Both have committed their crimes in another people's territory to which they have not been invited. Both militaries rule over those people without good cause, treating the local population as "hostiles". And both act in the knowledge that their soldiers enjoy absolute impunity.
In reaching its decision on the killing of the Afghan family this month, the Pentagon stated that it had not "broken the law". That verdict too is not honest. What the US military means is that it did not break its own self-serving rules of engagement, rules that permit anything the US military decides it wants to do. It behaves as if no laws apply to it when it invades others' lands, not even the laws of the territories it occupies.
That argument is dishonest too. There are the laws of war and the laws of occupation. There is international law. The US has broken those laws over and over again in Afghanistan and Iraq, as has Israel in ruling over the Palestinians for more than five decades and blockading parts of their territory.
The problem is that there is no appetite to enforce international law against the planet's sole military superpower and its allies. Instead it is allowed to claim the role of benevolent global policeman.
Both the US and Israel declined to ratify the Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court (ICC) that judges war crimes. That refusal was no "honest mistake" either. Each expected to avoid the court's scrutiny.
US and Israeli leaders know their soldiers commit war crimes, and that they themselves commit war crimes by approving either the wars of aggression these soldiers are expected to wage or the messy, long-term belligerent occupations they are supposed to enforce. But whatever they hope, the failure to ratify the statute does not serve as a stay-out-of-jail card. US and Israeli leaders still risk falling under the ICC's jurisdiction if the countries they invade or occupy have ratified the statute, as is the case with Afghanistan and Palestine.
The catch is that the Hague court can be used only as a last resort - in other words, it has to be shown first that any country accused of war crimes failed to seriously investigate those crimes itself.
The chorus from the US and Israel of "honest mistake" every time they kill civilians is just such proof. It demonstrates that the US and Israeli legal systems are entirely incapable of upholding the laws of war, or holding their own political and military officials to account. That must be the job of the ICC instead.
But the court is fearful. The Trump administration launched a mafia-style campaign against it last year to stop its officials investigating US war crimes in Afghanistan. The assets of the court's officials were blocked and they were denied the right to enter the US.
That is the reason why the court keeps failing to stand up for the victims of western war crimes like Zemerai Ahmadi and his children. The ICC had spent 15 years dragging its feet before it finally announced last year that it would investigate allegations of US war crimes in Afghanistan. That resolve quickly dissolved under the subsequent campaign of pressure.
In September, shortly after Ahmadi's family was killed by US drone operators, the court's chief prosecutor declared that investigations into US actions in Afghanistan, including widespread claims of torture of Afghans, would be "deprioritised". The investigation would focus instead on the Taliban and Islamic State.
Once again, enemies of the US, but not the US itself, will be called to account. That too is no "honest mistake".
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