Interview by Nell Whittaker
Portrait courtesy of Jake Romm

NW When did the Hind Rajab Foundation start operating?

JR It grew out of the March 30 Movement, a political movement based in Belgium established by the founder of the Foundation, Dyab Abou Jahjah. Dyab and Karim Hassoun, the foundation’s co-founder, had tried to bring a case in Belgium in the early 2000s against Ariel Sharon for his role in the Sabra and Shatila massacre, but the Belgians refused to move on it. The Hind Rajab Foundation grew out of this and began operations in September 2024. I volunteered as soon as I found out about it, and hit it off with Dyab and Karim. 

NW Does the team create cases against individuals and then wait until they leave the country, or is it reactive – being alerted that someone suspected of war crimes is in a country, and building the case rapidly?

JR We have many researchers, all of whom are basically anonymous for safety reasons, who build files on units as they commit crimes across Gaza. Then you figure out who the individuals are in these units and start building files against them, too. There’s also the more reactive work. There was a triple tap strike on Nasser hospital a few months ago that killed several journalists, healthcare workers and civil engineers. When that happened, the researchers immediately started trying to figure out who the unit was, what munitions were involved, and whether we knew any of the people there. We then begin building a case against the commanders and soldiers who authorised and carried out those strikes. In terms of when we file, we have two main tracks – one is against travelling soldiers who often, in between tours in Gaza, go on vacation. When they go to, let’s say, Brazil, we have a file ready to go that we can present to a prosecutor in Brazil and try to get them to use universal jurisdiction to arrest them and launch an investigation. The other tack is against dual nationals, where you don’t need to act very quickly or reactively. Jurisdiction is not based on their physical presence within a country but on the principle of nationality. 

NW Is it just you in the US at the moment, and what kind of work can you do from there?

JR The US is a very special jurisdiction. Not only is the United States diplomatically supporting Israel and vetoing everything the Security Council raises against it, but also materially supporting the genocide with billions of dollars’ worth of military aid and intelligence. The US is antagonistic towards the idea of International Criminal Law in general. It has, in fact, the “American Service Members Protection Act”, a law colloqially known as the “Invade The Hague Act”, where if any American service member or ally is brought to The Hague, the US is authorised to use military force to get them back. This dates to the Bush administration, in response to fears that people in the American military would be tried in The Hague for their crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq, which didn’t happen, even though it should have. What’s also different here is that in some jurisdictions of Europe and around the world, if you present a prima facie case to a prosecutor that meets certain criteria, they’re obliged to open an investigation. There’s no such thing here in the US. The relevant law in the US is the War Crimes Act, but for cases to be brought under the War Crimes Act, they need to be certified by the Attorney General of the United States, who’s currently Pam Bondi. We filed a request for prosecution back in April against Yuval Chatel, who had not only filmed himself destroying mosques, schools and apartments but had also filmed his unit saying that this was revenge for a fallen comrade, which is its own independent war crime. We filed the request, and it was ignored. All I can say is that things are happening that I cannot talk about.

NW How has it made you feel about the capacity of international law to act in the moment, as opposed to after the fact?

JR The legal form must be reactive: there has to be a violation you’re responding to. It can’t preempt it, except by the idea of deterrence, through illegality and in respect to international law, so it’s just a tool, not a solution. This is a critical and existential moment for international law. The international legal system was established as a direct response to the Second World War, and the aspirations of the UN Charter and the UN was to create a world without aggression, where countries could come together and solve their problems peacefully. The UN Charter very explicitly outlaws the use of armed force, except in self-defence or in defence of others. That is the idea, but in practice, this didn’t work out, partly because the UN was set up by colonial entities. It allowed powerful states to embark on aggressive wars under a new legal framework – this genocide, for instance, is couched by the Israelis in terms of self-defence. It changed the legal language, but not the aggressive behaviour by Western powers and their allies. If international law were actually to operate as law, then it must allow weaker states to rein in the behaviour of powerful states – to blunt the impact of the force differential that you can’t surmount militarily. States have a long-term interest in seeing international law be respected, while simultaneously having a contradictory short-term interest in securing favour with US power. As long as that raw power was untroubled, those two systems could carry on in parallel without too much conflict. But the second that the international legal institutions challenge the power of the US and its allies, like Israel, a crisis happens. Israel, the US and its allies, like England and Germany, have decided they would rather maintain their position in the world system at the expense of international law. They are willing to blow up the entire legal edifice so that Israel can commit a genocide. However, sensing that this is an existential moment, countries like South Africa and Colombia have taken the opposite approach. If you were to insist on the application of international law without compromise, which is what these countries in the Global South are doing, then that contains a revolutionary demand, because the demand can only be met by a new order actually premised on equality. International law is, in one sense, dying in Gaza. But there are also states, like South Africa and Colombia, who are not punting accountability to international mechanisms but are actively enforcing international law themselves. If they can do that, they can collectively help bring an end to the genocide and bring justice to the perpetrators, and a new world will emerge. But if they can’t, then it is back to not just de facto, but de jure “might makes right”. .