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.
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 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 and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page
