When I teach about the Gaza genocide, students will be asked to read the South Africa case. It's 84 pages of public facts and clear legal arguments which outline precisely how Israel is committing genocide. As clear a case as any of the last few decades.
If this was any other country, Western leaders would be condemning it as unconscionable ethnic cleansing. It's not just double standards, it's wilful complicity.
When protecting trade is more important than protecting people. We can live with the massacres but not the interruption of commerce. Western values in action.
I will have to teach my students in the coming years about how a genocide can occur, even in a democracy - through dehumanisation, stereotyping, separation, threat narratives, intellectual justification, etc. It will be very sad to discuss my academic colleagues who justified it.
It's nothing to do with dismantling Hamas. Destroying strawberry farms and chicken coops is about deliberate starvation. This is genocide, nothing less.
One day, when this attack on Gaza is added to all the university courses on genocide and ethnic cleansing, a lot of scholars will be desperately scrubbing their social media history to hide that they tacitly or explicitly supported it. Silence is complicity.
In a few years, it will be commonsense that Palestinians should have equal rights, freedom and self-determination, like others. The pro-Palestine protesters of today will be celebrated just like abolitionists, suffragettes, civil rights campaigners, etc. History is on their side
Just wondering how many dead Palestinians it will take for the US, UK and all its supporters to accept that Israel has gone too far and is committing genocide. Is there a set number? 50,000? 100,000? A million? When starvation sets in? Is there any limit to watching people die?
This is probably the most complete report to date that demonstrates how Israel's acts meet the legal definition of genocide.
It's a 100-page report, by legal experts at Boston University School of Law, Cornell Law School, Yale Law School, and others.
The report's conclusion:
🧵BREAKING: Today, on Nakba Day, we submitted to the UN the most thorough legal analysis of Israel's actions since Oct. 7, finding that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
READ THE REPORT:
If you ever wondered what you would do if you lived in apartheid South Africa or during the era of slavery, wonder no more. How you are responding to Palestine now is how you would have responded then. It took courage and conviction to speak out back then. It's the same today.
'The only moral thing Palestinian civilians can do apparently is to die. The only legal thing the rest of us can do is to watch them die. And be silent. The brilliant Arundhati Roy shares her thoughts about Gaza.
The editor at
@TheAtlantic
- Jeff Goldberg - who approved the below piece by
@gcaw
served in the Israeli occupation army as a prison guard “inflicting punishment on Palestinian detainees”. You see why the piece made it to print in the midst of a genocide?
@colwight
That's really beneath you, Colin. You are better than that. You know I have spent my life trying to find alternatives to political violence. I am an unapologetic pacifist. Trying to stop Israel killing thousands of innocent people does not make me an apologist for terrorism.
You have to wonder about the souls of those Israeli snipers. They look into the faces of elderly men and women, children carrying white flags, medics, journalists, doctors operating on patients, anyone - and then they shoot them dead. It's not a mistake. It's cold blooded murder
Keep boycotting and disinvesting. It's starting to make a difference. It's probably the only way to get Israel to negotiate a just peace with Palestine we have right now.
The Lemkin Institute has had it with the cynical lies and propaganda from Israel and the USA. One can have different views about the definition of genocide, but one may not use definitional disputes to deny genocide. If a genocide may be occurring, every nation is compelled by
The case for BDS against Israel and its supporters is now stronger than ever and likely the only real way to force a ceasefire and negotiations about a just settlement. No state should trade with a genocidal government or those who arm it. BDS now!
Israel has lost this war in a defeat of historic proportions because there's no going back now after committing genocide. Whatever they think they've gained is a pittance compared to all they've lost. They've slaughtered civilians and lost their humanity for nought...
Terrorism tactics 101: commit a spectacular attack on civilians in the hope that the state will respond with brutal disproportionate violence, thereby creating more victims and forcing everyone to choose sides in a polarised context. Textbook.
Yes, it is a genocide. And climate change is real, covid is real, vaccines don't cause autism, the moon landing really happened, Sandy Hook happened, pizzagate never happened, 9/11 wasn't an inside job, chemtrails aren't the deliberate spread of chemicals, and Elvis is dead.
Agreed. The Western liberal order is rotting under Gaza's rubble. I can't begin to fathom what Western leaders think is worth the reputational costs of tacitly and openly supporting Israel’s genocidal violence. What do they gain from staying silent? What's worth this cost?
It turns out that when you do some academic research, you find that the argument that Palestinians teach their children to hate is completely wrong. In fact, it's Israel that does that. It's educational system is deeply racist.
Please share my explosive interview with Israeli professor and author Nurit Peled Elhanan who blasts the racist Israeli education system that borders on child abuse.
Part 1
The incitement to genocide and its normalisation in public discourse is a key component to the process of committing it. We saw this process before in Bosnia, Rwanda, Darfur, Myanmar and elsewhere.
It's got nothing to do with defeating Hamas. This is clearly aimed at causing mass starvation among civilians. Brutal invaders have done this for centuries.
Israel is slowly clearing Northern Gaza of all Palestinians. Even hospitals and refugee centres are being emptied. How long do you think it will be before settlers move in behind? We are witnessing a clear case of ethnic cleansing, but no sign of R2P anywhere.
They will also wonder how so many prominent community leaders, scholars, politicians, journalists, lawyers, artists and ordinary people actively supported it, and why those who spoke out against it were sanctioned, suppressed and derided...
It's now incontrovertible that Israel is one of the worst human rights abusing regimes of the last few decades. The things they are doing to Palestinians are beyond comprehension and reveal a depth of savagery, sadism and cruelty that puts them in the ranks of the worst abusers
The Israelis are systematically torturing people, and not with the US quote unquote torture lite methods that don’t leave physical marks. They are straight up torturing people to death. There is no limit to their depravity
We must go full academic boycott of Israel now as part of BDS. This is unconscionable and genocidal, as it isthe deliberate destruction of a peoples' culture and knowledge. Besides, Israeli universities work with the IDF and support the occupation.
I am pretty sure killing a paralysed man who is in a hospital bed being treated is a crime under any circumstances. The rule of law is being utterly destroyed by Israel and its allies and I can't fathom what they hope to achieve by doing so. Blowback will result for sure.
Hey remember when tens of millions of people around the world marched against the invasion of Iraq because they knew it would cause thousands of deaths for no good reason and they were ignored by the political elite and a million people died and violence spread? Deja vu, anyone?
The genocide in Gaza, along with the torture, ethnic cleansing, war crimes, land theft and human rights abuse, are a joint US-Israel production. Both are equally guilty and both should be in the dock at the Hague.
What we are seeing in Gaza is a much better representation of what western civilization is really about than all the gibberish about freedom and democracy we learned about in school.
When Israeli president Isaac Herzog described the assault on Gaza as a war “to save Western civilization, to save the values of Western civilization,” he wasn’t really lying. He was telling the truth — just maybe not quite in the way that he meant it.
The demolition of Gaza is
Don't look away. A few kms away from this, Israelis are eating McDonalds and stacking food in their trolleys from the supermarket. This is a deliberate choice. And the US and other western states are letting it happen. We are letting it happen. BDS now.
Keep saying it loudly - I WILL NEVER VOTE FOR ANY POLITICIAN WHO OPENLY OR TACITLY SUPPORTS THE GENOCIDE IN PALESTINE. YOU HAVE LOST MY VOTE!
I am thinking this might be one of the only things that will cause a change in their appalling behaviour. Let them know and then do it.
"Today, Ireland, Norway and Spain are announcing that we recognize the state of Palestine."
Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris says this is a "historic day for Palestine" as we trust that more countries will join us in the coming weeks.
This. I remember when the Rwandan genocide occurred and the world stood by. I can't believe it's happening again. This time it's worse, in some ways, because the US, the UK, Germany and others are actively helping Israel. This is the 'rules-based order' being smashed and buried
Following reports that an officer was charged with indecent assault late last year, I am suspending all cooperation with the police. And following the conviction of a civil servant for fraud, I am withholding my tax payments to the government.
Israel has already lost the war. It can't achieve its stated aims, it has no realistic long term plan and the wider costs of continuing outweigh any gains. The killing is not just pointless, it's counterproductive.
Israel is trying to do today what the settler states of USA, Canada, Australia and NZ did yesterday - clear the land of its indigenous people through genocide, dispossession and cultural suppression. The similarities to how the native people were treated in the US is remarkable
I've proudly signed this statement supporting South Africa's genocide case against Israel👇
"We recognise that [the] struggles against apartheid & the racial calculus of genocide are crucial for upholding the internationalist vision of global justice"
From now on the question we'll ask to check whether a scholar has the moral values necessary to speak publicly is not 'do you condemn terrorism?' Now we will ask 'do you condemn Israeli genocide?' If you can't say yes, then you'll have to get off the stage and keep quiet.
That is sheer depraved evil! How can deliberately sending a precision guided missile into the middle of a group of children playing a game of foosball be considered self-defence or defeating Hamas? It's a clear war crime. This is why so many are protesting around the world...
2 weeks ago, we reported on a deadly strike in Gaza. The harrowing image of children's bodies splayed around a foosball table impossible to forget.
A CNN analysis of evidence recovered and documented at the scene of the strike now points to the likely cause: a precision-guided
The full horrors of this genocide have yet to be fully counted. The crimes and atrocities will be revealed for years to come, just like every other genocide. Shame on all who have given their support to these crimes against humanity.
If you ever wondered what you would have done during the civil rights movement or apartheid, and you're railing against the student protesters today, you would also have been complicit in segregation and apartheid. The students are right. Israeli genocide is a moral wrong.
This is a war crime, and a clear indication of genocidal intent. There's no military reason for destroying a water tank. It's aimed at causing civilian suffering. It's genocide.
🚨Video footage shows Israeli soldiers planting explosives to destroy the only water tank in the west of Rafah city southern
#Gaza
Strip , and then boasting about it on social media.
"Lifesaving food was stockpiled <30 miles across the border in an Israeli port, including enough flour to feed about 1.5M Palestinians for 5 months," USAID found, but the Israeli government "prohibited the transfer of flour" because it would go via UNRWA.
Hey, remember when Western military intervention in the Middle East led directly to stability, security and peace and didn't at all increase civilian suffering or cause further violence and instability? Good times. Carry on. Nothing to see here...
@LalehKhalili
It seems reasonable to suggest that if there was no Hezbollah, there would be Israeli settlers all over South Lebanon doing the same things they are doing in the West Bank, namely murdering families and stealing their land and water. It's resistance to colonial invasion.
More war crimes. If this was any other nation in the world, an arms embargo would be declared immediately, investigations would be opened, and world leaders would condemn the violence. Instead, Israel gets billions more in military aid. Western states are assisting genocide.
If the ICC is to maintain an ounce of credibility, it needs to indict Netanyahu and senior Israeli officials for war crimes immediately. If it has a grain of independence from Western interests, it will open an investigation into Israeli actions in Gaza now.
The IDF has to be one of the most brutish, ill-disciplined, unprofessional armies in the world. All of their actions admitted here are unjustified war crimes. ‘I’m bored, so I shoot’: The Israeli army’s approval of free-for-all violence in Gaza
The only democracy in the Middle East with the most moral army in the world which is being supplied with military weapons by the defender of the free world is starving children to death in an open air prison called Gaza. Work that out.
Netanyahu's starvation tactics at work: "A two-month-old Palestinian boy has died from starvation in northern Gaza..., days after the UN warned of an 'explosion' in child deaths due to Israel’s war on the besieged enclave." Where is the ICC's
@KarimKhanQC
?
I guess innocent until proven guilty only applies to those allegedly committing genocide, not those who are trying to save the lives of innocent people caught up in a genocidal campaign. In the case of UNRWA, it's fine to impose a sanction before the investigation is concluded.
That's so f**ked up - children starving to death a few miles from supermarkets and restaurants full of food. Not to mention all the trucks full of supplies lined up waiting to get in. That's deliberate in-your-face cruelty right there - watching people starve while eating burgers
Sam Rose from UNRWA "10kms away inside Israel we have gourmet supermarkets... food is clearly available"
Supermarkets stacked with food while 10km away kids starve to death. Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war
A few kilometers from these starving children, Israelis are going to restaurants and shopping in supermarkets. This is deliberate, slow, tortuous killing of innocent civilians. It's a war crime and genocide. It's hatred and cruelty on a grand scale.
Breaking: Children in northern Gaza are falling one by one amid severe Israeli starvation of the northern areas and a blockade on the entry of any food supplies.
#GazaGenocide
What we've been saying all along - Israel has worked hard to block the emergence of a Palestinian state for decades. And then it shot people who protested peacefully. And then it acted surprised when they fought back violently. This and much more is the context.
Debunking the lie Palestinians rejected all those opportunities & could've had a state: 'You and your journalist friends have been blaming me for almost 30 years for putting the brakes on the Oslo Accords, and preventing the Palestinian state. That’s true'
Despite evidence over hundreds of years, bullies and authoritarians forget that using violence only makes people more determined to resist. It also exposes weakness. Once you've lost the argument you only have brutality to fall back on. It's totally going to backfire.
Starvation is the plan for Gaza. We are all watching it inexorably unfold. Our Western leaders are actively supporting its unfolding. I will never again vote for anyone from those political parties who are complicit.
Chris Hedges: Let Them Eat Dirt
This. Israeli society, like Germany, Serbia, Rwanda and others, will one day have to reckon with what they did and who they became. They will have to look each other in the eyes knowing they are killers and torturers, and that they rejoiced in the deaths of thousands of children
Over 350,000 Israelis took part in this genocide as IDF reservists. I keep wondering what kind of people would that turn them into?
Imagine living in a society where your kids' teacher may have murdered kids; your doctor may have tortured civilians in the "Sde Teiman
We could see almost a quarter of Gaza’s population - close to half- a million human beings - dying within a year. Largely deaths from preventable health causes & collapse of the medical system. It’s a crude estimate, but one that is data-driven…
Massive protest by academics at the British International Studies Association conference to protest israel’s destruction of Gaza’s universities and killing of students and scholars in Palestine, and to pledge to support a full academic boycott of israel
@BDSatISA
🇵🇸
Not for the first time, a violent counterterrorist operation proves to be self defeating. Israel has already lost the war. It is destroying itself in Gaza.
The failure of Western states to condemn Israel's terrorist attack in Lebanon tells the world loud and clear that the rules based order is a sham, nothing but a fig leaf for a racist world order in which only white lives matter. It's breathtaking hypocrisy.
The West by its support for Israel’s terrorism, war crimes, occupations, apartheid and GENOCIDE has lost any shred of moral authority it had
The West has destroyed international law
The West will grievously regret what it has done
Please, tell me again how there's no evidence of Israeli human rights abuses, how killing patients in their beds is legitimate self defence, how mass graves will make Israel safer, how the IDF is the most moral army in the world, how questions about war crimes are antisemitic.
"Palestinian Civil Defense teams have recovered 324 dead bodies at Nasser Hospital as of 24 April; the UN Human Rights Chief calls for independent investigations into these deaths."
Reading Ilan Pappe's The Biggest Prison on Earth, it's hard to imagine a more oppressive, cruel, inhuman system than the Israeli occupation of Palestine. That it exists is an affront to humanity, just as apartheid and slavery were. It is the shame of all who support it.
How many times have we heard that there's no excuse for killing civilians? Well, apparently there are lots of excuses for killing Palestinian civilians... Shame on you apologists of war crimes.
Can we accept that the discourse and practice of 'violent extremism' is now rather suspect, or will those who went to fight for Ukraine or supported the resistance there have to do a CVE programme before they can come back? It seems it largely depends on who you fight for...
This is so depressing because it's so predictable. Any terrorism scholar worth their salt will confirm it: you can't destroy a terrorist group like Hamas with military force. All the killing is pointless and doomed to failure. Self defeating, in fact.
The recent Israeli settlers terrorist attacks killed 4 civilian Palestinians including a child, injured 75 othersof whom 14 are on critical conditions and burned tens homes and cars in the West Bank.
In most cases the settlers attacked in the presence and support of the Israeli
Don't look away. Israel did this deliberately. They could have stopped it. And our government, and many other Western governments, did nothing or even helped Israel do it. Nothing justifies this! Nothing!
In the terrorism studies field, we would say this is a clear case of state terrorism - extreme violence against civilians to intimidate them into changing their political allegiance and behaviour.
@ICJ
just recognised that the horror in Gaza plausibly constitutes genocide. A CEASEFIRE is the only sure way to fully abide by the Court's provisional measures to halt this horror.
Third States should now work to achieve it & avoid breaching their obligation to prevent genocide.
I've also said this for years to my students. It's pure propaganda and misdirection to imply that it's cleaner, more civilised and less cruel to be killed in an airstrike than by a gun or a knife. Murderous brutality is the same whether by knife or guided missile.
Westerners Have An Absolutely Psychotic View Of Airstrikes
Canadian online outlet The Breach has published a letter by CBC’s senior manager of journalistic standards Nancy Waugh which highlights perfectly the bizarre psychological relationship that westerners have with bombs and
Hey, R2P! Where are you? Anyone seen him? He's gone really quiet. Why did he come out for Ukraine, Libya, Darfur, etc, but not for Gaza? Or is he dead? It would be great to know.
Year after year Israel attacks its neighbors and Palestinians, and year after year it fails to gain any security, and year after year the West supports its pointless slaughter. It's groundhog day for ignorant leaders who learn nothing and care nothing.
Every serious analyst knows that Israel has lost this war already; it can't achieve its stated objectives. The mass killing is pointless except as revenge... 'Israel likely to keep fighting despite inability to achieve goals: Analyst' via
@AJEnglish
Congratulations to the brilliant Harmonie Toros for winning this year's Best Article Award, as chosen by the editorial board and three judges for “9/11 is alive and well” or how critical terrorism studies has sustained the 9/11 narrative. Read it for free.
I remember marching with the students in this same place in 2003 against the horrors of the Iraq war. They were right then and they are right now. Responding to an attack with genocidal violence is both morally wrong and stupidly counterproductive.
1000s today converging on the student camp at the University of Manchester, demanding justice for Palestine & that
@OfficialUoM
cut ties with
@BAESystemsplc
, Hebrew University & Tel Aviv University who are aiding & abetting Israel's genocide in Gaza that has killed 15000 children
I guess if you found apartheid and slavery to be 'complicated', you might also think that the situation in Palestine is 'complicated'. On the other hand, if you think that human beings should simply have equal rights...
The students are doing their part. Now we all need to stand up for Palestine. It's time for a full on BDS, just like we did with apartheid South Africa.
Another war crime filmed and shared by Israeli soldiers who know they have full impunity because our politicians are okay with this. Vote them out. BDS now.
It is astonishing that Save The Children released a report in July 2023 alleging that Palestinian children detained without charged are sexually abused - and this isn't part of the discussion at all.
Why is this?
Report here:
International law finally acknowledges the illegality of Israel's settler colonial annexation of Palestinian land. Israel is a rogue state. Diplomatic isolation is called for.
In future years, Netanyahu's Israel will be talked about in the same breath and included in the same murderous list as Putin's Russia, the Myanmar junta, Milosevic's Serbia, Assad's Syria, Saddam's Iraq, Bashir's Sudan, Duvalier's Haiti, Amin's Uganda, Pol Pot's Kampuchea, etc.