Mohammad Alhamawi & Taj Hussain
The New Arab / May 16, 2025
Let’s be clear, Israel isn’t a rogue state. It’s simply part of a system where Western powers enjoy total impunity.
In many parts of the world, and particularly in our Arab region, people often wonder why Israel is considered immune to global scrutiny and accountability, and why it considers itself above criticism. More specifically, why is Israel an exception to all the rules and norms that define the international post-war liberal order?
The past two years have placed the phenomenon of Israeli exceptionalism at the front and centre of any critique of Israel and its actions. To us in the Arab world and in many other regions globally, however, this was always what the international system was truly about — a system that was designed to be a tool of institutional violence to be wielded by a commanding few over a subordinate class of states.
The case of Israel has only laid bare all the contradictions that exist within this rules-based order.
For decades, Israel has considered its security and its interests paramount to those of any other state in the world. It has repeatedly undertaken military operations in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip with complete disdain for the rules and norms around occupied territory.
It calls for peace with its neighbours whilst simultaneously actively working to destabilise them. It has even given itself the right to pre-emptively defend itself, whatever that means, by setting the region on fire.
In the past six months, Israel has repeatedly bombed Lebanon despite the ongoing ceasefire, violated the 1974 UN disengagement plan with Syria whilst moving within 25 kilometres of Damascus, threatened to expel Palestinians in the West Bank to Jordan, called on Saudi Arabia to allow for the establishment of a Palestinian state on its territory, and refused to withdraw from the Philadelphi Corridor in violation of its 1979 peace agreement with Egypt.
Its cabinet ministers openly call for ethnic cleansing and display maps that highlight Israel’s expansionist agenda in the region.
More recently, the Israeli government has sought to create a protracted conflict in Syria that would, in turn, weaken it and turn it into a crippled state.
Reports of Israeli lobbying in Washington to allow for the continued presence of Russian bases in the country, its attempts to separate Syrian Druze and Kurds from the rest of Syria, and the exploitation of religion to sow discord between the Druze communities in Lebanon, Syria, and the occupied Golan Heights highlight the tactic of destabilisation that Israel has officially adopted to engage with its neighbours going forward.
Israel even appears to be manufacturing consent for a war with Turkey in Syria. This would, in turn, create a crisis within NATO, and particularly around its clause on mutual defence, as its second largest standing army would be in conflict with a country backed by the alliance’s principal powerbroker.
Normally, we can call out such states whose official policy is premised on destruction and violence. However, any legitimate critique of Israel’s actions is rebutted with an allegation of antisemitism — an action that serves to stifle criticism, trivialise anti-Jewish discrimination, and dilute genuine efforts to combat it.
This sense of impunity is the result of the unrestricted support that it has enjoyed from the United States and its staunchest allies. These states have spent decades upholding an international liberal order which they created only to discard it for Israel.
Most Western states, even non-signatory United States, praised the International Criminal Court (ICC) for its move to issue an arrest warrant for Putin and called on other states to execute it.
However, these Western states suddenly discovered the concept of nuance when an arrest warrant was issued for Benjamin Netanyahu, choosing instead to impose sanctions on the court, working to find loopholes to avoid its execution, or seeking to withdraw from the Rome Statute altogether.
To an even greater extent is how the US treats Israel, as if it were its spoiled child, irrespective of which political party is in power at the time. What else could be made of the US move to infringe on its famed and fabled principles of freedom in protection of Israel? And why are so many Americans content with this reality?
In the US, the right to freedom of conviction and belief is fiercely and publicly protected by people and politicians alike, except when it comes to protests against Israel’s incessant and destructive wars in the region. The freedom to not purchase a product made in the illegal settlements of the West Bank, driven by personal convictions and beliefs, has forced 38 US states to outlaw any targeted boycott of Israel. In order to receive aid following a hurricane, US citizens must pledge that they will not undertake such expressions of their own constitutionally protected freedoms.
The US government seems to care for Israeli citizens more than it does for its own—a crucial element of Trump’s “America First” policy. US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz stated that ‘[t]he American people’s patience is not unlimited, their wallets are not unlimited, and our stockpiles and munitions are not unlimited’ only two days after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced an additional $4 billion in expedited military aid to Israel to bring the total to $12 billion since Trump’s inauguration.
The truth is that Israel is not a rogue state, as that would imply that its actions render it an exception to a conflict-averse post-war international order. However, before Palestine, there was Syria, and Libya, and Afghanistan, and Iraq, and Sudan, and Rwanda, and the Congo, and Vietnam, and Algeria, and the list goes on, and on, and on.
In this regard, Israel finds itself right at home with all these other states that have committed countless atrocities in a post-war liberal order that is unsurprisingly and conveniently policed by none other than these states themselves.
This is what the international system was always about. The difference now is that the contradictions have become too difficult to hide, and it is high time that we no longer lie to ourselves about it.
Mohammad Alhamawi is a Research Assistant at the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies (CHS) in Doha, Qatar
Taj Hussain is a Research Assistant at the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies
