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genocide convention
'I Call it Genocide Because IT IS Genocide' Says UN Palestine Expert Francesca Albanese
"To end it, we must first be willing to see it."
Jun 03, 2025
United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese pushed back Tuesday against Israel and its defenders, who for years have attempted to gaslight and malign the Italian legal scholar for tirelessly condemning what an increasing number of international experts—including many Israelis and diaspora Jews—agree is a genocide in Gaza.
"I call it genocide because IT IS a genocide," Albanese wrote on the social media site X on Tuesday, amplifying a video she recorded last week in which she said that "Israel is committing genocide in Gaza."
"It's not an opinion, it's a fact," the 48-year-old Georgetown University scholar asserted. "Top international experts, including Israelis, agree upon that."
Under Article II of the Genocide Convention, the crime of genocide is defined as killing, "causing serious bodily or mental harm" to a group of people, "deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part," "imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group," or "forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."
Israel is currently facing a genocide case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) brought by South Africa and supported by dozens of nations, either individually or via regional blocs. The ICJ has issued three provisional orders for Israel to take steps including avoiding genocidal acts and ending weaponized starvation in Gaza. Critics say Israel has violated all three orders.
The International Criminal Court has also issued warrants for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister, for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza including extermination and forced starvation.
"In Gaza, Israel has killed nearly 60,000 people with bombs bullets, and drones, including 16,000 children," Albanese said in the video. "It has flattened homes, schools, churches, hospitals, water networks, farms, even cemeteries. The death toll from hunger, disease, untreated wounds, an deprivation could reach 300,000."
"Prisoners, including medics and journalists, have been tortured. Many have been raped, using dogs and sticks; some have died in Israeli prisons," she continued. "Forced displacement continues in the West Bank, and over 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in 20 months, and 1 in 5 is a child."
"Beware of those who use Hamas' crimes or the fate of the hostages to justify this massacre," she said. "Civilians are never legitimate targets. Israel has masked everything with legal words: 'evacuations,' 'safe zones,' 'human shields'—it's fiction."
Israel and its leaders deny they are committing genocide and say those who make such allegations—including Jews—are antisemitic. Albanese has been a prominent target of such smears, in which the Biden and Trump administrations as well as members of U.S. Congress, both Democratic and Republican, have taken part while supporting tens of billions of dollars in U.S. armed aid for Israel.
Albanese has called the U.S. and other Western nations that support Israel an "axis of genocide."
"And what about us? We are failing the test of our humanity."
Gaza officials say Israeli bombs, bullets, and blockades have left at least 193,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing and millions more forcibly displaced, sickened, or starved— sometimes to death. Israeli forces are currently carrying out a plan by Netanyahu's far-right government to conquer, indefinitely occupy, ethnically cleanse, and possibly recolonize Gaza, which U.S. President Donald Trump said he wants to make into the "Riviera of the Middle East"—presumably devoid of Palestinians.
"And what about us?" asked Albanese in the video. "We are failing the test of our humanity. Too many media, governments, companies, universities, too many guilty consciences and dirty hands. This genocide bears our fingerprints. It's under our eyes. Denying it today means being ignorant, or complicit. Stopping it is the only way to remain human."
"Genocide is a process, not a single act," Albanese added. "A collective act. A criminal venture. To end it, we must first be willing to see it."
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The Genocide Denial of the 'Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace' Crowd
The Israeli government has displayed clear and unequivocal genocidal intent. Continuing to arm Israel with U.S. weapons means full complicity in what they do with them.
Mar 19, 2025
Israel’s renewed assault on Gaza comes several months after both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch issued reports concluding without equivocation that Israel was engaged in genocide. But very few members of Congress dare to acknowledge that reality, while their silence and denials scream out complicity.
In a New York Times interview last weekend, the Senate’s Democratic leader Chuck Schumer put deep moral evasion on display. Among the “slogans” that are used when criticizing Israel, he said, “The one that bothers me the most is genocide. Genocide is described as a country or some group tries to wipe out a whole race of people, a whole nationality of people. So, if Israel was not provoked and just invaded Gaza and shot at random Palestinians, Gazans, that would be genocide. That’s not what happened.”
Schumer is wrong. The international Genocide Convention defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”—with such actions as killing, “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part,” and “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.”
It would be untenable to publicly acknowledge the reality of Israeli genocide while continuing to support shipping more weaponry for the genocide.
Such actions by Israel have been accompanied by clear evidence of genocidal intent—underscored by hundreds of statements by Israeli leaders and policy shapers. Scarcely three months into the Israeli war on Gaza, scholars Raz Segal and Penny Green pointed out, a database compiled by the Law for Palestine human rights organization “meticulously documents and collates 500 statements that embody the Israeli state’s intention to commit genocide and incitement to genocide since October 7, 2023.”
Those statements “by people with command authority—state leaders, war cabinet ministers and senior army officers—and by other politicians, army officers, journalists and public figures reveal the widespread commitment in Israel to the genocidal destruction of Gaza.”
Since March 2, the United Nations reports, “Israeli authorities have halted the entry of all lifesaving supplies, including food, medicine, fuel and cooking gas, for 2.1 million people.” Now, Israel’s horrendous crusade to destroy Palestinian people in Gaza—using starvation as a weapon of war and inflicting massive bombardment on civilians—has resumed after a two-month ceasefire.
On Tuesday, children were among the more than 400 people killed by Israeli airstrikes, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu proclaimed that “this is only the beginning.”
It’s almost impossible to find a Republican in Congress willing to criticize the pivotal U.S. backing for Israel’s methodical killing of civilians. It’s much easier to find GOP lawmakers who sound bloodthirsty.
A growing number of congressional Democrats—still way too few—have expressed opposition. In mid-November, 17 Senate Democrats and two independents voted against offensive arms sales to Israel. But in reality, precious few Democratic legislators really pushed to impede such weapons shipments until after last November’s election. Deference to President Biden was the norm as he actively enabled the genocide to continue.
This week, renewal of Israel’s systematic massacres of Palestinian civilians has hardly sparked a congressional outcry. Silence or platitudes have been the usual.
For “pro-Israel, pro-peace” J Street, the largest and most influential liberal Zionist organization in the United States, evasions have remained along with expressions of anguish. On Tuesday the group’s founder and president, Jeremy Ben-Ami, issued a statement decrying “the decision by Netanyahu to reignite this horrific war” and calling for use of “all possible leverage to pressure each side to restore the ceasefire.” But, as always, J Street did not call for the U.S. government to stop providing the weapons that make the horrific war possible.
This week, renewal of Israel’s systematic massacres of Palestinian civilians has hardly sparked a congressional outcry. Silence or platitudes have been the usual.
That’s where genocide denial comes in. For J Street, as for members of Congress who’ve kept voting to enable the carnage with the massive U.S.-to-Israel weapons pipeline, support for that pipeline requires pretending that genocide isn’t really happening.
While writing an article for The Nation (“Has J Street Gone Along With Genocide?”), I combed through 132 news releases from J Street between early October 2023 and the start of the now-broken ceasefire in late January of this year. I found that on the subject of whether Israel was committing genocide, J Street “aligned itself completely with the position of the U.S. and Israeli governments.”
J Street still maintains the position that it took last May, when the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to halt its military offensive in Rafah. “J Street continues to reject the allegation of genocide in this case,” a news release said.
It would be untenable to publicly acknowledge the reality of Israeli genocide while continuing to support shipping more weaponry for the genocide. That’s why those who claim to be “pro-peace” while supporting more weapons for war must deny the reality of genocide in Gaza.
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Israeli Cabinet Minister: 'Only Solution for the Gaza Strip Is to Empty It of Gazans'
"God has sent us the U.S. administration, and it is clearly telling us—it's time to inherit the land," she said.
Mar 11, 2025
Israeli Environmental Protection Minister Idit Silman argued Tuesday for ethnically cleansing the Gaza Strip of its Palestinian population so that the Jewish people can "inherit the land" many of them believe their deity promised them in biblical times.
"The only solution for the Gaza Strip is to empty it of Gazans," Silman—a member of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's ruling Likud party—said during an interview with Reshet Bet radio, according to a translation by Haaretz. "God has sent us the U.S. administration, and it is clearly telling us—it's time to inherit the land."
Last month, Republican U.S. President Donald Trumpproposed that the U.S. "take over" Gaza, remove it's approximately 2.1 million Palestinian inhabitants, and transform the coastal enclave into the "Riviera of the Middle East."
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Sunday that the so-called "Trump Plan" is currently "taking shape."
"It could be in single-family homes or Trump-style towers, but we will definitely go back there."
Silman said during Tuesday's interview that "Gush Katif will return, there's no question about it," referring to a former block of 17 Israeli apartheid settlements in southern Gaza that were abandoned 20 years ago. "It could be in single-family homes or Trump-style towers, but we will definitely go back there. I see no other solution to terrorism. The answer to terrorism is sovereignty."
While proponents of the plan insist that Palestinians will leave Gaza voluntarily, critics counter that this notion is utterly divorced from reality, as most Gazans are descendants of people who fled or were ethnically cleansed from other parts of Palestine during the establishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948, and are loath to be subjected to yet another expulsion. Many elderly Gazans are survivors of what Palestinians call the Nakba, or "catastrophe," of 1948.
This isn't the first time that Silman has called for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. She made similar comments during a recent rally, and last September she also said that Israel is "on a path to inherit" the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Israel has illegally occupied the territory since 1967, and hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers have steadily usurped Palestinians by building and expanding apartheid colonies on their land.
"We will not 'conquer,'" Silman asserted last year. "Conquer is a progressive word that the progressives brought upon us. We inherit. Inheritance from the lord."
Silman rose to prominence after abandoning the previous Israeli coalition government, prompting a crisis leading to the 2022 election that gave rise to the current far-right administration.
Numerous Israeli politicians, military leaders, journalists, entertainers, and others have called for genocide in Gaza or the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the territory. Statements from Netanyahu, members of his Cabinet, Knesset lawmakers, and others have been entered as evidence in the South Africa-led genocide case against Israel currently before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague.
More than 170,000 Palestinians are dead, maimed, or missing, and millions more forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened following 15 months of Israeli bombardment and invasion and more than 17 months of "complete siege" of Gaza, according to local and international agencies.
Palestine defenders argue the mass slaughter and annihilation of Gaza meet the definition of genocide under Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. However, according to the United Nations Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect, "To constitute genocide, there must be a proven intent on the part of perpetrators to physically destroy a national, ethnical, racial or religious group."
"The intent is the most difficult element to determine," the agency stressed. But critics say that comments like Silman's could make the ICJ's final decision much easier.
"Bolstered by the hubris of settler colonial power and the knowledge that it has killed, maimed, destroyed, expelled, humiliated, imprisoned, and dispossessed with more than seven decades of impunity and by the continued material and moral support of the United States, Israelis are explicit and unashamed about their genocidal intent because they have imagined and prosecuted a war against people who they see as colonized 'savages,'" Israeli Holocaust scholar and British law professor Penny Green wrote last year.
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US Reps. Thompson, Huffman Served in Class Action Suit Over Gaza Genocide
California residents' lawsuit accuses the Democrats of violating their constitutional rights by voting to use their taxes "for the unlawful purpose of being complicit in genocide."
Jan 02, 2025
Two Democratic congressmen from Northern California were served this week with legal documents in a class action lawsuit filed by hundreds of their constituents who argue that the lawmakers illegally forced them into complicity with Israel's genocidal annihilation of Gaza.
Taxpayers Against Genocide (TAG), a group of more than 600 constituents of Reps. Mike Thompson and Jared Huffman represented by the firm Szeto-Wong Law, said it delivered a complaint for declaratory and injunctive relief to the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, where it was received by Deputy General Counsel for the House of Representatives Todd Tatelman.
As Common Dreams reported, the lawsuit was filed last month in San Francisco.
TAG said in a statement Wednesday that Thompson and Huffman "illegally abused their tax and spend authority when they voted to allocate $26.38 billion in military aid to Israel on April 20, 2024," and that by doing so, they violated the U.S. Constitution, the Genocide Convention, and federal laws.
According to the lawsuit:
Mike Thompson and Jared Huffman exceeded the constitutional limitations on their tax and spend authority by voting to authorize the funding of the Israeli military when they were aware, or should have been aware, that the Israeli military was committing genocide in Gaza, which made their votes a violation of customary international and federal law that prohibits complicity in genocide. Furthermore, defendants' votes violated multiple other laws and policies, including the Leahy Law, which prohibits aid to foreign security forces that have committed a gross violation of human rights; the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 and Arms Export Control Act, which prohibit assistance to any country in which the government engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights and require the advancement of U.S. foreign policy interests consistent with internationally recognized human rights; and the Conventional Arms Transfer policy, which prohibits U.S. weapons transfers that risk facilitating or otherwise contributing to violations of human rights or international law. Plaintiffs' constitutional rights to have their taxes collected for only lawful purposes have been and continue to be violated by defendants' votes to use plaintiffs' taxes for the unlawful purpose of being complicit in genocide.
"The moral injuries that I and countless other constituents of Rep. Huffman have suffered resulting from his vote to arm the genocide in Gaza are immeasurable," plaintiff Carol Bloom said on Wednesday.
Judy Talaugon—a plaintiff and an Indigenous elder and activist in Sonoma County—said: "Palestinian children are all our children, deserving of our advocacy and support. And their liberation is the catalyst for systemic change for the betterment of us all."
In an interview with CounterPunch published Wednesday, plaintiff Ellen P. said that although Huffman did hold a November 2023 meeting with members of the group Humboldt for Palestine, activists in attendance left disappointed.
"I was aghast at Huffman's response to this thoughtful and heartfelt plea from his constituents," she said. "He repeatedly interrupted speakers, admonished their use of language—even debating with us about the definition of 'genocide' and 'apartheid'—and tried to lecture us rather than listen to us."
"He made it very clear he was not at all interested in anything we had to say and that he is a committed Zionist," she added.
Huffman has not responded publicly to the lawsuit.
Thompson's office responded last month to the suit in a statement asserting that the congressman "understands that it has been the civilian population that has paid the cost of Hamas' terrorist attack on Israel and he remains gravely concerned about the scale of civilian loss in this war."
However, the statement added that "achieving peace and securing the safety of civilians won't be accomplished by filing a lawsuit."
United Nations experts, human rights groups, jurists, academics, activists, and others argue that Israel's policies and actions during its 454-day assault on Gaza fit the definition of genocide as described in Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, more commonly called the Genocide Convention.
Backed by over two dozen mostly Global South nations and regional blocs, South Africa is leading a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. The U.S., which provides Israel with tens of billions of dollars in military aid and diplomatic cover including United Nations Security Council cease-fire resolution vetoes, is one of around 10 countries—most of them in the Global North—opposing the case.
The year 2025 began with more Israeli killing of Palestinians, including a New Year's Day airstrike massacre at the Jabalia refugee camp that left at least 15 people, including four children and a woman, dead, and a Thursday attack on an Israeli-designated "safe zone" in southern Gaza that reportedly killed at least 11 people, including three children.
According to Gaza officials, at least 45,581 Palestinians have been killed and more than 108,000 others wounded by Israeli attacks, with at least 11,000 people missing and believed dead and buried beneath rubble. The overwhelming majority of Gazans have been forcibly displaced, and hundreds of thousands are suffering starvation and sickness exacerbated by Israel's "complete siege" of the embattled enclave.
TAG plaintiff Norman Solomon wrote in a Thursday opinion piece for Common Dreams that he whilethat he certainly does not "expect the courts to halt the U.S. policies that have been enabling the horrors in Gaza to go on," the unprecedented lawsuit "makes a clear case for the moral revulsion that so many Americans feel about the culpability of the U.S. government."
As Maria Barakat, a Palestinian-Lebanese American plaintiff in the case said on Thursday, "This class action is only the beginning of the people's exercise of power against the violence of the American government and our refusal to be complicit."
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37 Groups Demand Foreign Secretary Clarify UK Definition of 'Genocide'
David Lammy's recent comment to Parliament, the coalition said, "at best, has injected a deeply troubling ambiguity in respect of these pivotal issues in light of the mass atrocities perpetrated against civilians in Gaza."
Nov 05, 2024
Fallout over remarks that David Lammy, the U.K.'s secretary of state for foreign, commonwealth, and development affairs, recently made to the House of Commons about the Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip continued on Tuesday with a letter from 37 rights organizations.
"We call on the foreign secretary, as a matter of urgency, to make a statement clarifying the government's understanding of i) genocide in international law; ii) the scope of the U.K.'s international obligations pursuant to the Genocide Convention and Rome Statute; and iii) what steps must be taken to fulfill such obligations," the coalition wrote.
The groups pointed to an exchange between Lammy, of the Labour Party, and Conservative Member of Parliament Nick Timothy on October 28, when the foreign secretary said that the way words like genocide are being used now "undermines the seriousness of that term."
Israel faces a South Africa-led genocide case at the International Court of Justice over its 13-month assault on Gaza, which has killed at least 43,391 Palestinians and wounded another 102,347, according to officials in the Hamas-governed enclave. The ICJ initially ordered Israel to "take all measures within its power" to uphold its obligations under the Genocide Convention in January.
Lammy's response to Timothy last week, "at best, has injected a deeply troubling ambiguity in respect of these pivotal issues in light of the mass atrocities perpetrated against civilians in Gaza," the coalition argued Tuesday. He "chose to undermine international law and answer in opposition to the International Court of Justice."
"If Labour is indeed the party of international law, Foreign Secretary David Lammy must align with, rather than undermine, the courts."
Despite Lammy's suggestion, the Genocide Convention contains no numerical threshold and "is clear that the crime of genocide is not only perpetrated through mass killing," the groups noted, highlighting Israeli attacks on food production, water infrastructure, healthcare facilities, and civilian housing, shelters, and camps.
In northern Gaza, "Palestinian civilians are being killed through starvation and dehydration, disease, deprivation of lifesaving medical intervention, and constant bombardment and targeting by weaponized drones," they wrote. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres "has warned of the ethnic cleansing of Gaza by Israel while the U.N. Commission of Inquiry has concluded that the Israeli authorities have committed the crime against humanity of extermination of part of the civilian population in Gaza through direct and indirect means."
"These assessments raise the specter of genocide and support the findings of other experts who have long concluded that genocide is taking place," the coalition continued. "This makes it imperative for the foreign secretary to revisit his comments and to clarify the government's understanding of the crime of genocide."
Amichai Stein, a correspondent for state-owned Israeli broadcaster Kan, said on social media Tuesday that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced "the division of the northern Gaza Strip into two parts has been completed, and we getting closer to the complete evacuation of the northern part from civilians and terrorists: 'This time there is no intention to allow the residents of the northern Gaza Strip to return to their homes and that humanitarian aid will regularly enter the southern Gaza Strip.'"
In other words, as Drop Site News' Ryan Grim put it, "Israeli media reporting that the IDF is declaring northern Gaza effectively ethnically cleansed, not even a hint of pretense now that it's Election Day" in the United States.
While the U.S. has repeatedly faced global condemnation for arming Israel over the past year, the rights coalition on Tuesday focused on the U.K. government, emphasizing that "to the extent that the ICJ has already ordered provisional measures, the U.K. is on notice that a plausible risk of genocide exists, triggering third-state responsibility."
Signatories to the letter include ActionAid U.K., Christain Aid, Council for Arab-British Understanding, Democracy for the Arab World Now, Gender Action for Peace and Security (GAPS), Global Justice Now, Jewish Network for Palestine, Medical Aid for Palestinians, Quakers in Britain, and War on Want.
GAPS director Eva Tabbasam told Middle East Eye that the language used to describe the war in Gaza "is essential to recognize the suffering of Palestinians and consider all possible actions the U.K. has to contribute to stopping what is a plausible risk of genocide."
"If Labour is indeed the party of international law, Foreign Secretary David Lammy must align with, rather than undermine, the courts," Tabbasam said. "He should have already done so months ago when the court first published this language, but the second best time is right now."
Separately, War on Want on Tuesday published an analysis detailing how "Israel is committing genocide of the Palestinian people" and arguing that "the U.K. government is failing to uphold international law, and is complicit in Israel's crimes, as it continues to export weapons and technology used by Israel against the Palestinian people."
"Palestinians have long struggled for their rights and for justice. During the 1947-8 ethnic cleansing of historic Palestine—the Nakba (Arabic for 'catastrophe')—around 750,000 Palestinians were forced from their homes and lands by armed groups, to live under Israel's system of apartheid," the group noted. "Israel has carried out its ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people, unlawful occupation, apartheid, and blockade of Gaza—the ongoing Nakba—with impunity and has now escalated its actions into genocide."
The London-based organization is also circulating a petition in response to the foreign secretary's remarks from last week, which says in part: "David Lammy is misleading parliament and the U.K. public. He must tell the truth—that this is genocide—and immediately take action to stop the genocide, and the U.K.'s complicity."
Other responses to Lammy's comments have included public criticism from What Is Genocide? author Martin Shaw and dozens of public figures in the Arab British community demanding an apology.
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South Africa Files Thousands of Pages of 'Overwhelming' Evidence in ICJ Genocide Case Against Israel
"The glaring genocide in Gaza is there for all who are not blinded by prejudice to see."
Oct 28, 2024
South Africa filed nearly 5,000 pages containing "overwhelming" proof that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands on Monday, the deadline for submitting final evidence in the ongoing trial.
South African Ambassador to the Netherlands Vusi Madonsela delivered the legal document—known as a memorial—to the ICJ headquarters in the Dutch city. Under the court's rules, the contents of the memorial cannot be made public at this time.
According to a statement from the office of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, the memorial is a "comprehensive presentation of the overwhelming evidence of genocide in Gaza."
The office said the document "contains evidence which shows how the government of Israel has violated the Genocide Convention by promoting the destruction of Palestinians living in Gaza, physically killing them with an assortment of destructive weapons, depriving them access to humanitarian assistance, causing conditions of life which are aimed at their physical destruction, and ignoring and defying several provisional measures of the International Court of Justice, and using starvation as a weapon of war and to further Israel's aims to depopulate Gaza through mass death and forced displacement of Palestinians."
"The evidence will show that undergirding Israel's genocidal acts is the special intent to commit genocide, a failure by Israel to prevent incitement to genocide, to prevent genocide itself, and its failure to punish those inciting and committing acts of genocide," Ramaphosa's office added.
South Africa's filing comes amid Israel's ongoing 387-day assault on Gaza, which according to Palestinian and international agencies has killed at least 43,020 people—most of them women and children. At least 101,110 others have been wounded and over 10,000 Gazans are missing and believed dead and buried beneath the rubble of hundreds of thousands of bombed homes and other structures. Millions more Palestinians have been forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened by Israel's invasion and "complete siege" of Gaza.
The filing also comes one week after senior members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's far-right Cabinet and national lawmakers spoke at a conference advocating the ethnic cleansing and recolonization of Gaza.
Ramaphosa's office lamented that "Israel has been granted unprecedented impunity to breach international law and norms for as long as the United Nations Charter has been in existence."
"Israel's continued shredding of international law has imperiled the institutions of global governance that were established to hold all states accountable," the presidency's statement asserted. "The glaring genocide in Gaza is there for all who are not blinded by prejudice to see."
Ramaphosa's statement continues:
The Palestinian struggle against imperialism, Israeli apartheid, and settler colonialism is the daily reality of the Palestinian people. Since 1948, they have faced various forms of colonization, often backed by historical colonial powers and, more recently, by states intent on shaping a world order in their interests. The global fight against settler colonialism persists in some parts of the world, including in occupied Palestine, both in Gaza and the West Bank. The international community cannot stand idly by while innocent civilians—including women, children, hospital workers, humanitarian aid workers, and journalists—are killed for simply being. That is a world we cannot accept.
"We reiterate our appeal for an immediate cease-fire in Palestine, in Lebanon, and entire region, and the start of a political process to ensure a just and lasting peace," Ramaphosa's office added.
South Africa also thanked the more than 30 countries and regional blocs, including the African Union and Arab League, that are supporting its case.
It could take years for the ICJ to deliver judgment in the case. In July, the tribunal issued a nonbinding advisory opinion that Israel's occupation of Palestine—including the West Bank, Eastern Jerusalem, Gaza, and Syrian Golan Heights—is an illegal form of apartheid that must end "as rapidly as possible."
South Africa's filing came on the same day that Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, published a report on Israeli "genocide as colonial erasure" in Palestine.
Israel vehemently denies it is committing genocide in Gaza, a position shared by the Biden administration, the country's main benefactor.
Palestine advocates welcomed Monday's filing, with Council on American-Islamic Relations national executive director Nihad Awad thanking South African leaders "for helping expose the far-right Israeli government's genocide and genocidal intent in Gaza to the world community."
"This detailed submission also further exposes the Biden administration's criminal complicity with Israel's genocide in Gaza," Awad added. "President [Joe] Biden should end his complicity with genocide by stopping arms deliveries to Israel and forcing an immediate cease-fire."
The Biden administration and Congress have provided Israel with tens of billions of dollars worth of armed aid and diplomatic cover to continue its war.
Francis Boyle, a professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law, noted that "Israel has violated three prior orders from the court" and "has also violated the decision on Rafah of May."
"Just after that decision, Biden put out his ridiculous statement that Israel had agreed to a cease-fire, which it obviously didn't," he continued. "The Biden administration's phony 'cease-fire negotiations' maneuvers have simply bought Israel more time to commit more crimes, including its recent annihilation of northern Gaza."
"Given Israel's lack of respect for decisions of the court, it becomes imperative that these decisions have teeth," Boyle added. "The U.S. veto at the U.N. Security Council has prevented that body from doing its job. So, the U.N. General Assembly should utilize its Uniting for Peace procedure to take control of the situation and recommend an arms embargo and economic sanctions against Israel as well as other measures. That's what was done to apartheid South Africa because of its illegal occupation of Namibia."
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Israel Lobbies US Congress to Pressure South Africa to Drop ICJ Genocide Case
One human rights expert said Israel's effort to bully South Africa is born from "obviously fearing it will lose" its World Court trial.
Sep 09, 2024
Israeli officials are lobbying U.S. lawmakers to pressure South Africa into dropping its genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, according to a report published Monday.
Axios said it obtained a classified Israeli Foreign Ministry cable sent Monday to the country's embassy in Washington, D.C. and all its U.S. consulates threatening consequences if South Africa proceeds with its case in The Hague—which is backed by dozens of nations and regional blocs, as well as countless legal and genocide experts.
"We are asking you to immediately work with lawmakers on the federal and state level, with governors and Jewish organizations to put pressure on South Africa to change its policy towards Israel and to make clear that continuing their current actions like supporting Hamas and pushing anti-Israeli moves in international courts will come with a heavy price," the cable states.
As Axios reported:
The Israeli diplomats were instructed to ask members of Congress to issue public statements condemning South Africa's actions against Israel and threaten that it could lead to suspending U.S. trade relations with South Africa. That's unlikely to happen because the U.S. wants to maintain its relationship with South Africa in order to counter the influence of Russia and China.
According to the report, Israeli officials are hoping that South Africa's new coalition government—the country's first to not be led by the leftist African National Congress since the beginning of post-apartheid majority rule—will eschew "boycotts and punishments" and prove more malleable.
This isn't the first time that Israel has been accused of trying to intimidate those who seek to hold it accountable for its obliteration of Gaza. Earlier this year, its government launched a pressure campaign urging world governments to condemn the ICJ trial.
South Africa filed its genocide case against Israel in December, alleging that statements and actions by Israeli government officials and armed forces "are genocidal in character because they are intended to bring about the destruction of a substantial part" of the Palestinian population in violation of Article II of the Genocide Convention.
A final ICJ ruling is not expected for years. Israel says the case is "baseless" and has accused South Africa of "functioning as the legal arm of Hamas," which led the attacks in which more than 1,100 Israelis and others were killed—at least some by so-called "friendly fire"—last October 7. More than 240 other people were kidnapped and taken to Gaza.
Since October, Israeli forces have killed or maimed at least 145,000 Palestinians in Gaza, most of them women and children, while forcibly displacing almost all of the embattled strip's 2.3 million people. Israel's " complete siege" of Gaza has caused widespread starvation and disease. Eliminationist rhetoric by Israeli politicians, military officials, journalists, entertainers, and others started shortly after the Hamas-led attack of October 7 and continues to this day.
In January, the ICJ ordered Israel to "take all measures within its power" to uphold its obligations under Article II of the Genocide Convention. Israel's far-right government and military have been accused by human rights groups of ignoring the order.
As Israeli forces launched a major ground invasion of Rafah four months later, the ICJ issued another order for Israel to "immediately halt its military offensive" in the city, where around 1.5 million forcibly displaced and local Palestinian residents were sheltering. Instead of heeding the order, Israel ramped up its assault on Rafah.
At the International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Karim Khan is urging the tribunal to promptly act upon his May application for warrants to arrest Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders—at least one of whom, political chief Ismail Haniyeh, was subsequently assassinated by Israel.
Israeli and U.S. officials have threatened ICC members with retaliation if the tribunal issues arrest warrants for Israeli leaders. In June, 42 House Democratsjoined Republican lawmakers in passing legislation to sanction ICC jurists in the event they authorize the Israeli leaders' arrest.
The U.S. is by far Israel's biggest benefactor, providing billions of dollars worth of weapons and invaluable diplomatic cover including United Nations Security Council cease-fire resolution vetoes.
Many experts say the U.S. is complicit in Israel's genocide. A group of Palestinians, Palestinian Americans, and rights groups is seeking to hold President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin criminally accountable for supporting Israel's Gaza slaughter at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
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Amnesty Urges War Crimes Probe of 'Indiscriminate' Israeli Attacks on Gaza Camps
The human rights group said Israeli forces "failed to distinguish between civilians and military objectives by using unguided munitions in an area full of civilians sheltering in tents."
Aug 26, 2024
In an investigation focusing on a pair of Israeli massacres of forcibly displaced Palestinians in Gaza, Amnesty International on Monday urged the International Criminal Court—whose chief prosecutor has already applied for warrants to arrest Israeli and Hamas leaders—to open a war crimes probe of the attacks, which it said were likely "indiscriminate" and "disproportionate."
"On May 26, 2024, two Israeli airstrikes on the Kuwaiti Peace Camp, a makeshift camp for internally displaced people in Tal al-Sultan in west Rafah, killed at least 36 people—including six children—and injured more than 100," noted Amnesty, which early in the assault on Gaza found "damning evidence" of Israeli war crimes including indiscriminate killing of civilians.
The Tal al-Sultan attack, which hit an Israeli-designated "safe zone," ignited an inferno that burned people alive inside the tents in which they were sheltering. One survivor told Amnesty that "there were so many dead people all around us," many of them "in pieces and in pools of blood."
"The military could and should have taken all feasible precautions to avoid, or at least minimize, harm to civilians."
The Amnesty report states that the airstrikes, "which targeted two Hamas commanders staying amid displaced civilians, consisted of two U.S.-made GBU-39 guided bombs" and that "the use of these munitions, which project deadly fragments over a wide area, in a camp housing civilians in overcrowded temporary shelters likely constituted a disproportionate and indiscriminate attack, and should be investigated as a war crime."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the Tal al-Sultan massacre a "tragic mistake."
"On May 28, in the second incident investigated, the Israeli military fired at least three tank shells at a location in the al-Mawasi area of Rafah, which was designated by the Israeli military as a 'humanitarian zone,'" Amnesty continued. "The strikes killed 23 civilians—including 12 children, seven women, and four men—and injured many more."
"Amnesty International's research found that the apparent targets of the attack were one Hamas and one Islamic Jihad fighter," the publication notes. "This strike, which failed to distinguish between civilians and military objectives by using unguided munitions in an area full of civilians sheltering in tents, likely was indiscriminate and should be investigated as a war crime."
Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty International's senior director for research, advocacy, policy, and campaigns, said in a statement that "while these strikes may have targeted Hamas and Islamic Jihad commanders and fighters, once again displaced Palestinian civilians seeking shelter and safety have paid with their lives."
"The Israeli military would have been fully aware that the use of bombs that project deadly shrapnel across hundreds of meters and unguided tank shells would kill and injure a large number of civilians sheltering in overcrowded settings lacking protection," she added. "The military could and should have taken all feasible precautions to avoid, or at least minimize, harm to civilians."
Israel—whose 325-day bombardment, invasion, and siege of Gaza has left more than 144,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing and millions more suffering forced displacement, starvation, and disease—is currently on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, Netherlands.
In January, the ICJ ordered Israel to "take all measures within its power" to uphold its obligations under Article II of the Genocide Convention. Israel's far-right government and military have been accused by human rights groups of ignoring the order.
As Israeli forces launched a major ground invasion of Rafah four months later, the ICJ issued another order for Israel to "immediately halt its military offensive" in the city, where around 1.5 million forcibly displaced and local Palestinian residents were sheltering. Instead of heeding the order, Israel ramped up its assault on Rafah.
At the International Criminal Court, Prosecutor Karim Khan is urging the tribunal to promptly act upon his May application for warrants to arrest Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders—at least one of whom, political chief Ismail Haniyeh, was subsequently assassinated by Israel.
Guevara-Rosas on Monday reminded Israel of its legal responsibility to protect noncombatants.
"The avoidable deaths and injuries of civilians is a stark and tragic reminder that, under international humanitarian law, the presence of fighters in the targeted area does not absolve the Israeli military of its obligations to protect civilians," she said.
"All parties to the conflict must take all feasible precautions to protect civilians," Guevara-Rosas added. "This also includes the obligation of Hamas and other armed groups to avoid, to the extent feasible, locating military objectives and fighters in or near densely populated areas."
The new Amnesty report was published on the same day that Human Rights Watch called upon the ICC to investigate alleged and documented incidents of Israeli forces torturing imprisoned Palestinian medical workers, including at the notorious Sde Teiman prison, where guards are accused of war crimes including murder, rape, and torture.
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We Need to Take Trump's Threat to Deport Millions of Migrants Seriously
Racist, violent, and genocidal rhetoric inevitably drives the process of forced expulsion, and Trump churns out a daily chorus of murderous bile that must bring a smile to Julius Streicher's corpse.
Jun 27, 2024
We often trivialize former U.S. President Donald Trump's racism—we consider his bigotry in passing while ruminating at length on his legal woes and alleged cognitive deterioration. Social media pundit David Pakman has been showing clips of Trump slurring his words or rambling chaotically on a daily basis—as if the primary threat posed by another MAGA presidency would be to allow an incompetent, confused, and mentally ill bungler to have another go at the Oval Office. One hears the word "unfit" tossed in Trump's direction with monotonous regularity, but unfitness may be the least of our worries.
Trump's drooling tirades should not be seen as a reflection of creeping Alzheimer's dementia—there is an inevitable and intentional structure to his meandering tale about sharks, the virtues of autocrats and gangsters, and the somnolent and absurd boasting of personal omnipotence. No matter how silly, pointless, or psychologically damaged Trump's soliloquy may appear to be, his rambling narrative returns to an epic promise: Trump vows to deport some 11 million so-called illegals from U.S. soil.
The obsession with mass expulsion has emerged at various times in history—in Rwanda, in pre-World War II Nazi Germany, in Turkish Armenia, in Palestine, in 19th-century America, in Bosnia, in Somalia—one could go on and on. Fourteen million ethnic Germans were expelled from Eastern Europe after World War II—the death count from that forced transfer of people has been estimated along a range from half a million to two-and-a-half million.
If one is nominally familiar with the history of genocide, Trump's memes and obsessions become ominously familiar.
There is an enormous and bloody climax forthcoming once mass expulsion leaps from being an act of political theater in the mouth of some ambitious autocrat, to becoming actual state policy. Once a nation assembles the bureaucratic and military force needed to move masses of people from their homes and communities—children and families—the act of genocide looms as a likely conclusion. Whether it is the mass extermination of Tutsis, Native Americans, Jews, Croatians, Armenians, Palestinians, or Yazidis, we should be exquisitely aware that genocide often follows on the heals of forced removal of ethnic, racial, or religious "others."
There has been an ongoing international debate since the year that Trump was born (1946) as to whether or not mass expulsion should be added to the five defining features of genocide that comprise Article II of the United Nations Genocide Convention.
We all should know the basic history. in October of 1938 the Nazi government arrested and moved 17,000 Polish Jews, residing in Germany, across the Polish border. The Polish government did not welcome these refugees, and they languished in terrible conditions without adequate food or medical care. As an act of revenge, Herschel Grynszpan—whose family had been deported to Poland—assassinated Nazi official Ernst vom Rath in Paris. This led directly to Nazi anti-Jewish retaliation—Joseph Goebbels' speech on November 9 of 1938 initiated massive state orchestrated violence against Jews (Kristallnacht) and the subsequent arrest of 30,000 Jewish men to be incarcerated in the burgeoning Nazi concentration camp system.
The Armenian genocide featured the deportation of prominent Armenian intellectuals at the behest of the Ottoman regime. This act, ordered and carried out in April of 1915, delineated a new policy of clear genocidal intent.
In recent decades, the Indigenous people of Bangladesh have been systematically removed from tribal lands and subjected to murder, beatings, and sexual assaults. The escalating genocide of the "Adibashis" follows a familiar pattern. Mass expulsion makes territory available to colonial settlers.
The Nakba of 1948 drove some 750,000 Palestinians from their homelands under the assault of Israeli military forces. Like the Bangladesh intrusion into Indigenous lands, the Israeli policy targeted long-term inhabitants to make room for growing settlement. This mass expulsion now, 76 years later, plays out in the current genocide perpetrated by the Netanyahu regime with U.S. military aid lavishly provided by the Biden administration. Many of the Palestinians expelled from what is now Israeli territory wound up in Gaza, and their descendants now lie under the rubble created by U.S. bombs.
Racist, violent, and genocidal rhetoric inevitably drives the process of forced expulsion, and Trump churns out a daily chorus of murderous bile that must bring a smile to Julius Streicher's corpse. He refers to refugees at the southern border as vermin, animals, monsters, invaders, murderers, rapists, and drug dealers. He tells us that unsupervised American kids will be brutalized by marauding hordes from "countries we've never even heard of." Latin countries, Trump gleefully informs his followers, systematically empty their prisons and transport all of their psychopaths to the southern border. Do we take Trump's assertions to be easily debunked bromides—unhinged nonsense—or do we regard Trump's verbal routines as genocidal preparation?
Article II of the U.N. Genocide Convention defines genocide as:
a) Killing members of the group;
b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
A peer reviewed paper published in The University of Dundee (UK) Student Law Review concluded:
The discussion of the highly contentious and heavily debated topic of the inclusion of forced expulsion in Article II of the Convention is ongoing, and is likely to continue for many years to come. Decisions of international courts and tribunals have established the position of the law today—forced expulsion is only included as a contributory factor in a system of conduct directed against a particular group, or as an indicator of genocidal intent. However, it is likely that the law will progress, much like it has already progressed with regards to other acts, so that forced expulsion in itself will one day be established within the scope of Article II of the Genocide Convention.
It is unfortunate that forced expulsion is not yet included in Article II of the Genocide Convention. If one is nominally familiar with the history of genocide, Trump's memes and obsessions become ominously familiar. This story has been written and rewritten. We all know how the plot unfolds and how it ends.
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'Enough Is Enough': South Africa Urges ICJ to Halt Israeli Assault on Rafah
Israel's assault on Rafah provides "evidence of the crime of genocide," one legal expert said. "This attack is the final blow that is intended to destroy the Palestinian group in Gaza."
May 16, 2024
South African officials on Thursday made their case before the International Court of Justice to stop Israel's brutal invasion of Rafah, warning once again that Israeli officials have displayed clear "genocidal intent" and "genocidal conduct" in their military campaign in Gaza.
The case for the ICJ to stop the attack on Rafah was made by a number of lawyers, legal experts, and ambassadors, with the South African representatives outlining the bare facts of Israel's military campaign, blocking of humanitarian aid, and statements of intent, just as they did when the court heard South Africa's original claim that Israel is committing genocide.
That case, argued in January, resulted in a preliminary ruling in which the court said South Africa had made a "plausible" case and ordered Israel to prevent genocidal acts by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
On Thursday, South Africa urged the ICJ to see that Israel has not followed that order.
"It is difficult to imagine that the situation could get worse" than it was in January, international law professor John Dugard told the court. "But unfortunately, it has... Israel has now commenced its long-threatened assault on Rafah. It has ordered the evacuation of Palestinians in Rafah to the barren sand dunes of Al-Mawasi. It has closed critical border crossings to humanitarian aid, medical supplies, goods, and fuel, upon which the population depends."
"Israel's actions are in violation of fundamental international humanitarian law, but in addition, they provide evidence of the crime of genocide," Dugard continued. "This attack is the final blow that is intended to destroy the Palestinian group in Gaza."
Watch the livestream of the ICJ hearing below:
The South Africans made their case as the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said Thursday that an estimated 600,000 people have now been forcibly displaced from Rafah by Israel.
Despite tepid warnings from the U.S.—the biggest international funder of the IDF—for Israel to avoid attacking "population centers," the IDF this week has moved into dense residential neighborhoods in central Rafah.
The U.S. has also called for Israel to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, but the IDF's seizure of the Rafah crossing between the enclave and Egypt last week led the World Food Program (WFP) on Thursday to warn that food and fuel rations "will run out in a matter of days." Dozens of Palestinians have been starved to death so far by Israel's blocking of relief shipments.
"The threat of famine in Gaza never loomed larger," said the WFP as South Africa made its case in The Hague.
Three months after giving a 22-minute speech detailing the numerous statements of genocidal intent made by top Israeli officials since the Gaza assault began in October, South African lawyer Tembeka Ngcukaitobi during Thursday's hearing, used the more recent words of Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who publicly described the aim of the Rafah invasion as "total annihilation."
In his presentation before the court, Ngcukaitobi invoked Smotrich's language by arguing that the Rafah incursion "is the last stage of 'total annihilation' of Palestinian life."
"For Palestinians to be able to continue to exist as a protected group under the Genocide Convention, they need a place from which to rebuild," he continued. "Rafah is that place, the last stand... Without Rafah, the possibility to rebuild will be lost forever."
In her speech, Irish lawyer Blinne Ni Ghralaigh outlined other developments in Gaza since the ICJ issued its preliminary ruling that illustrate the need for the court's "invaluable intervention."
Ni Ghralaigh detailed the destruction of hospitals like Al-Shifa, where mass graves have been found with the remains of women, children, and medical workers, and warned that "the same fate now awaits Rafah's remaining hospitals, doctors, and medics."
She also pointed to evidence that the IDF is treating evacuated areas as "extermination zones," where soldiers are ordered to kill any remaining people, and its use of an error-prone AI system to target Palestinians.
The South African legal team said the court must order Israel "to immediately take all effective measures to ensure the access of persons able to investigate ongoing atrocities," and called on the ICJ to "at least modify its provisional measures" from March, when it demanded that Israel allow humanitarian aid into Gaza.
"The court has the power to modify or make an explicit order for Israel to cease its military operations in Rafah, Gaza, and to withdraw from the Gaza Strip," said Ni Ghralaigh, pointing out that the provisional measure from March could only take full effect if a cease-fire agreement was reached.
"No such resolution is in place. The court must itself, therefore, create the circumstances necessary for its provisional measures to take full effect. It must order Israel to cease its military operations system finally," she said. "Enough is enough."
Israel is expected to address the ICJ at a second day of hearings on Friday.
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