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How to Arrest Benjamin Netanyahu

Make no mistake: The United States can seize Netanyahu for crimes under US law and prosecute him in US courts when he is in New York City this week.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrives at the White House for a meeting with Donald Trump on July 28, 2026.

On July 24, 2024, only nine months into the Israeli genocide in Gaza, the official Palestinian death toll stood at 39,145 people. This number, like every number that has come since, was almost certainly a severe undercount. A further 90,257 Palestinians had been injured (again, an undercount). At the same time, almost every single person in Gaza had been displaced by Israeli bombardment; the Israel-imposed famine and water crises were causing multiple compounding and long-lasting public health disasters; and the majority of hospitals in Gaza had been put out of operation by Israeli attacks.

Gaza was—and remains—an image of hell.

That same day, another vision of hell unfolded at the US Capitol. At 2 pm EST, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stood smiling as US lawmakers gave him a nearly eight-minute standing ovation ahead of his fourth address to a joint session of Congress. Throughout the course of his speech, he would receive 50 more. As US-made bombs fell on Gaza, Netanyahu thanked Joe Biden, Donald Trump, and Congress for their support and made a promise to his eager patrons: “No matter how long it takes, no matter how difficult the road ahead, Israel will not relent.”

Netanyahu has kept his promise. Since that day, an untold number of Palestinians have been murdered and maimed across Palestine. Israel’s genocidal campaign—which ravages both Gaza and the Occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem—has not only continued but also expanded to include the Shia population of southern Lebanon.

America has kept its promises too: Just this past week, the Trump administration announced a $2.8 billion arms package to Israel—paid for with American tax dollars—which includes 40,000 2,000-pound bombs, a munition used by the Israelis for the commission of numerous war crimes across Gaza. The transfer of these weapons—just like the atrocities they will inevitably be used to commit—is illegal under international law. But this is nothing new. As we have seen over the past three years, when it comes to Israel’s genocides, states around the world—particularly the United States—have repeatedly sided with illegality over legality, with murderers over their victims, and with impunity over justice.

Despite a panoply of legal obligations to prosecute war criminals and genocidaires—stemming from the Geneva Conventions, the Genocide Convention, the Convention Against Torture, numerous International Court of Justice advisory opinions and their attendant provisional measures, and states’ own domestic legal codes—the Israeli perpetrators remain at large. It is precisely because of the impotence of international law—an impotence cultivated by a world-system in which a pair of powerful states, namely the United States and Israel, are capable of positioning themselves beyond the law’s reach—that the atrocities in Palestine and southern Lebanon can continue unabated.

But just because the international justice system has woefully failed to make Israel answer for its crimes thus far does not mean that it is doomed to do so forever. Impunity is always a political choice.

Ending that impunity is at the heart of the mission of the Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF), where I am proud to work. We are dedicated to utilizing both national and international justice systems to hold Israeli perpetrators of the gravest international crimes to account and to ending the legal blank check that Israel has enjoyed for far too long. Our efforts have led to some victories: A number of countries have opened criminal investigations into Israeli soldiers or banned Israeli soldiers and government officials from entering their territory, on the basis of our legal filings.

The bulk of our work focuses on rank-and-file Israeli soldiers—not out of a desire for “easy wins,” as if there were such a thing in the present environment, but because, while military and government officials may have authored the policy of genocide, that policy is carried out by individual soldiers, pilots, and intelligence officers—and all of them are legally responsible.

That being said, we have never lost sight of those who bear the greatest responsibility for the slaughter in Palestine and southern Lebanon. And none bear more responsibility than Benjamin Netanyahu, who is now scheduled to arrive in New York City on Wednesday to address the United Nations General Assembly.

Netanyahu’s expected presence at the UN is yet another test for the........

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