In the wake of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, in which Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people and kidnapped about 250 more, Sen. John Fetterman papered his office walls with pictures of the hostages. 

He wore the Israeli flag like a cape to a pro-Israel march on the National Mall and waved it from the roof of his home as pro-Palestinian protesters chanting below accused him of “supporting genocide.”

He even broke ranks with President Joe Biden, who last week threatened to withhold U.S. military aid if Israel moved ahead with invading Rafah, the last Hamas stronghold in Gaza and refuge for hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinian civilians. 

“Hard disagree,” Senator Fetterman posted on X.  

In short, he has arguably become the most outspoken supporter of Israel in the Democratic Party.

“There’s a very clear right side on this,” he says, comparing Hamas to the Confederacy in the U.S. Civil War and the Nazis in World War II. “That kind of evil cannot be allowed to operate. Because if it is, how are we ever going to have peace?” 

His uncompromising stance has set him apart from many in his party, underscoring the extent to which the Democratic center of gravity on Israel has shifted left since last fall. Some argue that if it’s now controversial for a Democrat to support the Middle East’s sole democracy, when dozens of its citizens are still being held hostage by a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, that says more about the party than about Mr. Fetterman. 

But there’s also plenty to say about Mr. Fetterman, an unorthodox figure who seems to be finally finding his voice after a rough start to his Senate career. 

A larger-than-life politician, he was elected as an ally of the left. He officiated a 2013 same-sex marriage in defiance of Pennsylvania law as an “act of civil disobedience.” He wants to legalize weed and codify Roe v. Wade. He posts selfies from picket lines. But he has now rejected the label of “progressive” and is charting a path as a pragmatic Democrat. That has dismayed some voters who thought they were getting a burly version of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, but it has also won plaudits from moderates and even Republicans, and elevated his profile. 

J. Scott Applewhite/AP

Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania leaves the chamber as the Senate prepared to advance the $95 billion aid package for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan that was passed by the House, at the Capitol in Washington, April 23, 2024.

“Is this the John Fetterman Pennsylvania elected?” asked a recent in-depth profile in Philadelphia magazine, which compared him to an “underground band from the 1980s that somehow finds itself scoring hit singles and Grammy nods a decade later.” 

The truth is, John Fetterman has never fit into neat boxes. This is a man who earned a master’s degree from Harvard and then moved to a Rust Belt steel town, where he became mayor – for $150 a month. Married to a U.S. citizen brought to the country illegally by her Brazilian mother, he supports both border security and protections for “Dreamers.” Unlike many Democrats who want to curb reliance on fossil fuels, he opposed a moratorium on fracking, saying it would have taken away the jobs of Pennsylvanians. And now, even as a growing number of Democrats are calling on Israel to show restraint and prevent further killing of Palestinian civilians, he puts the onus on Hamas, which he says could end the war by returning the remaining hostages.  

“The vocal stance that John has taken about Israel is something you can’t jump to easy assumptions about,” says Pat Clark, a community organizer in the Pittsburgh area who first met Mr. Fetterman in the mid-1990s, when the latter came to the city to run an AmeriCorps GED program.

A media darling who struggled to find his footing in the Senate

Mr. Fetterman became a media darling back in the mid-2000s, as national reporters found an irresistible story in the tattooed mayor trying to revitalize Braddock, Pennsylvania, which is 70% Black. 

He went on to become the state’s lieutenant governor and then mounted a bid for the U.S. Senate. While campaigning in May 2022, Mr. Fetterman suffered a major stroke that left him with auditory processing challenges. He narrowly won election with 51.2% of the vote, but six weeks into his first term sought treatment for clinical depression and didn’t return to the Senate for two months. He still uses live transcription on his phone to help him process reporters’ questions in the hallways. 

Gene J. Puskar/AP/File

Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman takes the stage at an election night party in Pittsburgh, Nov. 9, 2022. Mr. Fetterman had his forearm tattooed with nine dates on which people were killed in Braddock, Pennsylvania, after he became mayor.

Much of the early press coverage of the freshman senator, never known as a policy wonk, revolved around either his health or his flouting of the staid Senate dress code with his trademark Carhartt hoodie sweatshirts. 

Then came Oct. 7. Hamas invaded Israel in what the group later told The New York Times was a calculated effort to “completely overthrow” the status quo and put the Palestinian cause back in the global spotlight. During the attack, fighters killed babies, raped women, and burned people alive.

“He was very shocked, upset, and deeply moved by what happened on Oct. 7,” says Mark Fichman, head of the Pittsburgh chapter of J Street, an advocacy group that describes itself as pro-Israel and pro-democracy. 

Why Senator Fetterman, who is not Jewish, cares so much about Israel is something that ultimately only he can answer. But it’s clear he genuinely cares, says Mr. Fichman, who met with the senator about a week after the brutal cross-border attack. 

In conversations leading up to their October meeting, Mr. Fichman adds, the senator openly admitted that Israel was an area about which he didn’t have extensive knowledge. 

But one thing he did seem to have, Mr. Fichman observes, was a sincerely felt empathy for victims of violence. 

It was the fatal shootings of two youths he worked with in Braddock that prompted him to run for mayor in 2004, Mr. Fetterman has said. He won by one vote. Two weeks into his tenure, a father about his age was shot and killed while delivering pizzas – “a senseless crime that affected me deeply,” the mayor would tell a reporter later. 

Mr. Fetterman tattooed the date on his right forearm. Eight more such tattoos would follow, a list of losses literally etched onto his body.

Pittsburgh’s Jewish community and rising antisemitism

Born in Pennsylvania, Senator Fetterman represents a state with the fifth-highest percentage of Jewish residents in the United States. And one where the threat of antisemitism is felt particularly keenly. 

In October 2018, a shooter committed the worst act of violence against Jews in America’s history, killing 11 worshippers at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood. Mr. Fetterman joined a vigil that evening and later toured the synagogue and saw the bullet holes. 

“You can’t be a part of that and have that not really change you,” Senator Fetterman told the Monitor. 

Gene J. Puskar/AP/File

Sen. John Fetterman (right) visits with people before a commemoration ceremony Oct. 27, 2023, in Pittsburgh to remember the 11 worshippers killed by a shooter at the Tree of Life synagogue in 2018.

It took nearly five years to bring the synagogue shooter to trial, a proceeding that reopened a raw wound for the Jewish community. 

“When our community thought we could close the chapter on that, we woke up to the events from Oct. 7 – and it’s one more in a series of traumas that the Jewish community is facing,” says Shawn Brokos, director of community security for the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh. She says the number of antisemitic incidents spiked after Oct. 7, with a third of the year’s total coming in the last 2 1/2 months. This year, the number of incidents so far is about triple what Pittsburgh saw last year, from graffiti on Jewish schools to hoax bomb threats at synagogues.

It was against that backdrop that Senator Fetterman’s 2022 campaign vow to support Israel was put to the test. 

Two weeks after the Oct. 7 attack, Senator Fetterman posted on X: “Two things can be true at the same time: I unequivocally stand with Israel and demand the immediate release of all hostages. I grieve for all innocent Palestinian lives lost. We must minimize suffering in Gaza and our humanitarian aid efforts must match the need.”

But his support for Israel’s efforts to root out Hamas in Gaza – including mass displacement of civilians, cutting off water for a week after the attack, and killing thousands of women and children – has rankled some of those who had helped him get to the Senate. 

Last October, an open letter by 16 former unnamed Fetterman campaign staffers said that his push for unconditional U.S. military aid to Israel felt like a “gutting betrayal.”

“On the trail, your overarching promise was to ‘Forgotten Communities’ – people and places that get overlooked, written off, and left behind,” they wrote, saying it wasn’t too late to stand on the “righteous” side of history. “You can’t be a champion of forgotten communities if you cheerlead this war and the consequent destruction of Palestinian communities at home and abroad.”

But as the months passed, and pro-Palestinian campus protests spread across the nation, Senator Fetterman only became more pointed. He mocked the “pup tent intifada” on college campuses, urged unconditional support for Israel, and countered calls for an Israeli cease-fire by placing the blame for the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza squarely on Hamas.

“Hamas fully owns and remains committed to the misery, deprivation, and trauma for Palestinians,” he wrote on May 5. 

Many Republican and Orthodox Jewish voters in the Pittsburgh area were pleasantly surprised by how unmovable he was, digging in further as he received blowback. Politically, it may be boosting him overall; a January poll showed twice as many voters saying they viewed him more favorably as a result of his stance than those who viewed him less favorably.  

Still, there are some in the largely progressive Jewish community of Pittsburgh who wish the senator would do more to support Palestinians – more than 35,000 of whom have been killed in Israel’s military offensive, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. 

And indeed, Mr. Fetterman’s stubbornly pro-Israel position stands in sharp contrast to that of a growing number of his Democratic colleagues in Congress.

J Street’s Mr. Fichman says there’s been a “sea change” within the party over the past six months when it comes to the U.S.-Israel relationship. Mainstream Democrats, including President Biden and Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Senate’s first Jewish majority leader, are now taking a closer look at how Israel is using U.S. military aid and whether it aligns with American values. 

Mr. Fetterman’s stance has drawn ire on social media, with some antagonists “encouraging me to kill myself or hoping that I get a stroke,” says the senator. He adds that he doesn’t know how anyone thinks that will get him on their side. “But that’s not a side that I’m going to be on.” 

Ms. Brokos, speaking on a personal level, says Senator Fetterman has been a “tremendous” ally – a “very visible” presence in the Pittsburgh Jewish community, from rallies to Shabbat services. 

“I think what he’s done is remarkable, and it does give people a sense of hope,” she says. “Because right now it feels like a lot of people are abandoning the Jewish community. And he is not.” 

The U.S. military says it has finished installing a temporary floating pier off the coast of Israel, a vital step toward delivering desperately needed food into Gaza.

The pier will be used as a route into the 25-mile-long Gaza Strip, which doesn’t having a working port of its own and has seen land routes blocked by war.

Strong winds and high sea swells initially prevented the U.S. military from emplacing the pier. It was anchored to a beach in Gaza at about 7:40 a.m. Gaza time on Thursday, according to U.S. Central Command. 

How will the pier work? 

The primary staging ground for this delivery of humanitarian aid via sea will be a floating road-and-dock system that the U.S. Defense Department, in its affinity for acronyms, has dubbed Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore, or JLOTS.

The first key component of the structure is a floating platform 72 feet wide and 270 feet long that’s located roughly 3 miles off the coast of Gaza. 

This is where ships leaving Cyprus loaded with humanitarian aid collected by the U.S. Agency for International Development and other international partners will dock. Next, cargo will be deposited onto trucks parked aboard U.S. Army watercraft waiting at the floating platform. 

Because the water near the shore is too shallow for big vessels, these smaller U.S. Army transport boats will then ferry the trucks filled with humanitarian aid to the system’s second key component: an 1,800-foot-long, two-lane floating causeway.

Civilian contractors who are not American citizens will be driving the trucks along the causeway and onto the beach, and the United Nations will oversee aid distribution. 

Hatem Khaled/Reuters

Palestinians wait to receive food cooked by a charity kitchen, amid shortages of aid supplies, after Israeli forces launched a ground and air operation in the eastern part of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, May 8, 2024.

To what extent will the pier help alleviate hunger in Gaza?

Initially, the pier will bring an estimated 90 truckloads of humanitarian aid into Gaza each day. 

Once it’s fully operational, that number “should jump to about 150 truckloads,” or enough food for roughly 2 million meals per day, according to Deputy Defense Department Press Secretary Sabrina Singh. 

“We’re going to start with an initial small amount of aid trucks to flow in to make sure that the system works, that the distribution works, and then you’ll see that increase” before reaching full operational capacity, she said.

Still, Pentagon officials say that using the pier to deliver aid is not ideal, and that land routes would be better. 

“We do want to see those [land crossings] opened up,” Ms. Singh said last week. “It’s meant to help augment, to help complement, other ways that aid can get in.” 

Does the pier put U.S. forces at risk?

The Pentagon has repeatedly emphasized that there will be no U.S. boots on the ground as part of the Gaza pier operation, which involves some 1,000 American service members. 

Still, the question of safety to U.S. forces is one that Mark Milley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was asked to address in April congressional testimony. 

He acknowledged that it’s possible that U.S. troops could come under fire. 

Because U.S. troops will not step foot on land, however, and because Hamas has “limited and inaccurate fires available from rockets and mortars,” the risk to U.S. troops is small, says retired Col. Mark Cancian, senior adviser to the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

U.S. Army/AP

Soldiers and sailors assemble a U.S. floating pier off the shore of Gaza, for delivering food aid, April 26, 2024.

Yet though these fires are inaccurate, Hamas “might eventually get a hit,” he adds.

“This is a combat zone,” Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, said last Thursday. “It’s a dangerous area.”

When asked whether the United States was in communication with Hamas leaders “to make sure that they’re not going to try to scuttle this” pier operation, he said there are “no conversations between DOD and Hamas.” 

That said, Major General Ryder added, there’s “no intelligence at this point in time to indicate that Hamas is actively targeting JLOTS or the humanitarian assistance.”

How is the Pentagon planning to protect U.S. forces? 

The “significant force protection” security around the pier operations is a “prudent measure” and “sufficient to support execution of the mission,” a senior U.S. defense official said in a background briefing last month. 

“But importantly, we reassess security every single day,” the official added.

To help mitigate risk of “friendly fire” attacks, the Pentagon and the Israel Defense Forces have established a deconfliction process to coordinate the humanitarian operations on the pier.

This is also meant to avert the sort of tragedy that occurred with the World Central Kitchen in April, when Israel launched an airstrike on the organization’s clearly marked vehicles, accidentally killing seven aid workers. This occurred even though the charity had cleared its movements with the IDF, which had reportedly approved the delivery. 

As for the coordination between the IDF and the U.S. military, Ms. Singh said, “We are confident that we are in a good place.”

Mahmoud Issa/Reuters

Palestinians carrying belongings and bags of flour return to their houses in the Zeitoun neighborhood after Israeli forces withdrew from the area following a raid, in Gaza City, May 15, 2024.

Hamas commander Yehia Sinwar and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who are driving the war in Gaza, are bitter rivals. Yet amid the deadlocked international efforts to secure a cease-fire, these two men have become something else as well.

Allies.

While they would doubtless reject that label, it is clear to the would-be mediators that both men share compelling personal and political reasons to want to stave off a negotiated end to the conflict.

And that presents a formidable challenge for U.S. and Arab diplomats straining to halt the fighting and relieve a mounting humanitarian crisis, both for hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians in Gaza and for the dozens of Israeli hostages Hamas still holds.

Both leaders know a moment of reckoning awaits when the fighting is over, and that they might well not survive it politically. For Mr. Sinwar, the stakes are even higher: not just power, but potentially his life.

Hamas calculations

The Hamas leader provoked the war. Last Oct. 7, his units swarmed across the border, beating, abducting, and killing more than a thousand civilians. The Israeli response, which he surely anticipated, was a declaration of war, a vow to dismantle Hamas’ hold on Gaza and to target Mr. Sinwar and other Hamas commanders.

And whatever arrangement emerges for governing Gaza when the war finally ends, one consensus assumption, not just for Israel but also for Washington and key Arab Gulf states, has emerged: Hamas would no longer be in charge.

Mr. Netanyahu, meanwhile, is also keen to avoid a political reckoning.

Debbie Hill/Reuters

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at a ceremony for Memorial Day for the Fallen Soldiers of the Wars of Israel and Victims of Actions of Terrorism at Yad LeBanim in Jerusalem, May 12, 2024.

Israel’s “Mr. Security”

The country’s longest-serving prime minister, he has built his career on an image of strength, as Israel’s “Mr. Security.”

Yet he was at the helm on Oct. 7, the most deadly attack on Jewish civilians since the Holocaust – an attack his security forces failed to anticipate, and that the military not only failed to prevent, but also proved agonizingly slow in confronting.

A hefty majority of Israelis have told pollsters they hold him politically responsible.

Mr. Netanyahu has so far fended off all calls to acknowledge responsibility. Instead, while saying there will clearly be questions for all involved to answer, he’s insisted that accountability must wait until the war is over.

The challenge facing international efforts to secure a cease-fire is not just the rival leaders’ clear reluctance to facilitate such a deal.

Calculating gains 

It is that both men have every reason to feel they’ve been gaining politically from the war.

Mr. Sinwar will feel Hamas has triumphed simply by surviving the full force of Israel’s military. In fact, his forces have begun to regroup in areas of northern Gaza that, a few months ago, Israel had declared cleared of Hamas fighters.

As for the price paid by Gaza’s civilians – well over 30,000 dead, and devastating property and infrastructure damage – the Hamas line is that this is Israel’s doing. Caring for the hundreds of thousands of people displaced, wounded, or hungry is the responsibility of aid organizations.

Osamah Abdulrahman/AP

A Houthi supporter holds a poster of Yehia Sinwar, head of the Palestinian Islamic movement Hamas, during a protest marking Jerusalem Day in support of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, in Sanaa, Yemen, April 5, 2024.

Mr. Sinwar has also watched as the deepening humanitarian crisis and Israel’s determination to do irrevocable damage to Hamas’ power have caused an unprecedented strain in Israel’s ties with international allies – including its most important, the United States.

Yet Mr. Netanyahu has gained as well, and not just by deferring any political reckoning.

His single-minded focus on the war, and on batting aside international criticism of the way it’s being waged, has so far kept most Israelis on board. He’s actually seen his polling numbers rebound somewhat from their nosedive after Oct. 7.

And critically, he’s been able to retain his parliamentary majority, which relies on a pair of far-right, overtly anti-Arab parties that want even more force used in Gaza.

What about a cease-fire?

All of that has brought a mounting frustration, and a deeper sense of urgency, about getting a cease-fire and a release of hostages in exchange for the freeing of Palestinians in Israeli jails.

The hope is that a mixture of carrot and stick can yet unblock the Israeli and Hamas leaders’ resistance.

Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

People attend a protest against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Tel Aviv, Israel, May 11, 2024.

The stick? Political pressure, mostly from Washington on Israel, and from key Arab states on Hamas.

So far, that’s not worked.

But in Israel, pressure on Mr. Netanyahu has been growing from the families, friends, and supporters of the hostages. There have also been leaked reports of frustration among top military officers about his failure to set out a coherent and achievable end goal for the war. Those feelings could gather further strength, given the army’s need to go back into parts of Gaza it had attacked and cleared of Hamas forces months earlier in the war.

Still, there’s a recognition that some form of a carrot may also be needed: a way to tailor any agreement in such a way both leaders feel they can present as a political victory.

A tall order? Yes.

But the U.S. and its allies recognize that the alternative – further fighting, further suffering, and very likely deaths for both Palestinians and the Gaza hostages – will make the ultimate goal of negotiating an end to the war even more difficult.

When Heidi and Gina Nortonsmith fought the state of Massachusetts for their right to marry in the early 2000s, they fought as a family. 

As plaintiffs in what would become a historic case, the two mothers waited at home every morning for months, anticipating news of a decision. A bag packed with clothes for their two sons, Avery and Quinn, stood ready if a drive from Northampton to Boston for a press conference would be necessary.

The parents were one of seven same-sex couples suing the state in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, a case that had been making its way through the Massachusetts court system since 2001. A Superior Court judge had ruled against the group in 2002. On a November morning in 2003, the long-awaited phone call about an appeal arrived.

“It was a frantic couple of hours just trying to wrap our brains around what we needed to do to drive to Boston for a week with two young boys,” Gina recalls over Zoom. “We still didn’t know what the decision was. We just knew it was coming that day.”

The family was still on the road when the decision came down around 10 a.m. From a local radio station, they learned that the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court had ruled in their favor – making the state the first in the United States to allow same-sex marriage. Heidi and Gina planned to wed the first day it would be allowed, May 17, 2004.  

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff/File

Gina (left) and Heidi Nortonsmith, and their son Avery, react to applause from the crowd outside City Hall after getting their marriage certificate in Northampton, Massachusetts, May 17, 2004. They got Probate and Family Court to waive the normal three-day wait for a marriage ceremony.

Massachusetts couples like Heidi and Gina, who are celebrating their 20th anniversaries this month, say the court’s decision ignited the nationwide fight to legalize same-sex marriage. Eventually, the U.S. Supreme Court would agree, declaring state bans unconstitutional in 2015. But it was the Bay State that first afforded legal protections to spouses and families. Along with long-fought-for nuptials, couples also got a sense of stability.

“It created a kind of security and safety for people that we didn’t used to have,” says Mary Ann Kowalski, who wed her partner, Aren Stone, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the first wave of marriages.

“Being fully yourself in life”

After getting a marriage license from Northampton City Hall, Heidi and Gina tied the knot 20 years ago this Friday in a nearby park with their sons and close friends. They combined their individual surnames, Norton and Smith, which they engraved on silver bracelets for each member of the family, along with the date.

“When our sons were born, we chose the name Nortonsmith for them. So we tell them that they came out as Nortonsmith, but we had to earn it,” Gina says.

Before they were legally able to wed, Heidi and Gina had started a family and were looking for legal protections to raise their children. But they quickly found there weren’t many for same-sex couples. In the case of an emergency, only one parent, Heidi, who had carried the children, would be recognized. 

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff/File

Gina (far left) and Heidi Nortonsmith read to their sons, Avery (second from left) and Quinn, in their living room May 17, 2004, in Northampton, Massachusetts.

“The law would consider Gina and our kids to be legal strangers. That was just really terrifying,” Heidi says. That’s when the couple joined the Goodridge case in 2001 to change the law. 

Marriage equality extended various legal protections to same-sex parents, such as the right to make medical decisions for their children, and access to family leave benefits and inheritance rights.

The decision to issue marriage licenses for same-sex couples in 2004 was historic for both spouses and families. A 2004 Boston Globe survey found that half of the couples who applied for licenses on the first day had been partners for at least a decade. Of those, 30% had children. Two-thirds of the applicants were women. 

“You can’t overstate the importance of being fully yourself in your life,” Heidi says. “Once Gina and I were married, and we could say wife or spouse, people knew what that was. Everybody had the same frame of reference for what that relationship is and how you treat it.”

“We worked really hard for it,” Gina adds, referring to the right to marry. “There are still people who are unhappy about it and who are doing their darndest to get rid of it.” 

Hope for the future

In 2004, the atmosphere surrounding marriage equality in Massachusetts was a mix of excitement, controversy, and significant social change. For many, the legalization of same-sex marriages was an emotional moment and a rallying call for national awareness. 

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Spouses Mary Ann Kowalski (left) and Aren Stone, who live in Cambridge, Massachusetts, were among the first same-sex couples to marry in May 2004, after the Bay State legalized same-sex marriage.

Ms. Stone, Ms. Kowalski’s wife, who sat on the Cambridge LGBTQ+ Commission for 10 years, says that with marriage equality, she could feel a little more comfortable and protected. But she says the debate in the state Legislature, which turned “ugly” at times, also educated the public about the ongoing struggles for same-sex couples.

“It just became so clear during all those legislative hearings how important it was. That if we lost, it would be a huge loss because we were not being seen as fully human,” Ms. Stone says, describing the debate that went on as the logistics of the law were hashed out.

“I think straight couples could see and understand what it’s like for gay people sometimes when they’re not accepted,” she adds. 

Today, the first couples to wed 20 years ago are rooting for the next generation of LGBTQ+ young people, who can wed as they choose, but are fighting battles for different rights and protections. They also see some growth in cultural acceptance.

“Now people just talk about their husbands and wives just casually in movies,” Gina notes. “That’s a huge difference. It’s like it’s not even anything to remark upon. It’s just emblematic of how ingrained it is in society and how people understand that that’s an option everywhere.”

She observes that the things that felt impossible two decades ago, are now possible. 

“It’s important to mark the 20th anniversary and to celebrate it,” she says, “because it helps bring hope for the other work that is yet to be done.”

AP Photo/Hussein Malla

A refugee woman carries her child in Asral, Lebanon, as she prepares to go back home to Syria, May 14, 2024.

Since 1990, the total number of armed conflicts worldwide has seldom dropped below a hundred. The world’s desire to prosecute those who start wars or commit war crimes, meanwhile, has grown. Last year alone, the number of cases brought before national courts for international crimes rose by 33%, according to an annual survey published in April.

Now the boundaries of such accountability face a new test. On Wednesday, the Paris Court of Appeal heard arguments concerning a French arrest warrant for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for war crimes. The case has broad ramifications for the principle of universal jurisdiction, or the idea that a country can prosecute war crimes committed outside its borders. No sitting head of state has ever faced charges in a foreign domestic court. A decision in Paris affirming equality before the law would mark a turning point in international justice.

For societies resigned to injustice, the debate alone matters.

“Heads of State have been understood to be immune before foreign domestic courts,” a grouping of Syrian and international rights organizations wrote in a letter to the Paris court last week. “Ongoing impunity ... only serves to perpetuate the cycle of violence and suffering for victims and survivors. It undermines the international rule of law.”

Dozens of prosecutions are underway in 13 countries involving individuals accused of crimes against humanity in 35 different states, according to the 2024 Universal Jurisdiction Annual Review. Charges include genocide, sexual violence, and financing of terrorism. Sixteen people were convicted last year outside their country of citizenship, all in European domestic courts.

In Syria, a brutal crackdown of peaceful protests in 2011 sparked a civil war that the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimates has killed more than 500,000 people. Nearly 17 million need humanitarian assistance, the United Nations counts. More than 7 million are displaced.

A lower French court issued arrest warrants last November against Mr. Assad, his brother, and two generals for attacks against civilians involving chemical weapons in 2013. They represent four of 49 cases underway in nine European jurisdictions against Syrian nationals. Switzerland announced in March it would try one of Mr. Assad’s uncles. Courts in Germany and the Netherlands have already convicted lower-ranking Syrian officials.

In seeking clarity on the Assad warrant, French prosecutors have effectively asked the Paris court to establish a new benchmark for international law beyond the immediate case. “The issuance of this warrant raises a fundamental legal question about the immunity rationale enjoyed by heads of state,” they stated.

Their intention “to see this question decided by a higher court” underscores a core ideal of universal jurisdiction. When democratic societies prosecute war crimes, they set foundations for reconciliation by listening to victims and drawing on the investigative work of local civil society organizations. Perhaps more importantly, they uphold human dignity by modeling the principle of equality before the law.