The Laws Jews Gave the World Now Put Israel on Trial

History has a cruel sense of irony. Eighty years ago, two Jewish lawyers from the same city, Lviv in Ukraine, gave the world the words we now use to talk about mass atrocities. Raphael Lemkin invented the term genocide. Hersch Lauterpacht pushed the idea of crimes against humanity.

Their ideas became central to the Nuremberg Trials, where Nazi leaders were prosecuted after World War II. The goal was clear: never again should a people be left unprotected against extermination or persecution.

Yet today, those very concepts are being used against Israel. At the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC), Israel stands accused of committing genocide and crimes against humanity in Gaza. A country built in the shadow of the Holocaust is now facing charges under laws born from that same catastrophe.

From Lviv to Nuremberg

Philippe Sands tells this story in his award-winning book East West Street. He shows how Lauterpacht and Lemkin, both from Lviv, responded to the horrors of their time by creating new legal tools.

Lauterpacht argued that individuals should be protected from state violence. Lemkin focused on entire groups, recognizing that sometimes the goal of atrocity is to wipe out a culture or a people. That is what he meant by genocide.

At Nuremberg, their ideas came together, forming the backbone of a new system of international justice. Out of Jewish suffering came concepts meant to protect all people.

Israel in the Dock

That Israel is now facing charges under those very concepts is a bitter irony. The destruction in Gaza is staggering: tens of thousands dead, neighborhoods leveled, hospitals reduced to rubble, and more than a million people forced from their homes.

Legal experts argue this is not simply collateral damage from war. It looks like the systematic destruction of a people’s ability to live. That is exactly the kind of crime Lauterpacht and Lemkin sought to prevent.

The ICJ is examining whether Israel has broken the Genocide Convention, which Lemkin helped write. The ICC prosecutor is pursuing charges of crimes against humanity, Lauterpacht’s idea.

Supporters of Israel see these accusations as outrageous, turning Holocaust survivors’ descendants into the accused. Critics respond that this is precisely the point: international law was always meant to apply to everyone.

Justice Without Exceptions

Sands makes this clear in East West Street and in his interview on Ezra Klein’s podcast. The laws Lauterpacht and Lemkin shaped were never meant to protect one group alone. They were meant to be universal. Justice loses its meaning if it exempts favored nations.

Shielding Israel from scrutiny would betray their legacy. The whole point of these laws is that no state, however powerful or however scarred by its past, can place itself above them.

The Danger of Victimhood as Justification

Being victims once does not mean a people cannot also become perpetrators. Trauma can be used to excuse new violence. Israel’s leaders often invoke the Holocaust not only as history but as justification for military actions. “Never again” becomes a shield against criticism, even as civilians in Gaza are bombed, displaced, and starved.

This is not to say Gaza is the same as the Holocaust. The Holocaust was unique. But the laws of genocide and crimes against humanity were not written only for that one case. They exist to be applied whenever mass violence threatens to destroy a people.

When the Past Confronts the Present

Lauterpacht and Lemkin could not have imagined their doctrines would one day be used against Israel. But they surely would have argued that justice, to be real, must apply universally. Law loses its credibility if it is selective.

The ICJ and ICC cannot stop the suffering in Gaza on their own. International law moves slowly, and powerful states often ignore it. Still, these cases matter. They show that the tools created after World War II remain alive, still capable of naming atrocity for what it is.

The streets of Lviv gave us the words to confront humanity’s worst crimes. Today, in The Hague, those words are being spoken again—with Israel in the dock.

If justice is to mean anything, it must apply to every nation, no matter its history. To honor Lauterpacht and Lemkin is to uphold that principle, even when it shocks, even when it cuts close to the bone.

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