As Donald Trump congratulates Israel for its conduct of the genocide in Gaza, he should be charged with aiding and abetting genocide, not given the Nobel Peace Prize.
In his speech on Monday to the Israeli Knesset, Trump spent an hour bragging about how he ended the “war” in Gaza and “an age of terror and death,” declaring, “This is the historic dawn of a new Middle East.”
He decried the “thousands of innocent Israeli civilians” who “were attacked by terrorists in one of the most evil and heinous desecrations of innocent life the world has ever seen; the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust,” adding, “The cruelty of October 7th struck to the core of humanity itself. Nobody could believe what they were witnessing.”
Conspicuously absent from Trump’s remarks was any reference to the ubiquitous images of the nearly 68,000 Palestinians killed (possibly as many as 680,000, U.N. Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese said on September 15), including at least 20,000 children, and the more than 170,000 injured by Israel during its two-year campaign of genocide in Gaza.
Trump failed to mention the 641,000 Gazans — about one-third of all Palestinians in Gaza — who have experienced catastrophic famine as Israel used mass starvation as a weapon of war and denied the entry of humanitarian assistance into Gaza.
And Trump omitted the fact that Israel has destroyed the civilian infrastructure across Gaza. It disabled most of the hospitals, damaged approximately 97 percent of the schools, and damaged or destroyed roughly 90 percent of all housing units.
Instead, Trump boasted about the weapons he furnished to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu and praised Israel’s use of them to massacre Palestinian people:
“We make the best weapons in the world, and we’ve got a lot of them. And we’ve given a lot to Israel, frankly. I mean, Bibi would call me so many times, ‘Can you get me this weapon, that weapon, that weapon?’ Some of them I never heard of, Bibi, and I made them. But we’d get them here, wouldn’t we, huh? And they are the best. They are the best. But you used them well.”
With those words, Trump admitted his complicity with Israel in its commission of genocide in Gaza.
Aided & Abetted Israel’s Genocide
Some of South Africa’s legal team on Jan. 26, 2024, for the ICJ order on indication of provisional measures in Pretoria’s genocide case against Israel. (ICJ)
In its Jan. 26, 2024, ruling, the International Court of Justice found a “plausible” case that Israel was violating the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Citing the definition of genocide in the Convention, the ICJ ruled:
“Israel shall take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all genocidal acts, particularly (a) killing members of the group; (b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; and (d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.”
The ICJ also decreed that “Israel shall take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians in Gaza.”
Nevertheless, Israel persisted in committing genocidal acts, including killing and wounding Palestinians, and depriving them of food, medicine, fuel, and water, while displacing them multiple times.
“It is often said that there is no daylight between Washington and Tel Aviv — a relationship whose deadly consequences are etched into the mass graves of Gaza,” according to a petition filed on Oct. 7, 2025, by Taxpayers Against Genocide (TAG) and Palestinian-Americans against the United States in the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
“After October 2023, the United States shifted from ally into public accomplice,” the petition continues.
“For almost two years, it has knowingly and deliberately sustained Israel’s assault on Gaza. By providing weaponry, technology, funding, and diplomatic shield, the U.S. has entwined itself in Israel’s genocidal machinery, turning what might have been a short-lived offensive into a protracted campaign of annihilation, conducted with impunity.”
Trump with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and others after disembarking Air Force One at Ben Gurion International Airport in Israel on Oct. 13, 2025. (White House/Daniel Torok)
On March 2, 2025, Israel declared a “total blockade” on Gaza, refusing to allow the entry of all essential goods, including food, medicine, water, fuel, and electricity, “devastating a population already ‘starving, sick, and dying,’” according to the petition. Netanyahu said the blockade was executed “in full coordination with President Trump and his people.”
Since January 2025, the Trump administration has delivered more than $12.5 billion in major military assistance to Israel, including weapons it has used to commit genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza. An Israeli official told Axios: “In most calls and meetings Trump told Bibi: ‘Do what you have to do in Gaza.’”
Moreover, ensuring that the carnage would continue, Trump’s administration provided diplomatic and political cover for Israel’s genocide. It vetoed two U.N. Security Council resolutions calling for an immediate and permanent ceasefire and the allowance of humanitarian aid into Gaza, one on June 4 and the other on Sept. 18.
“The United States bears legal responsibility under international law for its continued provision of military, financial, and diplomatic support to Israel amid Israel’s commission of genocidal acts against the Palestinian population in Gaza,” the petition states. It adds:
“This support has persisted despite widespread, credible warnings from international bodies that Israel’s actions amount to international crimes and constitute, or at minimum pose a serious risk of constituting, genocide.”
The Genocide Convention prohibits the failure to prevent genocide and creates a duty upon states to refrain from complicity in genocide, triggering both state and individual criminal responsibility. Complicity occurs when a state knowingly aids or assists another state in the commission of genocide, including by furnishing the means to enable or facilitate the genocide.
The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (I.C.C.) provides for the prosecution of individuals who have aided and abetted genocide, including by “providing the means for its commission.”
Trump and his high officials should be investigated and charged by the I.C.C. for aiding and abetting genocide, and prosecuted for complicity in genocide in national courts under universal jurisdiction.
What Happens Next?
An aerial view showing destruction in Rafah, in the Gaza Strip, after Israeli forces withdrawal and as the ceasefire took hold, Jan. 21, 2025. (UNRWA/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY 4.0)
Meanwhile, Gazans are slowly making their way back to their land, arriving to find piles of rubble where their homes once stood. The Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt remains closed to the entry of humanitarian aid. Only 300 of the 600 aid trucks agreed to in the ceasefire deal have been allowed to enter Gaza.
Israeli attacks on Palestinians in Gaza continue. At least 38 people have been confirmed killed since last Friday, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, andHamas has handed over the bodies of 10 Israeli captives.
In a statement Wednesday, Hamas said it had handed over “the corpses it could access,” adding, “As for the remaining corpses, it requires extensive efforts and special equipment for their retrieval and extraction. We are exerting great effort in order to close this file.”
Two of Trump’s advisers told reporters they don’t think Hamas has violated the ceasefire agreement about the recovery of the bodies of Israeli hostages because they lack heavy equipment required to locate the remains. But Israeli officials told the Trump administration that Hamas isn’t doing enough to retrieve the bodies and cautioned that the deal can’t proceed to the next phase until progress is made.
There is no doubt that the ceasefire is a welcome development — one that should have happened long ago. But the subsequent steps in Trump’s plan and how it will be implemented remain vague and elusive.
Far from constituting a peace plan, it is a blueprint to continue Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian territory and deny the Palestinian people their lawful right to self-determination.
The plan provides that Palestinians will be governed by a colonial “Board of Peace” chaired by Trump, composed of many non-Palestinians. And it calls for the imposition of an “international stabilization force” not under Palestinian control.
After Trump announced his plan, Netanyahu said that the Israel Defense Forces “will remain in most of the [Palestinian] territory” and that Israel did “absolutely not” agree to the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Trump told CNN on Wednesday that Israeli forces could “go back in as soon as I say the word” if Hamas doesn’t comply with the terms of the ceasefire. He has appointed himself arbiter of Hamas’s compliance. And Trump has threatened to disarm Hamas “violently” if Hamas refuses to disarm “in a reasonable period of time.”
In the meantime, “nothing has changed in the dehumanization and the attitude of this particular Israeli government and its belief that it has the power to wipe out Palestine as a nation, as a people and as a country,” Israeli historian Ilan Pappé said on Democracy Now!
On Tuesday, several U.N. agencies and humanitarian organizations said that approximately $70 billion will be needed to reconstruct Gaza.
Over the past two years, millions of people around the world have taken to the streets in solidarity with the Palestinians. The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement has gone mainstream.
Calls for states to implement arms embargoes will persist, as well as demands for legal accountability for Israeli and U.S. leaders, including Donald Trump, for enabling Israel’s horrific campaign of genocide.
Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, dean of the People’s Academy of International Law and past president of the National Lawyers Guild. She sits on the national advisory boards of Veterans For Peace and Assange Defense, and is a member of the bureau of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers and the U.S. representative to the continental advisory council of the Association of American Jurists. Her books include Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral and Geopolitical Issues.
