Tag: Center for Constitutional Rights

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In Gaza Genocide Case, Palestinians Seek Immediate Court Order to Stop Biden from Arming and Funding Israeli Government, Cite His Legal Duty to Prevent, Not Further, Genocide by Center for Constitutional Rights

PLEASE TAKE ACTION RIGHT NOW AND SEND YOUR LETTER TO THE UN OFFICE OF THE SPECIAL ADVISER ON THE PREVENTION OF GENOCIDE AND THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT PROSECUTOR.

On Monday, the plaintiffs, represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights with the law firm of Van Der Hout, LLP,  sued Biden, Blinken, and Austin for their failure to prevent genocide. Now the plaintiffs are seeking a preliminary injunction that would halt U.S. support for Israel as it carries out its assault and siege on Gaza while the broader case is being decided. It is needed, they say, to protect them from “irreparable harm.” Some of the plaintiffs face a grave risk of death as a result of Israel’s war on Gaza, which U.S. officials are aiding. Collectively, at least 116 of the plaintiffs’ family members have already been killed in Gaza by Israel since October 8th. 

“Our team has had to update more than once the numbers of our clients’ relatives who have been killed as we prepared this lawsuit and motion,” said Astha Sharma Pokharel, an attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights. “There is no starker illustration of how urgently this injunction is needed.”

Continue reading at https://ccrjustice.org/home/press-center/press-releases/gaza-genocide-case-palestinians-seek-immediate-court-order-stop

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Stop the Genocide: United States Complicity and Failure to Prevent the Israeli Government’s Unfolding Genocide of Palestinians by Center for Constitutional Rights

PLEASE TAKE ACTION RIGHT NOW AND SEND YOUR LETTER TO THE UN OFFICE OF THE SPECIAL ADVISER ON THE PREVENTION OF GENOCIDE AND THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT PROSECUTOR.

On November 13, the Center for Constitutional Rights filed a federal lawsuit, Defense for Children International—Palestine, et al. v. . Joseph Biden, et al., on behalf of Palestinian human rights organizations and Palestinians in Gaza and the U.S. Plaintiffs are suing President Biden, Secretary of State Blinken, and Defense Secretary Austin for their failure to prevent and complicity in the  Israeli government’s unfolding genocide against them, their families, and the 2.2 million Palestinians in Gaza. The case against the three high-level U.S. officials argues that they are violating international law, including those codified in the 1948 Genocide Convention and the corresponding Genocide Convention Implementation Act (18 U.S.C. § 1091) passed by the U.S. Congress in 1988.

The lawsuit situates the unfolding genocide within a history of Israeli actions against the Palestinian people – starting with the Nakba in 1948. It sets out how Defendants Biden, Blinken, and Austin have not only failed to prevent the genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza but have helped advance the gravest of crimes by continuing to provide the Israeli government with unconditional military and diplomatic support, coordinating closely on military strategy, and undermining efforts by the international community to stop Israel’s unrelenting and unprecedented bombing campaign and total siege of Gaza.

Plaintiffs are filing this federal complaint for declaratory and injunctive relief asking the court to declare that these U.S. officials have failed to prevent genocide and are aiding and abetting genocide, and to order an end to U.S. military and diplomatic support to Israel. The lawsuit is accompanied by a preliminary injunction (PI) motion, which seeks an emergency order to prohibit any further U.S. military and diplomatic support to the Israeli government while the case is being considered.

Continue reading at https://ccrjustice.org/stop-the-genocide

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Notice of Potential Legal Liability for Aiding, Abetting, Inciting, or Conspiring to Commit Genocide Through Congressional Acts, and Demand by The National Lawyers Guild, Center for Constitutional Rights, and Palestine Legal

PLEASE TAKE ACTION RIGHT NOW AND SEND YOUR LETTER TO THE UN OFFICE OF THE SPECIAL ADVISER ON THE PREVENTION OF GENOCIDE AND THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT PROSECUTOR.

Dear Congressional Representatives:

We understand that you will be voting on the emergency military funding package to Israel. We write to notify you of the legal liabilities of voting for that package, and to demand that you vote against the military assistance package.

The aid package will provide funds to Israel to, inter alia, support its ongoing genocide of, and war crimes against, Palestinians who are confined to the Gaza Strip, and to support apartheid and ethnic cleansing, and the underlying crimes of forcible transfer and deportation, in the West Bank. As the United States is a signatory to both the 1949 Geneva Conventions and the Genocide Convention, it has an obligation to respect and ensure respect for the obligations in those international treaties, including to prevent the commission of genocide and to prevent and punish the commission of grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions – not aid and abet them.

Please take notice that should you vote in favor of that package, you risk facing criminal and civil liability for aiding and abetting genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity under international law, and may face investigation and prosecution at the International Criminal Court, and in third-states under the principle of universal jurisdiction.

Continue reading at https://ccrjustice.org/sites/default/files/attach/2023/11/Final-Pal-Demand-CCR-Edits.docx.pdf

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Israel’s Unfolding Crime of Genocide of the Palestinian People & U.S. Failure to Prevent and Complicity in Genocide by The Center for Constitutional Rights

PLEASE TAKE ACTION RIGHT NOW AND SEND YOUR LETTER TO THE UN OFFICE OF THE SPECIAL ADVISER ON THE PREVENTION OF GENOCIDE AND THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT PROSECUTOR.

There is plausible and credible case, based on powerful factual evidence, that Israel is attempting to commit, if not actively committing, the crime of genocide in the occupied Palestinian territory, and specifically against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip. The gravest of crimes under international law, genocide refers to specific actions – such as killing or deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of the group in whole or in part – taken with the intention of destroying, in whole or in part, the group targeted, including on ethnic or national grounds.

Continue reading at https://ccrjustice.org/sites/default/files/attach/2023/10/Israels-Unfolding-Crime_ww.pdf

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UK joining Israel in celebrations is shameful by Tariq A. Al Maeena

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Last Thursday, the UK Prime Minister Theresa May was doling out compliment after another to the Israeli delegation attending the event to mark the one hundredth anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, a move that displaced Palestinians from their own lands and made way for European Jews to occupy Arab lands. Speaking at a dinner function, May said that Britain is ‘proud of our pioneering role in the creation of the state of Israel’ adding that she was proud ‘of the relationship we have built with Israel.’

… More than 3,500 civilians had lost their lives, a sizeable portion of whom were women and children. Some 17,000 Gazans were injured and more than 100,000 left homeless. Michael Ratner of the Centre for Constitutional Rights aptly termed Israel’s planned ethnic cleansing and massacres of Palestinians “incremental genocide.” And their retribution for the crime against them? The perpetrators of the genocide get felicitated at a dinner reception hosted by no less than the UK prime minister in recognition of their fine efforts, while their victims slide into anonymity.

 

Continue reading at http://gulfnews.com/opinion/thinkers/uk-joining-israel-in-celebrations-is-shameful-1.2118528

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Israel, Palestine, and the Poetics of Genocide by Mark LeVine and Eric Cheyfitz on Jadaliyya

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For these reasons, we feel it is important to raise awareness about the expanding scholarly understanding of genocide precisely because such discussions can and should ultimately lead to similar discussions in the relevant international tribunals. The idea of establishing a scale of genocidal behavior (not to be confused with incitement, conspiracy, or intent to commit genocide) that would include the experiences of groups such as West Papuans and Palestinians, and in the process also reintegrate concepts like cultural and political genocide (originally termed “politicide”) into the matrix of legal meanings is worthy of study by scholars and advocates. Such an approach would seem to make room for the concepts of incipient (Shaw), incremental (Pappé), or slow motion (Anderson) genocides discussed here to become part of the legal discussion as the term evolves.

However, in the current legal environment, we believe it would be very difficult to prove that the Israeli government has intended or conspired to commit genocide during the occupation (whether incremental or concentrated). (Others have reached the opposite conclusion, including, most recently, an analysis published by the Center for Constitutional Rights titled “The Genocide of the Palestinian People: An International Law and Human Rights Perspective.”)

Continue reading at http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/26480/israel-palestine-and-the-poetics-of-genocide

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Rwandan President Calls Israel an ‘Inspiration’ for Overcoming Genocide at AIPAC Conference by Nisreen Eadeh

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Undoubtedly, Israeli Jews and Rwandans both share national tragedy, but Palestinians do, too. In 1948, more than 700,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced from their homes, and today more than 6.5 million Palestinians live as refugees.

In technical terms, Palestinians have also suffered genocide at the hands of Israel – a history that President Kagame seems to be neglecting intentionally.

According to the Center for Constitutional Rights, “Genocide can be applied to the destruction of a people or a national group as a viable group, and that can be both with their being driven from a land or the rendering of their language no longer legal, or just the destruction of their national identity.”

Continue reading at http://www.arabamerica.com/rwandan-president-calls-israel-inspiration-overcoming-genocide/

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#BlackLivesMatter and the Question of Genocide in Palestine by Katherine Franke

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Zionist critics of the Platform portrayed the use of the term “genocide” as somehow out of bounds, leaving the impression that M4BL had crossed a line in raising concerns about the human rights record of the state of Israel in such harsh terms. They labeled the Platform and its supporters anti-Semitic on account of the supposedly jaw-dropping audacity of the Platform’s authors to use the “g” word with respect to Israel. The intensity of the outrage directed at the M4BL Platform’s assertion that the treatment of Palestinians by Israel could be described as “a genocide” leaves the impression that this kind of charge had never been leveled before, or that no reasonable person (and thus only an anti-Semite) could frame Israel’s policies this way.

Continue reading at http://nakbafiles.org/2016/11/01/blacklivesmatter-and-the-question-of-genocide-in-palestine/

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Attorneys Level Charges Of Genocide As Israel’s Impunity Continues by Joe Catron

Please TAKE ACTION RIGHT NOW and send your letter to the UN Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide and the International Criminal Court Prosecutor.

Katherine Franke, director of Columbia Law School’s Center for Gender and Sexuality Law, faculty director of its Public Rights/Private Conscience Project, and chair of CCR’s board of directors, was the primary author of the legal analysis.

The document applies the convention to not only Israel’s repeated military operations against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, but also Israel’s protracted occupation of Gaza and the West Bank (the effects of which it calls “incremental genocide”), Israel’s expulsion and killing of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians during its founding in 1948, and racist incitement against Palestinians by Israeli government officials.

“Persons that can be prosecuted for genocide include ‘constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials and private individuals,’ and according to the terms of the Genocide Convention they can be tried by the International Criminal Court, other international tribunals (such as the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda for Yugoslavia), [or] any court in the country or territory of which the act was committed,” Franke said.

“The crime of genocide is also understood according to customary international law to create universal jurisdiction, meaning that cases can be filed anywhere in the world, and are not limited to the territory where the conduct took place.”

While avoiding direct accusations, the briefing concludes that charges of genocide against Israel are hardly new in international legal circles:

“Prominent human rights advocates and scholars have argued that the killings of Palestinians and their forceful expulsion from mandate Palestine in 1948, the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza, and the violence and discrimination directed at Palestinians by the Israeli government have violated a number of human rights protections contained in international human rights law, genocide being among them.”

Continue reading at https://www.mintpressnews.com/attorneys-level-charges-genocide-israels-impunity-continues/220299/

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Why Israel’s actions can be called genocide by Nora Barrows-Friedman

Please TAKE ACTION RIGHT NOW and send your letter to the UN Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide and the International Criminal Court Prosecutor.

Israel lobby groups recently reacted with outrage against the Movement for Black Lives policy platform which refers to US complicity in Israel’s “genocide” and “apartheid” against the Palestinian people.

Despite the outrage of many pro-Israel groups, there is a long history of human rights scholarship and legal analysis that supports the assertion Israel is committing genocide, according to a statement from the Center for Constitutional Rights. “As human rights lawyers, [we felt] it might be appropriate to just clarify the record that this was nothing new – that the term genocide had been applied by human rights activists, lawyers, scholars both inside law and inside other disciplines for many, many years.”

Listen to the full interview at https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/why-israels-actions-can-be-called-genocide