Gaza’s utter devastation and masses of civilians facing death from bombardment and deliberate starvation already presents the world with a spectacle of mass murder of unspeakable proportions, writes Gareth Porter.
Palestinians in the ruins after an Israeli airstrikes in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza strip on Oct. 8. (Mahmoud Fareed, Palestinian News & Information Agency or Wafa, in contract with APAimages, CC BY-SA 3.0)
By Gareth Porter
Special to Consortium News
Israel’s systematic and wanton destruction of Gaza has raised long-standing issues of its political and legal culpability over the treatment of Palestinians to a new level of seriousness.
It obviously poses familiar issues of Israeli war crimes, and Amnesty International had already clearly designated it as such after just the first week. The human rights organization also asked the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to “urgently expedite” its investigation of the aims of all parties.
But this Israeli campaign now poses the even graver issue of genocide of Palestinians as a nation. The utter devastation of Gaza and the vast numbers of civilians facing death from bombardment and from deliberately engineered starvation and sickness already presents the world with a spectacle of mass murder of unspeakable proportions.
The Israelis should face accountability for its crimes.
A panel of nine distinguished independent experts on human rights who investigated the Gaza emergency for the United Nations’ Human Rights Council has just warned that the Israeli campaign of destruction of Gaza poses “a risk of genocide against the Palestinian people.”
And there is a long history of genocidal thinking and action behind this “genocidal moment”. It should be recalled that during the previous Gaza crisis in 2014, an equally extremist Israeli government openly threatened genocide against the Palestinians.
Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked declared on Facebook that “the entire Palestinian people is the enemy” and said:
“All of them are enemy fighters and all of them are bleeding from the head. Now it also includes the mothers of the martyrs, who send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They should follow in the footsteps of their sons, there is nothing fair about that. They have to go, and so does the physical house where they raised the snake. Otherwise, more small snakes will grow there.”
That same year, the Likud deputy speaker of the Israeli Knesset, Moshe Feiglin said:
“Gaza is part of our Land and we will remain there forever. Subsequent to the elimination of terror from Gaza, it will become part of sovereign Israel and will be populated by Jews. This will also serve to ease the housing crisis in Israel.”
The present Israeli government — whose extremist right-wing politics resemble those of the 2014 government — has made no effort to hide its political, genocidal contempt for the 2.3 million Palestinians living in Gaza.
Nor has it hidden the proximate objective of the present campaign, which is to eliminate Palestinians entirely from Gaza.
Al Aqsa Flood
Interior view of the Al-Aqsa mosque in the Old City of Jerusalem. (Aseel zm, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)
The official reason for the murderous new Israeli campaign against Gaza Palestinians was Hamas’s “Al Aqsa Flood” operation of Oct. 7, in which Palestinian commandos invaded kibbutzim near Gaza for the first time, taking the Israeli security system completely by surprise and inflicting a humiliating defeat on the government in the eyes of its own citizens.
Hamas said it was retaliating for hundreds of Israeli settlers who three days earlier had stormed the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem/al-Quds, the third holiest site in Islam. Ultranationalist Jews want to rebuild the Roman-era Jewish temple, destroyed around 70 AD, on the mosque’s site.
The Hamas operation clearly resulted in the deliberate killing of innocent civilians by Hamas. But surviving residents say it was the police — not the Hamas raiders — who destroyed many houses to ensure that everyone inside, both Hamas gunmen and hostages, would be killed, according to a standard Israeli procedure.
So the Israeli claim that Hamas killed more than 1,400 civilians in the operation must now be regarded with skepticism as part of the preparation for the massive murder to be inflicted on innocent Palestinian civilians in the weeks that followed.
The Israeli initial strategy for accomplishing its objective in Gaza appeared to be to carry out such heavy bombing on civilian targets throughout Gaza that the Palestinian population would be forced to leave Gaza for Egypt through the Rafah exit.
But that plan quickly ran into a serious obstacle that the Israelis apparently had not anticipated: the Egyptians have adamantly refused to open the exit for a Palestinian exodus.
The primary reason for this Egyptian resistance to the Israeli plan is that appearing to collaborate with an Israeli policy of pushing the entire Palestinian population out of Gaza would be extremely unpopular with the Egyptian public, which passionately supports the Palestinian cause.
Egyptian leader Abdel Fattah el-Sisi was extremely harsh in his denunciation of the Israeli Gaza strategy in his joint press appearance with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Oct. 15, declaring that the Israeli air war “went beyond the right to self-defence, turning into collective punishment for 2.3 million people in Gaza.”
Meanwhile, el-Sisi was insisting that the Israelis allow the trucks containing international assistance for displaced Palestinian families to enter the war zone, while Israel continued to delayed approval for any humanitarian assistance day after day and to allow only a trickle to enter Gaza.
At the same time, the Israeli government took the position that Palestinian civilians have no legal right to protection whatsoever, on the ground that Hamas is a terrorist organization. That was the import of remarks by former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett in an interview with Britain’s Sky News Oct. 12.
When asked by a journalist what Israel planned to do about the Palestinian civilians in Gaza hospitals after it had cut off all fuel supplies on which the hospitals depended for power, Bennet shouted angrily, “Are you seriously asking me about Palestinian civilians? What is wrong with you? Have you not seen what’s happened? We’re fighting Nazis.”
No Legal Limits
By reducing the issue to Israel vs. “Nazis”, the Israeli government has sought to reject its legal and moral responsibility for humane treatment of civilians, or to abide by international law regarding its conduct of a war.
Seizing on the Hamas raid on the kibbutzim, the Israelis hoped to convince their key foreign allies — the United States and the major European states — that the Palestinian civilian population has forfeited all right to protection from Israeli bombing.
Thus it has made no commitment whatever to any such legal or ethical limits on its war in Gaza, which should have been recognized immediately as a threat to the entire civilian population there.
The Israeli government has not uttered the phrase “collective punishment” in this phase of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Nevertheless Israel has carried out systematic punitive home demolitions as a means of punishing entire communities because of individuals who were involved in resistance activities.
That has long been the central Israeli method for dealing with Palestinian resistance activities, as Human Rights Watch concluded last February.
Israeli leaders have presented their current war of destruction as a further application of the same principle, aimed at punishing the Palestinian population in Gaza for the military operation by Hamas on Oct. 7.
Blaming that operation on the entire Palestinian population on Oct. 12, the president of Israel, Isaac Herzog, declared,
“It is an entire nation out there that is responsible. It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved. … They could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d’etat.”
When a reporter asked Herzog if he was arguing that the failure of the civilian population to overthrow the Hamas government made them “legitimate targets”, he answered, “No, I didn’t say that.” But then he clearly contradicted the denial by arguing, “When you have a missile in your goddam kitchen and you want to shoot it at me, am I allowed to defend myself?”
There has never been any evidence, of course, that Hamas missiles have been hidden in civilian dwellings, nor would it make any military sense for Hamas to do so under the present circumstances.
The constant Israeli invocation of “the right to defend ourselves” is obviously paired silently with the unspoken belief in the right to inflict suffering and even genocide on the Palestinians. Israel has also been dropping leaflets in the northern Gaza Strip warning the population.
“Whoever chooses not to leave north Gaza to the south of Wadi Gaza might be identified as an accomplice in a terrorist organization” clearly implies that they are indeed being treated as legitimate targets for bombing as punishment for the actions of Hamas.
No less than the former attorney general of Israel has declared unequivocally that in order to destroy Hamas, “you have to destroy Gaza, because almost every building there, is a stronghold of Hamas.”
Targeting hospitals in Gaza poses additional political risks of provoking media and even potentially U.S. government censure, so Israel has turned to an obvious disinformation operation to smooth the way.
When a missile struck the parking lot of the al-Ahli Arab Baptist Hospital, causing casualties among some of the more than 3,000 people who had sought refuge in that area, the IDF quickly blamed the explosion on a Hamas rocket that it claimed had misfired.
The IDF cited a video supposedly showing the misfired rocket exploding at the Baptist hospital, as well as what it called an intercepted conversation between a “former Hamas operative” and a Gaza resident that acknowledging that a misfired Hamas rocket had landed on the hospital grounds.
Counting on the US
Joe Biden as vice president visiting Israel March 2016. (U.S. Embassy, Tel Aviv)
The U.S. National Security Council announced its official position that Israel was innocent of the rocket attack, and the intelligence community obliged by expressing “high confidence” that it was an errant Palestinian rocket that had caused the blast.
But then the Israeli case began to fall apart. BBC reported they could find no cemetery anywhere near the location from which the IDF claimed the errant rocket had been fired.
And The New York Times reported that its own more thorough study of the relevant videos did not support the U.S.-Israeli case. Instead it showed that the Palestinian rocket that misfired was “most likely not what caused the explosion at the hospital,” because it had “actually detonated in the sky roughly two miles away.”
Nevertheless, Israel could count on the backing of the Biden administration, which has provided political-diplomatic cover for Israel to carry out its scorched earth policy in Gaza since before the visit of President Joe Biden in mid-October.
Biden and Blinken were reduced to the role of virtual appendages to the Israel government mouthing the Israeli propaganda slogan that Israel has “the right to defend itself”, while adding a reference to the “laws of war” to which the visitors from Washington should have known perfectly well the Israelis were not paying the least attention.
That Biden administration’s craven support for the Israeli destruction of Gaza makes the U.S. complicit not only in Israeli crimes in Gaza but in the crime of genocide.
Although the genocide issue has not surfaced yet in the international politics of the Palestine issue, there is now good reason to expect that it will be raised both by Arab governments and by human rights organizations in the coming months.
#ICC Prosecutor @KarimKhanQC was at the Rafah Border Crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip this weekend.
Watch his remarks on the current situation in Israel and the State of Palestine. ? pic.twitter.com/Z22DMLaAv3
— Int'l Criminal Court (@IntlCrimCourt) October 29, 2023
This is certainly the historical moment to press the case against Israel genocide as called for by the Genocide Convention itself. The legal requirement for such an accusation is not proof of the mass murder of millions as was carried out by Hitler.
It is sufficient to prove that a state has the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group…” and that it is
“[d]eliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”
The war imposed on the Gaza population by Israel obviously qualifies under those two crucial provisions of the convention.
The Genocide Convention also provides for finding that a state is guilty of the crime of “complicity” in genocide, which accurately describes the behavior of the U.S. government under the Biden administration.
Again it is not necessary to show that the complicity was motivated by the desire for the genocide in question but only that genocide could be a foreseeable result of the actions in question.
The legal question of genocide will ultimately be decided by the International Criminal Court or a national court with universal jurisdiction, such as Spanish courts have assumed in the past. The ICC would no doubt also investigate Hamas’ actions on Oct. 7. The Observer State of Palestine is a member of the ICC and the prosecutor of that court has an open file on Israel and Palestine.
Both the United States and Israel are parties to the Genocide Convention, which makes a campaign to hold them accountable for their respective roles in the present genocide even more of an urgent moral obligation for people and organizations of good will.
“Bring Netanyahu before the International Criminal Court so that he can be tried for what he is, a war criminal.”
—Ione Belarra, Spain’s Minister of Social Rights pic.twitter.com/cRH5IPblIj
— sarah (@sahouraxo) October 29, 2023
Gareth Porter is an independent investigative journalist and historian writing on U.S. national security policy. His latest book, Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare, was published in February of 2014. Follow him on Twitter: @GarethPorter.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
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Let’s not forget what really matters.
At least Joe Biden didn’t lose his ’67 Corvette.
Nah. Just his marbles. LOL
We should keep this thing in the best kind of focus we can. I don’t doubt there’s been a “long history of genocidal thinking and action behind” it. My impression, though, is that the 3rd Reich was more serious about genocide. You know that “mow the lawn” phrase. Well, the grass grows back. Maybe it’s more like a sacrificial Aztec thing from the 15th century.
Very thankful for sources like Consortium News…that keep hope alive until the world decides to get up on its feet. Thankful for that too.
Guess this time they had a different idea. Thanks Joe Lauria for “New Document Leak on Plan to Expel Gaza Population.”
I think America must have turned to crap back when Ronald Raygun took over as President —and it’s been downhill ever since. But America, it doesn’t have to be so. and that means citizens within our own nation.
What if we had a Biden with a brain? What if we as citizens truly helped those less fortunate?
American need help with jobs and finding places to live and being able to live on such low wages. What does it profit America if Israel gets richer and stronger, but America for Americans fades away?
What if Russia and Ukraine had to work out their own problems without American interference? What if we the humans recognized that we are fouling our own planet’s nest with wars, lies and intrigues?
Biden was much worse back when he had a brain. He never used to be stupid, and he was a loyal servant of the banks and the rich. Back when Biden had a brain, he was known as ‘the Senator from MasterCard’, and was writing pro-bank bankruptcy ‘reform’ that screwed working Americans. Biden, back when he had a brain, was responsible for writing and passing ‘the Biden Crime’ bill, which helped to create the world’s largest prisoner population, and created the Federal death penalty that Trump used to kill all those prisoners in his final month.
A confused Biden who plays with his jelly beans is not nearly as dangerous as the old Joe Biden who used his brain to harm this country and ordinary Americans. All to meet his constant goal … making the rich even richer.
Be careful what you ask for.
What are we going to do with a problem like America. Their Deep State runs not only the White House, but many, many countries around the world. They dictate EU and UK policy. They create proxy wars in order to suppress and destroy countries before they they steal their wealth and minerals. Thailand is the latest country to be stolen from its people. Taiwan (a legitimate part of China) is presently being targeted for takeover. They have coveted Russia for decades. We must look deep into the real Government of America and see how many have an ancestral connection to historical atrocities. We must ask who funds these terrible atrocities and who creates projection, destabilisation, propaganda etc. If we have the courage to dig down to the root of Western (and particularly USA) problems I fear we may find all roads lead to one place. Have we got that courage and indeed the stomach to cope with the stench. May I also add that Jesus was a Nazarene. He taught us to love and live in harmony. Many of the Gospels left out of the bible were written by John, Thomas and Phillip within a short period of Jesus’ life in Jerusalem. I for one do not agree with Jesus being used as a validation for destruction of life.
And not for the first time that I state that the IDF are the Nazis of the Middle East. I am utterly ASHAMED of my Jewish background and want NO part of these people. Hitler/Germany paid a price…and so will israel.
Israel should be a made pariah nation; the fact that the US is supporting and arming its genocide means we are equally guilty of its war crimes.
The US has become a pariah nation by virtue of its association and its actions.
It is either directly responsible or complicit – either way, it is guilty of atrocious crimes against humanity in many countries around the world, including its own.
On and on this madness goes…corporate-whore media in the west are working overtime to propagandize all into their fascist mindset, it’s the most egregious campaign since the Nazis. And all too many are swallowing it. But many are not. As a result they are hassling and arresting anyone who acts out or speaks up in public, further exposing themselves as the fascist pigs they are. I understand USAmericans refuse to acknowledge they live in a fascist state, as we have all the trappings of a democracy and are allowed to criticize the government as much as we want. But that doesn’t mean much in the face of reality; the US gov has always supported fascism abroad as it suited their financial interests. For the last 2 years they have openly and proudly supported the Ukraine fascists for all the world to see, but still deny it. Can’t help but wonder just what it would take for those still sitting on the fence to see it for what it is.
Well, to put it bluntly, Jesus seems to have lost all validity. Not that he really ever had any in world political movements, unless it cleared the path to greater power. What we choose to release upon the world always comes back to haunt us, at least retrospectively. It is time to let history dissolve into whatever it is you choose to live with forever. In situations such as this, there are no syllogisms releasing you from responsibility for the outcome of your own actions. Make certain you are willing to pay the full price. Because no matter which side you choose, you will pay the full price. “You” being, of course, both plural and inclusive.
Two million ‘animals’ trapped behind an iron fence and a coast they dare only enter a few feet have shown amazing resilience and resourcefullness over their 15 or so years of Israeli denominated ‘independence’. Watched over by constant drone surveillance and every phone call intercepted: and they still resist the oppression (not to mention the regular “what you build up – we knock down”).
Perhaps that explains how the Nazis governing Warsaw could never succeed.
Makes one wonder what the people of ‘the free world’ could accomplish with their much greater resources?
The model for the Israeli assault on Gaza is the U.S. assault on Fallujah. The U.S. flattened all the cities in Western Iraq rather then engage in bloody (for the U.S.) ground combat. These crimes were not televised the way the Gaza assault has been, and largely escaped the notice of world opinion. The U.S. should be charged with genocide for its crimes in Iraq, but the international community is not interested in this, probably for realpolitik reasons.
The world would be better off with an actual enforced system of international law, not the “rules-based order”.
Adolf Hitler was big on rules. Chancellor Adolf would certainly have supported the “Rules Based Order”.
The old system of ‘international law’, which is now in the scrap heap, was largely created after World War II in an attempt to try to prevent what had just occurred. So, the throwing out of that system, even though it was imperfect, is also a warning sign that since we refuse to learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it.
The leaders of the West and their over financed Israeli counterparts have demonstrated they are nothing but a syndicate of brain damaged psychopaths demanding the whole world fall to its knees and kiss their smelly feet. In their fevered dreams perhaps, but the world is fed up with their criminality. The UN is a major culprit in letting these freaks get away with their crimes for way too long. I sincerely hope the ICC will take Amnesty’s request seriously and charge every government that supports Israel’s genocide as well as Israel itself. This needs to happen before the violence spreads any further.
I bet that newscaster regrets instigating that interview.
Not really.This journalist succeeded in exposing the thin veneer of “ reason” that arrogant people like Nafteli Bennett wrap around themselves and actually exposed him as a party to unbridled government sanctioned criminality . Criminality that clearly is nothing less than genocide.
I meant from a purely personal point of view. I mean, he was so nice to that ex PM in the beginning. Then that one question blew up in his face. But right Philip, he did expose the mindset of the government and their beliefs. However, i doubt “sly news” audiences can think for themselves.
“Blaming that operation on the entire Palestinian population on Oct. 12, the president of Israel, Isaac Herzog, declared “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible. It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved…”
Yes, four year old children are responsible for the Oct. 7 massacres. It is unthinkable that the self-described “most moral army in the world” can continue this genocidal slaughter. Hypocrisy doesn’t begin to describe it. And the sheer stupidity of it all, apart from the moral abyss they have fallen into, is that this is assuredly going to breed ever more rage and violence well into the future. The reprehensible, and equally morally-bankrupt Biden could stop this with one phone call, but he’s perfectly comfortable allowing this horror to continue.
How disgusting that Israel is trying to turn truth on its head by accusing Hamas of being “Nazis.”
Jewish people and culture have a long and noble history. It was, after all, white Jews who marched with and supported Dr. Martin Luther King in the movement for civil rights. Israel however, has not inherited those values. Bit by bit, Israel has been taken over by the equivalent of America’s own neocons who in their ideology of zero/sum, might makes right, me first/me only, and their readiness to throw anyone, even entire populations (see Ukraine) under the bus for the sake of power and profit surely have inherited the heart of Germany’s own Nazis.
Professor John Measheimer has pointed out that Hamas certainly engaged in terrorist acts on 7-Oct but Hamas itself is a resistance movement that arose and exists to resist Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people. Thus, he said they could be described as a resistance movement that has engaged in terrorist activities.
This may sound like a distinction without a difference but it is certainly an important distinction when Israel’s defense for obliterating Gaza is that it is acting in self-defense against “animals” or sub-humans (and any abuse is okay).
Everyone shares the right of self-defense, Israelis and Palestinians as well. This however does not grant anyone the right or excuse to carry out indiscriminate brutality and bombing of an entire population on a national level nor murderous retaliation on an individual level. In reality, Israels ultra-nationalistic led government has lost its mind and wants the entire world to go along with it. And the Western world, in general, is doing just that.
I daresay that especially in light of the huge demonstrations led by Jewish (“Not in our name…”) protestors, Israel no longer represents the Jewish people world-wide but rather just its ultra-nationalist (neo-fascist..?) fringe that is intent on creating a “Greater Israel” for themselves.
Yes, sir, this is without a doubt a premeditated genocide. There is no doubt, whatsoever.
The United States is the major accomplice and enabler for all of Israel’s attacks on Palestinians and now for the genocide of Palestinian people. There is no question about this. The U.S. propaganda machine is sickening in its lies and evasions and its groupthink propaganda that gets more and more absurd and desperate by the hour. Facebook is now shadow banning posts that defend the Palestinians. The major mainstream media in the U.S. and Europe is not showing the massive protests occurring all over the world against Israel and in support of the Palestinians.
We have ceased to live in a democracy in the United States. We are living in an insane fascist state that has been brought to this extreme support for a blatant genocide by the Evangelical Christians in the government who agree with the fanatic Zionists. The same people who want to dissolve the wall between church and state. The same maniacs who want to kill homosexuals, ban abortion and work to turn the U.S. into a theocracy. Face it, people. This is what we’re up against.
Meanwhile, I keep seeing that video of the little kid’s legs lying on a white sheet on the ground. Two little toddler’s legs.
Don’t forget, 412 people in Congress voted for unconditional support for Israel and its sadistic genocide, with just 10 dissenters, only four of which voted against. I never thought I would agree with AOC on any issue, but I have to say now, she has courage.
How is near-unanimous support for Israeli war criminals possible? My eyes have been opened: the Deep State really is Israel.
The US has institutionalized State Media Propaganda; only Official Narratives are allowed. The bipartisan abolition of Smith Mundt in 2013-2014, our anti-domestic propaganda Act, putting the State Dept/ CIA in charge of legacy MSM, and the 2016 Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act strengthened state media control by the federal government.
Obviously this is more advanced technologically, and more secret and subtle, than the Fascist Police States of the 20th century, but the control is broader and deeper. Obviously the SS, Stasi, KGB, SAVAK, etc had no need for the 17 US Intelligence Agencies and organizations, plus the Justice Dept/ FBI that supplies the brains behind the US military muscle. The US also has the Five Eyes (and Mossad) to engage in US domestic operations; proxy actions against the US populations are evidently legal?
The fruits of US “Democracy” are obvious. Ukraine (and the CIA) has overthrown democratically elected governments in the Orange and Maidan Revolutions leading to present puppet Zelensky. Egypt (and the CIA) overthrew democratically elected government of Morsi and replaced him with puppet el Sisi. Honduras (and Hillary/ CIA) overthrew democratically elected government — “proclaiming it was not a coup” (since that would cut off Congressional funding)– and the military junta established another Latin narco state pushing more caravans of exploitable labor north. The CIA coup in Turkey in 2016, to overthrow elected Erdogan failed; and cost the US a loyal ally. The US talks “democracy” but clearly prefers dictators.
Hamas was last elected in 2006. Hamas was funded by and for Netanyahu to control Gaza, as he made clear in 2018-2019. Arafat dismissed Hamas as illegitimate, “a creature of Israel”, to undermine the PLO and serve Israel’s, not the Palestinians’ interests. Israel “democracy” is no different from American “democracy”. And now we are to believe that Hamas, who surely was green-lit by Netanyahu to grab Israeli hostages for another prisoner exchange, broke through undetected (after Israel being warned by Egypt and moving two thirds of the defending IDF elsewhere), and slaughtered civilians at will, in an insane display of violence? Clearly Israel was in on the attack (and likely Biden had been forewarned) as an excuse for a Palestinian Holocaust. The Hamas attack (which thegrayzone.com argues probably killed less Israelis than the IDF counterattack, based on released hostages’ reports) and, the 40 decapitated Israeli babies that Biden claimed he saw, were clearly just PR propaganda to limit international outrage for slaughtering Palestinians.
There are good people everywhere. Israelis and Jews have spoken out more than anyone against the treatment of the Palestinians. Unfortunately good people are impotent. The US and Israel and most of our allies are ruled by psychopaths.