After Philippine authorities surrendered former President Rodrigo Duterte to the International Criminal Court (ICC), authorities – or at least those factions that do not support Duterte – have launched a nationwide effort to arrest and surrender Senator Ronald dela Rosa as well. Dela Rosa served as Duterte’s national police chief during the deadly “war on drugs,” a campaign in which numerous residents of impoverished communities across the Philippines were executed.During the campaign, gunmen linked to the police would enter impoverished neighbourhoods, seize men and teenage boys, and shoot them dead. In some cases, the killers left signs on the bodies reading, “Don’t be a pusher and an addict like him.” Most of those killed were poor people, some of whom may have used drugs, but they were not major traffickers. Even if they had been, they should have faced criminal prosecution rather than extrajudicial execution.In many countries, uncovering Israeli involvement in such abuses has required painstaking investigative work. In the case of Duterte and Dela Rosa, however, both men openly publicised and boasted about the weapons shipments they received from Israel. The Philippine government’s official news agency reported on the deliveries, and Dela Rosa held public ceremonies at which he received Israeli-made weapons and distributed them to police units involved in the “war on drugs.”Photo: Philippine National PoliceAmong other examples, on August 12, 2017, the government news agency reported that Dela Rosa had handed over “12 high-powered Israeli-made Gilboa rifles” to police officers in Davao City.According to Dela Rosa’s report covering 2016 and 2017, police representatives under his command were sent to study what the report described as “Israel’s model” for combating drugs, though it did not specify what that entailed. No such model is known to exist in Israel. Given what subsequently took place in the Philippines, it is reasonable to infer that the reference was to lethal methods developed in the context of counterterrorism operations.Indeed, it was later officially reported that on April 30, 2018, a “Roundtable Discussion on Strategies for Countering Terrorism: Lessons Learned from Israel” was held in the Philippines with the participation of senior Israeli security officials, including representatives of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office.On February 1, 2018, the Philippine National Police published photographs on its Facebook page of weapons purchased from Israel as part of the implementation of Duterte’s campaign. The images included Negev machine guns marked as property of the Philippine National Police, firearms instructors from an Israeli weapons manufacturer, and Dela Rosa proudly holding one of the machine guns and receiving training on it from an Israeli instructor.Photo: Philippine National PoliceOn March 6, 2018, the government news agency quoted Dela Rosa as saying that “new equipment is arriving soon for the Philippine National Police, including from suppliers in Israel.”After Dela Rosa’s tenure ended in April, Duterte traveled to Israel on September 5, 2018. During a meeting with then-President Reuven Rivlin, he stated that he had instructed his security forces to purchase weapons exclusively from Israel. He explained that Israel, unlike the United States, Germany, and even China, did not impose restrictions on arms sales.The weapons shipments from Israel continued after Dela Rosa left office. For example, on August 29, 2018, the Philippine government news agency reported that the police had purchased and received 8,170 Galil ACE rifles, 4,933 Emtan assault rifles, 1,920 Masada pistols, and 551 Negev machine guns, the latter described as intended for urban warfare.A petition filed by our group of Israeli human rights activists with the Tel Aviv District Court sought to halt those exports. A gag order prohibits publication of the court’s ruling, but it may be disclosed that the judge ordered us to pay 10,000 shekels in legal costs to Israel’s Ministry of Defense.According to our calculations based on official Philippine announcements regarding these shipments, Israel sold at least 30,000 machine guns, rifles, and pistols to Duterte’s police force during his presidency, both before and after Dela Rosa’s tenure.This represents a continuation of Israel’s long involvement in the Philippines. Israel provided sustained support to the regime of Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos. During his rule from 1965 to 1986, security forces, death squads, and militias used Israeli weapons. After the fall of the Marcos regime, Israel continued to play a role in undermining democracy in the country. In January 1989, for example, a shipment of hundreds of Uzi submachine guns and Galil rifles from Israel to politicians in the Philippines was intercepted. The shipment was justified as a response to the “terrorism of leftists and Muslim extremists.”Years later, Edgar Matobato, a former death squad member, testified before a Senate inquiry that in 1993, while serving as mayor of Davao, Duterte “emptied two Uzi magazines” into a Justice Department agent.Even if Dela Rosa is ultimately surrendered to the ICC and justice is fully pursued against both him and Duterte, it is important to remember that the international community largely stood by as these events unfolded. Beyond condemnations from some quarters, no serious effort was made to stop the mass killings in the Philippines. Nor did it attempt to halt the flow of weapons from Israel. To this day, it continues to ignore those exports, allowing Israeli arms dealers and defense exporters to move freely from one country to another where crimes against humanity are being committed.