Sereen Haddad is a bright young woman. At 20 years old, she just finished a four-year degree in psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) in only three years, earning the highest honors along the way. Yet, despite her accomplishments, she still cant graduate. Her diploma is being withheld by the university, not because I didnt complete the requirements, she told me, but because I stood up for Palestinian life.
Haddad, who is Palestinian American, had been raising awareness on her campus about the Palestinian fight for freedom as part of her universitys chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. The struggle is also personal for her. With roots in Gaza, she has lost more than 200 members of her extended family to Israels war.
She was part of a group of VCU students and supporters who attempted to set up an encampment in April 2024. The university called in the police that same night. Protestors were pepper sprayed and brutalized, and 13 were arrested. Haddad was not charged, but she was taken to the hospital because of the head trauma that I endured, she told me. I was bleeding. I was bruised. Cuts everywhere. The police slammed me down on the concrete, like, six different times.
But last years attempted encampment wasnt even the reason Haddads degree is being withheld. This years peaceful memorial of it was. And how that scenario played out, with the university and campus police constantly changing the rules, illustrates something worrisome far beyond the leafy confines of an American campus.
Israels war in Gaza is chipping away at so much of what we in the United States but also internationally had agreed upon as acceptable, from the rules governing our freedom of speech to the very laws of armed conflict. It seems no exaggeration to say that the foundation of the international order of the last 77 years is threatened by this change in the obligations governing our legal and political responsibilities to each other.
This collapse began with the liberal worlds lack of resolve to rein in Israels war in Gaza. It escalated when no one lifted a finger to stop hospitals being bombed. It expanded when mass starvation became a weapon of war. And it is peaking at a time when total war is no longer viewed as a human abhorrence but is instead the deliberate policy of the state of Israel.
The implications of this collapse are profound for international, regional and even domestic politics. Political dissent is repressed, political language is policed, and traditionally liberal societies are increasingly militarized against their own citizens.
Many of us disregard how much has shifted in the last 20 months. But we are ignoring the collapse of the international system that has defined our lives for generations at our own collective peril. ... The strategic rewriting of the rules isnt unique to VCU. Its taking place across the United States as university administrators clamp down on protests supporting Palestinian rights. In one of many other examples, dozens of faculty members and students were temporarily suspended from Harvards library in late 2024 after they sat quietly reading in the library with signs that either supported free speech or opposed the war in Gaza, though a similar protest in December 2023 carried no such sanction.
Had any of these students been protesting Russias war on Ukraine, you can be sure these administrations would have responded with adulation. Universities, after all, pride themselves on being the testing grounds for societys collective values. As sites of contemplation and exploration, they function as incubators for future leaders.
But when it comes to the question of Palestine, a different pattern begins to emerge. Rather than listen to students who want to hold Israel accountable for its actions, those in positions of power in the university are opting to change the rules instead.
Such dubious rule changes are not just for our students. In a damning report published in January, ProPublica dissected the many ways that the Biden administration kept shifting the goalposts in Israels favor after 7 October 2023. Remember the threats of sanctions against Israel for invading Rafah? (Its a red line, Biden said.) Or the 30-day ultimatum placed on Israel to dramatically increase the food aid? But nothing happened. Outside briefly pausing a shipment of 2,000lb (0.9 tonne) bombs, the military hardware kept on coming.
The Leahy law requires restricting assistance to military units of foreign governments engaged in gross human rights violations. It has never been applied to Israel. In April 2024, it looked like secretary of state Antony Blinken was about to sanction Netzah Yehuda, a notorious battalion in the Israeli Defense Forces, under the Leahy law. In the end, he punted, and the battalion not only escaped US sanctions, but according to CNN, its commanders were even assigned to train ground troops and run operations in Gaza.
Its hard to avoid the conclusion that the red lines have all just been a smokescreen, Stephen Walt, a professor of international affairs at Harvard Kennedy School, told ProPublica. The Biden administration decided to be all in and merely pretended that it was trying to do something about it.
Leahy isnt the only US law that Israeli impunity is pushing to a breaking point. In late April 2024, the US governments leading agencies on humanitarian assistance concluded that Israel was deliberately blocking entry of food and medicine into Gaza. The US Foreign Assistance Act requires the government to suspend military assistance to any country that restricts, directly or indirectly, the transport or delivery of United States humanitarian assistance. Blinken just ignored the evidence provided by his own government. We do not currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of US humanitarian assistance, he informed Congress.
The rules bend like reeds when it comes to Israel, which in March 2025 also broke the ceasefire that the Trump administration had helped negotiate in January. And now we are witnessing a new level of cruelty: the use of starvation as a weapon of war. Meanwhile Israeli politicians openly call for ethnic cleansing. Bezalel Smotrich, the far-right finance minister, bragged that Israel is destroying everything thats left of the Gaza Strip and that the army is leaving no stone unturned. He added: We are conquering, cleansing and remaining in Gaza until Hamas is destroyed. And his idea of Hamas is expansive. Were eliminating ministers, bureaucrats, money handlers everyone who holds up Hamass civilian rule, he explained. Killing civilian members of government (as they are not combatants) is a war crime.
The US and the international community, again, do nothing.
Every day, the previously unheard of is not just spoken aloud but also acted upon precisely because it elicits little reaction. Two retired Israeli air force pilots wrote in the Israeli newspaper Haaretzs Hebrew edition that a member of the Knesset even boasted that one of the [Israeli] governments achievements is the ability to kill 100 people a day in Gaza without anyone being shocked (an excerpt of the Haaretz article was quoted by columnist Thomas Friedman in the New York Times.) ...