A Sense of Doubt blog post #3902 - GENOCIDE! Gaza Fits The Definition
I have sat on this post for some time, and my post on extremist Zionism is still a work in progress.
It's about the third temple. As per:
The cease fire MAY have ended the "acts of genocide," for now, but I have trouble believing that the reasons for the actions have been abandoned.
The resolution calls on the Israeli government “to immediately cease all acts that constitute genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity against Palestinians in Gaza” and asks both the Israeli government and the UN “to support a process of repair and transitional justice that will afford democracy, freedom, dignity, and security for all people of Gaza.”
I stand with Jewish Voices for Peace.
ENO ON GAZA
GIG FOR GAZA
Leading Genocide Scholars Say Israel’s War in Gaza Fits the Definition
Meanwhile, Israel denies the charge and American officials remain silent
Leading genocide scholars have ruled that Israel’s actions in Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide.
In a resolution issued Sunday by the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS), the scholars argue that Israel’s actions in Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide under the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. That document, which has been ratified by more than 150 member states, characterizes genocide as crimes “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”
The IAGS resolution cites several figures and examples from Israel’s war in Gaza to make its cases: more than 59,000 reported fatalities and 143,000 reported injuries, according to the UN; deliberate attacks on journalists, aid workers, and medical professionals; the aid blockade; and the destruction of Palestinian schools and cultural sites.
The resolution calls on the Israeli government “to immediately cease all acts that constitute genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity against Palestinians in Gaza” and asks both the Israeli government and the UN “to support a process of repair and transitional justice that will afford democracy, freedom, dignity, and security for all people of Gaza.” It also calls upon members of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to “surrender any individual subject to an arrest warrant,” seemingly referring to the arrest warrants the ICC issued last year for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
The resolution comes as international condemnation of Israel’s actions are ramping up. Several countries recently announced plans to recognize Palestinian statehood, with Belgium becoming the latest as of Tuesday morning. Amnesty International also concluded Israel is committing genocide in Gaza in a 300-page report issued in December, as my colleague Noah Lanard reported at the time, and the Israeli human rights groups B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel both determined the same in July. South Africa is also pursuing a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice in the Hague. And last month, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a coalition of 21 organizations—including Save the Children, UNICEF, the World Bank, and the World Health Organization—confirmed that an “entirely man-made” famine is taking place in Gaza City and that other nearby cities are also at risk.
The United States, though, has consistently remained an outlier as other countries have moved to speak out against Israel and call for peace. President Donald Trump, for example, has not publicly addressed the IPC’s designation of famine in Gaza, though he has previously acknowledged starvation in Gaza. Spokespeople for the White House and the State Department did not immediately respond to an inquiry from Mother Jones on Tuesday about the IAGS resolution.
The US has funded Israel’s war to the tune of nearly $18 billion since Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which killed more than 1,200 people and took more than 250 hostages, including a dozen Americans. The IAGS resolution also says the October 7 attack against Israel “constitutes international crimes.”
On Sunday, the same day the resolution was issued, the Washington Post reported that a postwar plan for Gaza circulating throughout the Trump administration would put it under US control for a decade and would include the so-called “voluntary” displacement of Palestinians—a plan that experts have called ethnic cleansing.
Israeli officials have repeatedly denied allegations of genocide against Palestinians. On Monday, the Israel Foreign Ministry slammed the IAGS resolution in a statement on X, calling it “an embarrassment to the legal profession and to any academic standard” and alleging that the claims within it were unverified and “entirely based on Hamas’s campaign of lies.”
Tim Williams, the vice president of IAGS and professor of insecurity and social order at the University of the Bundeswehr in Munich, told the UK’s Channel 4 News that the organization’s were not surprised by the Israeli reaction, but hoped their determination would provide “a certain amount of academic credentials to anyone now claiming that it is genocide.”
As Lanard has written, the definition of what constitutes a genocide has been both contested and narrowed since its original formulation:
The word “genocide” was coined in 1941 by Raphael Lemkin, a Jewish lawyer from a Polish family, who combined the Greek word for a people (genos) and the Latin translation for killing (cide). At its most basic, genocide meant systematically destroying another group. Lemkin laid it out as a two-phase, often colonial process in his 1944 book, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: First, the oppressor erases the “national pattern” of the victim. Then, it imposes its own. Genocide stretched from antiquity (Carthage) to modern times (Ireland).
[…]
Since the Genocide Convention’s adoption, international courts have arrived at a narrow reading of the already narrow interpretation of Lemkin’s concept, says Leila Sadat, the James Carr Professor of International Criminal Law at the Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. The emphasis of the law is determining whether a country or individual has killed massive numbers of a group of people, and whether they did so with a provable intent to destroy that group. This poses a problem for prosecutors since most perpetrators of genocide are not as transparent as Adolf Hitler.
Williams gestured toward these difficulties in his appearance on Channel 4 News:
Genocide is not just mass killing. It’s also other crimes, like I was saying, for instance, also the deliberate destruction of foundations of life. But also there is a high bar set by the intent to destroy. The perpetrators of genocide have to want to eradicate the target group in whole or in part, I think that’s where there’s been most debate. But we have seen many [Israeli] government leaders, cabinet ministers and senior army officials making explicit statements over the last now almost two years. And through that, I think eventually our members see that the bar has been fulfilled.
New report.. De-Gaza: A Year of Israel’s Genocide and the Collapse of World Order
Palestinian Territory – Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor has released a comprehensive report marking one year since Israel launched its genocidal campaign against civilians in the Gaza Strip on 7 October 2023. During this period, Israel has committed grave war crimes, with the explicit complicity of the international community.
Titled De-Gaza: A Year of Israel’s Genocide and the Collapse of World Order, the report details the most prominent crimes committed over the past 12 months, thoroughly documented by Euro-Med field teams. It traces the clear elements of genocide perpetrated by the Israeli army, explores the legal frameworks defining the crime of genocide, and scrutinises both the context and ongoing circumstances. The report also addresses the international judiciary's response, and, significantly, the global community's complicit role in allowing the genocide to continue.
An estimated 10 per cent of Gaza's population has been killed, injured, reported missing, or detained as a result of Israeli military assaultThe report sheds light on the appalling conditions and systematic atrocities Israel has inflicted upon the occupied Palestinian territory, with a particular focus on the Gaza Strip. These long-standing crimes include the illegal blockade, the deliberate isolation of Gaza from the rest of the Palestinian territory and the world, the systematic deprivation of basic human rights to the Strip’s residents, and the deliberate destruction of essential services.
Since the start of the genocide in Gaza, more than 50,000 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli army, including around 42,000 recorded by the Gaza Ministry of Health, the majority being women and children. In addition, approximately 100,000 have been injured, with thousands of bodies still lying under the rubble and in the streets, unreachable by rescue and medical teams.
An estimated 10 per cent of Gaza's population has been killed, injured, reported missing, or detained as a result of Israeli military assaults. Of the 50,292 Palestinians killed—including those still buried under the debris—33 per cent were children, and 21 per cent were women. Thousands more have been forcibly detained, with 3,600 still languishing in various Israeli prisons and detention centres.
Around 3,500 families have suffered multiple losses since October 2023. Of these, 365 families have lost more than ten members, while over 2,750 families have lost at least three.
The report details the systematic acts of genocide committed in Gaza, such as the targeted killing of civilians in homes, shelters, displacement camps, and humanitarian-declared zones. Civilians were also killed by military vehicles and tanks, in field executions, through drone strikes, in crowded markets, and even while waiting for aid at relief trucks.
The report notes the Israeli military's starvation tactics, the deliberate killing of prisoners and detainees, and the assassination of humanitarian workers, qualified professionals, and Palestinian elites.
The Israeli army employs explicit methods designed to inflict severe physical and psychological trauma on the population. These include launching thousands of systematic military assaults on civilians, dramatically increasing deaths among people of reproductive age, separating families, targeting the healthcare system, and imposing brutal living conditions marked by starvation and malnutrition.
The obstruction of humanitarian aid further exacerbates these atrocities, creating life-threatening situations for thousands.
The root cause of this persecution—the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory since 1967—has created conditions for the ongoing genocide, as confirmed by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in its advisory opinion of 19 July 2024, on the legal consequences arising from Israeli policies and practices in the occupied Palestinian territory.
Both the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip are internationally recognised as Palestinian territories that were occupied in 1967.
Up until 2005, the Israeli occupation army maintained internal and external control over Gaza by stationing military forces within and outside the Strip, establishing settlements on its land, a situation still seen in the West Bank today.
In 2005, Israel declared a unilateral "disengagement," evacuating its settlers from Gaza and withdrawing its military forces. However, despite this declaration, Israel continued to exercise control over Gaza, maintaining real authority over critical aspects of governance. The ICJ upheld this position in a recent advisory opinion, reflecting the near-universal international consensus on Israel’s continued occupation.
Even after its military withdrawal, Israel retained control over the essential governing elements of Gaza, including its population registry, borders (land, sea, and air), and the regulation of movement for both people and goods. Israel also continued to collect taxes on imports and exports and maintained control over the buffer zone.
Following the 7 October 2023 attack, Israel declared a state of war, with its President, Prime Minister, and other political and military leaders at the forefront. The declared aim was to eliminate Hamas, secure the release of hostages, and restore security. Thus began Operation Iron Swords, a brutal military offensive that intensified the suffering of Gaza’s civilians.
Euro-Med Monitor concluded with a set of recommendations after a year of genocide in Gaza, emphasising that all states, both individually and collectively, are still obligated to work towards stopping the ongoing genocide by all available means. Preventing and punishing this crime is an international legal obligation incumbent upon all states without exception, and it is an obligation of absolute authority towards all.
Euro-Med Monitor calls for the imposition of a total arms embargo on Israel, the termination of all licences and agreements related to arms imports and exports (including dual-use materials and technology that could be used against Palestinians), and an end to all military and intelligence cooperation.
In addition to imposing travel restrictions and freezing Israeli government assets, Euro-Med Monitor calls for political and economic sanctions on Israel and its accomplice states. These measures are intended to pressure the responsible parties into upholding international law, ensuring non-recurrence of crimes against Palestinians, and compensating the victims of these atrocities.
The organisation further calls for the halting all forms of support to Israel in connection with its genocide and other crimes against Palestinians. This includes withholding investments, cancelling or suspending political, diplomatic, economic, commercial, and academic ties, and curtailing support from the media, legal, and other sectors that might contribute to the continuation of these crimes.
Key measures include ensuring the Israeli occupation army's full withdrawal from Gaza, dismantling all military installations, barricades, and checkpoints, ending the imposed military and geographical divisions, restoring the Strip’s geographical unity, and guaranteeing the safe and swift return of forcibly displaced individuals to their homes. Furthermore, the recommendations call for the protection of freedom of movement, travel, and access for all citizens of Gaza.
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- Days ago: MOM = 3767 days ago & DAD = 421 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
