Aug 16, 2026
Purchase Gaza’s Gravediggers: An Inquiry into Corruption in High Places by Norman Finkelstein here.
The modern edifice of international law, and its correspondent institutions, were avowedly designed, after the Second World War, to prevent the recurrence of the unspeakable atrocities of the first half of the twentieth century. The United Nations, with its Security Council and International Court of Justice, was formed in 1945; the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the Genocide Convention, were adopted in 1948; older international legal texts were revised and expanded by the 1949 Geneva Conventions. Some institutions came much later: the International Criminal Court was established in 2002.
Although these institutions are very imperfect, it must yet be admitted that they can discharge useful investigative and political functions, and can prepare the ground for the punishment of international criminals. It follows that, in so far as these institutions are corrupted, and stray from their lofty objects, the cause of justice suffers: the truth is obscured and concealed from the world public, while the criminals are enabled to persist in their evil careers.
The special task of this meritorious volume by Norman Finkelstein is, the exposure of corruption in the international organs of justice and accountability. He has written, not a history of the genocide in Gaza, but a record of “the complicity—born of cupidity and corruption, cowardice and careerism—of officials in high places … Truth cannot be mangled and Justice traduced with impunity” (xxxii). All of Finkelstein’s characteristic intellectual virtues are displayed in this work: the industrious accumulation of evidence, in the shape of long human rights reports and legal documents; the close examination of these documents by a process of practical reasoning, with the castigation of whatever is dishonest or fallacious in them; and the fearless determination to bring truth to view, however painful or inexpedient it may appear to be. Few are qualified for such literary labours; fewer still are willing to undertake them—and it is this sort of assiduous scholarship that has made Finkelstein’s reputation.
The book commences with a synoptic discussion of the 7th October attacks, the ensuing genocide, and the history that preceded both events. Gaza, we are reminded, had long been a hopeless and despondent enclave: it was called, over the decades, a “concentration camp”, including by a senior Israeli official. Israel maliciously aggravated Gaza’s miserable condition by imposing a strict blockade after Hamas won elections in 2006; and massacre was superadded to collective economic punishment by a succession of Israeli “operations”. Notwithstanding the diplomatic exertions of the Palestinians, their appeals to international law, and their employment of non-violent resistance, Gaza still languished, and soon faded into irrelevance. The “Hamas atrocities on 7 October” (xxii) must be understood in light of that history: Finkelstein compares the attack to the bloody rebellion against American slavery led by Nat Turner in 1831. Although, in both cases, serious crimes were committed by the insurgents, the vast preponderance of moral culpability must lie with the oppressors: such was the judgment of America’s abolitionists, and such is the judgment of Finkelstein.
The Israeli genocide was a “national project” (xxii), broadly supported by Israeli society, and largely successful: for “Gaza is … no more” (xxvii). Despite the noble efforts of the genocide’s opponents, Gaza was ravaged. It falls to the living to bring the perpetrators, and their accomplices, to justice: nothing but condign punishment is fit to prevent a repetition of such horrors.
Finkelstein then examines the allegation, anxiously promoted by Israel and lent credibility by the UN Patten Mission, that Palestinian militants committed mass rape on 7 October as a weapon of war. Upon a detailed inspection of the evidence, Finkelstein finds no support whatever for this charge: the Patten Mission, though it enjoyed rare Israeli cooperation, “couldn’t locate a single victim of sexual violence” on 7 October, “or a single piece of direct evidence, be it forensic or digital, of sexual violence” (11). This was despite the large digital record of the attacks in photographs and video footage. Later reports similarly failed to uncover any evidence of mass rape: as Finkelstein concludes, although “it cannot be said with certainty that no rapes occurred on 7 October … it can be said with certainty that Hamas did not commit mass rape as a weapon of war” (34). It is reasonable to infer, in view of its falsity, that the purpose of the mass rape allegation was to vilify Palestinians as a group: the charge derived strength from existing prejudices, and was so sensitive as to discourage ordinary critical scrutiny. For these reasons, the allegation was particularly apt to be credited by Western media and politicians—including in Britain, where it was repeated by both Tories and Labourites. Since this charge was an element of genocide propaganda, the bodies which promoted it, especially the Patten Mission, must account for their conduct. As for Israel’s employment of sexual violence against Palestinians—including sexual torture and rape—it was scarcely mentioned in public discussion.
In his chapter on the UN Commission of Inquiry chaired by Navi Pillay, Finkelstein exposes two injurious tendencies in the Commission’s work: first, until September 2025, the Commission did not accuse Israel of genocide, but limited its strictures to reprimanding Israel for violating the laws of war. Yet since Israel’s object was not to inflict a military defeat upon Palestinian militants, but to exterminate Palestinians indiscriminately; and since this rendered the violation of the laws of war indispensable; the Commission’s reprimands, expressed with reference to more or less frequent Israeli breaches of the laws of war, were inaccurate and unapt. They effectively conceded that Israel was fighting a war when it had in fact undertaken to destroy a people; and in consequence, the Commission diminished the real turpitude of Israel’s conduct. Finkelstein further proves that the Commission often contrived to extenuate or excuse Israel’s actions, a bad tendency which was aggravated by Israel’s refusal to allow the Commission, or independent international journalists, to enter Gaza and investigate incidents in greater detail (69-80).
The finest chapter in the book is the exposure of Julia Sebutinde, a judge of the International Court of Justice and its most enthusiastic defender of Israel. In a series of amusing passages, Judge Sebutinde’s inconsistencies, omissions, irrationalities, and vulgar errors are brought to view.1 It is shown that her judgments derived their evidence from Israeli sources of the scantiest probative force, while an extensive table compiled by an anonymous scholar from Gaza displays her plagiarism across 48 pages of text. The scope of Judge Sebutinde’s literary fraud is really so great as to defy any more elaborate exposition in the space allotted to us. It suffices to observe that the chapter is a crushing blow to judicial corruption—one of the fullest and best exposures of a preposterous judge in our century—and makes us somewhat optimistic that Judge Sebutinde may be deprived of her high office. Finkelstein winds up his remarks as follows: “The farce is in its last act … Judge Sebutinde is either an Israeli mole or a crazed fanatic (or both) … The longer she sits on the Court, the longer she disgraces it” (198). If this scandalous fraud and imposture are allowed to continue, then no rational being can entertain the slightest respect for the ICJ.
Next Finkelstein comes to Joan Donoghue, the former president of the ICJ, and her odd statement in a BBC interview—and not in a law journal or academic lecture—that the January 2024 Order of the Court over which she presided, in South Africa’s genocide case, did not find that Israel was plausibly committing genocide. The Court, she said, merely found that the Palestinians’ right to be protected from genocide was plausible: “there was a risk of irreparable harm to the Palestinian right to be protected from genocide”. It did not decide “that the claim of genocide was plausible” (252). But mark the incoherence of this foggy lawyers’ language: if there was a risk of irreparable harm to the Palestinians’ right to be protected from genocide, that risk can only have been caused by Israel’s plausibly genocidal conduct: for how can a right be plausibly prejudiced, or endangered, if there is no plausible act to prejudice or endanger it? It is as if to say, A has plausibly prejudiced the right of B to life; but it is not plausible that A unlawfully killed B! So mere an absurdity, in the mouth of a distinguished judge, and stated in the course of informal remarks, invites censure; and Finkelstein amply shows, by a close examination of the proceedings in the case, that Donoghue misled her hearers. “Donoghue”, he says, “uttered a shameful and shameless lie” (294). Her remarks were thereafter exploited by contemptible politicians, like David Lammy, the former foreign secretary, to allege that the ICJ had not ruled on “the plausibility of Israel committing genocide” (296).
The final chapter and appendix consider the UN Security Council and the International Criminal Court. UNSC resolution 2803, approved in November 2025, endorsed President Trump’s misnamed peace plan, and made Gaza his personal possession as chair of the misnamed Board of Peace. The consequence was, that all the legal principles, resolutions, and deliberations regarding Palestinian self-determination were peremptorily vitiated: “Gaza was reduced by the Security Council … to the extra-legal status of—in the idiom of the European conquest of Africa—res nullius (‘thing of nobody’)” (301). The drift of the Security Council’s resolution can be accurately judged from this: that “except for a single sentence by Algeria, not one State supporting the resolution uttered one word of criticism of Israeli actions after 7 October”—including, of course, Britain (305). In short, “the supreme political organ of the UN immolated itself in order to placate a gangster juggernaut in Washington” (307). The UN, by making itself an accomplice to genocide, overthrew the whole system of laws and institutions that was supposed to prevent and punish international crimes.
The appendix is devoted to the true history of Fatou Bensouda, former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, who now finds herself celebrated for her courage in belatedly opening an investigation into the situation in Palestine in 2019, and resisting Israeli intimidation. No celebration is warranted. Bensouda obstinately refused to investigate Israel for its murder of humanitarian activists on the Mavi Marmara flotilla bound for Gaza in 2010: she could not even see a “reasonable basis” to think a crime was committed amid international outrage. Not once, not twice, but thrice she thwarted an investigation, relying largely upon an Israeli report about the incident, and conjuring any fallacious excuse to absolve Israeli forces of wrongdoing. The inhuman blockade of Gaza—the reason for the flotilla’s voyage, and the cause of Gaza’s sorrows—she carefully ignored, in order to pretend that the case was insufficiently grave to be investigated. Bensouda’s years-long obstruction of justice proved ultimately successful when the case was closed in 2020. Although, as a general maxim, it is not true that familiarity breeds contempt—in respect of Bensouda, the saying is apt.
Finkelstein’s work prompts the following general reflections. First, international institutions have proved themselves impotent to prevent and punish—or, worse, have been culpable abettors of—the crime of genocide. The reason for this is, that the law of the strongest continues to be the rule in international affairs: it has been demonstrated beyond doubt that there is hardly a limit to the barbarism which may be tolerated or aided by the vaunted international community, when those with authority support the crimes. At any moment, if ruling classes command or approve the worst of offences, states will be found ready to lapse into the sheerest savagery. Second, and correspondent to that regrettable fact, our hopes should rest upon the consciences (and, indeed, the best interests) of ordinary people. Although Israel has been allowed by the world’s rulers to perpetrate the crime of crimes, it is by no means true that there has been no sanction—even as the sanction is woefully inadequate. Opinion has almost everywhere turned against Israel; and opinion is a force in history. No one can persevere in unconcealed evil without eventually meeting disgrace. Our duty, then, is to seize upon and guide this transformation of opinion: to reveal the vices and iniquities of an international political and economic order which can permit such things to be done, and to displace the ruling classes which have delivered us into this inferno. Third, let it be remembered that the law, unaided by politics, is only a poor instrument for the attainment of justice. Finkelstein has written the indictment. The perpetrators of high crimes will not see justice except by our tireless exertions.
Talal Hangari
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