Benjamin Netanyahu, now appearing in the aura of ‘peace’, is not diplomacy. It is an obscenity. When the same leader seeks to destroy Iran, then the reverse is the real truth
THE “grotesque theatre of power in a wounded world” describes a contemporary reality where political action, conflict, and societal decay are performative, absurd, and cruel. It is characterised by a “tragic farce” that merges the beautiful with the monstrous, challenging the boundary between performance and real-world suffering.
The “grotesque theatre of power” is where the actions of leaders or societal structures have become monstrous, absurd, or chaotic, often resulting in suffering, brutality, and the breakdown of traditional norms.
When a leader under investigation for war crimes and crimes against humanity is ushered into a body described as a “Peace Council,” we are no longer in the realm of irony. We are in the theatre of moral collapse. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel during the most catastrophic assault on Gaza in its history, now appearing in the aura of “peace” is not diplomacy. It is an obscenity. When the same leader seeks to destroy Iran on the dubious claim that it is weaponised with nuclear weapons, then the reverse is the real truth; then the very damage they cause to others will visit them.
Let us speak plainly. Under Netanyahu’s watch, Gaza has endured devastation on a scale that even hardened observers of conflict struggle to comprehend. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed. Entire neighbourhoods have been flattened. Hospitals have been struck, universities reduced to dust, refugee camps turned into graveyards. Children have died not only from bombs but from hunger, dehydration, and the slow suffocation of siege.
In May 2024, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court announced that arrest warrants were being sought against Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. The charges referenced starvation of civilians as a method of warfare and intentional attacks against civilian populations. Months earlier, in January 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), responding to South Africa’s case under the Genocide Convention, ruled that there was a plausible risk of genocide in Gaza and ordered provisional measures requiring Israel to prevent genocidal acts and facilitate humanitarian assistance.
The ICJ did not declare genocide proven. That will take time. But it did not dismiss the accusation either. It found plausibility. That word matters in law. It means the evidence presented was serious enough to warrant urgent protection of a people facing possible annihilation. These are not the accusations of street agitators. These are proceedings before the highest judicial bodies of the international system.
And yet, while courts deliberate and rubble still smoulders, the political world moves on. The accused is rehabilitated not by acquittal, not by exoneration, but by invitation. A seat at a table. A title. A photo opportunity beneath the word “peace.” What are we witnessing if not the laundering of legitimacy?
Peace is not a decorative label. It is not a diplomatic accessory to be worn while military campaigns continue. Peace is a condition rooted in justice, accountability, and the protection of life. When the very leader under whose authority catastrophic civilian destruction has taken place is presented as a custodian of peace, the concept itself is hollowed out.
Some will object that the term genocide remains contested. Indeed, genocide requires specific intent under international law. It must be proven beyond rhetoric. But that is precisely why the current legal proceedings are so grave. The ICJ’s finding of plausibility is not casual. The ICC’s pursuit of arrest warrants against a sitting leader aligned with Western powers is extraordinary. Such actions are rare and historically significant.
International law was created precisely to restrain the powerful. The Genocide Convention emerged from the ashes of the Holocaust to ensure that “never again” would not depend on geopolitical convenience. If leaders under serious legal cloud are allowed to circulate freely as peacemakers without even symbolic consequence, then the message is unmistakable: law bends before power.
We have seen this before in different contexts. When Slobodan Milošević was indicted, he did not receive invitations to peace councils as a gesture of routine diplomacy. When Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir faced ICC charges, his international travel became diplomatically complicated and politically controversial. Legal jeopardy carried reputational cost.
Why, then, this extraordinary normalisation?
The answer lies in power hierarchies. The rules are invoked selectively. Some leaders are isolated when indicted. Others are shielded. The difference is not legal principle; it is geopolitical alignment.
But let us move beyond the individual and examine the structure that permits this farce. What is this “Peace Council”? Does it demand immediate and unconditional protection for civilians? Does it insist on lifting sieges and blockades that strangle two million people? Does it address the occupation, the settlements, and the denial of Palestinian self-determination? Does it speak of accountability for violations by all parties?
Or does it redefine peace as mere quiet — the silencing of guns without the restoration of rights?
History is unambiguous on this point. Quiet imposed without justice is not peace; it is preparation for the next explosion. South Africa’s transition required truth. Northern Ireland’s agreement required recognition of political grievances. Even the most fragile peace processes understood that legitimacy cannot be built atop denial.
In Gaza today, displacement is near total. Infrastructure is shattered. Aid is politicised. Families dig with bare hands to retrieve loved ones. The images have seared themselves into global consciousness. To speak of “peace” without centring these realities is to engage in abstraction so detached that it borders on cruelty.
The deeper wound here is moral inversion. Victims are urged to moderate their resistance. The powerful are invited to moderate the narrative. Palestinians are asked to prove their humanity. Israeli leadership is granted the benefit of institutional courtesy despite a legal cloud.
This inversion corrodes faith not only in diplomacy but in the very idea of international order. If international humanitarian law is applied vigorously to the weak and cautiously to the strong, it will not survive as a universal norm. It will become a rhetorical instrument wielded selectively.
And yet, this moment demands clarity. Peace cannot be built on premature absolution. Peace cannot bypass accountability. Peace cannot be manufactured while the legal machinery of the international system grinds slowly toward possible indictment.
To allow the accused to don the robe of peacemaker without even the acknowledgment of legal gravity is to trivialise both peace and justice.
None of this denies the complexity of the conflict. Civilians have suffered on all sides. Hostages remain captive. Security fears are real. But complexity does not erase responsibility. Leadership carries weight precisely because its decisions have consequences measured in human lives.
If starvation of civilians is alleged, if disproportionate force is documented, if statements by officials are entered into legal records as possible evidence of genocidal intent, then the leader presiding over that machinery cannot be casually reframed as a neutral broker of harmony.
This is not vengeance speaking. It is a principle.
The international system now stands at a crossroads. It must decide whether its courts are ornamental or consequential. It must decide whether peace is a public relations term or a moral commitment. It must decide whether power exempts or law restrains.
History has a long memory. The victims of mass violence do not forget who spoke for them and who rehabilitated their tormentors. The credibility of global institutions will not be measured by press releases but by consistency.
When the accused claims the language of peace while courts examine the wreckage left behind, the world is entitled to ask: peace for whom? Peace on what terms? Peace without justice?
If this is peace, it is peace emptied of meaning.
And if the international community accepts this inversion without protest, then it is not Gaza alone that stands diminished. It is the moral architecture of the post-war world itself.
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Ranjan Solomon is a writer, researcher and activist based in Goa. He has worked in social movements since he was 19 years of age. The views expressed here are the author’s own and Clarion India does not necessarily share or subscribe to them. He can be contacted at ranjan.solomon@gmail.com
