Episode Details

The language of international law is being stretched to breaking point. Terms once defined with precision are now deployed as instruments of moral accusation, detached from the evidentiary standards that once gave them force. In that shift, something deeper is revealed about the condition of Western institutions. Authority no longer rests securely on method, but on consensus, amplification, and the emotional force of accusation. What presents itself as a defence of human rights increasingly operates through blurred definitions, institutional capture, and self-reinforcing narratives. The result is a system that struggles to distinguish between war, crime, and rhetoric, while insisting on moral certainty.

Danny Orbach is an associate professor for history and Asian studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He specialises in military history, political assassinations and coups, military adventurism, illegal orders, dynamics of military atrocities and the history of intelligence and espionage.

In this conversation with Jonathan Sacerdoti he challenges the widespread use of the term “genocide” in relation to Gaza, examines how international institutions, media, and academia reinforce one another in elevating contested claims into accepted truth, and how evidentiary standards are displaced by moral framing.

He explores the blurring and expansion of legal definitions, the role of NGOs and the UN in shaping narratives, and the way political and intellectual pressures shape judicial and scholarly consensus. He also addresses how immigration and shifting notions of national and cultural identity are placing new strain on Western democracies, challenging their ability to define boundaries, maintain cohesion, and sustain legitimacy.

👁‍🗨 Watch if you want to understand how legal language, institutional authority, and political incentives are reshaping truth, justice, and democracy in the modern world.

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💬 We Discuss:

⚖️ Why the legal definition of genocide requires specific intent and why that threshold matters

🧠 How moral intuition is increasingly replacing evidentiary standards in public discourse

🌐 The rise of “junctions of reliability” across the UN, NGOs, academia, and media

📊 How the shift from quantitative to interpretive standards enables political manipulation

🔁 The feedback loop between institutions that amplifies unverified claims into accepted truth

🏛️ Why international courts may be influenced by social and intellectual pressure

🧩 The gradual expansion and blurring of legal definitions in the laws of war

🗳️ How modern political incentives prioritise signalling over compromise in democracies

🧱 The “barnacle effect” of accumulating laws and regulations slowing institutional function

🌍 Why the post-World War II rules-based order is fracturing into a more unstable system

⚠️ The growing gap between liberal elites and democratic legitimacy

🧭 Whether liberal democracy can reform itself before more radical alternatives emerge

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👇 Comment below — can institutions recover their authority once definitions, evidence, and trust begin to erode, or does that loss become irreversible?