The decision of the International Court of Justice to rule that Israel has a legal obligation to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid in Gaza is more than a legal recommendation — it is an appeal to the world’s conscience. In its advisory opinion, the court was clear: Israel has not presented credible evidence that the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) has been infiltrated by armed groups, and it must allow the entry of food and essential goods for a population that has lived for two years under an almost total blockade. It is, therefore, a reminder that international law exists to protect human dignity — even, and especially, in times of war.
But Tel Aviv’s response was predictable: rejection and contempt. The Israeli government dismissed the decision as “political” and reiterated that it would not cooperate with the UN. This attitude is, in itself, the practical expression of institutionalized arrogance — one that feeds on the conviction of impunity.
The country behaves as if it were above criticism, shielded by decades of strategic alliances and a rhetoric of self-defense that serves as justification for any atrocity. The blockade of Gaza, the refusal to allow humanitarian aid, and the systematic delegitimization of UN agencies are not signs of strength, but of dehumanization. And this is precisely what the Hague Court seeks to remind us: that even democracies, even peoples who have themselves suffered persecution, are not exempt from the moral and legal duty to respect others.
The problem is that Israel no longer listens. It embodies, almost tragically, the paradox of a nation born from the trauma of the Holocaust, now using the memory of its suffering to justify the suffering of others. And the complicit silence of much of the international community only reinforces the idea that law is relative — that it depends on the power of those who invoke it.
The world must ask itself what “morality” means in a time when hunger in Gaza is described by UN experts as “entirely man-made.” It may mean the collapse of the universalism that founded the United Nations. It may mean accepting that suffering has hierarchies. And it means, above all, that the promise of “never again” has become nothing more than an empty phrase.
Israel may continue to reject opinions and resolutions. But with each refusal to comply with international law, with each word of contempt for global institutions, the state that calls itself the only democracy in the Middle East moves closer to becoming what it claims to fight: barbarism.
*Editor-in-chief of PLATAFORMA
