Israel has been accused of the most serious crimes, and what is the response of other countries: BBC editor's analysis

"Israel wanted us to see what Hamas did. The conclusion then must be that it doesn't want foreign journalists to see what it's doing in Gaza."

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Disclaimer: The translations are mostly done through AI translator and might not be 100% accurate.

10.06.2025. 08:10h

Even wars have rules.

They do not prevent soldiers from killing each other, but their purpose is to ensure that civilians caught in the fighting are treated humanely and are protected from danger as much as possible.

The rules apply equally to all parties.

If one side suffered a brutal surprise attack that killed hundreds of civilians, like Israel on October 7, 2023, that does not exempt it from the law.

The protection of civilians is a legal requirement in the combat plan.

That, at least, is the theory behind the Geneva Convention.

The latest version, the fourth, was formulated and adopted after World War II to prevent such massacres and atrocities against civilians from ever happening again.

"Even wars have rules" are written in giant letters on a glass rotunda at the headquarters of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Geneva.

This reminder is timely because those rules are being broken right now.

By January 2025, 14.500 Palestinian children had died in Gaza, according to UNICEF.

Getting information from Gaza is difficult, because it's a war zone where people are dying.

At least 181 journalists and media workers have been killed since the start of the war, almost all of them Palestinians from Gaza, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Israel is not allowing international press teams into Gaza.

Since the best way to verify controversial and difficult stories is firsthand, this means that the fog of war, which is always difficult to penetrate, is thicker than I have experienced in my entire life of war reporting.

It is obvious that Israel wants it to be that way.

A few days after the war began, I was part of a journalist convoy that the army escorted to border communities that had been attacked by Hamas.

Rescuers were pulling the bodies of Israelis from the smoking ruins of their homes, and Israeli paratroopers continued to clear the buildings with bursts of gunfire.

Israel wanted us to see what Hamas had done.

The conclusion then must be that he doesn't want foreign journalists to see what he's doing in Gaza.

To find an alternative path through that fog, we decided to approach it through the prism of laws that are supposed to regulate warfare and protect civilians.

I went to the headquarters of the Red Cross, the official guardian of the Geneva Convention.

I spoke to respected lawyers, humanitarians with years of experience working within the law to bring aid to Gaza and other war zones, and senior Western diplomats about their governments' growing impatience with Israel.

I also noticed a nervousness that they might be considered complicit in future criminal investigations if they did not speak out about the ongoing disaster inside Gaza.

There is now a widespread belief in Europe, just as in Israel, that Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, is prolonging the war not to protect Israelis, but to preserve the ultranationalist coalition that keeps him in power.

As prime minister, he can prevent a national investigation into his own role in the security lapses that gave Hamas a foothold before October 7th and slow down a years-long trial on serious corruption charges that could put him behind bars.

Netanyahu rarely gives interviews or holds press conferences.

He prefers recorded direct announcements that are posted on social media.

Gideon Saar, Israel's foreign minister, declined an interview request.

Boaz Bismuth, a lawmaker from Netanyahu's Likud party, echoed his leader's views.

There is no famine in Gaza, Israel respects the customs of war, and unfounded criticism of their actions from countries such as Great Britain, France, and Canada provokes anti-Semitic attacks on Jews, even including murder.

The lawyers I spoke to believe there is evidence that Israel responded to the war crimes committed by Hamas when it attacked Israel with numerous of its own, including genocide.

It is obvious that Israel has some very difficult questions to answer that will not go away on their own.

He also faces a legal process of genocide charges before the International Court of Justice and has a prime minister with limited travel options.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu on war crimes charges.

Rival politicians in Israel accuse Netanyahu of orchestrating war crimes and turning Israel into a pariah state.

He put up a strong resistance, comparing himself (at the time the arrest warrant was issued) to Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer wrongly convicted of treason in the anti-Semitic scandal that rocked France in the 1890s.

Watch the moment the UN ambassador broke down in tears while talking about children dying in Gaza

Evidence in numbers

The evidence of what is happening in Gaza begins with the numbers.

On October 7, 2023, Hamas invaded Israel, killing 1.200 people, including more than 800 Israeli civilians.

The others were members of the Israeli security forces, emergency services and foreign workers.

About 250 people, including non-Israelis, were taken to Gaza as hostages.

Figures vary slightly, but it is believed that 54 hostages are still in Gaza, 31 of whom are presumed dead.

It is much more difficult to compile a total number of Palestinian casualties inside Gaza.

Israel restricts movement in Gaza and most of the northern part of the strip is inaccessible.

The latest figures from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry record that Israel killed at least 7 Palestinians and wounded 2023 between the attacks of October 4, 2025, and June 54.607, 125.341.

Their numbers do not distinguish civilians from members of Hamas and other armed groups.

According to UNICEF, by January 2025, Israel had killed 14.500 Palestinian children, 17.000 were separated from their parents or orphaned, and Gaza had the highest percentage of children with amputated limbs in the world.

Israel and the US have tried to question the ministry's casualty reports, because it, like the other remaining fragments of government in Gaza, is controlled by Hamas.

But the Ministry's figures are used by the UN, foreign diplomats, and even, according to reports from Israel, the country's intelligence services.

When the work of the Ministry's statisticians was checked after previous wars, it coincided with other estimates.

In a study published in a medical journal Lancet It is claimed that the Ministry underestimates the number of people killed by Israel, partly because the figures are incomplete.

Thousands are buried under the rubble of destroyed buildings, and thousands more are dying slowly from diseases that would be curable if they had access to medical care.

Gaza civilians had a brief respite during a ceasefire earlier this year.

But when negotiations for a longer-term agreement collapsed, Israel returned to the war on March 18 with a series of massive airstrikes.

Since then, he has been conducting a new military offensive, which Netanyahu says will finally bring about the elusive "complete victory" over Hamas that he promised on October 7, 2023.

Israel has imposed strict restrictions on food and aid shipments to Gaza throughout the war, and completely blocked them from March to May 2025.

While Gaza is on the brink of famine, it is clear that Israel has violated laws that require civilians to be protected and not starved.

A British government minister told the BBC that Israel is using hunger as a "tool of war".

Israel Katz, the Israeli defense minister, has openly said that the food blockade is the "main lever of pressure" on Hamas to release the hostages and accept defeat.

Using food as a weapon is a war crime.

Humanity has failed.

War is always brutal.

I went to Geneva to meet with Mirjana Špoljarić, a Swiss diplomat and president of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

She believes that it could get worse and that there is no doubt that both sides are violating the Geneva Convention.

This, she believes, sends a message that the customs of warfare can be ignored in conflicts around the world.

As we passed glass cases with three Nobel Prizes for the Red Cross and handwritten reproductions of the Geneva Convention on copper plates, Špoljarić warned that "we are making meaningless the very rules that protect the fundamental rights of every human being."

We sat down to talk in a room with one of the most serene views in Europe: the tranquility of Lake Geneva and the majestic expanse of the Mont Blanc massif.

But for Špoljarić, who is perfectly aware of the Red Cross's role as guardian of the Geneva Convention, the view beyond the Alps and across the Mediterranean to Gaza is worrying.

She has been to Gaza twice since October 7th and says it is worse there than hell on Earth.

"Humanity has failed in Gaza. It has failed. We cannot continue to just watch what is happening."

"It exceeds any acceptable, legal, moral and human standard. That level of destruction, that level of suffering," Špoljarić tells me.

Watch: 'Gaza has become worse than hell on Earth,' Red Cross president tells BBC

More importantly, the world is watching as an entire people, the Palestinians, are stripped of their human dignity, she points out.

"That should really shock our collective conscience - it will haunt us."

"We see things happening that will make the world a much unhappier place far beyond the region."

I asked her about Israel's justification for acting in self-defense to destroy a terrorist organization that attacked and killed people on October 7th.

"That is not an excuse for disrespecting or making sense of the Geneva Convention," she says.

"No side is allowed to break the rules, no matter what, and that's important because, you know, the rules of the Geneva Convention apply equally to every human being."

"A child in Gaza enjoys the same protection under the Geneva Convention as a child in Israel," he adds.

Mirjana Špoljarić spoke calmly, with emphasized moral clarity.

The Red Cross considers itself a neutral organization and in wars it strives to cooperate equally with all sides.

Špoljarić was not neutral about the rights that all human beings should enjoy and was deeply concerned that they were being violated by the disregard for the customs of warfare in Gaza.

'We will turn them into ruins'

While Israeli army troops were still fighting to drive Hamas out of border communities, on the evening of October 7, 2023, Benjamin Netanyahu briefly addressed the Israeli people and the watching world.

Speaking from the Israeli military command center in Tel Aviv, he chose words that would reassure Israelis and strike fear into the bones of his enemies.

The words were also an insight into his thinking about how war should be fought and how Israel would defend military choices from criticism.

Hamas's fate is sealed, he promised.

"We will destroy them and avenge by force this dark day that they have imposed on the State of Israel and its citizens."

"We will turn all the places used by Hamas, where it hides and operates, that corrupt city, into ruins," the Israeli prime minister said.

Netanyahu praised the allies who stood by Israel, singling out the US, France and Britain for their "unreserved support".

He spoke with them "to ensure freedom of action."

But in war, freedom of action has legal limitations.

States are allowed to fight, but it must be proportional to the threat they face, and the lives of civilians must be protected.

"You never have the right to break the law," says Janina Deal, professor of global security at the Blavatnik School at Oxford University.

"How Israel is waging this war requires a very special legal analysis...

"The same, by the way, applies to resistance to occupation. October 7th was not an appropriate exercise of the right to resist occupation either."

"So you can have an overall right to self-defense or resistance. And then how you use that right is subject to specific rules."

"And if you have a very good legal reason for war, that doesn't give you additional license to use additional violence."

"The rules for how wars are fought are rules that apply equally to everyone, regardless of why they are in that war."

What a difference time and death make in war.

Twenty months after Netanyahu's speech, Israel has exhausted a deep reservoir of goodwill and support among many friends in Europe and Canada.

Israel has always had critics and enemies.

The difference now is that some countries and individuals who consider themselves friends and allies no longer support the way Israel is waging this war.

They particularly do not support the restrictions on food aid that, according to respected international estimates, have brought Gaza to the brink of general famine, as well as the growing evidence of war crimes against Palestinian civilians.

"I'm disturbed to the core," Jan Egeland, a veteran and head of the Norwegian Refugee Council and former UN humanitarian chief, told me.

"I have never seen a population trapped for such a long period of time in such a small area under siege."

"Indiscriminate bombing, denial of reporting and healthcare."

"This can only be compared to some areas under siege during the rule of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, which led to uniform Western condemnation and massive sanctions."

"In this case, very little happened," he points out.

But now the UK, France and Canada are demanding an immediate halt to the latest Israeli offensive.

"We have always supported Israel's right to defend itself against terrorism, but this escalation is completely disproportionate."

"We will not just stand by while the Netanyahu government carries out these outrageous acts," British and Canadian Prime Ministers Keir Starmer and Mark Carney, and French President Emmanuel Macron, said on May 19.

Sanctions could follow.

Great Britain and France are actively considering the circumstances under which they would be prepared to recognize Palestine as an independent state.

War and revenge

Netanyahu quoted a poem by Hayim Nachman Bialik, Israel's national poet, in his televised address to the Israeli people on October 7, 2023, as people struggled with fear, anger, and trauma.

He chose the verse: "Satan has not yet devised vengeance for the blood of the little child."

The verse is from "In the City of Carnage," widely considered the most significant Hebrew poem of the 20th century.

Bialik wrote it as a young man in 1903, after visiting the site of a pogrom of Jews in Chisinau, a city in what was then Imperial Russia and today the capital of Moldova.

In three days, a Christian mob killed 49 Jews and raped at least 600 Jewish women.

Anti-Semitic brutality and murders across Europe were the main reason why Zionist Jews They wanted to settle in Palestine to build their own state, in a place they considered their historical homeland.

Their ambition clashed with the desire of the Palestinian Arabs to retain their own land.

Great Britain, the colonial power, did much to exacerbate their conflict.

Vincent Sheehan, an American journalist, described Jerusalem in 1929 in a way that was grimly familiar to journalists there almost a century later.

"The situation here is terrible.

"I expect the worst every day," he wrote.

He added that violence was in the air and that "the temperature was rising, you could reach out and feel it rising."

Schie's testimony about the 1920s illustrates deep roots of conflict in a land that both Israelis and Palestinians want, and have found no way, nor the goodwill, to divide or separate it.

Palestinians see a direct link between the war in Gaza and the destruction of their society in 1948 when Israel became independent, which they call Nakba (Disaster).

But Netanyahu and many other Israelis and their supporters abroad linked the October attacks to the centuries-long persecution suffered by Jews in Europe, which culminated in Nazi Germany killing six million Jews in Holocaust.

Netanyahu invoked the same reference to retaliate when Macron said in May that Israel's blockade of Gaza was "shameful" and "unacceptable."

The Israeli prime minister said the French president "has once again decided to side with the murderous Islamist terrorist organization and repeats its heinous propaganda, accusing Israel of blood libels."

"Blood libel" is a notorious anti-Semitic archetype that traces its roots to medieval Europe, falsely accusing Jews of killing Christians, especially children, in order to use their blood in religious rituals.

"I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza," the attacker told police, after killed a married couple who worked for the Israeli embassy in Washington.

Netanyahu linked these killings to criticism of Israel's behavior by the leaders of Great Britain, France and Canada.

"I say to President Macron, Prime Minister Carney and Prime Minister Starmer: when mass murderers, rapists, baby killers and kidnappers thank you, then you are on the wrong side of justice."

"You are on the wrong side of humanity and on the wrong side of history," Netanyahu told them in a video posted on the X social network.

"For eighteen years we had a de facto Palestinian state. It was called Gaza. And what did we get? Peace?

"No. We had the most brutal massacre of Jews since the Holocaust."

Netanyahu also referred to the long history of anti-Semitism in Europe when he warrants for his arrest, along with former Minister Joav Galant, who was Minister of Defense for the first 13 months of the war, was extradited by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.

The court also issued arrest warrants for three Hamas leaders, including Yahya Sinwar, who is considered the mastermind behind the October 7 attacks.

Meanwhile, Israel killed all three.

The International Criminal Court's trial chamber ruled that there were "reasonable grounds" to believe that Netanyahu and Galant were criminally responsible.

"As accomplices in the commission of acts together with others: the war crimes of starvation as a method of war; and crimes against humanity in the form of murder, persecution and other inhumane acts."

In a defiant statement, Netanyahu rejected the "false and absurd accusations."

He compared the ICC to the anti-Semitic conspiracy that sent Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer in the French army, to a penal colony on Devil's Island for treason in 1894.

Dreyfus, who was innocent, was eventually pardoned, but the affair caused a major political crisis.

"The anti-Semitic decision of the International Criminal Court represents a modern-day Dreyfus trial - and will end in the same way," the statement said.

"There is no more just war than the one Israel is waging against Gaza after October 7, 2023, when the terrorist organization Hamas launched a murderous attack and carried out the greatest massacre of the Jewish people since the Holocaust."

History of persecution

British lawyer Helena Kennedy was on the trial panel asked by the ICC chief prosecutor to assess the evidence against Netanyahu and Gallant.

Kennedy and her colleagues, all recognized lawyers, judged that there was reasonable cause to issue an arrest warrant.

She rejected the accusation that the court and prosecutor were guided by anti-Semitism.

"We must always remember the horrors that the Jewish community faced over the centuries," she told me in her office in London.

"The world is entitled to great compassion for the Jewish experience," she added.

But she believes that a history of persecution does not give Israel the right to do what it is doing in Gaza.

"The Holocaust filled us all with guilt, as it should, because we were all complicit in some way."

"But it also teaches us a lesson that we must not be complicit now that we see crimes being committed."

"You have to wage war according to the law, and I firmly believe that the only way to ever create peace is through just conduct, and justice is fundamental to that and I'm afraid we're not seeing that here," she argues.

Harsher words came from Danny Blatman, an Israeli Holocaust historian and head of the Institute for Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Professor Blatman, the son of Holocaust survivors, says that for many years Israeli politicians have used the memory of the Holocaust as "a tool to attack governments and public opinion around the world, and to warn them that accusing Israel of any atrocities against Palestinians is anti-Semitism."

The result, he says, is that potential critics "keep quiet because they are afraid of being attacked by Israelis, by politicians, that they are anti-Semitic."

Lord Sampson, a former judge of the United Kingdom's Supreme Court, believes that Israel should have learned from its own history.

"The horrific Jewish experience of persecution and mass murder in the past should have made Israel fear repeating the same things to other nations."

You cannot avoid history in the Middle East, because it is eternally present, a real little storehouse of justifications that anyone can freely plunder at any moment.

America: Israel's Key Ally

Israel could not have launched the war in Gaza using the tactics it chose without American military, financial, and diplomatic assistance.

President Donald Trump is showing signs of impatience, forcing Netanyahu to allow several cracks in the siege that has brought Gaza to the brink of famine.

Netanyahu himself continues to express support for Trump's widely condemned proposal to turn Gaza into a "Mediterranean Riviera" by emptying it of Palestinians and handing it over to the Americans for redevelopment.

In other words, this means the mass expulsion of Palestinians, which would be a war crime.

Netanyahu's ultranationalist allies want to replace them with Jewish settlers.

Trump has been fairly quiet about the plan, but his administration's support for Israel and its actions in Gaza is unwavering.

On June 4, the United States vetoed a Security Council resolution calling for an "unconditional and permanent" ceasefire, the release of all hostages, and the lifting of restrictions on humanitarian aid.

The other 14 members voted in favor.

The Americans imposed sanctions on four ICC judges and fines for their decision to issue arrest warrants a day later.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he was protecting American and Israeli sovereignty from "illegitimate decisions".

"I call on the countries that continue to support the ICC, many of whom have had their freedom purchased at the cost of great American sacrifices, to fight this shameful attack on our country and Israel."

Instead, the ICC was supported by European leaders.

A wide and increasingly bitter rift has opened between the US and Europe over the war in Gaza, and the legitimacy of criticism of Israeli behavior.

Israel and the Trump administration reject the idea that the customs of war apply equally to all sides, arguing that it is a false and misleading equating of Hamas and Israel.

Jan Egeland observes that the rift between Europe and America is widening.

"I hope Europe will now grow a backbone," he says.

"There have been new tones, finally, from London, from Berlin, from Paris, from Brussels, after all these months of hypocrisy on a massive scale where they did not see that a world record had been reached in the number of humanitarian workers, nurses, doctors, teachers, children killed."

"All this time, journalists like you were denied access, denied the opportunity to witness all of this."

"This is something that will make the West truly regret being so spineless."

The question of genocide

The question of whether Israel is committing genocide in Gaza scandalizes Israel and its supporters, led by the United States.

Lawyers who believe the evidence does not support the allegations have risen up against a lawsuit filed by South Africa at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) alleging genocide against Palestinians.

But they won't disappear.

"How can you accuse us of genocide when the Palestinian population has grown, I don't know how many times?"

"How can you accuse me of ethnic cleansing when I am moving the population inside Gaza to protect it?"

"How can you accuse me when I am losing soldiers to protect my own enemies?" Netanyahu loyalist Boaz Bismuth responded.

It is difficult to prove that genocide occurred - the legal bar that prosecutors must meet is deliberately set high.

But leading lawyers who have been assessing issues of legal fact for years to see if there are grounds for the case believe it is not necessary to wait for the process that South Africa launched in January 2024 to make years of progress in the ICC.

We asked Lord Sampson, a former Supreme Court judge, for his opinion.

"Genocide is a matter of intent," he wrote.

"It means killing, maiming, or inflicting unbearable living conditions on a national or ethnic group with intent to destroy it in whole or in part."

"Statements by Netanyahu and his ministers suggest that the goal of the current operations is to force the Arab population of Gaza to leave by killing or starving them if they remain."

"These things make genocide the most plausible explanation for what is happening right now."

South Africa based most of its genocide lawsuit against Israel on the inflammatory language used by Israeli soldiers.

One example was the biblical reference Netanyahu used when Israel sent troops into Gaza, comparing Hamas to Amalek.

In the Bible, God commands the Israelites to destroy the persecuting Amalekites.

The second was the statement by Defense Minister Yoav Galant immediately after the Hamas attack when he ordered a complete siege of the Gaza Strip.

"There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything will be closed. We are fighting against human animals and we will act accordingly," Gallanat said at the time.

Ralph Wilde, a professor of law at UCL, also believes there is evidence for genocide.

"Unfortunately, yes, and now there is no longer any legal doubt about it and indeed it has been that way for some time," he claims.

He points out that the ICJ's advisory opinion has already determined that Israel's presence in Gaza and the West Bank is illegal.

Baby returned to war zone after heart surgery: 'He won't survive in tents'

Professor Wilde compares the reactions of Western governments to the war in Gaza to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

"There has been no court ruling on the illegality of Russia's actions in Ukraine. Despite this, states have already considered it possible to declare the illegality of those actions. Nothing prevents them from doing so in this case as well."

"If you're announcing that you're going to wait, the question for them is, why are you waiting for the court to tell you something you already know?" he adds.

Helena Kennedy is "very nervous about the casual use of the word genocide and I personally avoid it because I really think there has to be a very high level of law and a strong degree of intent that is necessary to prove it."

"Are we saying it's not genocide, but it is a crime against humanity? Do you think that's okay then? Horrible crimes against humanity? I think we are in the process of witnessing the commission of the most serious crimes possible."

"I think we are on a path that could very easily lead to genocide, and as a lawyer I think there is certainly a strong argument for that," she points out.

Kennedy says that her advice to the British government, when asked, was: "We must be very careful not to become complicit in very serious crimes ourselves."

Eventually it will come to truce.

It will not end the conflict or remove the certainty of a long and bitter epilogue.

The genocide lawsuit before the MKP guarantees this.

So are the International Criminal Court arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Galant.

Once journalists and war crimes investigators are able to enter the Gaza Strip, they will emerge with more solid facts about what was happening.

Those who have been to Gaza with medical or UN teams say that even people who have been in many wars find it difficult to comprehend the scale of the destruction - there are too many islands of human misery in an ocean of rubble.

I keep remembering something an Israeli officer said the only time I was in Gaza since the war started.

I spent a few hours in the ruins with the Israeli army, a month into the war, when it had already turned northern Gaza into a wasteland.

He started telling me how they were doing their best not to shoot Palestinian civilians.

And then his mind wandered, so he paused, and then he told me that no one in Gaza could be innocent anyway because they all support Hamas.

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