Israel Is Brazenly Committing International Criminal Offences, And The West is Complicit

In the final days of last week, apartheid Israel cut the internet and all communications in the Gaza Strip, where it’s perpetrating a 20-month-long extermination program against the Palestinian civilians living in the region, while it too laid siege to the West Bank, before the Zionist state went on to perpetrate a massive aerial attack upon the Islamic Republic of Iran.

All of these acts are highly illegal, even though mainstream media reports often say otherwise.

Israel attacked Iran early morning on 13 June 2025. The Zionist nation claimed its attack was preemptive, based on the claims that Tehran was about to build a nuclear bomb, which was a threat to Israel. And even if this excuse was true, it still wouldn’t add up, because it’s an open secret that Israel has an illegal nuclear program of its own, and it’s in possession of an estimated 90 nuclear warheads.

In response to a question from ABC Insiders host David Speers regarding whether what Israel had “done was justified and legal”, Australian foreign affairs minister Penny Wong replied, “Well, Israel has a right to self-defence, it does have a right to self-defence.”

And a collective gasp of shock on hearing the minister raise this tired old excuse about Israel was audible right across the continent.

The hard-boiled truth regarding all of Israel’s military actions since October 2023 is that they’ve all been illegal. Indeed, the rogue state has been operating outside of the precepts of international law since its inception in 1948. Yet, the unbridled nature of Israeli state actions over the last 20 months has served to tear down the edifice of international law with last Friday’s attack likely the final nail.

The illegal nature of Israel’s acts remain concealed to many, however, as there’s an unofficial prohibition that prevents Australian major party politicians and the mainstream press from mentioning that Israel, an allied nation, is completely disregarding the law and perpetrating multiple illegal acts, which means, in the case of some these crimes, these local entities are complicit.

An illegal attack on a foreign nation

After launching the airstrike, PM Benjamin Netanyahu announced that this “preemptive” attack was based on Iran posing “a clear and present danger to Israel’s very survival”, via its having produced enriched uranium, which could be used to make up to “nine atom bombs”, and it had “taken steps to weaponise” the uranium. And he added that the strikes targeted Iran’s nuclear facilities.

But in a 26 March address, US national intelligence director Tulsi Gabbard set out that US intelligence continues to assess that Iran “is not building a nuclear weapon”, while a 1990s issued fatwa against producing nuclear weapons issued by the nation’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei remains active. Although Gabbard did add that Iran possesses its largest ever stockpile of enriched uranium.

Article 2 of the United Nations Charter prevents states from the “threat or use of force” against another nation, while article 51 provides states with the right to self-defence, but only when subjected to an “armed attack”.

But Iran had not attacked Israel prior to Tel Aviv’s 13 June assault upon the Islamic republic, and this is why when foreign minister Wong raised Israel’s right to self-defence, her statements made no sense.

However, the 2004 UN Report of the High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change found that it has been long-established in international law that “a threatened state” can take military action if a “threatened attack is imminent”.

Yet, Iran’s possession of enriched uranium, without any program underway to produce a nuclear bomb, really leaves Netanyahu’s assertion that Iran was presenting “clear and present danger” a tad farfetched.

And as for Netanyahu’s bragging about having targeted Tehran’s nuclear facilities, article 56 of the Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions of 1949 prevents attacks against “works or installations containing dangerous forces, namely dams, dykes and nuclear electrical generating stations”, if the attack may cause “dangerous forces” to be released that could harm civilians.

So, despite western allies repeatedly congratulating and speaking out in support of the Netanyahu government’s unprovoked attack against Iran, according to international law there was no justification whatsoever for it and it was, therefore, an illegal military operation.

Laying siege to the West Bank

The Israeli state placed the entire West Bank in lockdown last Friday. The West Bank is part of the occupied Palestinian territory, which includes the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967. Occupation occurs when a state takes control over the territory of another people without their consent and without having sovereign title to do so.

Occupation law is set out in various international humanitarian law (IHL) agreements, including the 1907 Hague Regulations, the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention and the 1977 Additional Protocol I.

A key element to occupation law is that occupation is always considered temporary, and the occupiers have an obligation to provide protection, support and welfare to the occupied.

International law recognises two types of occupation. The first is belligerent occupation which occurs during an armed conflict or directly afterwards. The second involves territorial acquisition via invasion and annexation, which means the occupying force attempts to take over another people’s territory with the ultimate goal of permanently making it its own.

Both forms of occupation are illegal, hence Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip have been illegally operating since 1967.

The more than 140 Israeli settlements that have been established in the West Bank are too illegal entities, as under article 49 of 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention, the transfer of some of the population of the occupying force into the occupied territory is forbidden.

And most significantly, the International Court of Justice last August published its finding in regard to 2022 questions put to it by the UN General Assembly regarding the status of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territory, and the court found that the occupier’s presence is illegal and it ordered the Zionist state to withdraw from the Palestinian territory “as rapidly as possible”.

The worst crime of all

As Netanyahu announced the attacks on Iran, he raised the World War II Holocaust as providing more credence for his apartheid nation’s decision to attack the Islamic republic. However, this bizarre justification of committing an unprovoked attack upon a sovereign nation based on the mass slaughter of 6 million Jewish people in the 1940s is as absurd as Wong’s ‘right to self-defence’ line.

The nastiest part of the Israeli PM’s invoking of those Jewish people subjected to the dehumanisation and mass slaughter of Nazi Germany is that Israel is carrying out another such holocaust in the Gaza Strip, where it would be hard to find an international atrocity crime contained in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) that the Zionist state hasn’t perpetrated in that region.

Israel’s cutting of the last internet cable into the Gaza Strip last Thursday marked the effective turning off of the lights on its slaughter and starvation program that it’s been perpetrating since late 2023. And the 20-month-long operation is the first mass killing of its type to have been live streamed to the planet, so the cutting of communications suggests that the horrors within are only set to escalate.

The Rome Statute contains the international criminal offences of crimes against humanity, war crimes, crimes of aggression and genocide.

Israel is committing genocide in the Gaza Strip. The official death toll is almost 55,500 Palestinian people dead. However, Al Jazeera reported in January that the region’s population has been reduced by 160,000 people since the slaughter initially broke out in October 2023.

Article 6 of the Rome Statute defines the crime of genocide as the perpetrating of any of five acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the members of “a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”. The acts include killing, causing serious mental or physical harm, inflicting conditions to cause physical destruction, preventing births and the forcible removal of children.

The International Court of Justice ruled on 26 January last year, that Israel is plausibly carrying out the crime of genocide, and it ordered the Netanyahu government to stop. However, last month, PM Netanyahu announced that Israel is now planning on ethnically cleansing The Strip completely and annexing it. And unsurprisingly, these too are further illegal moves under international law.

Article 23(3)(c) of the Rome Statute makes third parties that assist in the facilitating of the atrocity crimes that the ICC has jurisdiction over, criminally responsible and liable to criminal punishment if they aid, abet or otherwise assist the perpetrator in the commission of their atrocity crime.

The reason why the collective gasp in response to Wong rolling out the ‘Israel has a right to defend itself’ line rang out last Sunday, is that the last time she applied it with vigour was in late 2023, when she was justifying the beginning of Israel’s genocide in Gaza by deeming it an act of self-defence, and Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese enthusiastically seconded this atrocity assessment.

Albanese then became the first leader of a western nation to be recommended to the ICC for charging, following an accessorial liability for genocide claim having been lodged by Sydney law firm Birchgrove Legal with the court in March last year. And the document too charges Wong with the same genocide complicity offence.

And with the coming of the second US Trump administration, and its erosion of its own domestic laws, coupled with its unrestrained promotion of a profitable development bonanza that it considers has presented itself as a result of the wholesale slaughter in the Gaza Strip, it appears the planet is entering into a new age of complete lawlessness with the once righteous west the chief instigator.