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Subject: Re: Israel is committing genocide. Its enablers can be held to
 account.
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NefeshBarYochai wrote:
> BY THOMAS BECKER AND EMILY WILDER  JUNE 2, 2024
> 
> Less than 48 hours after the world’s top court, the International
> Court of Justice (ICJ), ordered Israel to “immediately halt its
> military offensive and any other action” near the southernmost Gazan
> city of Rafah, Israel increased its deadly strikes on the already
> beleaguered area. Over Sunday night, Israel dropped massive bombs,
> including United States-made warheads, on an encampment of displaced
> civilians Israel had designated a “safe zone.”
> 
> At least 45 people were killed and 200 injured in the bombing and
> subsequent fires, most women and children. People were burnt beyond
> recognition and reduced to ash; in one video of the horrors, a man
> wordlessly held up a beheaded baby to the camera, the background
> ablaze.
> 
> This most recent attack is not Israel’s first defiance of the ICJ and
> basic human rights principles; nor, unfortunately, is it the last.
> Despite global outrage, Israel has continued to bombard Rafah in the
> days since. Indeed, over eight months, Israel has besieged and
> bombarded Gaza in a pattern of conduct that has amounted and continues
> to amount to genocide.
> 
> Genocide is among the most loaded charges one might levy. Often
> considered the “crime of crimes,” an aspiration to prevent genocide is
> in many ways foundational to the modern international legal system.
> 
> The conclusion that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinian
> people in Gaza is based on a thorough legal analysis of the
> international jurisprudence surrounding the 1948 UN Convention on the
> Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, or the Genocide
> Convention. Since the October 7, 2023 attacks, we at the University
> Network for Human Rights (UNHR), alongside scholars at programs,
> clinics, and projects at Boston University, Cornell, University of
> Pretoria, and Yale, sought to determine whether Israel’s actions meet
> the legal threshold of genocide. This meticulous analysis is
> delineated in painstaking depth and detail in a report published
> earlier this month. In it, we found the evidence of genocide was clear
> and overwhelming.
> 
> Our analysis, which joins warnings by other leading and authoritative
> experts on international law and genocide about impending and ongoing
> genocide in Gaza, puts the world on notice of Israel’s grave breaches
> of the Genocide Convention and other human rights and humanitarian
> law. The International Criminal Court chief prosecutor’s application
> for warrants to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and
> Defense Minister Yoav Gallant is a step toward accountability for
> Israel’s war crimes and crimes against humanity. But it’s crucial to
> note that when it comes to the paramount prohibitions on genocide, it
> is not just Israel that is in violation.
> 
> Genocide is the only crime in which all nations have a duty to prevent
> and punish and a responsibility not to be complicit. For countries
> aiding Israel’s operations in Gaza, such as the United States, which
> supplies much of Israel’s weapons and military aid, actively abetting
> genocide is its own breach of the Convention.
> 
> The legal bar for genocide is a very high one to meet. The standard,
> according to the Genocide Convention and developed since by the ICJ
> and other international criminal tribunals, is that a perpetrator
> kill, seriously harm, or inflict conditions of life calculated to
> bring about the destruction of a group, in whole or in part, with the
> intent to destroy the group as such. Since October 7, Israel has done
> precisely that to Palestinians in Gaza, a protected group under
> international law that forms a substantial part of the Palestinian
> people.
> 
> Israel has killed more than 36,000 Palestinians, 15,000 of whom are
> children, and injured over 81,000, a combined total of over 5 percent
> of Gaza’s population. Israel has executed Palestinians in Gaza
> wherever they are – in their homes, hospitals, “safe zones,” refugee
> camps, UN schools, mosques, and elsewhere. The destruction of nearly
> every facet of civilian infrastructure has displaced 75 percent of
> Gaza’s population. The devastation has been unprecedented: more
> children were killed in the first four months of Israel’s assault than
> in all conflicts over the past four years combined; Israel’s assault
> has resulted in the fastest starvation rate the world has ever seen;
> and Israeli forces have targeted those who respond to the devastation,
> killing the highest number of journalists and aid workers ever
> recorded in war.
> 
> To fulfill the element of “intent to destroy, in whole or in part,”
> case law on the crime of genocide sets out that this intent must be
> the only reasonable inference from the totality of the facts. The
> conduct of Israel’s military forces – and indeed the expressions of
> Israel’s leaders – leave no other reasonable interpretation than an
> intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza as such.
> 
> In dozens of statements since October 7 documented in our report,
> Israeli leaders at all levels have dehumanized Palestinians in Gaza as
> Israeli forces have carried out egregious rights abuses. Netanyahu has
> referred to Palestinians in Gaza as “sons of darkness,” and Defense
> Minister Gallant and others have called them “human animals” –
> textbook methods of genocidal dehumanization that parallel evidence in
> prior genocide cases.
> 
> Meanwhile, Israel’s heads of state, government, and military, and
> others who have decision-making power in Israel’s operations, have
> explicated intentions to destroy Palestinians and Palestinian society
> in Gaza; to collectively punish Palestinians and cause them to suffer;
> to not distinguish between civilians and combatants; to encourage the
> Israeli military to cause massive death and destruction; and to enact
> another Nakba, the violent dispossession of 800,000 Palestinians from
> their homes between 1947 and 1949.
> 
> These genocidal statements have been flagrant. Officials have urged
> troops to “erase all of Gaza from the face of the earth” and boasted,
> “I am proud of the ruins of Gaza, and that every baby, even 80 years
> from now, will tell their grandchildren what the Jews did.” Netanyahu
> and other leaders have referenced biblical passages to call for the
> wholesale annihilation of Palestinians in Gaza, while Defense Minister
> Gallant succinctly and candidly described Israel’s intentions in Gaza:
> “We will eliminate everything.”
> 
> It is rare in history and in the case law for those who commit
> genocide to be so frank about their intent. With such candor, Israel’s
> enablers can no longer bury their heads in the sand.
> 
> In the wake of the Holocaust, the United States was central to the
> construction of the legal framework on which the prohibition of
> genocide is based. The U.S. guaranteed its commitment to genocide
> prevention when it ratified the Genocide Convention in 1988 and
> reinforced this duty before the ICJ only two years ago. While Biden’s
> “red line” for providing assistance to Israel continues to shift, the
> legal obligations of the U.S. do not. If the U.S. continues to
> facilitate Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, it too may
> become vulnerable to international liability.
> 
> 
> Thomas Becker
> Thomas Becker is the Legal and Policy Director at the University
> Network for Human Rights and has taught at Harvard and Columbia Law
> Schools.
> 
> Emily Wilder
> Emily Wilder is a researcher and editor with the University Network
> for Human Rights.
> 
> 
> https://mondoweiss.net/2024/06/israel-is-committing-genocide-its-enablers-can-be-held-to-account/
> 
> 
> 
so