Editorial
How many airports has the Butcher of Gaza, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, traversed since the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued the so-called arrest warrant against him? How many bombs has he commanded to rain upon civilians, not only in Palestine but in Lebanon, Syria, and beyond? The ongoing blockade of essentials has already snuffed out thousands of innocent lives. Yet, the Gaza Butcher roams freely, wielding unchecked power, immune to the dictates of international law. Meanwhile, in the Far East, a man—no saint himself—was arrested the moment he attempted to pass through an airport. The contrast is as stark as it is damning. This is not justice; it is the theatre of hypocrisy, wherein power determines culpability, and accountability is a matter of political convenience.
Justice is dead; the courts of the world are mausoleums to its rotting corpse, and the International Criminal Court is its most grotesque parody. It drapes itself in the solemnity of legalese, masquerades as an institution of fairness, yet bends its knee to the very empires that orchestrate slaughter on an industrial scale. Duterte, an iron-fisted strongman from a small Southeast Asian nation, was hauled into chains. Netanyahu, a calculating executioner of state terror, continues to sip wine in Western capitals, heralded as a statesman. This is not an oversight. It is a design. The gears of international law grind only against those deemed disposable, never against those whose hands drip with the blood of imperial complicity.
Josef Stalin once remarked, “A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.” The West has perfected this art of obfuscation, transforming mass murder into an abstraction. Gaza’s dead are not victims; they are numbers on a page, reduced to collateral damage in the ever-expanding annals of geopolitical convenience. When the bodies pile so high that they block out the sun, the world averts its gaze, unable to stomach the enormity of its own complicity. Duterte’s crimes, as heinous as they are, pale in comparison to Netanyahu’s ledger of death. Duterte oversaw an estimated 30,000 deaths in his bloody war on drugs, a policy that disproportionately executed the poor. Netanyahu, in his decades of brutal governance, has overseen the systematic annihilation of a people, razing entire neighbourhoods to the ground, snuffing out over 35,000 Palestinian lives in a matter of months and leaving countless more to perish under the siege of famine and disease. And yet, it is Duterte who finds himself shackled, while Netanyahu continues to orchestrate carnage from the comfort of a Tel Aviv war room.
The International Criminal Court was never meant to be a tool of true justice; it was meant to be a weapon of control. The United States, the ultimate puppet master of this farce, refuses to acknowledge its jurisdiction, yet wields it to crush those who dare defy its global hegemony. The American Servicemembers’ Protection Act, more aptly dubbed the Hague Invasion Act, enshrines this hypocrisy into law, granting Washington the power to use military force should the ICC dare lay a finger on an American or allied war criminal. This is not justice. This is gangsterism masquerading as international order.
History provides an unbroken litany of Western impunity. Henry Kissinger, the architect of coups and slaughter from Southeast Asia to Latin America, died in his bed, never facing a day in court. George W. Bush and Tony Blair, the orchestrators of the Iraq genocide, enjoy lucrative speaking tours instead of facing war crimes tribunals. Barack Obama, the drone king who annihilated wedding parties in Afghanistan, strolls through halls lined with Nobel Peace Prizes. Meanwhile, African leaders, Middle Eastern rebels, and now, a Filipino despot, are paraded before international courts in a grotesque display of selective retribution. The hypocrisy is so blatant, so all-consuming, that it no longer shocks; it merely affirms what we have long known—justice is a privilege of the powerful, not a principle of the law.
The evidence against Netanyahu is overwhelming. His airstrikes have incinerated entire families, his troops have executed civilians in broad daylight, and his government has sanctioned the collective starvation of an entire population. Article 7 of the Rome Statute defines crimes against humanity as “a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population.” If not this, then what? If not Netanyahu, then who? If the ICC seeks credibility, it must demand his immediate extradition. But it will not, because the forces that uphold its existence have no interest in holding their own to account. Netanyahu is not merely an Israeli leader; he is a proxy of Western militarism, a vanguard of imperial continuity in the Middle East. His impunity is their impunity.
Duterte, for all his brutality, never pretended to be anything other than a tyrant. His bloodstained hands were bare for all to see. But Netanyahu is different—he cloaks his butchery in the language of security, of necessity, of “self-defense.” He is the master of linguistic deception, where murder is “neutralisation,” starvation is “a necessary measure,” and ethnic cleansing is “territorial realignment.” And the world, in its staggering cowardice, allows it.
This is not merely a case of selective justice. It is a demonstration of the raw, unfiltered reality of global power. The West does not simply protect Netanyahu—it enables him, arms him, funds him, and justifies him. The United States, with its annual $3.8 billion in military aid to Israel, is not merely an ally; it is an accomplice. The United Kingdom, despite its occasional murmurs of discontent, continues to supply arms that turn Palestinian homes into craters. Germany, still burdened by the ghosts of its past, refuses to acknowledge that absolution for one genocide does not grant permission for another.
If the world had any semblance of moral integrity, Netanyahu would be dragged in chains to The Hague, his crimes laid bare before an international jury. But justice is a theatre, and the actors play their roles with unwavering commitment. The West pontificates about human rights while endorsing their violation, laments the plight of the oppressed while bankrolling their oppressors. It is a cycle so predictable, so utterly devoid of sincerity, that it no longer provokes outrage—only weary resignation.
The arrest of Duterte is not an affirmation of justice; it is an affirmation of the arbitrary power of international institutions to subjugate those deemed expendable. Until the Gaza Butcher stands trial alongside the Manila Butcher, the ICC remains nothing more than a hollow instrument of Western supremacy, a courtroom where the verdict is predetermined by the weight of geopolitical interests.
In this theatre of hypocrisy, justice is neither blind nor fair—it is a commodity, sold to the highest bidder, withheld from the powerful, and weaponised against the weak. The plight of mocking justice continues, and Netanyahu, the architect of untold suffering, remains unscathed while Duterte is paraded as the token sacrifice. The world watches in silence, complicit in the charade, as the bodies pile higher, turning human lives into nothing more than statistics on a page.
