It's been more than a year since the October 7 events, when militants from the Palestinian group Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel, killing hundreds and taking dozens of hostages.

The Israeli retaliation which followed was brutal and seemed to have no red lines. Already under blockade before October 7, Israel imposed a complete siege on the Gaza Strip, limiting the entry of food, fuel and medicines. There was a clear intent to starve and permanently displace the population.

A few months into the assault, Gaza turned into a wasteland, with almost the entire population displaced and more than 80 percent of buildings destroyed. It is not surprising that the International Criminal Court, in its recent verdict, concluded that there was strong evidence for crimes against humanity while issuing the arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.

Aside from the nearly 45,000 official deaths, a large number of which are women and children, the year-long carnage in Gaza has also brought forth harsh aspects of the contemporary world order.

Wither international law?

The year in Gaza has shown the irrelevance of international law and organisations. Over the past year, the United Nations (UN) has issued daily warnings and reported on the dire humanitarian situation, and passed resolutions in the general assembly appealing for a ceasefire, all to no avail. Time and again, Israel has been bailed out in the UN Security Council by its Western allies, in particular, the US. The only resolution that managed to get passed in the Security Council did not result in any tangible steps towards a ceasefire.

To be fair, the UN has been equally unsuccessful in stopping conflicts in other regions of the world, including Sudan and Ukraine, underscoring its broader inability to prevent and stop wars and conflicts.

Concomitantly, Israel has wilfully disregarded international law on the protection of civilians in war. By insisting that the militants use civilians as ‘human shields’, Israel has blurred the well-established distinction in international law between combatants and non-combatants.

There are reports that Israel used AI-powered systems to generate targets. Israeli strikes targeted hospitals, schools, shelters, ambulances and humanitarian zones, all contrary to basic human decency. Earlier this year, a tragic illustration of this was the death of seven volunteers from the World Central Kitchen who were bombed by an Israeli drone strike on their cars.

Western connivance

It was not just Israel that flouted the international law. The year in Gaza showed us that countries that usually voice concerns for human rights and denounce violence were willing collaborators.

The US has flown more than 500 flights to Israel containing weapons and munitions. The most notorious of these were the US-made 2,000-pound bombs dropped on houses in Gaza. The UK and Germany have kept up with regular arms shipments and intelligence. Germany used the opportunity to its advantage, becoming the number two supplier of weapons to Israel over the past year.

The shipment of arms and the diplomatic support to Israel was done with full knowledge of the actual events unfolding in Gaza. Thus, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken disregarded reports from his own state department that Israel was blocking US humanitarian assistance. Had he acted on them, US law would have forced the Biden administration to halt weapons supply to Gaza. Keir Starmer, the UK Prime Minister and a former lawyer who has advised on human rights issues, repeatedly denied in the British Parliament there was an ongoing genocide in Gaza.

Compromised mainstream media

The year in Gaza has also revealed the role of mainstream Western media and exposed the claims of objectivity and fairness. From carrying false reports of beheaded babies to making unverifiable allegations of widespread sexual abuse on October 7, mainstream Western media went with Israel’s version of events.

Israel has not allowed independent journalists inside the Gaza Strip, and everything it told the Western media, such as the presence of a Hamas command centre under Al Shifa Hospital, was taken at face value. Few, if any, mainstream journalists questioned the basis for the routine Israeli claim of militants hiding in the civilian population.

We saw systematic internal bias by mainstream media organisations against Palestinians. Palestinian civilian losses were frequently described in the passive, with the briefest mention of Israeli strikes or shelling that caused their death. The New York Times published a front page photo of a Gaza boy with both his arms amputated under the caption ‘Surviving Gaza’; unless one turns to the whole story, one wouldn't learn what led to his condition.

The bias was not limited to right-wing outlets. A leaked memo from the liberal New York Times revealed forbidding journalists from using the words ‘Palestine’, ‘apartheid’ or ‘genocide’ when talking about the events in Gaza. Earlier this October, a large number of former and present media persons signed a letter to protest the BBC's bias in its reporting of Gaza.

The latest example of this bias was the wilful misrepresentation of clashes involving Israeli football fans and Amsterdam locals of Arab descent as ‘antisemitic’ while suppressing that the Israeli visitors had earlier clashed with locals, torn down flags, and chanted dehumanising slogans mocking the dead children of Gaza.

Weakening of democratic freedoms

The year in Gaza also made evident the repression of democratic protest and voices critical of Israel. From the initial days, large groups of protesters in western cities took to the streets, mostly peacefully, to call for an end to the violence. The protesters, sometimes numbering in the thousands, were smeared as ‘antisemitic’ and ‘Hamas supporters’ by Western officials. Countries with long traditions of protesting, such as France and Germany, outlawed protests. Wearing the Palestinian Keffiyeh or the Palestinian lapel was grounds for cancellation or denial of entry.

Several independent journalists have been detained in the UK for supporting ‘proscribed’ groups. On the lines of the US Congress, the German parliament recently passed a unanimous resolution making civil society groups critical of Israel’s conduct unable to receive government aid. The UK and German governments now decide what is ‘acceptable’ freedom of speech.

In an alternate world, Western countries, led by the US, would have long back imposed the two-state solution on close ally Israel. Palestinians would live in safety and dignity in their own state, free from Israeli occupation and control. That such a reality is far from being realised shows the cruel nature of the world order where there are different rules for different people.