Much has been made of the fact that the ICC's chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, consulted a panel of legal experts that unanimously supported his decision to apply for arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his defence minister, Yoav Gallant.

The most famous of those experts is Amal Clooney.

Less noticed is that the panel also included Theodor Meron, who was a pivotal legal authority in Israel's foreign ministry at the time Israel occupied the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza in 1967.

As disclosed in Gershom Gorenberg's book The Accidental Empire (2006), it was Meron who advised the Israeli government in a secret memo at that time that any settlements it built in the newly occupied Palestinian territories would be flagrantly illegal under International law – a war crime.

Every Israeli government since 1967 has lied that the legal advice it received from its own officials was that the settlements were not illegal.

Some 57 years later, Meron has again pointed out the criminal nature of Israel's actions towards the Palestinians. And once again, Israeli leaders are lying through their teeth in denying that they are systematically breaking international law in Gaza.

Just as Israeli leaders knew they were committing war crimes in 1967, they know they are committing even grosser crimes against humanity now. And every western leader knows this too. They just don't want you to know.