war crime

BEIRUT — Cascades of condemnation from friend and foe alike. An array of international organizations and rights groups leveling accusations of genocide and war crimes. Boycotts across a range of sectors and fields.

As Israel begins its ground offensive to occupy Gaza City, defying international and domestic pressure to negotiate a ceasefire with the militant group Hamas, it skirts ever closer to becoming a pariah state.

“Israel is entering diplomatic isolation. We will have to deal with a closed economy,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at a Finance Ministry conference Monday, giving a rare admission of the war’s effect on Israel’s international standing.

“We will have to be Athens and super-Sparta,” adapting to an “autarkic,” or self-sustaining, economy, he added. “We have no choice.”

Netanyahu engaged in damage control on Tuesday, saying that he was talking specifically about Israel’s defense industry and that the wider economy was “strong and innovative.” But by then his words had already spooked markets, spurring a sharp fall in the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange and a raft of enraged statements from his political enemies.

“We are not Sparta — this vision as presented will make it difficult for us to survive in an evolving global world,” the Israel Business Forum, which represents the heads of around 200 of the Israeli economy’s largest companies, said in a statement. “We are marching towards a political, economic, and social abyss that will endanger our existence in Israel.”

Netanyahu has forged ahead with the ground operation despite repeated warnings from allies and adversaries that it would trigger a humanitarian catastrophe for the hundreds of thousands of people remaining in what was the enclave’s largest urban center.

Visiting the U.S. in July, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, center, posed alongside Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), Sen. Jim Risch (R-Ida.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).

(Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images)

Even as tanks and armored vehicles streamed into Gaza City’s western neighborhoods, an independent U.N. commission released a report Tuesday concluding that “Israeli authorities and security forces have the genocidal intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”

It was the most recent of a number of international organizations and rights groups accusing Netanyahu’s government of committing genocide. The Israeli government dismissed the commission’s report as “falsehoods.”

The European Commission on Wednesday decided on a partial suspension of a trade agreement between the European Union and Israel. The move could involve imposing tariffs on Israeli goods entering the union.

The measure, EU top diplomat Kaja Kallas said in a statement Tuesday on X, is aimed at pressuring Israel’s government to change course over the war in Gaza.

Western governments — including some of Israel’s most loyal supporters — castigated the decision to invade, with Germany’s foreign minister slamming it as “the completely wrong path” and France saying the campaign had “no military logic.”

Yvette Cooper, Britain’s foreign secretary, said it was “utterly reckless and appalling,” while Irish President Michael Higgins, a routinely vociferous critic of Israel, said the U.N. must look to exclude countries “practicing genocide and those who are supporting genocide with armaments.”

Meanwhile, many nations — including traditional U.S. allies such as Australia, Britain, Canada and others — are expected to recognize Palestine at the United Nations General Assembly in defiance of intense diplomatic pressure from Washington.

Pope Leo XIV weighed in Wednesday on the carnage in Gaza, expressing his “deep solidarity” with Palestinians “who continue to live in fear and survive in unacceptable conditions, being forcibly displaced once again from their lands.” He called for a ceasefire.

Relatives of Palestinians who died following Israeli attacks mourn as the bodies are taken from Al-Shifa Hospital for funerals in Gaza City on Wednesday.

(Khames Alrefi / Anadolu / Getty Images)

Israel’s military pressed on with the offensive Wednesday, leveling buildings in Gaza City’s north, west and south, residents and local reporters said. Palestinian health authorities in the enclave said 50 people had been killed since dawn Wednesday, adding to a death toll that has exceeded 65,000 since Oct. 7, 2023. It will take months to fully occupy Gaza City, Israeli military leaders say.

It’s unclear whether the U.S. supports the ground invasion. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said President Trump prefers a negotiated settlement, but seemed reluctant to exert any pressure to stop Israel’s incursion. Trump, after professing “I don’t know too much” about the offensive, warned Hamas against using hostages as human shields.

Neighboring Arab nations perceive the ground operation as the latest in a series of moves over the last two years that demonstrate Israel has little interest in peace. Noting the bombings this month of Lebanon, Syria, Qatar and Yemen, they say Israel has become as destabilizing a player in the region as Iran has long been.

Prospects for Saudi Arabia to join the Abraham Accords, the normalization agreements between some Arab states and Israel forged during Trump’s first term, appear dimmer than ever. And the United Arab Emirates, a founding and enthusiastic member of the accords, has said the agreements are under threat if Netanyahu goes ahead with plans to annex the occupied West Bank.

The fallout has spread to the cultural arena.

On Tuesday, Spain joined Ireland, the Netherlands and Slovenia in saying it would boycott the Eurovision contest if Israel were to join. Last week, Flanders Festival Ghent, a Belgian music festival, withdrew its invitation for the Munich Philharmonic to play there because the orchestra’s conductor is Lahav Shani, who is also music director of the Israeli Philharmonic. In August, Israeli actor Gal Gadot blamed “pressure” on Hollywood celebrities to “speak out against Israel” for the paltry box office returns of “Snow White.”

Even Israel’s much-vaunted arms industry, which has used the war in Gaza as proof-of-concept for its wares and has proved to be relatively resistant to opprobrium, is affected.

Though the U.S. remains by far Israel’s largest supplier of weapons, a number of European governments have imposed complete or partial arms embargoes and prevented Israeli manufacturers from participating in defense expos. This week, organizers for the Dubai Air Show, one of the world’s largest aerospace trade events, reportedly barred Israeli defense firms from taking part — reversing a policy in recent years that saw them take pride of place in similar events.

Similarly, beginning next year, Israelis will not be able to attend programs at the Royal College of Defense Studies in London, a prestigious institution that allows enrollment from the British armed services and roughly 50 U.K. partner nations.

“U.K. military educational courses have long been open to personnel from a wide range of countries, with all U.K. military courses emphasizing compliance with international humanitarian law,” the Defense Ministry in London said in a statement Monday. It said the Israeli government’s decision to escalate in Gaza “is wrong.”

“There must be a diplomatic solution to end this war now,” the statement said, “with an immediate ceasefire, the return of the hostages and a surge in humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza.”

As the Democratic Party searches for direction in the post-2024 landscape, its leaders seem bent on alienating their own base over Gaza. This is not a matter of nuance or tactical positioning; it’s a profound moral and political miscalculation.

That failure is on vivid display in the decision by House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar (Redlands) to help lead a delegation of mostly freshman Democratic representatives recently to Israel. The trip included meetings with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is on trial for corruption in Israel and is the subject of arrest warrants from the International Criminal Court alleging war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Polling makes the disconnect impossible to ignore. In July, Gallup found that just 8% of Democrats approve of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, with disapproval overwhelming. Pew Research Center reported in April that 69% of Democrats now hold an unfavorable view of Israel — a striking shift from just a few years ago. And Data for Progress has consistently found supermajority Democratic support for a permanent ceasefire; in May 2024, 83% of Democrats backed a permanent ceasefire, and in a June 12, 2024, poll a majority of Democrats said they believed Israel was committing war crimes in Gaza.

Aguilar’s role makes this especially galling. He isn’t a backbencher; he’s a high-ranking member of the Democratic Party leadership. That gives him a particular responsibility to model principled conduct for newer members. Instead, he’s showing them the wrong lesson: that obedience to the donor class matters more than representing constituents. The point is underscored by his fundraising: OpenSecrets reports Aguilar received about $678,000 from donors categorized as “Pro-Israel” in the 2023–24 cycle.

The mechanics of that influence are no mystery. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee and allied pro-Israel PACs reward loyalty with torrents of campaign cash and punish dissent with lavishly funded primary challenges. Reps. Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush — both outspoken critics of Israel’s conduct in Gaza — have been textbook examples: Bowman was unseated after record outside spending flooded his race, and Bush faced a barrage of super-PAC money that ultimately toppled her. The incentive structure is clear: Toe the line and your coffers swell; cross it and a financial juggernaut rolls over you.

There is a political price for complying with this pressure, however. The Institute for Middle East Understanding, using YouGov, found that among voters who backed Joe Biden in 2020 but chose someone else in 2024 “ending Israel’s violence in Gaza” was the top issue for 29% nationally — ahead of the economy — and 20% in battleground states. Those results point to a straightforward conclusion: Ignoring Democratic voters on Gaza depresses enthusiasm and peels away enough support to matter in close races.

Gaza is politically damaging not only because of the issue itself — though the moral stakes could hardly be higher — but also because it has become a measure of where leaders’ loyalties lie. Voters read it as a test of whether their representatives will stand with the people who elected them or with wealthy donors and foreign lobbies. Fail that test and many will assume you might betray them on other critical issues in the future.

The Democratic leadership’s unwillingness to adapt is not just bad politics; it’s a betrayal of basic democratic principles. Rank-and-file Democrats overwhelmingly want an end to the carnage, an end to unconditional military aid to Israel, and policies rooted in human rights and international law. Yet too many leaders seem more concerned with keeping favor in donor circles than with honoring the public’s will.

If Democrats hope to retain their coalition, they need to realign policy with their voters’ values: call for a permanent ceasefire; condition U.S. military assistance on compliance with international law; and replace photo-op delegations with diplomacy that centers on justice and accountability.

Until then, every AIPAC-sponsored trip led by a party leader will read like a declaration of priorities — and a reminder of the price the party will continue to pay at the ballot box.

George Bisharat is a professor emeritus at UC Law San Francisco and a longtime commentator on U.S. policy toward the Middle East.

ANCHORAGE — President Trump made his expectations clear entering a summit with Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday: “I won’t be happy if I walk away without some form of a ceasefire,” he said aboard Air Force One.

Yet he did, ending his meeting with the Russian leader with curt remarks, taking no questions from the press and offering no sense of a breakthrough toward peace in Ukraine.

It was an immediate success for Putin, who was greeted on the tarmac of Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson with applause and smiles from the American president, offered a ride in his iconic vehicle. After years in isolation over his repeated invasions of Ukraine, facing an indictment from the International Criminal Court over war crimes, a red carpet awaited Putin on U.S. soil.

Both men referenced “agreements” in statements to reporters. But Trump implied the question that matters most — whether Russia is prepared to implement a ceasefire — remains unresolved.

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“We had an extremely productive meeting, and many points were agreed to. There are just a very few that are left,” Trump said. “Some are not that significant. One is probably the most significant, but we have a very good chance of getting there.”

In a follow-up interview on Fox News, Trump said the meeting went well. “But we’ll see,” he said. “You know, you have to get a deal.”

Trump’s failure to secure a ceasefire from Putin surprised few analysts, who have seen him pressing Russian advantages on the battlefield and offering no indication he plans to relent.

The question is whether Putin will be able to sustain Trump’s goodwill when the war continues grinding on. On Friday alone, hours before the summit began, Russian forces struck a civilian market in the Ukrainian city of Sumy.

The Russian delegation left immediately after the press availability, providing no comments to the press corps on how the meetings went behind closed doors. And after sitting down with Fox, Trump promptly left Anchorage for Washington. The White House issued no statements, readouts or fact sheets on the summit. Administration officials fell silent.

“Putin is going to have to give Trump some kind of concession so that he is not completely embarrassed,” said Darren Kew, dean of the Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies at the University of San Diego, “probably a pledge of a ceasefire very soon — one of Trump’s key demands — followed by a promise to meet the Ukrainians for talks this fall.”

“Both serve Putin’s goals of delay and appeasing Trump, while allowing more time for Russian battlefield victories,” Kew added, “since ceasefires can easily be broken, and peace talks can drag on for years.”

In brief remarks of his own, Putin said that points of agreement reached with Trump would likely face opposition across Europe, including from Ukraine itself, warning continental allies not to “torpedo nascent progress” in follow-up talks with the White House.

“I would like to hope that the agreement that we have reached together will help us bring us close to that goal, and will pave the path toward peace in Ukraine,” Putin said. “We expect that Kyiv and European capitals will perceive that constructively, and that they won’t throw a wrench in the works.”

It was an acknowledgment that whatever terms agreed upon bilaterally between Putin and Trump’s team are almost certainly unacceptable to Ukraine, a party to the conflict that has lost hundreds of thousands of lives fighting Russia’s invasion since February 2022.

Trump told Fox that a Russian takeover of Ukrainian lands was discussed and “agreed upon,” pending Ukrainian approval — an unlikely prospect given vocal opposition from Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, and provisions in the Ukrainian Constitution that prohibit the concession of territory.

“Those are points that we negotiated, and those are points that we largely have agreed upon, actually. I think we’ve agreed on a lot,” Trump said. “I think we’re pretty close to a deal. Now, look. Ukraine has to agree to it. Maybe they’ll say no.”

Europe and Ukraine have argued that conceding land to Putin is not enough. After invading Crimea in 2014, and successfully holding it, Putin came back for more territory in the eastern Donbas — only to launch a full-scale invasion of the country in 2022.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said this week that its war aims remain unchanged.

“We’re convinced that in order to make the settlement last in the long-term, we need to eliminate all the primary roots, the primary causes of that conflict,” Putin said, “to consider all legitimate concerns of Russia, and to reinstate a just balance of security in Europe, and in the world on the whole.”

“The root causes of the conflict,” he added, “must be resolved.”