Rules Of War BROKEN

Israel’s Free Pass on Breaking the Rules

If there’s one thing the world has proven since 1948, it’s that Israel is allowed to do what no other nation could dream of doing without consequence. Imagine for one moment that an Arab state assassinated Emmanuel Macron in Paris. NATO would mobilize overnight. Sanctions, bombings, and war would follow instantly. But when Israel assassinated Ahmed al-Rahawi, the prime minister of Yemen’s Houthi-led government, in August 2025, the world barely flinched. News headlines came and went. No tribunals, no UN emergency resolutions enforced, no “red lines.” Instead, silence.

This is not the first time. In April 2024, Israel bombed the Iranian consulate in Damascus — a violation so blatant it shredded the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which makes diplomatic premises absolutely inviolable. The strike killed senior Iranian commanders, the equivalent of bombing the Pentagon annex in Washington or an embassy in Paris. If Iran had done the same, the entire Western alliance would have cried for war. But since it was Israel, there was nothing more than “concern” and “monitoring.”

The so-called rules of war, treaties signed after humanity’s worst conflicts, were meant to bind all nations equally. Yet when it comes to Israel, those rules seem optional.

A State Built on Exceptionalism

Israel’s disregard for wartime law is not new; it’s woven into its history. Even before the state’s official birth, armed Zionist militias carried out operations that would today be called terrorism. The King David Hotel bombing in 1946 killed 91 people — British officials, Arabs, and Jews alike. In 1948, the Deir Yassin massacre of Palestinian villagers ignited the Nakba, fueling mass displacement. That same year, the UN mediator Count Folke Bernadotte — tasked with brokering peace — was assassinated in Jerusalem by members of the Stern Gang.

After independence, the pattern continued. The Lavon Affair of 1954 saw Israeli operatives attempt false-flag bombings in Egypt against U.S. and British-linked sites. In 1967, Israeli jets and torpedo boats attacked the USS Liberty, killing 34 American sailors. Any other country sinking a U.S. naval vessel would have been met with bombs. Israel received continued aid.

Through the decades, Israel struck far beyond its borders — from Tunisia (1985, bombing PLO HQ) to Sudan (2009, convoy strikes), from Iraq (1981, Osirak reactor) to Syria (2007, nuclear site). No courtroom ever held its leaders to account. Each time, the world adjusted the rules to accommodate Israeli exceptionalism.

Political Assassination as Normal Policy

Most shocking is Israel’s normalization of political assassination. In modern diplomacy, heads of government and diplomats are “protected persons” under the Vienna Convention. Article 29 states clearly: “The person of a diplomatic agent shall be inviolable.” That means you cannot simply assassinate them, whether in a capital city or on foreign soil.

And yet Israel has repeatedly done exactly that. It has systematically decapitated resistance movements and political organizations across the Arab and Muslim world:

>Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, founder of Hamas, killed by helicopter strike in Gaza (2004).

>Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, his successor, killed weeks later.

>Fathi Shaqaqi, founder of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, assassinated in Malta (1995).

>Imad Mughniyeh, Hezbollah commander, killed in Damascus (2008).

>Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, Hamas figure, murdered in a Dubai hotel (2010).

>Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Iran’s top nuclear scientist, assassinated in 2020.

>Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas political chief, killed in Tehran in 2024.

>And now, Prime Minister Ahmed al-Rahawi of Yemen (2025).

No other state could claim the right to assassinate foreign leaders on this scale. The list is long, the locations stretch across half the globe, and yet the response is always the same: a shrug, followed by more military aid to Tel Aviv.

The Hypocrisy Laid Bare

Here is the hypocrisy in its rawest form: when Russia allegedly poisons a defector in London, it sparks global outrage and sanctions. When Iran is accused of targeting dissidents abroad, the West condemns it as terrorism. But when Israel openly brags about eliminating leaders — sometimes prime ministers, sometimes in consulates, sometimes even striking a U.S. Navy ship — the same powers look away.

Since the 1940s, Israel has been in open conflict with or carried out lethal operations in at least a dozen states: Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Tunisia, Sudan, Uganda, the UAE, Malta — plus its continuous wars with the Palestinians and Hezbollah. And yet, instead of punishment, it enjoys protection.

The message is clear: there is no “rules-based order.” There is only power, and those aligned with Western power are exempt from the rules that bind everyone else.

That is why Israel can assassinate a Yemeni prime minister in 2025 and walk away untouched. It is why it could sink the USS Liberty in 1967 without fear of U.S. retaliation. And it is why the Vienna Convention, Geneva Conventions, and every noble principle about protecting civilians and leaders in wartime have become, in Israel’s case, empty ink on paper.

For Yemenis, for Palestinians, for Iranians, for so many in the Global South, this is not an abstraction. It is the reality of living under an international order where the same acts that would provoke all-out war elsewhere are brushed aside as routine when carried out by Israel.

And so the question becomes unavoidable: how long can a system last when its rules are applied to everyone — except those who break them the most?