Are the walls finally beginning to close in on Israeli war criminals?
Sid Shniad
“I don’t see myself surviving. This is the end.”
There is no such active warrant for Ben-Gvir, but rights groups argued that he should be prosecuted for his role as “one of the chief architects and champions of the genocide against the Palestinian people.” In a complaint to the NY State Attorney General, the Center for Constitutional Rights and the Hind Rajab Foundation — which seeks legal action against the perpetrators of the Israeli genocide — laid out Ben-Gvir’s numerous war crimes and acts of genocide, including leading the transformation of the Israeli prison system into an outright “network of torture camps.”
There’s significant and growing precedent for their legal argument. Ten European countries in total have now banned both Ben-Gvir and fellow extremist settler and Israeli Minister Bezalel Smotrich: the UK, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, Spain, Belgium, Norway, Ireland, New Zealand and France. Many have also slapped sanctions on the racist, far-right leaders, including freezing their assets, related to their genocidal actions and leadership of the violent extremist settler movement in the West Bank. Countries including France, Spain and Italy have also called for European sanctions on Ben-Gvir after videos of him abusing detained humanitarian flotilla prisoners were made public in May.
Israel has engineered an all-out medical crisis.
Even as international isolation increases for individual genocidaires, the world continues to fail Gaza. The Israeli government is blocking nearly everything needed for life from entering, from critical medical equipment and medicines to basic necessities needed for transport and rebuilding. As a result, the medical system available to Palestinians in Gaza continues to enter new levels of crisis.
Sanitation infrastructure across Gaza was destroyed by Israeli bombs, and has been kept in disrepair through the Israeli blockade on rebuilding supplies. Disease is rampant, and the UN has reported skin diseases and chickenpox outbreaks just this week. Its report cited “inadequate access to drinking water, limited soap availability, insufficient solid waste management, and overcrowded living conditions” all as compounding factors increasing the spread of disease.
As diseases spread, there is little treatment available. Since the start of the genocide, Israeli bombs have destroyed the vast majority of Gaza’s hospitals, and killed over 1,500 Palestinian healthcare workers. Hundreds of other doctors and medical workers in Gaza have been kidnapped by the Israeli military and held, often without charges, in Israeli military prisons.
Doctor Hussam Abu Safiya is one of the kidnapped doctors. The director of Kamal Adwan hospital in Northern Gaza, he refused to abandon his patients, even as Israeli forces descended on the hospital in 2024. He’s been held in an Israeli prison without charges ever since. This week, his lawyer said he was “unrecognizable” from abuse and torture in the prison. “They brought me here to kill me,” he told his lawyer. “I don’t see myself surviving. This is the end.”
The medical staff that do remain in Gaza are “blinded” — they have no equipment to test, diagnose, or treat patients. 12-year-old Jana is one such patient: with no functioning MRI machines in Gaza, doctors are unable to diagnose her condition, which is slowly taking away movement in her limbs. She’s been suffering since 2023, but no treatment has been possible — and now, she can no longer walk.
Throughout Gaza, treatable diseases are turning chronic, disabling, and even fatal due to the medical crisis, leaving many patients with no hope but medical evacuation from Gaza. But Israel is blocking those too, in yet another violation of the “ceasefire” agreement. Over 20,000 Palestinians need medical evacuations from Gaza, but the Israeli military has kept the Rafah crossing blocked since February. Every day, six to ten people die waiting at the border.
The Israeli state’s carpet-bombing of Gaza, destroying hospitals, homes, sewage, energy, and water infrastructure, set the stage for the horrific present: one where disease after disease sweeps through Gaza; where, barred from evacuating, children die of treatable illnesses; and where doctors, with no testing or diagnostic supplies, can only guess at what ails patients.
We know that Israel will continue its genocide by any means necessary — and we also know that international pressure has led to shifts, such as when the widespread famine conditions in Gaza led to a global uproar. It is more crucial than ever to dedicate ourselves to continuing and escalating international pressure to end Israel’s genocide for good.