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BY THOMAS BECKER AND EMILY WILDER JUNE 2, 2024

Less than 48 hours after the world’s top court, the International
Court of Justice (ICJ), ordered Israel to “immediately halt its
military offensive and any other action” near the southernmost Gazan
city of Rafah, Israel increased its deadly strikes on the already
beleaguered area. Over Sunday night, Israel dropped massive bombs,
including United States-made warheads, on an encampment of displaced
civilians Israel had designated a “safe zone.”

At least 45 people were killed and 200 injured in the bombing and
subsequent fires, most women and children. People were burnt beyond
recognition and reduced to ash; in one video of the horrors, a man
wordlessly held up a beheaded baby to the camera, the background
ablaze.

This most recent attack is not Israel’s first defiance of the ICJ and
basic human rights principles; nor, unfortunately, is it the last.
Despite global outrage, Israel has continued to bombard Rafah in the
days since. Indeed, over eight months, Israel has besieged and
bombarded Gaza in a pattern of conduct that has amounted and continues
to amount to genocide.

Genocide is among the most loaded charges one might levy. Often
considered the “crime of crimes,” an aspiration to prevent genocide is
in many ways foundational to the modern international legal system.

The conclusion that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinian
people in Gaza is based on a thorough legal analysis of the
international jurisprudence surrounding the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, or the Genocide
Convention. Since the October 7, 2023 attacks, we at the University
Network for Human Rights (UNHR), alongside scholars at programs,
clinics, and projects at Boston University, Cornell, University of
Pretoria, and Yale, sought to determine whether Israel’s actions meet
the legal threshold of genocide. This meticulous analysis is
delineated in painstaking depth and detail in a report published
earlier this month. In it, we found the evidence of genocide was clear
and overwhelming.

Our analysis, which joins warnings by other leading and authoritative
experts on international law and genocide about impending and ongoing
genocide in Gaza, puts the world on notice of Israel’s grave breaches
of the Genocide Convention and other human rights and humanitarian
law. The International Criminal Court chief prosecutor’s application
for warrants to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant is a step toward accountability for
Israel’s war crimes and crimes against humanity. But it’s crucial to
note that when it comes to the paramount prohibitions on genocide, it
is not just Israel that is in violation.

Genocide is the only crime in which all nations have a duty to prevent
and punish and a responsibility not to be complicit. For countries
aiding Israel’s operations in Gaza, such as the United States, which
supplies much of Israel’s weapons and military aid, actively abetting
genocide is its own breach of the Convention.

The legal bar for genocide is a very high one to meet. The standard,
according to the Genocide Convention and developed since by the ICJ
and other international criminal tribunals, is that a perpetrator
kill, seriously harm, or inflict conditions of life calculated to
bring about the destruction of a group, in whole or in part, with the
intent to destroy the group as such. Since October 7, Israel has done
precisely that to Palestinians in Gaza, a protected group under
international law that forms a substantial part of the Palestinian
people.

Israel has killed more than 36,000 Palestinians, 15,000 of whom are
children, and injured over 81,000, a combined total of over 5 percent
of Gaza’s population. Israel has executed Palestinians in Gaza
wherever they are – in their homes, hospitals, “safe zones,” refugee
camps, UN schools, mosques, and elsewhere. The destruction of nearly
every facet of civilian infrastructure has displaced 75 percent of
Gaza’s population. The devastation has been unprecedented: more
children were killed in the first four months of Israel’s assault than
in all conflicts over the past four years combined; Israel’s assault
has resulted in the fastest starvation rate the world has ever seen;
and Israeli forces have targeted those who respond to the devastation,
killing the highest number of journalists and aid workers ever
recorded in war.

To fulfill the element of “intent to destroy, in whole or in part,”
case law on the crime of genocide sets out that this intent must be
the only reasonable inference from the totality of the facts. The
conduct of Israel’s military forces – and indeed the expressions of
Israel’s leaders – leave no other reasonable interpretation than an
intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza as such.

In dozens of statements since October 7 documented in our report,
Israeli leaders at all levels have dehumanized Palestinians in Gaza as
Israeli forces have carried out egregious rights abuses. Netanyahu has
referred to Palestinians in Gaza as “sons of darkness,” and Defense
Minister Gallant and others have called them “human animals” –
textbook methods of genocidal dehumanization that parallel evidence in
prior genocide cases.

Meanwhile, Israel’s heads of state, government, and military, and
others who have decision-making power in Israel’s operations, have
explicated intentions to destroy Palestinians and Palestinian society
in Gaza; to collectively punish Palestinians and cause them to suffer;
to not distinguish between civilians and combatants; to encourage the
Israeli military to cause massive death and destruction; and to enact
another Nakba, the violent dispossession of 800,000 Palestinians from
their homes between 1947 and 1949.

These genocidal statements have been flagrant. Officials have urged
troops to “erase all of Gaza from the face of the earth” and boasted,
“I am proud of the ruins of Gaza, and that every baby, even 80 years
from now, will tell their grandchildren what the Jews did.” Netanyahu
and other leaders have referenced biblical passages to call for the
wholesale annihilation of Palestinians in Gaza, while Defense Minister
Gallant succinctly and candidly described Israel’s intentions in Gaza:
“We will eliminate everything.”

It is rare in history and in the case law for those who commit
genocide to be so frank about their intent. With such candor, Israel’s
enablers can no longer bury their heads in the sand.

In the wake of the Holocaust, the United States was central to the
construction of the legal framework on which the prohibition of
genocide is based. The U.S. guaranteed its commitment to genocide
prevention when it ratified the Genocide Convention in 1988 and
reinforced this duty before the ICJ only two years ago. While Biden’s
“red line” for providing assistance to Israel continues to shift, the
legal obligations of the U.S. do not. If the U.S. continues to
facilitate Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, it too may
become vulnerable to international liability.


Thomas Becker
Thomas Becker is the Legal and Policy Director at the University
Network for Human Rights and has taught at Harvard and Columbia Law
Schools.

Emily Wilder
Emily Wilder is a researcher and editor with the University Network
for Human Rights.


https://mondoweiss.net/2024/06/israel-is-committing-genocide-its-enablers-can-be-held-to-account/

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