Netanyahu: I am the law, and Israel is Über alles. When leaders treat accountability as optional

When a leader insists on operating as though the rules did not apply to him, it isn’t simply an affront to a set of abstractions. It’s the proclamation of a philosophy. The leader asserts that might trumps right, that the brute fact of their power immunises the powerful, and that the pain of others merely constitutes the necessary shadow side of national resolve. Concerning the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, it has been clear to many critics that there has been a stance that boils down to this: I am beyond the reach of international law, and Israel is Über Alles.

Such an impression did not materialise overnight. Nor is it an invention of hostile onlookers. It is, rather, the product of a series of years, where Israel’s leadership regards these global bodies with downright contempt. United Nations probes are rejected as being antisemitic. Human rights reports are brushed aside, labeled propaganda. Arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court are rejected, not as legal objections to be answered, but as exercises of political warfare, to be defeated. The message is, of course, unmistakable. The laws are for others.

International law exists just because we learned the lessons from the histories of world wars, genocide, and large numbers of deaths as a result of violence from those who hold power over their citizens. This law came into existence from the lessons learned from the world’s tragedies that were the result of violence by nations unleashed on innocent civilians. The law did not come into full effect as perfect, but as a global law that would apply to the powerful as well as the weak.

The Israel that Netanyahu represents has been casting itself less and less as a bearer of the norms of the international community, and more and more as a matter of a civilisation that places itself beyond the norms, a country that, through experience, pain, and trauma gives itself the right to be exempt from the rules that other nations are required to live by. It is a most perilous position to take. Every atrocity-committing power in history has made the same argument.

This is not a matter of challenging Israel’s right to security, of failing to account for what is plainly a very complex and violent, entrenched place. This is a matter of a more profound principle. There is no country, no country, whose legitimacy may rightfully be called into question when it contends that it itself is beyond/questioning. No leader may properly be recognized as a democracy when they reject the legal traditions of democracy.

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Netanyahu’s attitude is doubly damaging because it is now so openly stated. While previous leaders at least pretended to respect international standards, the current administration just steamrolls them. While previous leaders at least pretended to respect international standards, government officials can now openly refer to long-term occupation, massive dislocation, and collective punishment. There can be no civilian casualties, only numbers to be managed. Persecution takes the place of responsibility. The rule of law has become the enemy.

“Contempt has consequences, and this contempt has consequences that do not remain confined to either Gaza or the West Bank. International law itself becomes tainted by this contempt. When a state is permitted to flaunt its contempt for rulings, investigations, and conventions without consequences, other states take notice. Why should international law apply to Russia’s actions in Ukraine, or to China’s actions in Xinjiang, and to any regional power that may have ambitions, if it’s optional for Israel?”

The Netanyahu camp frequently argues that international institutions are flawed, politicised, and biased. This is sometimes true. But having flaws does not give anyone an excuse to desert it. One does not solve a problem with a broken system by setting it on fire. To destroy the only institutions of accountability now left standing because it’s inconvenient would be to invite a world ruled by nothing except brute force.

But there is a more sinister moral failing at play in this instance—the kind that transcends policy and legal discourse. By exempting themselves from the law, these leaders invite their society to do the same. They build a culture where cruelty is the norm, treason is dissent, and the expression of empathy is tantamount to weakness. It is a society where civilians are reduced to mere abstractions and pain is merely a PR crisis.

When it comes to such leadership, history is cruel. For those who proclaim themselves untouchables, judgment is seldom avoided but postponed. It is the courts that such leaders scoff at today who are also the ones that, later on, write their infractions in the annals of history, if not in punishment. While punishment may be denied, accountability is not.

The international system is a profoundly flawed, inconsistent, and sometimes hypocritical order. But it is one of the very few shields that humanity has established against the law of brute force. To make it optional is to go back to a world where might makes right, where life or death, and suffering, are decided by power. Such a world will not be a safer world for Israel or for anyone else.

When leaders think and behave as if they are beyond the law, they are not demonstrating strength. They are admitting weakness — weakness before accountability, before judgment, before the possible infinity of their deeds and actions being measured and judged on the yardstick of morality. And in the end, it will not be the law that will bow down before them. It will be their legacy, their memory, and their name that will crumble under its weight.

Accountability stands not as an enemy to peace but as its last remaining foundation.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.