UN Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, International Criminal Court Prosecutor, International Court of Justice President: Investigate the Possibility that Israel is Committing the Crime of Genocide Against the Indigenous Palestinian People.
“So when we talk about anti-normalization, it’s not an intellectual exercise. People-families, children, parents- with lives, dreams, hopes, and aspirations- just like each and every one of you- their lives are at the end of every action we take when Israel is in question. There is no way to disentangle a colonized people from the regime that has propped itself on top of them. Any policy, any action, any transaction that Israel makes- economic, cultural, academic- is at the expense of Palestinian lives and existence as a people. Because the colonial goal is the elimination of the indigenous identity so that the colonists may claim the place and its history. And by erasing the people, erasing the the sin of their erasure. This, of course is an oxymoron. But logic never stopped a genocide, sanctions do. “ (40:17)
“I have not said anything about the hundreds of thousands of Israelis protesting the government and the number of times they use ‘fascsist’… in the last couple of months, I’ve never seen the F-word being used so much in the Israaeli media, it’s unbelievable. Of course it’ll be an extremely difficult period for Palestinians, as we’re seeing from Huwara onwards. It’s the first time that Israeli ministers openly support genocide. I mean all of them do. From the most liberal, who have committed acts that can qualify as possibly genocide- Rabin and Peres, you know, the Peaceniks. (Ben Gvir is much better than them, he has not yet committed any acts of massive ethnic cleansing; Rabin and Peres have.) So all of them agree, but now we have ministers openly saying things that everyone had hidden before.” (1:28:32)
Continue watching at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFl5abYmjOk&t=9s
Que pensez-vous du champ politique israélien actuel? Semble-t-il capable de proposer une solution? Le champ politique israélien actuel ne semble capable que de proposer un génocide. Ce n’est pas une hyperbole. Les élections se situent entre Nétanyhaou, l’initiateur du plan d’annexion Trump-Kushner et Benny Ganz qui se vante d’avoir «ramené Gaza à l’âge de pierre,» comme si c’était un mérite politique. Je ne pense pas qu’il faille leur demander de trouver des solutions au problème de la violence qu’ils commettent. La seule solution est l’arrêt immédiat de la violence et le retrait du pouvoir aux auteurs de ces actes. Bien qu’il y ait des forces opposées, principalement les partis palestiniens, c’est peu; c’est comme tenir d’un doigt un barrage qui s’écroule. Mais ce n’est qu’à cette condition qu’on pourra commencer à envisager des actes de réparation et de responsabilisation. Tout cela devrait être mené par les victimes et encouragé par la communauté internationale.
What do you think of the current Israeli political field? Does it seem capable of proposing a solution? The current Israeli political field is only capable of proposing genocide. I’m not being hyperbolic, the elections are between Netanyahu, the originator of the Trump-Kushner annexation plan, and Benny Gantz, who boasts of “returning Gaza to the stone age” as a political merit badge. While there are opposing forces, mostly expressed in the Palestinian parties, it’s like a finger in a broken down dam. I don’t think perpetrators of violence should be asked for solutions to the problem of them perpetrating violence. I think the only solution is the immediate stop to violence and a stripping of power from the perpetrators. After that, modes of reparations and accountability can begin to be discussed. And all of this must be led by the victims and shouldered by the rest of the community- in this case, the international community.
From the moment I started addressing Israel in the context of the crime of genocide, I became acquainted with the numerical counter-argument. The argument usually goes something around the lines of “Israel really sucks at genocide, the Palestinian population has increased eight- fold.”
…It is an astounding testament to how violent human society is, that it might ever venture to argue that “not enough” people are being killed. Or that the destruction of a people and their culture may only be counted as such, if they are completely exterminated. Or that if everybody carries an amount of responsibility then nobody is guilty.
Since I’ve started the Let’s Talk About Genocide series, over four years ago, the discussion around Israel in the context of the crime of genocide has grown substantially. And while many scholars, journalists, and human rights defenders have embarked on the arduous task of examining the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16); many others have dedicated many words to the various, very partial definitions found in most English language dictionaries (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6). Based on these inaccurate definitions- that no genocide scholar in either the Political Science or the legal field would agree on- inevitably the authors reach the conclusion that Israel is not committing genocide against the indigenous Palestinian people.
In the summer of 2012, UNICEF and UNRWA asked if Gaza will be liveable by 2020. At the time- five years into Israel’s siege, and post Israel’s 2008 and 2012 carpet-bombing campaigns- one might have been led to think that if the situation only had eight more stable years to go until apocalypse, then it probably doesn’t look too good already. What one might have missed is that Gaza in 2020, as in 2017, as in 2012, is what genocide looks like.
Beyond the particularities of this bloody episode, there is also the wider context of the crime of genocide, which I discuss at length in the “Let’s Talk About Genocide” series [Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. My analysis stems from the assumption that Palestinians are in a reality of a continuous genocide, according to the Convention of Prevention of Genocide, with recurring peaks of violence (last summer’s bombing of Gaza to the effect of 6 nuclearbombs, murdering 2300 people, including over 500 children, is one harrowing example) that induce heightened acts of resistance. The mechanisms of genocide that are in place are not put on hold because the victims of the genocide killed members of the population that benefit from the genocide. These uncoordinated stabbings are a gut response to the continuous extermination.
Shurat HaDin is a practical organization, hence it doesn’t foresee that Israel could credibly be charged in the ICC with genocide, along with crimes against humanity and war crimes. But genocide is a wider-context crime. So at a time when Israel is engaged at an excelerating pace with actions intended on the destruction of a people, Shurat HaDin is busy suing human rights advocates that protest this genocidal web of actions and policies, and advocating for the impunity for Israel to kill even more civilians. Not only is Shurat HaDin’s conference a party of the crime Incitement to Genocide, if Israel is ever charged with the Crime of Genocide, Shurat Ha’din itself might face charges of complicity.
TAKE ACTION now and write a letter to the UN Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide and the International Criminal Court Prosecutor. Make sure to post a copy of the letter in our comments as well, so we can publish it.
On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, two weeks ago, Israel’s president, Reuven Rivlin, addressed the United Nations calling “to define red lines beyond which an intervention would be necessary to stop acts of genocide”… Simply put, Rivlin is calling for the restriction of the definition of genocide, so that Israel may be excused… Though there’s ample reason for Rivlin to try and spin “Never Again”, the accusations of genocide are still far and in between. In fact, In my last article in this series, I tried to unravel the realpolitik which leads the United Nations to serial inaction in the case of Palestine. In the last week however, we’ve seen a dramatic shift in events, subtle as they may seem… Last week, to much media fanfare, William Schabas resigned from the commission. The reason apparently being Israel providing the Human Rights Council with “incriminating” information…
TAKE ACTION now and write a letter to the UN Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide. Make sure to post a copy of the letter in our comments as well, so we can publish it.
“Intent to destroy” a group is a basic qualifier for the crime of genocide. Intent is probably the element of a crime that is most difficult to prove, however the zionist movement and its subsequent colony in Palestine in its 67 years of colonialism, has never really hid its intent, the “enemy” being identified alternately as “Arabs”, “Muslims”, or “Palestinians”.
TAKE ACTION now and write a letter to the UN Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide. Make sure to post a copy of the letter in our comments as well, so we can publish it.
