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war crimes
Sen. Graham's Legacy: He Helped Israel Get Away With Genocide
Lindsey Graham is part of the answer to the question of how a genocide could be pursued in plain sight with impunity.
Jul 15, 2026
The sudden death of South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, 71, has been greeted with the full spectrum of reactions. Many of them were personal in character. I never met or testified before Sen. Graham, and I’m not under the illusion that the persona politicians project on television gives much insight into them as persons. This maxim is especially true for a politician, who typically tacks with the wind, as Graham often did. Nor is my interest here personal. People depict him as a nice guy to colleagues who was capable of praising rivals such as Joe Biden. That sort of senatorial bonhomie is irrelevant to the issue I want to address.
Genocides in the past 50 years have not always been easy to recognize in real time. The Khmer Rouge polished off a fifth of Cambodia’s population, but isolated journalistic reports of what was going on were dismissed in Washington. Likewise, the Clinton administration was slow to understand the mass killings in Rwanda.
It was not until April 23, 2005, that the first video was successfully posted to the World Wide Web. It was that breakthrough that made the Gaza genocide that began in October 2023 the first televised such mass atrocity. The Israeli policy of systematic killing of innocent noncombatants was live-streamed on smartphones on a daily basis throughout the world. There was no doubt about what we were seeing.
And yet, the Israeli leadership has suffered almost no repercussions for having disregarded the value of civilian life, adopting a monstrous Rules of Engagement allowing for as many as a hundred women, children, and noncombatant men to be killed for each militant targeted. NATO has ceased joint military exercises with Israel because its army violated its RoE so egregiously.
We have to revise the old saying. If you have neither the law nor the facts on your side, pound racist superiority and inherent lack of accountability.
Lindsey Graham is part of the answer to the question of how a genocide could be pursued in plain sight with impunity.
When the prosecutor for the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, prepared in April 2024 to apply for arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity, former Prime Minister David Cameron shouted angrily at him that Britain would withdraw from and defund the ICC if the indictment went forward. Cameron was not in office at that time, and may have been used by the Tory government to express its displeasure without intervening officially. Labour promised to do better when it came back to power. It didn’t.
There is an old adage among lawyers: “If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. If you have the law on your side, pound the law. If you have neither, pound the table.”
Israel’s lawyers, like Cameron and the Conservative Party in general, had neither the facts nor the law on their side, so they pounded the table. In fact, they threatened to dismantle the judge’s bench, strip his clothing off, and shoot him in the head.
Sen. Graham then joined a conference call with Khan in April, 2024, in which he lambasted the prosecutor, saying that ICC indictments are for “Africa and thugs like Putin,” not for the United States and its allies such as Israel.
If Khan’s report of this conversation is correct, it casts the late senator in an extremely poor light. It is hard to see the reference to Africa as anything but racism.
South Carolina had for centuries had one law for white people and another one for African Americans, who were kidnapped in Africa and brought to the lowcountry. Until 1863 they were held as chattel, property rather than persons. After a brief period of emancipation, they were gradually denied the right to vote or hold office, until the mid-1960s Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act. The point of the Trump administration, of which Graham became a pillar, is to repeal those laws and to again disenfranchise African Americans, with outrageous racial gerrymanders and measures such as limiting the number of polling stations in heavily African American districts.
While it is controversial whether Graham was personally a racist, what he said about the ICC being for Africans was certainly a racist comment, and it unfortunately replicated the long history of white sentiment in South Carolina that some laws do not pertain to white people, which is a way of saying that whites have impunity. He clearly coded Israelis as “white.” Such categorizations are worthless and arbitrary, however. Whiteness has no stable meaning. Most Israelis couldn’t have gotten served at a diner in South Carolina in the 1950s, though. What is important is that Graham so categorized them, and the significance he attached to that categorization.
That he threw Putin (and who could be more pasty?) into the mix might tell against this analysis. Yet obviously even under slavery and Jim Crow there were white criminals who harmed propertied white gentry and who did not share in impunity as a result. An example was Ian Gale, the cat burglar who robbed a hundred homes of valuables totaling as much as half a million dollars. Putin became a “thug” by attacking other white people in Ukraine, and so deserves to be dealt with as though he were an African.
It is still a racist comment.
Graham’s angry attack on Khan showed the Nixonian logic of genocide denial. It isn’t a crime if the United States or Israel does it.
Ironically, Graham was a law school graduate and served in the US Air Force Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps for more than 30 years while in the Air National Guard and Reserves. He rose to hold the rank of colonel.
The JAG Corps of the Air Force admitted in 2020, “The statistics show that black male Airmen under the age of 25 and with less than 5 years of service receive NJP [nonjudicial punishment] and courts-martial actions at a higher rate than similarly situated white male Airmen.”
You give the white guy a break but throw the book at the Black guy. That was how Graham’s second institution often behaved during the decades he served in it. While for some JAG officers, this outcome may have resulted from an unconscious prejudice, Sen. Graham made his invidious view explicit in the conference call with Khan.
He also once said that it would be “terrible” if he took a DNA test and it showed he had Iranian ancestry. In retrospect I think he may have meant that such a bloodline might have made him partially brown and so would have denied him the benefits of being above the law enjoyed by white people. (Persian is an Indo-European language and Iran comes from the same root as “Aryan,” and a lot of Iranian Americans identify as white, but Graham was too incurious to have known all that.)
We have to revise the old saying. If you have neither the law nor the facts on your side, pound racist superiority and inherent lack of accountability.
And that is how Graham, in his guise as master prestidigitator, made the elephant of genocide disappear.
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Rubio Threatens to 'Teach the ICC'—Which Prosecutes War Crimes—the 'Full Meaning of American Resolve'
"Is the secretary of state worried because he knows US personnel committed war crimes in Iran?"
Jul 13, 2026
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday announced what he characterized as a "campaign to dismantle" the International Criminal Court, the Hague-based tribunal tasked with investigating and charging individuals with war crimes and other violations.
In a video posted to social media, Rubio accused the international court of "waging a war against our country—not with bullets or missiles, but with statutes, compacts, and the force of so-called international law." The top American diplomat threatened that the US "will teach the ICC the full meaning of American resolve."
The US State Department said in a statement that Rubio's new campaign against the ICC would "feature a whole-of-government response to systematically disable" the court's "ability to operate, target American servicemen or officials, or otherwise threaten American sovereignty." The US is not party to the Rome Statute, the 1998 treaty that established the ICC.
US President Donald Trump and his subordinates, who have been accused of myriad violations of international law, have adopted an increasingly aggressive posture toward the ICC since taking power last January.
In a February 6, 2025 executive order, Trump declared "a national emergency to address" the purported "threat" posed by the ICC and announced sanctions against court officials, including its judges. The president's order cited the ICC's "investigations concerning personnel of the United States and certain of its allies, including Israel," which is also not party to the Rome Statute.
In November 2024, the ICC issued arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, for alleged war crimes committed in the Gaza Strip.
Rubio warned in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal on Monday that US officials accused of international crimes could be next to face ICC action.
"Border Patrol agents working to remove violent criminals from our country, US Marines risking their lives to restore order in the Western Hemisphere, federal prosecutors working to dismantle terror networks plotting attacks on the American homeland—all would face the constant risk of persecution for the 'crime' of defending our country," Rubio wrote. "Using all the tools at our government’s disposal, working beside every ally with whom we can make common cause, we will dismantle the ICC—brick by brick, if necessary."
Raed Jarrar, advocacy director of the human rights group Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), said in response to Rubio's op-ed that "when the world’s most powerful country aims to dismantle the world’s only permanent international court, it sends the message that the powerful are above the law."
"It is not the ICC that Rubio is dismantling brick by brick, but the rules-based international order that grew out of the ashes of World War II,” said Jarrar. "Rubio’s attack doesn't just underscore US hypocrisy, but undermines access to justice across the globe, from Ukraine to Sudan and could amount to obstruction of justice, a crime under the Rome Statute in and of itself."
In his op-ed, Rubio pointed to DAWN's call earlier this year for Iran and other Middle East nations to grant the ICC jurisdiction to investigate apparent war crimes committed during the conflict launched in late February by Trump and Netanyahu.
Omar Shakir, DAWN's executive director, said Monday that Rubio mischaracterized the group's call as focusing solely on actions by US personnel. That move, said Shakir, "begs the question: Is the secretary of state worried because he knows US personnel committed war crimes in Iran?"
Under Rubio's plan, the State Department is threatening to impose "increased sanctions against the ICC and affiliated organizations," hit court personnel with "visa revocations and travel bans," and pressure other nations that aren't party to the Rome Statute to "leverage their diplomatic networks to take similar actions alongside" the Trump administration.
Kenneth Roth, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch who has demanded international accountability for the Trump administration over its illegal assault on Iran, wrote Monday that Rubio "can't even make an honest case for attacking the International Criminal Court."
"He makes it sound like the ICC acts out of the blue anywhere it wants when in fact it acts only against crimes committed on the territory of states that have invited it," Roth wrote. "He never explains why the United States should be able to commit crimes on the territory of those states with impunity, contrary to the desire of their sovereign governments for an international backstop to reinforce justice for such crimes."
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'It Was a Field Execution': IDF Shoots Driver Delivering Relief Supplies to Gaza in the Head
A Gaza trucker's association leader called it "a deliberate killing of a civilian driver who had complied with all instructions."
Jul 09, 2026
A soldier with the Israel Defense Forces reportedly shot and killed a Palestinian driver delivering aid to Gaza on Wednesday in what witnesses described as a "field execution."
Based on accounts from three witnesses, The Guardian reported that the driver, Ahmad Nasser Saleem, was shot in the head at close range shortly after his convoy entered Gaza to deliver food supplies from the World Central Kitchen.
They said the four-truck convoy had stopped along the Philadelphi Corridor on the edge of Gaza after one of the vehicles broke down. Israeli soldiers then ordered the drivers to dismount before one of them shot Saleem in the head when his hands were raised.
The other drivers in the convoy stressed that every movement made by the World Central Kitchen is coordinated with the Israeli government.
“After the truck broke down, we waited for authorization to get out and inspect it, because every movement we make has to be coordinated in advance,” said one of the other drivers, Diaa Mansour.
He said that while they were awaiting authorization, an Israeli military vehicle arrived and soldiers ordered him, Saleem, and another driver, Alaa Shaat, to get out of their trucks.
“They made us stand by the side of the road. They ordered me to take off my clothes and forced me to sit under the sun,” Mansour said. “Then they brought Ahmad out of his truck. One of the soldiers began talking to Ahmad while he stood with his hands raised. Ahmad did not speak Hebrew, and it seemed the soldiers did not understand his Arabic."
"Suddenly, they shot him. He was hit in the head and died at the scene," Mansour said. "It appeared they were trying to find out why we had stopped, but they did not understand the situation and opened fire immediately, without any discussion or attempt to communicate.”
Jihad Saleem, the deputy head of the Association of Transport Companies in Gaza, identified as a distant relative of the aid worker who was killed, said that the transportation of aid was "100%" coordinated with Israel through the UN World Food Program and WCK.
"The moment Ahmad raised his hands in surrender, one of the soldiers drew his M16 rifle and shot him directly in the head,” he said. “It was a field execution and a deliberate killing of a civilian driver who had complied with all instructions. He was wearing his orange safety vest and carried all the required permits, security clearances, and coordination that had been approved by the IDF."
The IDF confirmed the shooting, but disputed the series of events. A military spokesperson said the convoy "had stopped along the Philadelphi Corridor and exited their trucks contrary to established procedures" and that one of the drivers "ran toward the troops" who "initiated the suspect apprehension protocol and, after perceiving an immediate threat, opened fire toward him."
Jihad Saleem said that “drivers are subjected to daily violations, including beatings, abuse, humiliation, and being forced to stand for long hours under the sun."
“Even more disturbing," Saleem said, "the soldier who shot Ahmad talked to the three surviving drivers afterward and threatened them, saying they would meet the same fate as Ahmad. This clearly indicates that the attack was deliberate.”
Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza, which began in October 2023, has included the systematic restriction of humanitarian aid entering the strip, which has caused widespread starvation, which humanitarian groups have said Israel is using as a "weapon of war" against the Palestinian population.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said as of April 29, 2026, that it had recorded the killing of 593 aid workers in the territory, including eight since a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas in October 2025.
The shooting of Ahmad Saleem follows the shooting of two other Palestinian aid drivers in May under similar circumstances. According to The Guardian, the two men had been detained by the IDF for days before being released near a roundabout in Rafah where they were each shot.
The month before, two drivers working for the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) were killed by Israeli fire as they were filling their water trucks at an established distribution point.
Saleem is at least the 11th documented worker with WCK to have been killed by Israeli forces during the conflict. In April 2024, an Israeli strike hit a convoy clearly marked with the WCK logo and killed seven workers after the drivers had similarly coordinated their movements with the IDF.
That November, Israel bombed another vehicle, killing three WCK workers and two others, claiming that one of them had been involved in Hamas' October 7, 2023 attack against Israel, which was not independently confirmed and which the WCK said it had no knowledge of.
WCK said in a statement that it was "devastated" to learn of Saleem's killing on Wednesday.
"Ahmad Nasser Saleem was doing what so many of our partners do every day in Gaza—working to get food to hungry people," the group said. "We are in contact with his family, and our deepest grief is with them. WCK expects a full accounting of what happened. Humanitarian aid deliveries should never be a target."
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