Can the British Legal System Really Handle Gaza War Crime Allegations Against IDF Soldiers?
The announcement that ten British citizens who served in the Israeli army may soon face war crimes investigations in the U.K. is both troubling and unsurprising. Troubling because it risks reinforcing the growing international perception of Israel as a pariah state; unsurprising because, after months of war in Gaza, such a legal reckoning felt inevitable. The case demonstrates a dire tension between the moral clarity that liberal democracies claim to uphold, and the complexity of combat against Hamas.
The 240-page dossier, reportedly compiled with witness testimony and open-source evidence, alleges that the ten individuals, including senior IDF officers with British passports, were involved in crimes that ranged from the targeted killings of civilians and aid workers to the demolition of historic sites and the forced removal of Gaza's residents. British law, under the International Criminal Court Act 2001, allows for the prosecution of such crimes, even if committed abroad.
The legal case is explicit in its claims. However, the moral terrain is anything but. War crimes allegations must be investigated. No soldier, no matter what passport they hold, should be above either national or international law. This is how the law works.
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The application of international law to this conflict, though, demands a level of nuance rarely found in courtrooms. The IDF is not, right now, fighting a conventional army: Hamas is a group that openly uses civilian infrastructure to shield its fighters, that launches rockets from educational institutions and hospitals and that builds tunnels to transport ammunition, guns, money, hostages and whatever else. It is a group that, on October 7, committed some of the most brutal atrocities seen in modern Israeli history.
Against such an enemy, the calculus of proportionality and distinction becomes rather murky.
British courts will have to determine whether these ten soldiers have crossed a line - such is the way the legal system works. But one must also ask: is the British legal system properly equipped to bear the full moral context of asymmetric warfare? Can rules designed for traditional battlefields be fairly applied to an urban war where fighters blend in with civilians, and where the goal (other than according to the Israeli far-right) is the thorough and exhaustive dismantling of a terror network entrenched in cities and towns across the Gaza Strip?
These prosecutions also raise a rather fraught question about the status of Jews and Zionists in the diaspora. For many British Jews, serving in the IDF is not an act of foreign adventurism: it is an _expression_ of identity and solidarity. To protect Israel is felt as a safeguard against the stateless vulnerability Jews endured for centuries.
Surrounded by destroyed homes and buildings, Palestinians gather for iftar, the fast-breaking meal during Ramadan in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza StripCredit: Jehad Alshrafi, AP
Thus, there is a broader context here: a sense, increasingly pervasive in the liberal West, that Zionism itself is on trial; that to be a proud Zionist, even outside of Israel, is to be complicit in a gruesome colonial project.
None of this is to argue for impunity. If a soldier acts outside the bounds of military necessity and international law, he or she should be held accountable. The IDF, for all its codes of conduct and internal investigations, simply must not be immune to scrutiny. Such scrutiny, though, must be fair, consistent and contextually aware. If it becomes a vehicle for ideological battles it will vandalize both the very purpose of justice and the dependability of international law.
Perhaps the real fear of these prosecutions among British Jewry is that the case forces a reckoning within Zionism itself. If the Zionist project is to remain morally coherent, it must take seriously the values it claims to uphold. It must not dismiss war crime allegations out of hand and must be willing to examine whether its soldiers, either in the fog of war or the ardency of vengeance, have crossed a line. But in order to remain authentic, a true and active _expression_ of peoplehood, it also must refuse to allow itself to be defined by its critics.
The danger is not that the British legal system will bring war criminals to justice, but that the proceedings will further erode the space for moral complexity in an already polarized debate. Flattening a conflict of many dimensions could lead to courtroom dramatization, a soap opera for popular consumption.
Justice must never shield impunity, but it must also never become a tool of selective morality. If British citizens commit atrocities, they must be held accountable. But one must also ask if, in the rush to judge, whether this is only a legal question, or whether it is also a moral one.
Simon Kupfer is an English writer exploring Zionism, diaspora, and liberal democracy.