XPost: uk.legal, soc.culture.jewish, alt.news-media   
   XPost: alt.politics.democrats, alt.atheism   
   From: void@invalid.noy   
      
   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   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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