Worthington says...

    It’s revealing, Aadila, in that it shows so explicitly how they not only regard all Palestinians as sub-human; it is almost as though they don’t even exist. And behind it all, of course, if challenged, are their relentless lies about how all hospitals are terrorist command centers, and how therefore everyone is a legitimate target. If they aren’t one day held accountable for this, it really will mean that no one anywhere is safe if any unprincipled government decides to label them a “terrorist.”

  23. Andy Worthington says...

    Craig Mankin wrote:

    Such utterly hypocritical and despicable comments by these leaders in Israel, who believe they can commit genocide against the “subhuman” (Israel’s longstanding characterization of the Palestinians) men, women, and children of Gaza for 21 months, with utter impunity. In a just world, Israel should be hauled before the International Criminal Court and charged with horrendous war crimes against the Geneva Convention, and against International Humanitarian Law. But, SURPRISE! Israel is not a member of the ICC, nor did it sign the Rome Statute (the treaty that established the ICC). Therefore, in effect, the ICC has no control or jurisdiction over Israel. Absolutely sickening. Israel is absolutely a rogue state among the nation-states of the world.

  24. Andy Worthington says...

    Good to hear from you, Craig. It is indeed another startling example of how Israel’s leaders – and far too many of the Israeli people, sadly – regard the Palestinians as “sub-human” – “untermenschen”, in the Nazis’ words.

    Regarding the ICC, I’d suggest that the biggest problem is the US’s refusal to recognize the Court, its aggressive efforts to sanction and punish its judiciary, and its refusal to ban Netanyahu and Gallant from visiting the US.

    Elsewhere, the arrest warrants have had an impact, despite Hungary welcoming Netanyahu and withdrawing from the Rome Statute, and despite other violations of the statute by member states – I’m thinking about certain European countries allowing Netanyahu’s flights to pass through their airspace, and, if the accounts are correct, Greece welcoming Netanyahu on a brief visit last week when the Iranian counter-strikes began.

    In many other countries, however – and I include the UK in this – I think it’s clear that Netanyahu and Gallant will never be allowed to visit. It may not particularly bother them, just as it didn’t particularly bother George W. Bush that he couldn’t travel freely after he narrowly avoided being arrested under the Torture Convention when he was going to visit Switzerland in 2011, but it is an actual blow to their impunity, and it’s telling that all the countries obeying their obligations under the Rome Stature are also aware that they will explicitly be held complicit if, as states, they treat these two men as anything other than pariahs and fugitives from the law.

    A small victory.

    For the largely forgotten George W. Bush story, see: https://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2011/02/15/george-w-bush-war-criminal-is-not-welcome-in-europe/
    and: https://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2011/02/19/the-indictment-for-torture-filed-against-george-w-bush-part-one-the-facts/

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