THE concept of a ‘rules-based order’ was something of a joke long before Israel embarked on the latest phase of its genocide in October 2023. The violence of the oppressed on Oct 7 that year was almost welcomed as an excuse to impose a final solution. The Nazi-like brutality of all that followed has been facilitated — at times even encouraged — by some of the most consequential nations.
What is at least equally appalling is the determination of the West, spearheaded by the US, to intimidate those who dare to stand up for human rights. Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur for occupied Palestinian Territories, is the first UN representative to have been sanctioned by the US —because she was not only among the first to call out the genocide, but also to rigorously detail the complicity of particular nations and corporations.
Apart from being denied entry to the US, she can’t use credit cards, since the issuing institutions are American. After a US court last month blocked the sanctions, they were reimposed by an appeal court. These technicalities are only the tip of the iceberg. Apart from death threats, Albanese has also had to contend with the anonymous warning that her (then pre-teen) daughter would be raped, while her husband — a World Bank employee — has suffered professional repercussions. Inevitably, Albanese has weighed the cost of her relentless activism on her family, but without resiling from her determination to disseminate the truth about the 21st century’s worst Western-aided crimes against humanity.
The International Criminal Court is also a 21st-century phenomenon, and the 125 signatories to the Rome Statute that established it in 2002 unfortunately do not include Israel, India, Pakistan, the US, Russia or China. There were no Western objections when the ICC issued arrest warrants in 2023 against Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova for the crime of transferring Ukrainian children to Russia, or when it added military leaders Sergei Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov to the list of those accused of crimes against humanity. ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan was tried in absentia in Russia, and a retaliatory arrest warrant was issued against him.
The West is bent on intimidating those who stand up for rights.
It was the US, though, that sanctioned not just Khan but two deputy prosecutors and eight judges, alongside Albanese and various Palestinian NGOs. His predecessor in the post, Fatou Bensouda, was pressured and threatened, including by former Mossad chief Yossi Cohen, who advised her to curb her enthusiasm as far as Israel was concerned.
Khan stepped aside in 2024 when he was accused of sexual indiscretions. There is no evidence that the accuser was influenced by Israel or its proxies, who have nonetheless pounced upon the allegations to declare that the prosecutor’s personal proclivities demolish his case against Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant. That’s nonsense. The case stands, despite the shadow hanging over the prosecutor.
Khan was suspended from his post on Monday, with the ICC’s governing body pursuing the allegations against him. Following a UN watchdog’s investigation, a three-judge ICC panel found that the allegations against him did not meet the ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ test. It wasn’t exactly an exoneration, as some media outlets have claimed. There are indications his chief accuser held back from her accusations because she did not wish the case against Israel to be compromised. After a whistleblower highlighted her charges, a second complainant has emerged. In ‘he said, she said’ circumstances, the truth is hard to ascertain. In most cases, though, ‘she said’ remains a more reliable source of information.
Khan’s younger brother, Imran Ahmad Khan, resigned as a pro-Brexit Conservative MP in Britain — where both brothers were born to a Pathan father from Mardan, and an English mother — after being found guilty of sexual abuse against a male teenager. That does not necessarily reflect on Karim Khan’s tendencies, but his pushback against the accusations he faces has tended to be legalistic. Whether or not any criminal charges ensue, it might be best for him to make way for a successor. Whatever the details in this instance, though, it’s worth noting that his predecessor, Bensouda — a Gambian lawyer who is now her nation’s high commissioner to the UK — faced threats, including directly from Mossad, over her pursuit of investigations related to Palestine.
Regardless of the veracity of the allegations against him, it might be best for Karim Khan to bow out so that the credible case of genocide can be pursued without offering Israel the opportunity to question its credibility. Notwithstanding all that, though, history will recall this juncture as an epochal rupture in the myth of a postwar international order, courtesy of the US, Israel and their all too many associates.
Published in Dawn, June 10th, 2026
