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Israeli Lawmakers Reaffirm Genocidal Rhetoric on Eve of ICJ Trial
"I stand behind my words," said Deputy Knesset Speaker Nissim Vaturi. "It is better to burn down buildings rather than have soldiers harmed. There are no innocents there."
Jan 10, 2024
Two Israeli lawmakers from right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party doubled down Wednesday on calls to destroy or depopulate Gaza, prompting an admonition from the country's attorney general on the eve of an emergency hearing in the South African-led genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.
In an interview with Hakol Baramah radio, Deputy Knesset Speaker Nissim Vaturi said he did not regret his November call for Israel to "stop being humane" and "burn Gaza now."
"I stand behind my words," Vaturi said, according toThe Times of Israel. "It is better to burn down buildings rather than have soldiers harmed. There are no innocents there."
Referring to Palestinian civilians trapped in northern Gaza, Vaturi added that he has "no mercy for those who are still there."
"We need to eliminate them," he asserted.
On Tuesday, Israeli Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara cautioned government officials against making inflammatory statements like Vaturi's.
Baharav-Miara said officials are "obligated to act according to the principles of international law and the laws of war."
"Statements that call for, among other things, intentional harm to uninvolved citizens, are against the prevailing policy and may constitute criminal offenses, including incitement," she added.
Vaturi's remarks came as more than 90,000 Palestinians have been killed, wounded, or left missing by 96 days of largely indiscriminate Israeli bombardment of Gaza, where around 90% of the territory's 2.3 million residents have been displaced and most of its infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to Palestinian and United Nations officials.
Meanwhile, Haaretzreported that Danny Danon, a former United Nations ambassador now serving in the Knesset, said in a Wednesday radio interview that Israel must "not do half a job" in Gaza.
That, Danon said, means "voluntary migration" of Palestinians from Gaza—a euphemism, critics say, for an ethnic cleansing campaign akin to the Nakba, or "catastrophe," in which more than 750,000 Arabs were forcibly expelled from Palestine during the war to establish the modern state of Israel in 1948.
In November, Danon co-authored a Wall Street Journalopinion piece suggesting the ethnic cleansing of some of Gaza's population to Western countries that would accept the refugees.
Danon and Vaturi's remarks came as the International Court of Justice prepared to convene an emergency hearing Thursday in The Hague in a genocide case against Israel filed by South Africa and backed by nations including Pakistan, Turkey, Malaysia, Venezuela, Jordan, and Bolivia.
The filing in the World Court specifically mentions "direct and public incitement to genocide by senior Israeli officials and others."
These include individuals from Netanyahu and other senior Cabinet and military officials to Knesset members and municipal leaders.
Meanwhile, leftist Israeli lawmaker Ofer Cassif is being targeted for removal from the Knesset after becoming the first parliamentarian to express support for the ICJ genocide case against his country.
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Prominent Israelis Demand End to Calls for Outright Genocide From Top Officials
"When it comes to the statements of Jews instigating mass deportation and even genocide—the legal adviser to the government, the state attorney, and the entire prosecution system are silent," wrote a group of prominent Israelis.
Jan 03, 2024
A human rights lawyer representing influential Israeli journalists, academics, scientists, and other public figures who have demanded an end to the government's open declarations of genocidal intent in Gaza said Wednesday that he was shocked that such a call needed to be made in the Middle Eastern country.
"The fact that this type of talk has completely left the far, unimportant fringes and came into the mainstream in such a massive way, for me it's incomprehensible," attorney Michael Sfard told The Guardian following the group's decision to send a letter to the attorney general and state prosecutors raising concerns about recent comments by top government officials that they say have normalized genocidal language.
"Explicit calls to commit horrific crimes against the citizens of Gaza began [on October 7] and have since become a legitimate and normal part of the Israeli discourse," wrote the group, decrying "calls for destruction; for ethnic cleansing; for executions of prisoners; to drop an atomic bomb; to 'Nakba 2'; to starve; to create a deliberate humanitarian crisis and to use epidemics as a means of military pressure."
The signatories accused right-wing lawmakers aligned with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of incitement to genocide within Israel by repeatedly calling for Gaza's population of 2.3 million people to be wiped out or forcibly removed from the blockaded enclave—using a variety of language.
Examples of the government's promotion of "the discourse of annihilation, expulsion, and revenge" include a comment made in November by Yitzhak Kroizer, a member of the Knesset representing the Jewish National Front party, in which he called for Gaza to be "flattened" and said that for all residents "there is but one sentence, and that is death."
"What will we be after the war? What kind of Israeli society is being cast at present?"
The normalization of such rhetoric was evident in journalist Shimon Riklin's call for Gaza to be "wiped off the face of the Earth," said the signatories, and members of Netanyahu's own Likud party have called for the use of a nuclear bomb for "strategic deterrence" and have echoed the prime minister's references to the biblical massacre of the people of Amalek, which has been evoked in the past by far right Israeli leaders to justify the killing of Palestinians.
The attorney general's office, the public figures noted, is fully equipped to hold people to account for inciting genocidal violence.
"It actually enforces vigorously, but it seems that almost only against Arabs," the letter reads, pointing to 269 investigations that were opened by Israel between October and November, and 86 indictments that were filed, against ordinary citizens whose speech had been interpreted as supporting Hamas.
"But when it comes to the statements of Jews instigating mass deportation and even genocide—the legal adviser to the government, the state attorney, and the entire prosecution system are silent," wrote the group. "No notice, no instructions, no condemnation, no warning, no opening of an investigation, nothing."
As if to prove the signatories' point about the normalization of genocidal rhetoric, another Knesset member from the Likud, Moshe Saada, said Tuesday that the fact that calls to "destroy" Gazans have become increasingly commonplace in Israeli society shows that the far right was right to make such statements after Hamas' October 7 attack on Israel.
"My friends at the prosecutor's office, who fought with me on political matters, in debates, tell me, 'Moshe, it is clear that all the Gazans need to be destroyed,' and these are statements I have never heard," Saada toldChannel 14 in Israel.
In an op-ed in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Sfard wrote last week that the aftermath of the October 7 attack—with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) massacre of at least 22,313 Gaza residents, the displacement of 90% of the enclave's population, and the government's explicit calls for genocidal violence while officials claim that the IDF protects civilian lives—has forced many Israelis to confront "a terrible insight" and an urgent question about their country and the occupied Palestinian territories.
"What will we be after the war? What kind of Israeli society is being cast at present?" wrote Sfard. "What will be the image of a society that in its endless and axiomatic rightness killed tens of thousands, most of them children, women, and the elderly? Indeed, they were killed in the aftermath of a horrifying and unforgivable crime. And yet. My grandmother, who survived the Holocaust after escaping with her mother and sisters from the actions in the Warsaw ghetto and hid until the end of the war in attics and cellars, wrote in her memoirs, that the greatest challenge in the face of the extreme inhumanity was to maintain humanity."
"What will our deeds in recent weeks etch into our souls—the destruction of cities, towns, villages and refugee camps, the total demolition of residential neighborhoods and civilian infrastructure, the erasure of families and leaving hundreds, if not thousands, of children orphaned?" Sfard continued. "How many tons of coldness and indifference have settled inside us in order for us to turn high-rise buildings into dust, promenades and plazas into ruins, and a million and a half people into displaced people who have nothing? Is there a way back from the hardness we have decreed on our hearts in the face of hundreds of thousands of people who because of our war are fighting like animals for pieces of food, a safe place where their children can lay down their heads, medicine, clean water, and dignity?"
Sfard toldThe Guardian that the attorney general has the responsibility "to make clear that comments inciting genocide were unacceptable, amount to incitement, and had become normalized."
The group sent its letter just before South Africa filed a motion at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), asking the body to formally declare that Israel has breached its obligations under the Genocide Convention and citing some of the same comments referenced in the letter.
As Common Dreams reported Monday, the Israeli Foreign Ministry held a hearing this week regarding how the government should proceed after legal advisers warned top officials that the ICJ could issue an injunction to stop Israel from committing genocidal violence in Gaza.
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Palestinians Say Netanyahu 'Confessions' Reveal Truth of 'Genocidal War' in Gaza
The Foreign Ministry said that the Israeli prime minister's push for what he terms "voluntary migration" shows that ethnic cleansing of the besieged enclave is the real goal of the ongoing bombing and ground invasion.
Dec 26, 2023
Amid a ramping up of bombardments and military ground operations, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday he was working toward what he referred to as a "voluntary migration" of Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip, the Israeli newspaper Hayom Daily reported.
"Our problem is the countries that are willing to absorb (them), and we are working on it," he said, according to a translation from the Anadolu Agency.
The remarks earned a swift condemnation from Palestinian leadership.
In a statement posted on social media, the Foreign Ministry said that "frank and clear confessions reveal the truth about the goals of the genocidal war led by Netanyahu against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip," according to The Siasat Daily.
The ministry called for "a courageous international stance to immediately stop the war on the Gaza Strip and stop the crime of ethnic cleansing and displacement before it is too late."
It further said that "Netanyahu's confessions regarding the displacement of our people is a new blow to the countries supporting him in the genocidal war on Gaza Strip."
Hamas, meanwhile, said that Netanyahu's plan "would prolong the aggression," the Anadolu Agency reported.
"The Palestinian people will not allow to pass any plan that aims to obliterate their cause or to get them out of their lands and sanctities," the group said.
Netanyahu's remarks came during a Likud faction meeting, according to Hayom Daily. The prime minister was responding to a statement by Member of the Knesset Shani Danon.
"The world is already discussing this matter. Canadian immigration minister Mark Miller spoke about these matters publicly, as did Nikki Haley (the potential Republican candidate for the U.S. presidency)," Danon said, according to a translation from The Siasat Daily.
Danon recommended "forming a team in the State of Israel that will take care of this issue and make sure that anyone who wants to leave Gaza for a third country can do so."
"This must be organized, because of its strategic importance for the day after the war," he said.
Netanyahu responded that his government was working on it.
This isn't the first time it has been suggested or hinted that Israel aims for the expulsion of the civilian population of Gaza. Danon co-wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal in November with fellow Knesset member Ram Ben-Barak arguing that Europe and the U.S. should help resettle refugees from the Gaza Strip. Another opinion piece published in The Jerusalem Post on Monday argued that the population of Gaza should be relocated to Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.
A U.N. expert warned last week that a goal of forcible population transfer out of Gaza was the only "logical conclusion" of Israel's assault on the strip, which has internally displaced 85% of its 2.3 million people. Israel has killed more than 20,000 people in Gaza since Oct. 7, when Hamas attacked southern Israel and killed more than 1,100 people and took around 240 hostages.
In retaliation for the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas militants,Israel has cut off the flow of essential supplies into Gaza and flattened or damaged, homes, hospitals, schools, and businesses with heavy, U.S.-made bombs in what military historian Robert Pape called "one of the most intense civilian punishment campaigns in history."
So far, however, governments in the Middle East, Europe, and the U.S. have rejected any plans to transfer the population of Gaza to another country, according to Middle East Eye. Both Egypt and Jordan have refused to accept large numbers of Gazan refugees, wanting to avoid a repetition of the first Nakba, in which Israel forced more than 700,000 Palestinians from their homes in 1948.
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