IT IS difficult to be shocked after 18 months of Israel’s genocidal onslaught on Gaza.

Brazen crimes against humanity have become the norm. World powers do nothing in response. At best, they put out weak statements of concern. Now the US does not even bother with that. It is fully on board with genocide.

Israel and the US are planning the violent ethnic cleansing of Gaza, knowing full well that no-one will stop them. The International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court are sitting on their hands, despite what appeared to be significant rulings last year on Israeli war crimes by the ICC, and on the “plausible risk” of genocide by the ICJ.

As Israeli anti-zionist commentator Alon Mizrahi wrote this week:

“As Israel and the US announce and begin to enact plans to ethnically cleanse Gaza of Palestinians, let’s remember that the International Court of Justice has not even convened to discuss the genocide since May 24 2024, when it was using very blurry language about the planned Rafah action. Tens of thousands have been exterminated since then, and hundreds of thousands have been injured. Babies starved and froze to death, and thousands of children lost limbs. Not a word from the ICJ.

“Zionism and US imperialism have rendered international law null and void. Everyone is allowed to do as they please to anyone. The post-World War II masquerade is truly over.”

Under the Joe Biden administration, secretary of state Antony Blinken and the smirking US spokesperson Matt Miller would make performative statements about “concern” over the killing of Palestinians (they would never use a word as clear as “killing,” always preferring the perpetrator-free “deaths”).

Today, under the Donald Trump regime, the mask of respect for the rituals of international diplomacy has been thrown aside. This is the law of the jungle, and the winner is the government that uses superior force to seize what they believe is theirs, and to silence and destroy those who stand in their way.

This week a group of Palestinian Red Crescent, Civil Defence and UN staff rushed to the site of Israeli air strikes to rescue wounded Palestinians in southern Gaza.

The Palestinian Red Crescent is the local branch of the International Committee of the Red Cross, which, like the UN Relief and Works Agency (Unrwa), provides essential health services to Palestinians in a devastated, besieged war zone. Alongside other international aid groups, they have been repeatedly and brazenly targeted by Israel.

Nothing happened following previous lethal attacks, such as the killing of seven World Central Kitchen staff on April 1 2024, exactly one year ago, when the victims were British, Polish, Australian, Palestinian and a dual US-Canadian citizen. Despite a certain uproar that was absent when dozens or hundreds of Palestinians were massacred, Israel was not sanctioned by Western powers or the UN. And so they continued killing aid workers.

Israel declared Unrwa a “terror” group last October. It has killed more than 280 Unwra staff since October 2023.

Last week it targeted the Palestinian Red Crescent and Gaza’s civil defence in a heinous, deliberate massacre.

“An emergency medical team of nine disappeared along with their ambulances when they came under heavy fire in Al-Hashashin on March 23,” the International Federation of Red Cross said.

The bodies of 15 first responders were found in Rafah, southern Gaza, a week after they were killed by Israeli forces. The vehicles were mangled and the bodies were dumped into a mass grave, some of which were mutilated, with one decapitated.

The Palestinian health ministry said some of the bodies were found with their hands tied and with wounds in their heads and chests.

“This grave was located just metres from their vehicles, indicating the [Israeli] occupation forces removed the victims from the vehicles, executed them, and then discarded their bodies in the pit,” civil defence spokesperson Mahmoud Basal said. “This scene represents one of the most brutal massacres Gaza has witnessed in modern history.”

Among the dead were eight PRCS members, six members of the Gaza Civil Defence, and one UN agency employee.

The head of the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Gaza, Jonathan Whittall, said: “Today, on the first day of Eid, we returned and recovered the buried bodies of eight PRCS, six Civil Defence and one UN staff. They were killed in their uniforms. Driving their clearly marked vehicles. Wearing their gloves. On their way to save lives. This should never have happened.”

The international response to this massacre? Zilch.

On Sunday, Save the Children, Medical Aid for Palestinians and Christian Aid took out ads in Britain’s Observer calling for the British government to stop supplying arms to Israel in the wake of renewed Israeli attacks in Gaza: “David Lammy, Keir Starmer, your failure to act is costing lives.”

Starmer is too busy touting his mass deportation of “illegal” migrants from Britain to comment on the atrocities of his close ally Israel. He has said nothing in public.

Lammy, the British Foreign Secretary, has found time to put out statements on the Myanmar earthquake, Nato, Russian attacks on Ukraine, and the need for de-escalation of renewed tensions in South Sudan. On Israel and Gaza: nothing.

His last comment was on March 22, several days after Israel’s horrific massacre of more than 400 Palestinians on the dawn of March 18: “The resumption of Israeli strikes in Gaza marks a dramatic step backward. Alongside France and Germany, Britain urgently calls for a return to the ceasefire.”

No condemnation of the slaughter of nearly 200 children.

In response to my request for comment, a Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office spokesperson said: “We are outraged by these deaths and we expect the incident to be investigated transparently and for those responsible held to account. Humanitarian workers must be protected and medical and aid workers must be able to do their jobs safely.

“We continue to call for a lift on the aid blockade in Gaza, and for all parties to re-engage in ceasefire negotiations to get the hostages out and to secure a permanent end to the conflict, leading to a two-state solution and a lasting peace.”

The new world order of 2025 is a lawless one. The big powers and their allies are committed to the violent reordering of the map: Palestine is to be forcibly absorbed into Israel, with US backing. Ukraine will lose its eastern regions to Russia, with US support.

Smaller nations can be attacked with impunity, from Yemen, Syria and Lebanon to Greenland (no US invasion plan as yet, but the mood music is growing louder with each statement from JD Vance). This has always been the way to some extent, but previously in the post-war world, the adherence to international law was the official position of great powers including the US and the USSR.

Israel, however, never had time for international law. It was the pioneer of the force-is-right doctrine. That doctrine is now the dominant one.

International law, and international aid, are out.

In Britain last Thursday, a group of young people were meeting at the Quaker Friends Meeting House in central London to discuss peaceful opposition to the genocide in Gaza and to climate destruction caused by the fossil fuel industry. Police stormed the building and arrested seven of them. Such a police action would be unthinkable a few years ago, but new laws introduced under the last government have made such raids against peaceful gatherings increasingly common.

This is the age of lawlessness. Anyone standing up for human rights and peace is now the enemy of the state, whether in Palestine, Columbia, New York, or London.