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AS ISRAEL DEFIES UNSC DEMAND FOR GAZA CEASEFIRE, UN HUMAN RIGHTS BODY
SLAMS ONGOING GENOCIDE  
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Juan Cole
March 26, 2024
Informed Comment
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_ The report concludes that Israel’s policies in Gaza give
“reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating
Israel’s commission of genocide is met.” _

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Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The UN Security Council has finally
passed a ceasefire resolution for Gaza, from which the US abstained,
so it was passed by the other 14 members. Although UNSC resolutions
are binding, and countries like Iraq and Iran have been severely
punished for disobeying them, the US is running interference for the
Netanyahu government by insisting that the resolution is
“non-binding.”

Israel’s government was so furious at Joe Biden for abstaining
rather than vetoing the resolution that it has canceled a planned trip
to Washington. But this intransigence in the face of international law
and international institutions could end up hurting Israel severely.
Since the state is already under scrutiny for committing genocide by
the International Court of Justice, its truculence and defiance of the
UNSC can only harm its case.

In a further blow to Israeli policy, Francesca Albanese, the Special
Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian
territories occupied since 1967 of the UN Human Rights Council, issued
a report Monday entitled _“Anatomy of a Genocide_
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Albanese, an attorney with degrees from Pisa and SOAS in London, has
worked for a decade with the UN on human rights law. She is also at
the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown
University as an Affiliate Scholar.

Her report begins, “After five months of military operations, Israel
has destroyed Gaza.” She points out that the Israeli military has
killed over 30,000 Palestinians, included over 13,000 children, and
has wounded 71,000. She says that not only has 80% of the population
been made refugees but 70% of the areas where people lived have been
destroyed. So they have no place to return to. Corpses have decayed
“in homes, in the street or under the rubble.”

The report concludes that Israel’s policies in Gaza give
“reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating
Israel’s commission of genocide is met.”

The Special Rapporteur finds that Israeli authorities are misusing and
distorting the international law governing the prosecution of war
(_jus in bello_), disregarding their function in protecting innocent
civilian noncombatants, “in an attempt to legitimize genocidal
violence against the Palestinian people.” In other words, Israeli
officials’ invocation of international humanitarian law is nothing
more than a “camouflage.”

The Special Rapporteur argues that genocidal projects are inherent in
settler-colonial states. She cites the mass killings of the Native
Americans in the US, the First Nations in Australia, and the Herrero
in Namibia. Since the settler-colonial state covets the land and the
resources of the native people, it has a motive for provoking the
disintegration of the native people’s social institutions and very
identity.

The report alleges, “Israel’s settler movement and leaders have
framed Gaza as a territory to be ‘re-colonized’ and its population
as invaders to be expelled. These unlawful claims are integral to the
project of consolidating the ‘exclusive and unassailable right of
the Jewish people’ on the land of ‘Greater Israel’, as
reaffirmed by Prime Minister Netanyahu in December 2022.”

One of the problems for the Israeli government’s attempts to defend
itself against charges of genocide is how openly and volubly Netanyahu
and his cronies have proclaimed their intentions and the racist bases
for them.

Turning to the charges of genocide, the report notes that in just the
first few months of the current Israeli campaign against Gaza, the
Israeli army deployed

a) over 25,000 tons of explosives (equivalent to two nuclear bombs) on
countless buildings

b) that these targets were chosen using Artificial Intelligence

c) that the Israeli military dropped 2000-pound “bunker buster”
bombs in “densely populated areas” and even on the “safe
zones” declared by that very Israeli military.

d) The Israelis killed an average of 250 people a day in this period,
including 100 children a day, destroying entire neighborhoods and
necessary infrastructure.

Albanese points out that by early December, the Israeli government was
alleging that it had killed “7,000 terrorists” in Gaza. But at
that point only 5,000 adult males had been killed, so it is clear that
the Israeli authorities considered all of them terrorists.

In a compelling bit of reasoning, she points out that “This is
indicative of an intent to indiscriminately target members of the
protected group, assimilating them to active fighter status by
default.” That is, the Israeli government’s triumphalist
statistics are themselves genocidal.

She estimates moreover, that 10 children are dying of acute
malnutrition daily that that over 500,000 Palestinians could die from
malnutrition and poor health conditions in 2024.

So that’s the first element of genocide, “Killing members of the
group.”

The report then goes down the other criteria for genocide. “Causing
serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group?” Check. This
includes depriving them of needed medicines and inflicting
psychological harm.

Then there is “Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of
life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in
part.” Check.

Here she mentions the destruction of 77% of healthcare facilities, 68%
of telcoms, almost 50% of roads, and 60% of Gaza’s 439,000 homes,
all the universities, 60% of schools, etc.

What about “Genocidal intent”? Check.

The Israeli officials have made this one a no-brainer. Albanese
writes,

* 50. In the latest Gaza assault, direct evidence of genocidal
intent is uniquely present. Vitriolic genocidal rhetoric has painted
the whole population as the enemy to be eliminated and forcibly
displaced.150 High-ranking Israeli officials with command authority
have issued harrowing public statements evincing genocidal intent,
including as follows: (a) President Isaac Herzog stated that “an
entire nation out there…is responsible” for the 7 October attack,
and that Israel would “break their backbone”;151 (b) Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu referred to Palestinians as
“Amalek”152 and “monsters”.153 The Amalek reference is to a
biblical passage in which God commands Saul “Now go and smite
Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not;
but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel
and ass”.154 (c) Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant referred to
Palestinians as “human animals”,155 and announced “full
offense” on Gaza, having “released all the restraints…”

Finally, the Israeli military has subverted basic principles of
international humanitarian law, which makes a key distinction between
combatants and noncombatants. In essence, Israel’s government has
treated all Palestinians in Gaza as combatants. Moreover, the Israeli
military has declared all civilian institutions to be Hamas “power
centers,” obliterating the distinction between hospitals and
military garrisons. While such “objects” can be legitimate targets
if they are used by the enemy for military purposes, they are only
targets _while_ they are so being used. Israel’s army is treating
them as legitimate targets if they ever were or potentially might be
used by Hamas. It is thus ignoring the distinction between military
and civilian objects.

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Juan Cole [[link removed]] is the founder and
chief editor of _Informed Comment_. He is Richard P. Mitchell
Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of,
among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of
Empires
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and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
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Follow him on Twitter at @jricole
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or the Informed Comment Facebook Page
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