What Are War Crimes?

War crimes are serious violations of international humanitarian law committed during armed conflict. These include attacks on civilians, destruction of infrastructure, and the use of starvation as a weapon. War Crimes are serious breaches of International Humanitarian Law, such as parts of The Geneva Convention that protects life, dignity and the means of sustaining life that can be attributed to an individual. The International Criminal Court (ICC ) can prosecute War Crimes arising from breaches of the Geneva Convention and other serious violations of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) under article 8 of The Rome Statute.

What qualifies as a war crime?

War crimes are defined under international law, including the Geneva Conventions and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. They include actions such as targeting civilians, destroying civilian infrastructure without military necessity, and blocking humanitarian aid.

These crimes include:

1. Killing

2. Directing attacks against the civilian population or those not directly taking part in hostilities

3. Wanton destruction and appropriation of civilian infrastructure that is not justified by military necessity

4. Attacking humanitarian assistance

5. Attacking UN peacekeepers

6. Attacking with the knowledge that such an attack will cause loss of life to civilians, or civilian objects, or spread severe damage to the natural environment that is clearly excessive to the overall military advantage anticipated

7. Attacking buildings which are not military objectives

8. Transfer of occupiers' population into occupied land or deportation of civilians within or outside of this occupied territory

9. Attacking buildings used for religious purposes, education, art, science, charity, hospitals, historic buildings provided they are not military objectives

10. Torture and inhumane treatment

11. Pillaging (looting)

12. Use of banned weapons

Examples of war crimes

Examples of war crimes include mass destruction of residential areas, starvation of civilian populations, attacks on hospitals, and denial of humanitarian assistance.

How war crimes are documented

War crimes can be documented using open-source evidence, including satellite imagery, videos, photographs, and verified reports. These materials are analyzed to identify patterns and assess potential violations of international law.

Command Responsibility and Systemic Violations of International Humanitarian Law

The ICC has grounds to issue arrest warrants for individuals if the breaches are large scale or appear to be part of a plan or policy, in other words if these breaches are systemic and/or widespread. Countries are also able to prosecute their own soldiers and discipline them for breaches of IHL within their domestic court systems. In the most grave cases, the international community created legal tribunals to sit and bring justice to areas which have seen horrendous suffering such as post war Germany, Tokyo, Rwanda and Bosnia.

In many ways Israel’s propaganda regarding the presence of military bases under essential civilian infrastructure such as hospitals, the presence of an extensive tunnel network and the ongoing search for hostages with little intelligence on their whereabouts is evidence of a systemic or widespread attack on civilians and civilian infrastructure. Such propaganda creates a weak basis to claim all civilian infrastructure is a military target whilst failing to engage with the second part of IHL which requires soldiers and commanders to assess the military advantages and achievement of objectives against the civilian destruction and death caused. Similarly, the conscious deployment of Artificial Intelligence (Program Lavender) to generate targets with little human hindsight is evidence of a policy which at best disregards Palestinian life and at worse actively seeks to eliminate all Palestinian life.

From this, we can conclude that not only are individual soldiers and their commanders are guilty of war crimes but also individuals in charge of military and government policy. Karim Khan, the ICC prosecutor issued arrest warrants finding grounds to allege that Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Prime Minister since 2022 and Yoav Gallant, former minister of defense between 2022 and 2024 are guilty of the following War Crimes:

Starvation of civilians as a method of warfare as a war crime contrary to article 8(2)(b)(xxv) of the Statute;

1. Wilfully causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or health contrary to article 8(2)(a)(iii), or cruel treatment as a war crime contrary to article 8(2)(c)(i);

2. Wilful killing contrary to article 8(2)(a)(i), or Murder as a war crime contrary to article 8(2)(c)(i);

3. Intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population as a war crime contrary to articles 8(2)(b)(i), or 8(2)(e)(i);

4. Extermination and/or murder contrary to articles 7(1)(b) and 7(1)(a), including in the context of deaths caused by starvation, as a crime against humanity;

5. Persecution as a crime against humanity contrary to article 7(1)(h);

6. Other inhumane acts as crimes against humanity contrary to article 7(1)(k).

This is the tip of the iceberg as potentially Ittimar Ben Gvir , Israeli far-right politician and lawyer who has served as the Minister of National Security since 2022 and Bezalel Smotrich, Israeli far-right politician and lawyer who has served as the Minister of Finance since 2022 can be accused given their roles in condoning the treatment of Palestinian detainees and pushing for the annexation/settlement of the occupied West Bank.