How Israel wields international law as a license to kill

In the wake of Israel’s obliteration of Gaza, it is easy to conclude that international law has failed. But Israeli scholar Neve Gordon argues that the problem runs deeper: states can wield the language and principles of international law not only to evade accountability, but to justify mass violence itself. On this episode of The +972 Podcast, Gordon traces how Israel has used legal concepts to construct a rationale for its assault on Gaza, how human rights advocacy has shifted from political struggle toward an increasingly professionalized field of lawyers and experts, and how the language of human rights can be co-opted to advance the very forms of domination it was meant to challenge. What, then, can international law actually offer a struggle for Palestinian liberation?