I was suspended from Israel’s Knesset for highlighting the tyranny of Netanyahu. Help us to oppose him | Ofer Cassif

I've been punished for using the term genocide' - but hope for peace and justice must be kept alive in Israel and Palestine

The arrest warrants issued by the international criminal court (ICC) against Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and former defence minister Yoav Gallant caught many in the international community by surprise. How is it that a perceived constitutional democracy, bound by the rule of law, with a supposedly autonomous judiciary, could allegedly be in such grave violation of international laws and norms?

However, those who have observed, in horror and shock, the unfolding genocide over the past year needed no revelation by the ICC to know the extent of the war crimes and atrocities committed in Gaza. Palestinians, in the ruins of bombarded Gaza, the occupied West Bank, or illegally annexed East Jerusalem, were undoubtedly not surprised. For decades, generation after generation of Palestinians have been deprived of their basic rights and liberties under the auspices of the Israeli occupation. For them, the idea of an Israeli rule of law is as absurd as any colonial attempt to legitimise tyranny through hollow legality.