Wars have rules

Summary

Today, Explained: "Wars Have Rules" Episode Summary

Podcast Information:

• Title: Today, Explained
• Host/Author: Vox
• Description: A daily news explainer podcast guiding listeners through the most important stories of the day.
• Episode: Wars Have Rules
• Release Date: June 26, 2025

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1. Introduction to International Humanitarian Law

Noel King begins the episode by reflecting on the devastation of World War II, which resulted in the deaths of approximately 60 million people. This unprecedented loss spurred the creation of international humanitarian law (IHL), an effort to ensure that while wars might still occur, certain actions within them are prohibited to prevent future atrocities.

“[...] We built a legal infrastructure, we called it international humanitarian law that essentially said this. You can wage a war, but while you are waging a war, there are certain things you can't do.”
— Noel King [00:02]

The establishment of IHL included the designation of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide, along with the creation of courts to prosecute those who violate these laws. The underlying belief was that this legal framework, though imperfect, could mitigate the horrors of war.

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2. The Erosion of International Humanitarian Law in the Gaza Conflict

The discussion shifts to the recent conflict involving Hamas's attack on Israel and Israel's subsequent military response in Gaza. Noel King highlights how this situation has tested the robustness of the established legal infrastructure.

“Then came Hamas's attack on Israel and Israel's war in Gaza. And that legal infrastructure fell apart.”
— Noel King [00:02]

Susie Hanson, a journalist and writer for New York Magazine, delves into whether Hamas's actions qualify as war crimes or genocide.

“People can debate those things, but I would say yes, generally people do agree that the attack on October 7th was a war crime.”
— Susie Hanson [02:17]

While there's consensus that Hamas's attack constitutes a war crime, the classification as genocide remains debatable.

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3. Israel's Military Response: Adherence to International Law?

The focus shifts to Israel's military actions over the past 90 weeks and their compliance with IHL.

“Has Israel followed international humanitarian law?”
— Noel King [02:40]

Susie Hanson outlines the contentious aspects of Israel's response, emphasizing deprivation and starvation as potential war crimes. She points to the withholding of food, water, electricity, and fuel from Gaza as deliberate actions that contravene IHL.

“Israel has been accused of withholding food, water, cutting off electricity, withholding fuel... As of May 2024, no one can leave.”
— Susie Hanson [02:40]

Additionally, the indiscriminate bombing campaign targeting civilians, including women and children, raises significant concerns about the proportionality and intent behind Israel's military objectives.

“These absolutely lethal bombing campaigns... target civilians, women, children... the tolerance for killing in this war seems to be off the charts.”
— Susie Hanson [03:49]

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4. International Criminal Court (ICC) Actions and Legal Proceedings

In May 2024, Karim Khan, the ICC prosecutor, issued warrants for three Hamas leaders and two Israeli leaders, including Benjamin Netanyahu, on charges of war crimes.

“My office submits that there are reasonable grounds to believe that these three Hamas leaders are criminally responsible for the killing of Israeli civilians...”
— Karim Khan [06:00]

Susie Hanson discusses the implications of these warrants, highlighting the challenges in apprehending leaders like Netanyahu due to practical and political barriers.

“These are warrants. And so that means that they would have to be arrested or submit to being arrested. And I think that the problem is that it's very difficult to apprehend these leaders.”
— Susie Hanson [06:19]

Furthermore, South Africa brought charges to the International Court of Justice alleging that Israel was committing genocide. While the court found it plausible that genocide was occurring, it did not definitively label the actions as genocide or order a ceasefire.

“The judges released a ruling that it was plausible that genocide was happening...”
— Susie Hanson [07:41]

Despite these legal efforts, Susie expresses skepticism about the effectiveness of these institutions in halting ongoing atrocities.

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5. The Role of the United States and International Institutions

Noel King and Susie Hanson explore how international bodies and key nations, particularly the United States, have influenced the conflict and the enforcement of international laws.

“The United States has been supporting this war and it has been blocking any efforts to even bring a ceasefire.”
— Susie Hanson [09:12]

Omer Bartov, a professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University, further explains the U.S. stance:

“The United States has taken the very clear position since this conflict began that Israel has a right to defend itself.”
— Omer Bartov [09:05]

This unwavering support has contributed to the paralysis of international institutions like the United Nations, which faces obstruction in passing resolutions aimed at mitigating the conflict.

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6. Expert Analysis: Is Israel Committing Genocide?

Omer Bartov provides an in-depth analysis of whether Israel's actions in Gaza meet the criteria for genocide. Initially, in an op-ed, Bartov argued that the situation did not meet the UN's definition of genocide, but his perspective evolved as the conflict persisted.

“I felt that evidence became undeniable in early May 2024.”
— Omer Bartov [14:27]

Bartov cites the systematic destruction of infrastructure, displacement of civilians, and the targeting of essential services as indicative of an intent to destroy the Palestinian population as a group. The staggering death toll, especially among children, and the long-term trauma inflicted upon survivors further support his conclusion.

“When you put all of that together... then it's very hard to call this anything but an attempt to destroy the ability of that group, and that group is made up of Palestinians to survive as a group.”
— Omer Bartov [17:06]

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7. Israel's Defense and Global Perception

Israel vehemently denies accusations of genocide, associating the term with the Holocaust and rejecting its applicability to their actions in Gaza.

“In Israel, if you use the G word, everyone gets very uncomfortable because genocide is associated with the Holocaust.”
— Omer Bartov [18:35]

The Israeli government contends that their military actions are necessary to combat Hamas, which they accuse of using civilians as human shields and manipulating the population to prevent decisive military victories.

“The Israeli media is saying that there is no other way to destroy Hamas... if Hamas were to return the hostages, then Gaza would be immediately completely destroyed.”
— Omer Bartov [20:44]

This stance has led to widespread international criticism, particularly regarding the humanitarian impact on Gaza's civilian population.

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8. The Future of International Humanitarian Law and Accountability

Noel King and Omer Bartov discuss the limitations of the current legal framework and the challenges in enforcing accountability for war crimes and genocide.

“The enforcement agency, the UN is dysfunctional. The United States is standing in the way.”
— Noel King [21:55]

Despite the issuance of ICC warrants, the practical avenues for prosecution remain constrained. Omer Bartov remains cautiously pessimistic about short-term outcomes but holds hope for long-term changes in international relations and accountability standards.

“I've always said. I'm pretty hopeless in the short run. In the long run, things change.”
— Omer Bartov [22:51]

He emphasizes that the current conflict challenges the very foundation of international law established post-World War II, potentially catalyzing a reevaluation of global responses to such crises.

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Conclusion

The episode "Wars Have Rules" from Today, Explained provides a comprehensive analysis of the ongoing conflict between Hamas and Israel, scrutinizing the adherence to and breakdown of international humanitarian laws. Through expert interviews and detailed discussions, the podcast highlights the complexities of prosecuting war crimes, the influential role of international powers, and the profound human cost of the conflict. The episode underscores the urgent need for effective enforcement mechanisms to uphold the principles established to prevent atrocities in the aftermath of World War II.

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Notable Quotes:

• “We built a legal infrastructure, we called it international humanitarian law that essentially said this. You can wage a war, but while you are waging a war, there are certain things you can't do.”
  — Noel King [00:02]

• “People can debate those things, but I would say yes, generally people do agree that the attack on October 7th was a war crime.”
  — Susie Hanson [02:17]

• “These absolutely lethal bombing campaigns... target civilians, women, children... the tolerance for killing in this war seems to be off the charts.”
  — Susie Hanson [03:49]

• “We are fighting animals and acting accordingly.”
  — Omer Bartov [03:51]

• “I've always said. I'm pretty hopeless in the short run. In the long run, things change.”
  — Omer Bartov [22:51]

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Additional Information

Produced by: Victoria Chamberlain
Edited by: Jolie Meyers
Senior Researcher: Laura Bullard
Engineers: Andrea Christensdotter and Patrick Boyd
Hosts: Noel King and Omer Bartov

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Support for Today, Explained: This summary omits advertisements and promotional content to focus solely on the episode's substantive discussions.

Transcript

[Noel King]

During World War II, something like 60 million people died. Humanity had never seen anything like this. So with great post war optimism, people decided, never again. We built a legal infrastructure, we called it international humanitarian law that essentially said this. You can wage a war, but while you are waging a war, there are certain things you can't do. And we labeled them war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. We built courts where you could take people who were accused of breaking the law. And we believed that while imperfect, the laws backed up by the courts could prevent and prosecute crimes of war. Then came Hamas's attack on Israel and Israel's war in Gaza. And that legal infrastructure fell apart. And it fell apart as Israel was accused of the most serious of the crimes, genocide. Coming up on Today Explained how this war broke the law. Support for Today explained comes from WhatsApp. Nobody likes having someone look over their shoulder when they're texting or listening in on their personal calls or peeking at their note to self. You deserve privacy in person and digitally. And WhatsApp gets that by design. No one, not even WhatsApp can see or hear your personal messages except the person you send them to. If someone tries to take a peek, all they'll see is gibberish. And that includes WhatsApp themselves. WhatsApp message privately with everyone. Visit WhatsApp.com privacy to learn more. This is TODAY Explained. I'm Noel King. Susie Hanson is a journalist and writer who has spent much of her career in the Middle East. New York magazine recently published Susie's piece Crimes of the Century. It's in part an examination of why we created international humanitarian law after World.

[Susie Hanson]

War II to prevent the kind of horrors that we saw in that war. Not only ethnic cleansing, genocide, all different kinds of crimes against humanity, torture and.

[Noel King]

How it fell apart. I asked Susie first about Hamas's attack on Israel and whether the experts that she spoke to say that was a war crime.

[Susie Hanson]

People can debate those things, but I would say yes, generally people do agree that the attack on October 7th was a war crime. I think that it's debatable whether or not it was an act of genocide. But some people would argue that. I mean, people can arg different things about this, okay?

[Noel King]

And then comes Israel's response, which has unfolded over about 90 weeks. Has Israel followed international humanitarian law?

[Susie Hanson]

Again, I think that that is debatable. I think many people would argue no. I think in some cases they would argue yes. But I think that the main points of contention here are about the deprivation and starvation, which is a war crime. And the nature of the bombing campaign. And those were certainly the two things that I was most interested in for this peace. Israel has been accused of withholding food, water, cutting off electricity, withholding fuel. Remember, it controls everything that goes into Gaza, and it also prevents people from leaving. As of May 2024, no one can leave. Okay, so many people have been arguing as early as, you know, probably 2023, but certainly 2024, that Israel has been withholding, deliberately withholding those things. And certainly there have been in the last few years in which there have been sieges where they have said openly, we are doing a total siege on.

[Omer Bartov]

Gaza, in Kashmal, in Mazon.

[Noel King]

No electricity, no food, no water, no gas.

[Omer Bartov]

It's all closed.

[Susie Hanson]

We're fighting animals and acting accordingly. They say it's to bring Hamas to the table. They say it's to release the hostages. But what Ken Roth at Human Rights Watch and many other people told me is that there is an obligation on the part of states to allow access to food. And this is something that nobody debates. So that's one area that I would point to. The second point is indiscriminate bombing. And I think this is something that anyone who has been witnessing this catastrophe, who has been on social media, has seen day in and day out, these absolutely lethal bombing campaigns that target seem to target, end up targeting civilians, women, children. I think that has been one of the most heartbreaking aspects of this war. And so it raises the question, are these attacks proportionate to the military aims? And I think what has been found by many other journalists investigations is that Israel has changed its tolerance of proportionality in this war. It seems to me that for much of the war, they have tolerated an unbelievable amount of civilian deaths. I think now what we're seeing is something way even beyond what was the norm of this war, because as you can see, there are people simply coming to aid sites to try to get food, and they are being shot at. The tolerance for killing in this war seems to be off the charts as compared to the norms of international law.

[Noel King]

If the law is being violated, there are places you can go to prosecute. There are places you can go to say, this shouldn't be happening. Somebody needs to make it stop. So let's talk about the attempts to prosecute. In May of 2024, Karim Khan, the International Criminal Court prosecutor, issued warrants for three leaders of Hamas and for two leaders of Israel, including Benjamin Netanyahu. So warrants issued on both sides, and the charge was war crimes.

[Karim Khan]

My office submits that there are reasonable grounds to believe that these three Hamas leaders are criminally responsible for the killing of Israeli civilians in attacks perpetrated by Hamas and other armed groups on the 7th of October, 2023.

[Noel King]

Walk us through what happened.

[Susie Hanson]

Well, they've issued these warrants, and I think that you could say that that establishes a sense that what they are doing is inhumane.

[Karim Khan]

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister of Defence Yoav Gallant bear criminal responsibility for the following international crimes. Starvation of civilians as a method of warfare, willfully causing great suffering, serious injury to body or health or cruel treatment, willful killing or murder.

[Susie Hanson]

I think that one thing that's very important with war crimes and certainly with genocide, is intent. And I think in this case you have a lot of statements of intent on the part of Netanyahu and Gallant, but these are warrants. And so that means that they would have to be arrested or submit to being arrested. And I think that the problem is that it's very difficult to apprehend these leaders. So I think, you know, again, there is an apparatus, there is an idea of apprehending people who are accused of war crimes, putting them on trial and bringing them to court. But whether or not that will happen is a totally different story.

[Noel King]

The term, the formal term that the ICC used was war crimes. But South Africa brought to the International Court of Justice a charge that Israel was committing genocide. Did that go anywhere?

[Susie Hanson]

The judges released a ruling that it was plausible that genocide was happening and they ordered, or they voted to order Israel to take measures to prevent genocide and that they must punish those who are inciting genocide. So they did not say that it is happening. And they, to a lot of people's disappointment, didn't order a ceasefire, but they did say that it was plausible. And I have to say I think this was very meaningful to many people around the world. Even if people are cynical about the ability for these courts to actually prevent things like genocide, to prevent war crimes, or to bring people to justice, I think the fact that South Africa brought this case might have even reinvigorated some faith in international humanitarian law. But again, if you take a darker view, it hasn't prevented anything. It hasn't prevented anything from happening. And in fact, things right now, as we speak, are getting worse and worse and worse.

[Noel King]

You can look at this through a very dark lens and say it hasn't prevented anything, or you can be more hopeful and say there still has been movement within the legal architecture that we set up after World War II, that the world set up. But those Processes don't seem to be working in this case this time around. Is there something about this conflict that has seemed to defenestrate or like, disembowel the institutions that we set up to prevent exactly this?

[Susie Hanson]

Unfortunately, yes, because the United States has been supporting this war and it has been blocking any efforts to even bring a ceasefire.

[Omer Bartov]

The United States has taken the very clear position since this conflict began that Israel has a right to defend itself.

[Noel King]

Which includes defeating Hamas and ensuring they.

[Omer Bartov]

Are never again in a position to threaten Israel.

[Susie Hanson]

At the U.N. you know, there were Security Council resolutions. The U.S. blocks them. And I think, you know, I saw that a former war crimes prosecutor in the Bosnia case said, yes, you should not expect these courts to be able to prevent these things from happening or stop these things from happening. It's up to governments, up to governments to uphold these laws. It's up to governments to prevent atrocities from happening, to stop supplying weapons when they know that the country they're supplying weapons to are breaking international humanitarian law. I mean, let's not forget, it's in the piece that I wrote. They knew at the State Department that Israel was committing war crimes, that Israel was depriving Gaza of food. It wasn't even a debate, as Stacey Gilbert told me in the piece. But they said that they weren't doing it anyway. And the reason why they said that is because then it would trigger, according to our own US Laws, a cessation of weapons to Israel. And the fact of the matter is the Biden administration was never going to stop giving weapons to Israel. That was the policy. And so I think that we have to take a really hard look at these policies within the United States, within the Democratic Party, within the Republican Party, and try and understand why they are so ironclad, why they have been so unchanging, even in the face of moral outrage, of unrest in the United States, of pain and heartache all over the world, and a total loss of faith in the United States, frankly, which I don't think. No, I actually don't believe we will ever recover from.

[Noel King]

Susie Hanson is a journalist and writer who wrote Crimes of the Century for New York Magazine. Coming up, is Israel committing genocide in Gaza? An Israeli historian of genocide explains how he got to. Yeah, support for Today explained comes from WhatsApp. WhatsApp is committed to keeping users personal chats safe. The things you want most to keep private are indeed kept private, even from WhatsApp. Maybe it's where you message in character memes to your Dungeons and Dragons group. Or it's where you share a detailed itinerary with your coworker who's planning a vacation in your home state. From everyday moments of connection to relationship milestones, WhatsApp is your go to for secure and private messaging. And that's because privacy is core to their design. That means no one, not even WhatsApp, can see or hear your personal messages. The only people who see your messages are the people you send them to. Whether it's personal calls, documents, photos, or media that you share in your personal chat, no one's listening in, not even WhatsApp, because all WhatsApp is of your personal messages is gibberish. Your personal Messages stay yours. WhatsApp message privately with everyone. Visit WhatsApp.com privacy to learn more.

[Omer Bartov]

This is Today Explained. My name is Omer Bartov and I'm a professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University.

[Noel King]

I took a class with you on genocide at Brown. Very good class, very memorable class. How did you end up developing expertise in this very troubling area?

[Omer Bartov]

Well, thanks for saying that. First of all, it's always nice for a teacher to hear that. And that was a long time ago, I gather, right?

[Noel King]

Yeah, yeah. Professor Bartov is Israeli, he is Jewish, and his interest in genocide started many years ago with what he believed to be an incorrect narrative that the German army fought honorably in World War II and that the Gestapo were just like bad apples, they were acting behind the army's back. Now, Bartow was ultimately right about that. He's a serious scholar of genocide. And about a month after Hamas's attack on Israel on 10 7, he wrote an op ed for the New York Times saying what was happening in Gaza was not a genocid. Yet he said it didn't meet the UN's definition.

[Omer Bartov]

One, that there is an intent to kill or to destroy a particular group, to destroy the group as a group. And the second is that that intent is being implemented. And that was still unclear at the.

[Noel King]

Time, but he warned that it could become a genocide. And now he says it is. Undeniably.

[Omer Bartov]

I felt that evidence became undeniable in early May 2024. And the reason was that at the time the IDF was about to launch an operation against the city of Rafah, by the way, a city that no longer exists. And there were at the time about a million displaced persons in that city. That is half the population of Gaza was in that city. And the Americans were saying, if you go into Rafah, you're going to kill a lot of civilians. And the IDF said, don't worry about it. We're going to move them for their own safety. And then once they were removed from that area, the IDF moved in and began demolishing Rafah. By July, much of it was destroyed. Now, according to current reports, there's simply nothing there anymore. The city has disappeared. It was at that point that I started looking back at everything that had happened between October of 2023 and May of 2024, and what you could see was a pattern of operations. And that's important to understand because often regimes that carry out genocide don't say, we are carrying out genocide. They say, well, it's security reasons, we're attacked, it's a war of defense, and so forth. In this case, there were, as I said before, many people, many leaders in Israel who said, we have to wipe out Gaza. We have to flatten it. Nobody's uninvolved. And the pattern of operations showed that there was implementation of those early statements. They were not simply made at the heat of the moment. And what it meant was that there was systematic destruction of schools, of museums, of hospitals, infrastructure that makes it possible for a population to live, and that makes it possible for it, if it survives that calamity, to reconstitute itself as a group. And it was at that point that it appeared to me that the goal was actually what was said right at the beginning, to destroy the ability of Palestinians to live as a group in Gaza.

[Noel King]

What about the number of people killed? Does that figure into to your thinking on defining this as a genocide?

[Omer Bartov]

Well, yes, of course. I mean, if you see what is happening since May 2024, but much more so now, not only are the numbers of those who were killed very high, we're talking about 55,000 or so right now. About half of those are children. And then you have large numbers of children who will, even if they survive this, who will suffer for the rest of their lives from years of trauma. Gaza has the distinction now of having the largest number of child amputees per capita in the world, children who have not received enough food, who will never grow up to be normal, healthy human beings because of what they underwent. When you put all of that together, and of course they've been living in atrocious conditions, then it's very hard to call this anything but an attempt to destroy the ability of that group, and that group is made up of Palestinians to survive as a group.

[Noel King]

Israel, of course, is aware of these facts on the ground, because the Israeli army is perpetrating the facts on the ground. Israel still says this is not genocide. What is Israel's claim? What does Israel say is happening if not genocide?

[Omer Bartov]

So, for one thing, in Israel, if you use the G word, everyone gets very uncomfortable because genocide is associated with the Holocaust. And Israel sees itself as a country that was created in response to the Holocaust. So in that sense, when you say genocide in Israel, it's like saying the country that was created in the wake of genocide, in the wake of the largest modern genocide, is now being accused of doing it itself. It appears to be impossible to grasp, to accept such a statement. So this huge resistance to even invoking this word, but specifically what the Israeli media is saying is that there is no other way to destroy Hamas. There's no way of doing that without causing major damage to the population, because Hamas is using the population as human shields. And the argument is that generally there is large support for Hamas among the population, so if they get killed, then so be it. The other argument I'd say is that if Hamas just returned the hostages, then the war would end. Now, of course, that is completely false, because the only thing that is keeping the IDF from moving even more aggressively into all areas of Gaza is the fear that generals in the IDF have that by doing so, they will also kill the remaining hostages. And so if Hamas were to return the hostages, then Gaza would be immediately completely destroyed because there would be nothing to stop the IDF from doing that.

[Noel King]

That's your belief. That's not something that Israel has said, though, right?

[Omer Bartov]

Actually, what is being said right now in Israel, interestingly, and that's sort of out there, many people have spoken about it in Israel on mainstream media. The plan of the idf, and it's implementing it as we speak, is to take over 75% of the Gaza Strip and to concentrate the entire population of Gaza in 25% of the territory. So to squeeze 2 million people into an area that has no infrastructure to enclose them there, to completely empty the rest of the Gaza Strip, and as a very detailed report in Haaretz actually showed just about a week ago, to carry out systematic destruction of everything, literally everything in the rest of the Gaza Strip. So this is not, you know, hypothesizing. This is what is actually happening on the ground and is reported in Israel itself.

[Noel King]

What do you make of this? There are limits to the legal architecture that we use. The enforcement agency, the UN is dysfunctional. The United States is standing in the way. And then on top of that, it's usually only in the aftermath that people say, okay, it was indeed a genocide. What do you think should happen.

[Omer Bartov]

The fact, for instance, that right now Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant have an arrest warrant in their name by the International Criminal Court and therefore cannot travel to signatory states without being in fear of being arrested and brought to the international court, to the ICC in the Hague. That alone matters.

[Noel King]

You are not hopeless.

[Omer Bartov]

I've always said. I'm pretty hopeless in the short run. In the long run, things change. One thing that I've been thinking about just recently is that Israel, the state that I grew up in and in whose ministry I served and where I have many friends, that state has used up its argument for impunity. It used that argument for many years, for decades since its creation, by saying there was a holocaust of the Jews and therefore no one can tell us what to do. We don't operate according to the rules of the rest of the world because the rest of the world stood by while millions of Jews were murdered. And I think that is run out. This case, which is a huge challenge to the entire regime of international law in the long run, may perhaps also teach the international community that it has to act more expeditiously, that it has a responsibility to stop these actions lest it itself find itself in that other era that existed before the creation of all these international bodies where strong states could do anything they liked to their weaker neighbors.

[Noel King]

Omar Bartov is a historian and a professor at Brown University of Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Victoria Chamberlain produced today's show, and Jolie Meyers edited. Laura Bullard is our senior researcher. Andrea Christensdotter and Patrick Boyd are our engineers. I'm Noel King. It's TODAY Explained. Support for Today explained comes from WhatsApp. Whether it's memes or a vacation itinerary or a heartfelt voice message, your private messages are just that, private. They're yours and no one else's. WhatsApp understands that, which is why it's a core component of the app's design. No one, not even WhatsApp, can see or hear your personal messages. That includes personal calls, plus any documents, photos or media that you share in your personal chat. WhatsApp makes sure your personal messages stay yours. WhatsApp message privately with everyone visit WhatsApp.com privacy to learn more.