This past May, Hind Rajab, a 5-year-old Palestinian girl from Gaza, was murdered by the Israeli military, along with the rest of her family. Their car was targeted by an Israeli tank as they were fleeing the bombardment of the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood. Hind’s family was killed by the initial round of fire, leaving her and her teenage cousin alone in the blood-soaked car, surrounded by corpses. Her cousin called the Palestinian Red Crescent for help.

The Red Crescent released a recording of the call to the public; in it, Hind can be heard screaming about the ongoing fire and the approaching tank. The medics who initially attempted to reach the scene were also murdered, despite having been promised safe passage by the Israeli military. When other medics were finally able to arrive a full 12 days later, Hind and her cousin were dead, their car riddled with upwards of 300 bullets. An investigation by Forensic Architecture found that the Israeli tank operators who killed Hind and her family, as well as the ambulance operators, would have been able to see that the car was full of civilians including small children.

Hind’s murder prompted an international outcry, which in turn led the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) to conduct a sham investigation into the killing. The Israeli investigators concluded–contrary to all evidence and to all independent probes—not only that no crime was committed but that Israeli soldiers weren’t even in the area at the time. It was a lie so blatant that it could only come from an entity accustomed to impunity.

It is from Hind that our organization, the Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF), draws its name. Our mission is as simple as it is daunting: to make sure that the soldiers who murdered Hind meet justice—alongside their leaders and every other IDF murderer.

There was never any hope that Israel would hold their own accountable for Hind’s murder. Once genocide was adopted as the goal, the legitimization of mass murder became a foregone conclusion. International tribunals have sought to fill the gap: On November 21, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant (along with a warrant for Mohammed Deif, the head of Hamas’s Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades).

The warrants contain charges for both war crimes and for crimes against humanity—that is, crimes carried out as a “part of a widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population of Gaza.” Both Netanyahu and Gallant are accused of using starvation as a weapon of war, of directing attacks against a civilian population, and of having “intentionally and knowingly deprived the civilian population in Gaza of objects indispensable to their survival, including food, water, and medicine and medical supplies, as well as fuel and electricity,” among other charges.

Despite the absence of the charge of genocide—a crime that Israel is manifestly committing–this is a welcome step towards justice for a State that has enjoyed impunity ever since the Nakba, the original criminal act of its founding.

Current Issue

January 2025 Issue

But while Netanyahu and Gallant may be the two most senior-level perpetrators of the present genocide, the quest for justice cannot stop with them. As with any genocide, they are part of a massive criminal undertaking.

Hind’s murder is a particularly harrowing episode, but it is not unique. Similar atrocities are playing out across Gaza on a daily basis. Children are being shot in the head and abdomen by quadcopters, entire families are being wiped out by aerial bombardments, and people are burning to death in their makeshift tents. Netanyahu and Gallant bear responsibility for every massacre, but they do not bear it alone.

Indeed, there is no reason to believe that either Netanyahu or Gallant directly ordered Hind’s murder, and there is no reason to believe that either man even knew about the murder until it became an international scandal. Hind, like so many others in Gaza, was murdered by soldiers who decided to exterminate a child in furtherance of their war of extermination against an entire people. Like so many others in Gaza, she was murdered by soldiers assured of their license to kill civilians.

Just as the ICC warrants mean that Netanyahu and Gallant can no longer set foot in much of the world without facing arrest, the HRF is working to end impunity for individual IDF soldiers, their enablers, and their accomplices, wherever they may go. The ICC arrest warrants were issued against two of the men giving the orders. But those “torturers” tasked with carrying out the orders must be held accountable as well.

To this end, we have submitted legal complaints and petitions to prosecutors’ offices in eight countries against 28 individuals for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Each petition and complaint contains significant compilations of evidence establishing the individual criminal responsibility of the accused. Underscoring both the culture of impunity and the dedication to extermination within the IDF, a large portion of our evidence is taken from soldiers’ own photos and videos. It is often pointed out that Gaza is the first livestreamed genocide; it is less often remarked upon that much of the livestreaming is done by the perpetrators themselves.

In one case, the HRF filed a complaint in Cyprus against Israeli reserve officer Elisha Livman, after we were made aware of his presence in the country. Among the evidence against Livman contained in the complaint is video footage in which he sets fire to a civilian home in Gaza while declaring, “We will not stop until we burn all of Gaza.” Cyprus’s criminal code, like that of many other States, provides for the prosecution of grave international crimes, including those committed outside Cypriot territory, under the doctrine of universal jurisdiction. Faced with potential arrest, Livman fled the country with the direct assistance of the Israeli government, as reported by the Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom. Though Livman was able to escape arrest, the episode demonstrates the goal and efficacy of the HRF strategy: that no IDF killer can ever again find a safe haven outside the blood-stained cradle of their colonial state.

Though the HRF has filed a complaint to the ICC against over 1,000 individually named IDF soldiers, supported by over 8,000 pieces of verifiable evidence—including videos, audio recordings, forensic reports, and social media posts—there is little hope that the severely under-resourced court will be able to tackle the number of trials demanded by the genocide.

Unless and until an international tribunal is established specifically for crimes committed during the ongoing genocide in Palestine on the model of the International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia or for Rwanda, meting out justice to most of the perpetrators will be a task for national courts. The HRF urges all states to arrest any of their nationals returning from service in the IDF where evidence points to the commission of the crime of genocide, war crimes, or crimes against humanity (there are within the HRF’s complaint to the ICC, over 30 dual nationals). The HRF also urges states to arrest non-national IDF soldiers who find themselves within a state’s territory, on the principle of universal jurisdiction.

All genocides are singular events, but they all point to the same imperative: The conditions that led us here must change—never again, never again this. In Education After Auschwitz, German critical theorist Theodor Adorno wrote, “Walter Benjamin asked me once in Paris during his emigration, when I was still returning to Germany sporadically, whether there were really enough torturers back there to carry out the orders of the Nazis.” His—and history’s—cold reply: “There were enough.” Now, as then, the conditions that allow for genocide remain the same. Only the uniform of the torturers has changed. And now, as then, it is humanity’s collective obligation to find those who issued the orders for extermination and those who carried them out—all of them—and bring them to justice for their crimes.