There are facts without consequences, books without follow-up. What shall we make of this monumental piece of research and logic that speaks to our conscience and should move us all to action? The very essence of civilized existence, of the values of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, of the purposes and principles of the United Nations are at stake.
The genocide in Gaza is not just another monstrous Holocaust, it is a public spectacle.[1] The failure of the United Nations to stop it and the inaction of most Americans and Europeans makes us all complicit in the crime, because qui tacet consentire videtur. If we are only voyeurs of this ongoing massacre, we bear at the very least moral responsibility.
Over the past 30 years Norman Finkelstein has given us many brilliant books, including Method and Madness, I Accuse, Knowing Too Much, Gaza, Beyond Chutzpah, and The Holocaust Industry.
This 400-plus page book documents the civilizational collapse of the ruling classes in the West, the betrayal of all humanistic values, the all-too-public Israeli rejection of international law and morals with the complicity inter alia of the U.S., UK, France, Germany and the European Union.
This is all accompanied by the cacophony of the Orwellian mainstream media, which disseminate fake news, fake history and fake law, especially with respect to the Palestinians as a people, who are wrongly depicted as “terrorists,” while they possess the right, recognized in international law, to resist colonization and occupation.[2]
Nelson Mandela too was once called a “terrorist,” but he was crucial in the struggle to liberate his people. Today everyone acknowledges that the end of Apartheid in South Africa was overdue. When will we see the end of Apartheid in Israel and the Occupied Territories? This is what Jimmy Carter demanded in his book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.[3]
Western politicians and the mainstream media have reversed the roles, and blamed the victim for its misery. Israel is the terrorist that practices State terrorism and booby-traps pagers, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu obscenely showed during his rant at the UN General Assembly on September 24, 2026.[4]
It is Israel that was born out of terrorism[5] against Brits and Palestinians, that has been an aggressor State since its inception, in a very real sense a failed state, because it has not learned how to live in peace with its neighbors.
Israel has attacked Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, etc. In an infamous false-flag operation it even attacked the United States Navy intelligence ship USS Liberty[6] in June 1967, killing 34 U.S. sailors, in a failed attempt to bring the U.S. into Israel’s war of aggression.
Israel has been a rogue state since its creation in 1948—and even before.
The Gaza genocide is only a continuation of the criminal intent to establish an anachronistic, imperialistic “Greater Israel” in the midst of the Arab and Muslim world.
Undoubtedly, the governments of Israel and the U.S. and the EU are morally bankrupt.[7]
Alas, the perception of reality is more decisive than reality itself. Because our actions are conditioned on the information at our disposal, our judgment is influenced—and subverted—by the odious narratives we receive from the mainstream media and our opinions are distorted by the relentless hate speech and propaganda against the Palestinians. This constitutes incitement to hatred and violence, in contravention of Article 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.[8]
The mainstream media disseminate the Israeli narrative and suppress dissenting narratives. We are not only lied to, we are deprived of crucial information that significantly changes the picture.
The public is manipulated, but many let themselves be manipulated. As Julius Caesar wrote in De Bello Civili (II, 27, 2) —quae volumus, ea credimus libenter—we believe what we want to believe. Or worse, as the Romans used to say, mundus vult decipi—the world wants to be lied to.
It is precisely because we have been led to believe that the Israelis are the “good guys” and the Palestinians are the terrorists that we have failed to act in a timely fashion against the outrages committed against the Palestinians, the Lebanese, the Syrians, the Iranians—and not only by Netanyahu, but by every Israeli government since 1948.
The mainstream media have not only influenced, they have manufactured, our qualified consent[9] for the ongoing genocide against the Palestinians.
Finkelstein’s newest book is intended as a “wake up call,” in the hope that a new consciousness in the young people of many countries will lead to vigorous pushback against the ongoing genocide, will lead to accountability before domestic and international tribunals.
Finkelstein shocks us into a realization of the magnitude of the crimes and the inescapable responsibility of our leaders, who have provided and continue to provide military, political, economic, diplomatic and propagandistic support to a genocidal state.
Finkelstein demonstrates the failure of the United Nations to act, the corruption of some UN officials who have gone along with the Israeli narrative and concocted excuses for the gravest crimes.
He documents the unprofessionalism of “Special Advisers” to the Secretary-General, “independent commissions,” and many politicized judges at the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court.
The Book’s Structure
Lesser historians, politicized academics and journalists are wont to apply a deductive approach to history-writing, starting from the desired conclusion and working backwards to find justifications.
Finkelstein relies on inductive reasoning, taking the reader by the hand and walking him/her past the root causes of the Palestine-Israeli conflict, the dialectics of racism and Apartheid.
He collects and evaluates incontrovertible facts that necessarily lead to well-founded conclusions: that Israel has committed and is committing genocide, that many countries are complicit in the crimes, that the media have misled the public, and that the United Nations has failed not only the Palestinians but it has failed the world.
The reader will have no difficulty following Finkelstein’s logic, buttressed by facts and unyielding arguments.
He advances step by step from a comprehensive prologue, followed by a necessary debunking of “rape fantasies” associated with the Israeli narrative of what happened on October 7, 2023,[10] a dialectic between “Laws of War or Logic of Genocide,” the insightful analysis “Free Agent or Foreign Agent?” and the manipulation of public opinion through “Rewriting the Present,” a disturbing Epilogue about the meaning of it all, and a final, heart-wrenching, Postscript.
In the Appendix he adds a comprehensive analysis of the failure of the International Criminal Court to conduct an investigation into the Israeli crimes associated with the repeated illegal hijacking in international waters of the humanitarian Flotillas bringing crucial medicines and food to the beleaguered population of Gaza.
As a professor of international law for more than 30 years, I can confirm that Israel’s actions entailed the crime of piracy as well as multiple violations of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, and the unlawful use of force in contravention of Article 2(4) of the UN Charter. It is hard to swallow that the then-Chief Prosecutor at the ICC, Fatou Bensouda, refused three times to start an investigation of the killings that occurred during the boarding of the flotilla, entailing breaches of Articles 7 and 8 of the Statute of Rome. Was she blackmailed by Israel? She and other UN officials have many skeletons in their closets.
Throughout the book Finkelstein ably uses tables in which he contrasts the law with its interpretation, contrasts the factual findings by commissions with their sometimes incomprehensible assessments, contrasts the reports with their misuse by the courts, and contrasts Israeli narratives with the language used, e.g., by Judge Julia Sebutinde[11] (p. 103) at the ICJ and Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda[12] at the ICC.
Sometimes the tables consist of three columns, e.g., contrasting the sources cited by Judge Sebutinde with those presented by Israel and South Africa (p. 109), contrasting South Africa’s request with Israel’s response and Judge Sebutinde’s comments (p. 119), and contrasting the measures indicated by the court with Judge Barak’s response and Judge Sebutinde’s observations (122).
He also brings tables that summarize the core findings of judgments and advisory opinions (p. 169). This method is extremely revealing of the level of dysfunction at the ICC and ICJ. One can safely conclude: quod erat demonstrandum.
Finkelstein’s analysis of the various reports of special commissions, the pertinent Advisory Opinions of the International Court of Justice and the arguments presented by South Africa in the pending South Africa v. Israel case are invaluable to understand what is going on in the court, and why the ICJ is dragging its feet and not issuing an expeditious judgment determining that Israel has committed and is committing genocide.
One should remember that the Genocide Convention of 1948 was primarily intended to prevent genocide. Notwithstanding the enormous documentation on the genocide and the public statements of numerous Israeli officials and military, the ICJ continues to delay. There is no doubt that the criteria of articles 1-3 of the Genocide Convention have been met. And yet, the ICJ lets the genocide proceed.
Finkelstein also reminds us that, 15 years ago, South African Judge Richard Goldstone (himself Jewish and a Zionist) issued a report concerning Israel’s Operation Cast Lead (2008-9) and concluded that Israel’s actions constituted war crimes and crimes against humanity.
As so often in the past, judges who express inconvenient views are mobbed. This we know from anti-Mafia judges in Italy, some of whom have been killed.
Goldstone, too, was threatened and, on April 1, 2011, he dropped a bombshell, recanting the report in a Washington Post op-ed. He did not consult his colleagues in the UN fact-finding commission, but chose an op-ed to try unilaterally to distance himself from the Commission’s well-founded conclusions. Finkelstein correctly concludes that Goldstone “disgraced his calling and himself” (p. 295).
Finkelstein’s observation in the postscript entitled “Requiem: A Declaration of War Against Gaza. United Nations Security Council Resolution 2803 (2025)”[13] on page 299 ff may shock some readers.
As a 50-year veteran of working in the United Nations in various capacities—as senior lawyer, Secretary of the Human Rights Committee, Chief of the Petitions Department, consultant, independent expert, rapporteur, president of non-governmental organizations with UN consultative status—I fully understand Finkelstein’s conclusion, although I would have phrased it less sharply, because I still cling to my inveterate optimism and the undying hope that the UN can be reformed and that, one day, it will fulfill its principles and purposes laid down in the UN Charter.
On page 308, Finkelstein notes: “Resolution 2803 directly implicated the Security Council itself in the ongoing genocide. It also condemned the tormented and tortured people of Gaza, or those not killed off, to eternal martyrdom…The silently raised hands ratifying the resolution sounded its death knell. Going forward, the cause of Justice will have to be reconstituted on a new foundation. It must be said without recoiling—for it is the Truth—but also being cognizant of the gravity of the verdict that: After 17 November 2025, the UN is rotting corpse” (p. 308).
Tough words. Indeed, the Security Council, by welcoming President Donald Trump’s absurd “Board of Peace” for Gaza, turned its back on hundreds of resolutions of the Security Council (including Resolution 242 of November 22, 1967),[14] General Assembly, ECOSOC, Commission on Human Rights, Human Rights Council, and numerous judgments of the International Court of Justice, including three advisory opinions on Israeli-Palestinian issues.
It is inconceivable how such a resolution was proposed and adopted. The question remains why China and Russia did not veto this abomination. The resolution is clearly incompatible with the UN Charter and should be considered ab initio null and void, because it betrays the purposes and principles of the UN Charter and pretends to “outsource” and delegate the peace process to President Trump, a function that is the exclusive domain of the Security Council. Is the UN deliberately committing hara kiri?
Any member State of the United Nations can request the International Court of Justice to issue an advisory opinion on the unlawfulness of Resolution 2803. Alas, as of the writing of this review, no State has shown the courage to do so. Yet, on November 19, 2025, the Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur on Palestine, Professor Francesca Albanese,[15] issued a blistering media statement rejecting the resolution as contra legem and stating: “This is an existential moment…The international community must not allow Gaza’s future—or the future of the Palestinian people to be decided without their agency and consent. Only an approach rooted in justice, legality, and self-determination can lead to genuine peace.”
In his Epilogue, Finkelstein tells us: “This book was written to expose lies and restore Truth. It will not save lives. The genocide in Gaza is too far gone. Is the book then pointless? For the dead, yes. But for the living, no. The demand sounded in the book’s Prologue stands: not just the perpetrators in Israel but also their accomplices in high places—blood-soaked, all—must be accountable” (p. 297).
General Observations
Again and again, I had to agree with Finkelstein’s description of the chronic malaise at the UN Secretariat, at the General Assembly, Security Council and other UN bodies. From my own experience in the UN, I can confirm that “it is impossible to ignore that politics always interpose in UN investigations. The closer a faction stands to Power, the further it stands from Truth, while the further a faction stands from Power, the more independent it is and the closer it can stand to Truth.” (p. 89)
The ultra vires abuse of power by the UN Secretariat is always disturbing, sometimes shocking. As UN Independent Expert I can confirm attempts by the Secretariat to doctor my reports, to banalize them, to dictate what I should write. I rejected all of these attempts and wrote about some of them in my book The Human Rights Industry.
Yes, the UN has been weaponized by the West. Sooner or later the Global Majority will ensure that the UN is finally decolonized. In a dozen or so cases ideologues in the UN Secretariat refused to issue some of my press releases,[16] which I then published in my blog with an indication that the UN Secretariat had censored them.
Alas, the situation is this bad. As Juvenal wrote in his Sixth Satire, quis custodiet Ipsos custodes? Who will guard over the guardians? (verses 347-48). What do we do when the institutions created to defend our rights actually betray us?
Often Finkelstein has to remind us of pertinent articles of the Statute of International Court of Justice. Article 19 stipulates: “Every member of the Court shall, before taking up his duties, make a solemn declaration in open court that he will exercise his powers impartially and conscientiously” (p. 97).
This is necessary in the light of the unprofessional behavior of some ICJ judges, including Thomas Buergenthal, Georg Nolte, Julia Sebutinde and Joan Donoghue. The intellectual dishonesty of the German judge and the logical acrobatics he pursues in his separate opinions and declarations constitute a disservice to the Court, regardless how stylistically elegant they are.
To say that Gravediggers is a tour de force is an understatement. The facts are riveting, the methodology thorough, the sources impeccable, the analysis merciless, the arguments compelling.
Frequently, I had to put the book aside, because the facts are too upsetting, the moral implications too disturbing. A sense of profound indignation came over me, a sense of frustration at the hypocrisy of our leaders, a conviction that we must win the information war.
Even when we do not want to acknowledge it, the normalization of genocide[17] is ongoing, even if it is dystopian. We must reject the whitewash of the worst possible crimes imaginable by politicians, journalists and academics. Their behavior entails an egregious betrayal of our values, of the U.S. Constitution, of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
We are witnessing an open and public revolt by Israel, the U.S., EU, and other countries against the United Nations Charter, against international law and morality, against the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, against the European Convention on Human Rights—in short, against civilization.
This book is vital, intelligent, pregnant with wider implications. It is impossible for any single reviewer to do justice to it. The information is so vast, the tables so complete, the sources so overwhelming, and the hundreds of footnotes so comprehensive that it is necessary to annotate the book and come back to it.
With regard to style, Finkelstein’s language is at the same time crystal clear and erudite. He does not hesitate to add Latin and French words and phrases where appropriate, when they hit the nail on the head. He embellishes the book by including reproductions of famous works of art by Goya (The Disasters of War, p. 129), Picasso (Guernica, p. 140), Malak Mattar (No Words, Only Scenes of Ruin, p. 151) and others. These additions are not without merit. They optically emphasize the text.
He also brings photos of the dramatis personae in this tragedy, those who have betrayed professional ethics and hindered justice, including Pramila Patten, Sheryl Sandberg, Julia Sebutinde, Joan Donoghue and Fatou Bensouda.
This reviewer was tempted to incorporate some 20 quotes from Finkelstein’s distressing analysis of corruption in high places, of careerism and blackmail. That would have significantly lengthened this review.
Bottom line: This is an indispensable book for all judges of the ICC and ICJ. It should be read by politicians in the U.S., Canada, UK and EU countries, especially by those who are complicit in the genocide. It should be read by all who still have a heart that beats for human dignity.
Someday there must be an accounting.
The Palestinian victims are entitled to compensation and reparations. We recall that Israel became a State member of the UN more or less as recognition following the Holocaust. Palestine has at least an equal claim to UN membership. But, unlike Israel, I am convinced that Palestine will adhere to the purposes and principles of the UN Charter and not wage war against its neighbors.
Finkelstein is the son of Holocaust survivors. His father had been in Auschwitz, his mother in Lublin/Majdanek. He knows what he is talking about. It is urgent and just that the Palestinians have their own State after the Gaza genocide, that they finally enjoy the realization of the right to self-determination.
https://covertactionmagazine.com/2026/01/21/what-did-germans-know-about-the-holocaust-what-do-we-know-about-the-gaza-genocide/ ↑
See Article 7 of the Declaration on Aggression, General Assembly Resolution 3314. ↑
Jimmy Carter, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006). ↑
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGGRNErktOs ↑
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Epq9x0Px5Yk ↑
https://ussliberty.org/ ↑
https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/04/01/the-track-record-of-the-collective-west/
https://dezayasalfred.wordpress.com/2026/04/01/counterpunch-the-track-record-of-the-collective-west-in-regards-to-human-rights-and-international-law/ ↑
https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/international-covenant-civil-and-political-rights ↑
https://chomsky.info/consent01/ ↑
See also Max Blumenthal in The Grayzone https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFEurGy05ps ↑
https://www.icj-cij.org/current-members ↑
https://www.icc-cpi.int/about/otp, see also https://www.icc-cpi.int/judges/judges-who-s-who ↑
https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/4093207?v=pdf ↑
https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/90717?v=pdf ↑
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/11/un-security-council-resolution-violation-palestinian-right-self ↑
See Chapter 2 of my book The Human Rights Industry (Atlanta: Clarity Press, 2023). ↑
https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/11/05/the-normalization-of-genocide/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Epq9x0Px5Yk ↑
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About the Author
Alfred de Zayas is U.S. and Swiss citizen, residing in Geneva, Switzerland, where he is Professor of Law at the Geneva School of Diplomacy.
De Zayas is a former senior lawyer with the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and former UN Independent Expert on International Order (2012-18).
He is author of 12 books including “Building a Just World Order.”
Alfred can be reached at alfreddezayas@gmail.com.
I prefer not to express an opinion or take sides, but I just want to share another person’s perspective.
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/norm/