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 international community—one it must meet with renewed vigor and resolve. The UN General Assembly has the power to suspend Israel, just as it did to apartheid South Africa in 1974. Similarly, states can reestablish the Special Committee against Apartheid, as South Africa recently proposed, in order to help coordinate and bolster international efforts against Israel’s apartheid policies.

But Netanyahu’s presence in New York is a test for the US too.

Netanyahu is a wanted man—the subject of an International Criminal Court arrest warrant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. Unlike so many other states around the world, the US has refused to join the ICC, and thus bears no treaty obligation to enforce the warrant. The US has also, under the current administration, undertaken to dismantle the ICC entirely with an unprecedented sanctions regime and threats to member states—all, it seems, in service of protecting Netanyahu and other Israeli officials. Internally, the US has also barred collaboration with the court when it comes to investigations or arrest warrants against “covered allied persons,” a category that, predictably, includes Israeli officials. This prohibition stems from the American Servicemembers’ Protection Act of 2001 (ASPA), bipartisan legislation passed shortly after the beginning of the US’s so-called War on Terror in order to shield American soldiers, officials, and US allies from prosecution for the criminal campaign that followed.

Americans support Netanyahu’s arrest and extradition to the ICC by a 22-point margin, and while the rhetoric of an increasing number of lawmakers and other government officials is beginning to catch up to public opinion, there has been no movement toward repealing the ASPA since a stalled effort in 2022 by Representative Ilhan Omar. Statements supporting Netanyahu’s arrest and extradition to the ICC are welcome, but lawmakers must also be willing to fight the political battles necessary to make that arrest a legal possibility.

Enforcement of the ICC warrant, however, is not the only tool available to the US when it comes to holding Netanyahu accountable. As stated above, our work at the HRF focuses on the utilization of national jurisdictions. International law has always depended upon states for its execution and articulation, and in the face of unprecedented attacks against the ICC and the extraordinary unlikelihood of an ad hoc criminal tribunal for Israel’s crimes, it is states that must give teeth to international law through their own justice systems.

The United States is no exception. Indeed, the HRF’s filings against Israeli perpetrators in the US have largely depended upon the existence of two robust federal criminal statutes: the War Crimes Act (18 USC. §2441) and the Genocide Statute (18 USC. §1091). Each statute incorporates important international instruments into US law: in the former case, the Geneva Conventions and the earlier Hague Conventions governing acceptable conduct during wartime; and, in the latter, the Genocide Convention. What’s more, each law provides for US jurisdiction over alleged perpetrators regardless of where the crimes have been committed and regardless of the perpetrator’s nationality, as long as the alleged perpetrator is physically present in the US or their crimes were committed against US nationals.

Netanyahu’s myriad crimes are a matter of well-documented public record. And while his physical presence in the US is enough to trigger US jurisdiction, a number of the crimes for which Netanyahu bears responsibility have also been committed against US citizens, like teenager Mohammad Ibrahim, held without charge and tortured in Israel’s dungeons for over nine months before his eventual release, or 26-year-old Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, murdered by an Israeli sniper while attending a protest in the West Bank, to give just two recent examples.

While Netanyahu remains immune from arrest for the duration of his official visit to the UN under the Convention on Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations, such immunity expires the moment he deviates from that official mission or the mission expires. As a matter of customary international law, sitting heads of state enjoy absolute immunity from national legal proceedings (but not international legal proceedings) during their term of office, even pertaining to grave violations of international law. But, as many legal scholars and human rights groups have pointed out, this contradicts other principles of international law, such as the obligation to prevent and punish war crimes and genocide.

Nor is this articulation rooted in long-standing international law principles or state practice—indeed, the principle of absolute head-of-state immunity represents a politically motivated deviation from the Nuremberg Principles and other World War II–era legal precedent, which, per legal scholars Dan Plesch and Steve Kostas, reveal “extensive, coordinated state practice…explicitly rejecting head of state immunity for international crimes.”

Furthermore, it appears as if some state practice has already begun to break from this principle. In 2024, for instance, Venezuela and Argentina each issued arrest warrants against the other’s sitting president. Similarly, last November, Turkey issued an arrest warrant against Netanyahu for genocide. Each of these warrants signals that the customary international legal principle of head-of-state immunity, even with respect to international crimes, is perhaps no longer absolute.

With respect to domestic US law, the picture is even clearer. As we have seen recently with the illegal seizure and domestic prosecution of Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro, or with the prior prosecution of de facto Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega in 1997, US practice on immunity deviates from the present international norm. Indeed, it is a long-standing principle of US law that the executive branch’s immunity determinations are entitled to absolute deference from the courts.

Which is to say: The United States has the ability to arrest Netanyahu for crimes under US law and to prosecute him in US courts. I stress this not because I believe that an administration that has, at every turn, deepened its complicity in Israel’s crimes will suddenly change. I stress the US’s ability and obligation to arrest Netanyahu—and all Israeli perpetrators of the genocides in Palestine and southern Lebanon—in order to make one thing clear: Every day that Netanyahu remains free is a day that the US has allowed him to remain free.

If lawmakers are serious about ending the genocides in Palestine and southern Lebanon, there are steps that they can, and must, take without delay.

Congress must call for the prosecution of Israeli genocidaires and war criminals—including US dual nationals—under US law and support civil society efforts to ensure such prosecutions take place, as Representative Rashida Tlaib has done in her resolution to recognize the genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza, which we urge Congress to pass. These prosecutions would not only serve the interest of justice—they would finally bring the US into compliance with its international legal obligations.

In two years, there will be a new presidential administration. Senators must commit to withholding confirmation of any attorney general nominee who does not promise to undertake prosecutions of Israeli perpetrators under the War Crimes Act.

Congress must enact a full arms embargo against Israel, and call for the prosecution of those arms company executives who have aided, abetted, and profited from Israel’s genocides.

Congress must also repeal the American Servicemembers’ Protection Act of 2001, thus paving the way for US cooperation with the ICC’s investigation into the Situation in Palestine and for enforcing the arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant.

While some US states retain the ability to prosecute Israeli perpetrators for crimes against their residents under their already existing penal laws, regardless of where those crimes took place—as in the case of Itamar Ben-Gvir’s many crimes against New York residents—governors must begin examining options for state-level war crimes statutes, which would extend jurisdiction to encompass additional crimes, and would begin turning US states themselves into sites of accountability. US states must not become safe havens for the perpetrators of the gravest crimes under international law, and justice must not be held hostage by a recalcitrant and complicit federal government.

This list is non-exhaustive: while these measures pertain to our core mandate—to hold Israeli war criminals and genocidaires to account for their crimes—there are many other important economic and diplomatic measures available to lawmakers, all of which must be pursued with the utmost urgency.

None of these measures alone will bring about an end to Israel’s genocides, but, as the ICJ held in a 2007 case regarding the genocide in Srebrenica, parties to the Genocide Convention are obligated “to employ all means reasonably available to them” to prevent genocide “at the instant that the State learns of, or should normally have learned of, the existence of a serious risk that genocide will be committed.” It is no excuse that individual actions may prove insufficient to abate the genocide, “since the possibility remains that the combined efforts of several States, each complying with its obligation to prevent, might have achieved the result…which the efforts of only one State were insufficient to produce.”

Prosecuting the perpetrators of the genocides in Palestine and southern Lebanon under US law would constitute a monumental step in the fight against impunity and for the restoration of the rule of law, both domestically and internationally, but it is not justice.

Justice requires something more: that these prosecutions take place in the courtrooms of a free Palestine, before Palestinian judges and a Palestinian jury. But until then, it is the legal obligation of every state, including and especially the United States, to prosecute Israel genocidaires wherever they may be found. The future of law itself depends on this choice.