Abstract:
This article, a chapter in a larger work on the global costs imposed by the actions of the state of Israel, examines the double standard in citizenship and the law, the discovery that belonging and legal protection have been made conditional on whose violence a person serves. It sets two records side by side. On one, the British schoolgirl stripped of her only nationality and left stateless for joining a proscribed group as a trafficked child, barred from return while her country prosecuted dozens of other returnees in its courts. On the other, the fifty thousand dual-national soldiers serving the military of a state accused of genocide, thousands of them Western nationals who return home unprosecuted, their governments affirming their right to serve. It adds the parallel in speech, the prosecution of a Muslim man whose translation of texts the state advanced as material support for terrorism, set against the freedom of figures who openly justify mass violence against Palestinians. The chapter argues that these contrasts reveal the corruption of equality before the law itself, the promise that the law treats all alike, exposed as conditional on the identity of the holder and the direction of the violence.
Main Article:
The deepest promise a state makes to its citizens is that the law will treat them all alike, that belonging is not provisional, and that the same act will meet the same judgment regardless of who commits it. This promise is the foundation of equal citizenship, and it is the promise that has been quietly broken. For it has been revealed, in case after documented case, that belonging and the protection of law now depend on a question that equality was supposed to forbid, the question of whose violence a person serves. Serve one side, and the full weight of the law descends, citizenship itself stripped away. Serve another, and the law withdraws, citizenship affirmed, return assured. The two passports are the same passport, treated in opposite ways, and the difference between them is the measure of the broken promise.
Begin with the case that defined the harsh side of the standard, told accurately.
A British girl, born in London, left the United Kingdom at the age of fifteen, a schoolgirl, and travelled to Syria to join the Islamic State. [1] Four years later, discovered in a refugee camp, she was stripped of her British citizenship by the Home Secretary, the only citizenship she held, on the argument that she was entitled to the citizenship of her parents country of origin, a country that promptly stated she was not its citizen and would face the death penalty if she entered. [2] She was, in practical fact, rendered stateless, and barred from returning to the country of her birth to challenge the decision, a bar the Supreme Court upheld. [3] A tribunal would later accept that there was a credible suspicion she had been trafficked into Syria as a child, for exploitation, and that state bodies may have breached their duties in allowing a fifteen-year-old to travel, yet it ruled that even a trafficked child could be stripped of her nationality and abandoned, because the Home Secretary was entitled to view her as a security risk first. [4] Her own country, which had prosecuted dozens of other returnees from the same group through its courts, chose for her not trial but exile. [2]
That is one passport, and how it was treated. Now the other.
Across the same years, tens of thousands of dual nationals served in the military of the state of Israel during its war on Gaza, a war that credible rights organizations and a case before the International Court of Justice have characterized as genocide, and in which more than seventy thousand Palestinians have been killed. [5] Official Israeli data, obtained through a freedom-of-information request, revealed that more than fifty thousand serving soldiers held at least one additional citizenship, over twelve thousand of them holding United States passports, with thousands more holding British, French, German, and other Western nationalities. [5] More than two thousand British nationals served since the war began. [6] And when rights groups assembled dossiers and called for investigations into those accused of war crimes, the result was not prosecution but its opposite. The police war-crimes unit closed its investigation into ten British nationals, citing no realistic prospect of conviction, and the British Foreign Office affirmed that it recognized the right of British dual nationals to serve in the armed forces of the other state of their nationality. [6] No dual national has been arrested for war crimes in Gaza. [5] The state that exiled a trafficked schoolgirl affirmed the right of thousands to serve an army accused of genocide and to come home.
Set the two passports beside each other, and the principle that governs them comes clear, and it is not the principle of equal law.
The girl who joined one proscribed armed group lost her citizenship, her home, and her right to a trial. The thousands who joined the military of a state accused of the gravest crime in international law kept their citizenship, their homes, and their freedom, with their governments affirming their right to do as they did. The difference cannot be explained by the gravity of the violence, for the violence the second group is accused of serving is, by the measure of scale and of international legal process, far greater. It cannot be explained by the principle that fighting in a foreign war forfeits belonging, for that principle was applied to one and explicitly waived for the other. The only variable that explains the difference is the identity of the side served. Violence in the service of one cause strips the citizen of the law protection. The same act in the service of another cause is shielded by it. That is not equality before the law. It is the law made into an instrument that sorts citizens by the allegiance of their violence.
And the same sorting governs not only the violence of arms but the speech of citizens, as a second pair of cases reveals.
Consider the Muslim man, an American pharmacist, prosecuted by his government in a case whose theory advanced his translation of texts and his online postings as material support for terrorism. [7] The courts ultimately sustained his conviction on other grounds, the matter of a trip abroad, and declined to rule on the translation question. But the government had built its case in part on the proposition that translating and posting controversial texts could constitute the support of terrorism, a theory that civil liberties organizations warned could see writers, journalists, academic researchers, and translators prosecuted for rendering unpopular ideas into English. [7] The state reached for a citizen speech, his act of translation, and sought to make it a crime. Set against this the freedom enjoyed by public figures who, in the same years, have openly advocated and justified mass violence against Palestinians, called for the flattening of Gaza, the denial that any of its civilians are innocent, and faced no legal consequence whatsoever for their words. [5] The speech of one Muslim man, translating a text, was pursued as terrorism. The speech of those who justify the killing of an entire population is protected as opinion. Again the variable is not the act but the allegiance, not what was said or done but on whose behalf.
This is the cost catalogued in this chapter, and it is a cost to the very idea of equal citizenship.
The promise of equality before the law is not a small thing. It is the foundation on which the legitimacy of a state rests, the assurance that the law is a neutral instrument applied alike to all, and not a weapon wielded by power against those it disfavors. When a state strips one citizen of her nationality for joining an armed group while affirming the right of thousands to join another, when it prosecutes one citizen translation as terrorism while protecting another citizen incitement to mass killing as speech, it has destroyed that assurance. It has revealed that citizenship is not equal but conditional, that the law is not neutral but directional, and that the determining factor in how a citizen is treated is whether their conduct serves the interests the state wishes to protect or the people the state has decided do not count. Every citizen who shares the identity of the disfavored learns the lesson, that their belonging is provisional, that their speech is policed by a different rule, that the passport in their pocket is the same document treated as a lesser thing.
And here the boundary that governs this work applies with full force, because the injustice is precisely a matter of unequal treatment.
What is indicted here is not the citizenship of anyone, and not the right of any person to hold the nationality they hold. The opposite. What is indicted is the unequal application of the law, the stripping from some of a protection extended to others, the sorting of citizens by the allegiance of their conduct rather than the conduct itself. The principle this chapter defends is the principle of equality, that the same act should meet the same judgment whoever commits it and whomever it serves, that a trafficked child should not be abandoned while a war-crimes suspect is welcomed home, that one man translation should not be terrorism while another man incitement is freedom. To demand that the law treat all citizens alike is the foundational demand of justice, and it is violated not by naming the inequality but by practicing it. The cost is paid by everyone sorted into the disfavored category, and it is paid, ultimately, by the idea of equal law itself, which cannot survive being revealed as a respecter of persons.
So return to the two passports, and read in them the full measure of what has been lost.
They are the same document. They confer, in principle, the same belonging, the same protection, the same equal standing before the law. But they have been treated as though they were different documents, one carrying full citizenship and one carrying a provisional, revocable, second-class version of it, with the difference determined not by any act the law defines but by the identity of the holder and the allegiance of their conduct. The schoolgirl stripped and exiled and the soldier welcomed home carried the same passport, and the law saw two different things. The translator pursued as a terrorist and the demagogue protected as a speaker exercised the same freedom, and the law saw two different things. That doubling of vision, the same act seen as crime or as right depending on whom it serves, is the corruption of equal law, and it is a cost charged to every citizen who belongs to the wrong group, and to the promise of equal citizenship that was supposed to belong to them all.
References:
1. Al Jazeera. "How and Why Did Shamima Begum Lose Her UK Citizenship?" aljazeera.com, February 23, 2023, on the departure of the fifteen-year-old from London to join the Islamic State in Syria in 2015 and the subsequent revocation of her citizenship.
2. Time. "Shamima Begum and the Legality of Making a Citizen Stateless," time.com, February 22, 2019, on the revocation of her only citizenship on the argument of entitlement to Bangladeshi nationality, the statement of Bangladesh that she was not its citizen and would face the death penalty, and the British prosecution of dozens of returnees from the group through its courts.
3. Al Jazeera. "UK Top Court Rules Shamima Begum Cannot Return," aljazeera.com, February 26, 2021, on the Supreme Court decision upholding the bar on her return to challenge the revocation.
4. Cranbrook Legal and the European Network on Statelessness, 2023, on the tribunal acceptance of a credible suspicion that Begum had been trafficked to Syria for exploitation as a child and of arguable breaches of duty by state bodies, and its ruling that this did not outweigh the national-security basis for the deprivation of citizenship; and the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism analysis of the statelessness and due-process questions.
5. Al Jazeera. "Thousands of Western Nationals Fought Israel's War on Gaza: What to Know," aljazeera.com, February 15, 2026, on the official Israeli data showing 50,632 serving soldiers holding at least one additional citizenship, including 12,135 with United States passports, the killing of more than 72,000 Palestinians, the characterization of the war as genocide by rights groups and in the case before the International Court of Justice, the absence of any arrest of a dual national for war crimes, and the public calls by officials and figures for the flattening of Gaza and the denial of civilian innocence.
6. Middle East Eye, "Thousands of Western Nationals Serve in Israel's Army Amid Gaza Genocide," middleeasteye.net, February 15, 2026, and Jewish News, 2026, on the more than 2,000 British nationals who served since October 2023, the closure by the Metropolitan Police War Crimes Unit of its investigation into ten British nationals, and the British Foreign Office statement recognizing the right of British dual nationals to serve in the armed forces of their other nationality.
7. Wikipedia compilation on Tarek Mehanna and Lawfare, "The Air Goes Out of the Balloon: The Tarek Mehanna Appeal," on the prosecution theory advancing his translation and online posting of texts as material support for terrorism, the warning by civil liberties organizations that this could expose writers, journalists, researchers, and translators to prosecution for translating unpopular ideas, and the appeals court sustaining the conviction on the separate basis of the Yemen trip while declining to rule on the translation question. [Note: underlying primary sources are the First Circuit opinion and ACLU statements; the compilation was used only to locate them.]