https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_Lj1yfN6Nw

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Israeli President Isaac Herzog has dismissed the genocide lawsuit brought against his country over the staggering civilian deaths in Gaza. He made his comment when meeting US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday. 

“There is nothing more atrocious and preposterous” than a case filed in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) by South Africa against the State of Israel, Herzog said.

South Africa brought the case before the UN court on December 29, with the hearings set to begin on Thursday. Israel has been accused of violating international humanitarian law by “engaging in genocidal acts” against the Palestinians. More than 22,000 people were killed in Gaza during Israel’s airstrikes and ground invasion, according to local Hamas-run authorities.

https://www.rt.com/news/590367-genocide-lawsuit-israel-preposterous/

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Ray McGovern: Israel's Political Crisis and the Internal Investigation that Could Topple Netanyahu

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“If current conditions persist,” said Israeli group B’Tselem, “there is significant risk that famine will be declared throughout the entire Gaza Strip within six months.”

The Israeli government “can, if it chooses to,” save more than 2 million people who are starving in Gaza by ending its blockade on aid, an Israel-based human rights group emphasized in a report on Monday, condemning the country for continuing to allow just a fraction of the food needed in the enclave through border crossings as it relentlessly bombs civilian targets.

“Everyone in Gaza is going hungry,” said B’Tselem in the dispatch, bluntly titled, “Israel Is Starving Gaza.”

The organization pointed to a recent analysis by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Famine Review Committee from late last month, which found that about 93% of Gaza’s over 2 million people were suffering from “acute food insecurity” at Phase 3, while more than 15%—378,000 people—were already at the most dire classification, Phase 5, with “extreme food shortages, hunger, and exhaustion.”

By February 7, the entire population of Gaza is expected to reach Phase 3, and “if current conditions persist,” said B’Tselem, “there is significant risk that famine will be declared throughout the entire Gaza Strip within six months.”

“Such a declaration is made when 20% of households read Phase 5, when 30% of children suffer from extreme malnutrition, and when two adults or four children out of 10,000 die of hunger every day,” said the group.

Before Israel began its U.S.-backed bombardment of Gaza in retaliation for Hamas’ October 7 attack, about 80% of Gaza residents relied on humanitarian aid to survive.

Israel’s destruction of cultivated fields, bakeries, food warehouses, and factories has meant that residents now wholly depend on food supplies from outside Gaza.

That aid is still available, B’Tselem stressed, but cannot reach people because “Israel is deliberately denying the entry of enough food to meet the population’s needs.”

About 500 aid trucks entered Gaza daily before the assault began, but only about 120 trucks are allowed through just two crossings—Rafah and Kerem Shalom—on a daily basis.

The Rafah crossing is a designed for passenger vehicles rather than “massive commercial transports,” and the recent opening of the Kerem Shalom crossing was “merely a token addition that has failed to alleviate the hardship,” said B’Tselem.

“The little food that does get in is very difficult to distribute due to constant bombings, destroyed roads, frequent communications blackouts, and shelters overflowing with hundreds of thousands of [internally displaced people] crowding into smaller and smaller areas,” said the group.

Israel’s continued blockade has resulted in “children begging for food, people waiting in long lines for paltry handouts, and hungry residents charging at aid trucks,” B’Tselem added. “The horror is growing by the minute, and the danger of famine is real.”

https://johnmenadue.com/horror-is-growing-by-the-minute-says-rights-group-as-israel-starves-gaza/

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The Netanyahu regime and its chief patron, the United States, understand the magnitude of South Africa’s ICJ application, writes Marjorie Cohn.  

For nearly three months, Israel has enjoyed virtual impunity for its atrocious crimes against the Palestinian people. 

That changed on Dec. 29 when South Africa, a state party to the Genocide Convention, filed an 84-page application in the International Court of Justice (ICJ, or World Court) alleging that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

South Africa’s well-documented application alleges that 

“acts and omissions by Israel … are genocidal in character, as they are committed with the requisite specific intent … to destroy Palestinians in Gaza as a part of the broader Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group” and that “the conduct of Israel — through its State organs, State agents, and other persons and entities acting on its instructions or under its direction, control or influence — in relation to Palestinians in Gaza, is in violation of its obligations under the Genocide Convention.”

Israel is mounting a full-court press to prevent an ICJ finding that it’s committing genocide in Gaza. On Jan. 4, the Israeli Foreign Ministry instructed its embassies to pressure politicians and diplomats in their host countries to make statements opposing South Africa’s case at the ICJ. 

[Consortium News will provide live coverage of the two-day hearing Thursday and Friday, 10am to noon each day in The Hague, 4-6 am EST.]

In its application, South Africa cited eight allegations to support its contention that Israel is perpetrating genocide in Gaza. They include:

(1) Killing Palestinians in Gaza, including a large proportion of women and children (approximately 70 percent) of the more than 21,110 fatalities and some appear to have been subjected to summary execution;

(2) Causing serious mental and bodily harm to Palestinians in Gaza, including maiming, psychological trauma, and inhuman and degrading treatment;

(3) Causing the forced evacuation and displacement of about 85 percent of Palestinians in Gaza — including children, the elderly and infirm, and the sick and wounded. Israel is also causing the massive destruction of Palestinian homes, villages, towns, refugee camps and entire areas, which precludes the return of a significant proportion of the Palestinian people to their homes;

(4) Causing widespread hunger, starvation and dehydration to the besieged Palestinians in Gaza by impeding sufficient humanitarian assistance, cutting off sufficient food, water, fuel and electricity, and destroying bakeries, mills, agricultural lands and other means of production and sustenance;

(5) Failing to provide and restricting the provision of adequate clothing, shelter, hygiene and sanitation to Palestinians in Gaza, including 1.9 million internally displaced persons. This has compelled them to live in dangerous situations of squalor, in conjunction with routine targeting and destruction of places of shelter and killing and wounding of persons who are sheltering, including women, children, the elderly and the disabled;

(6) Failing to provide for or ensure the provision of medical care to Palestinians in Gaza, including those medical needs created by other genocidal acts that are causing serious bodily harm. This is occurring by direct attacks on Palestinian hospitals, ambulances and other healthcare facilities, the killing of Palestinian doctors, medics and nurses (including the most qualified medics in Gaza) and the destruction and disabling of Gaza’s medical system;

(7) Destroying Palestinian life in Gaza, by destroying its infrastructure, schools, universities, courts, public buildings, public records, libraries, stores, churches, mosques, roads, utilities and other facilities necessary to sustain the lives of Palestinians as a group. Israel is killing whole families, erasing entire oral histories and killing prominent and distinguished members of society;

(8) Imposing measures intended to prevent Palestinian births in Gaza, including through reproductive violence inflicted on Palestinian women, newborns, infants and children.

South Africa cited myriad statements by Israeli officials that constitute direct evidence of an intent to commit genocide:

 “Gaza won’t return to what it was before. We will eliminate everything,” Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said. “If it doesn’t take one day, it will take a week. It will take weeks or even months, we will reach all places.”

Avi Dichter, Israel’s minister of agriculture, declared, “We are now actually rolling out the Gaza Nakba,” a reference to the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestinians to create the state of Israel.

“Now we all have one common goal — erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the earth,” Nissim Vaturi, the deputy speaker of the Knesset and member of the Foreign Affairs and Security Committee proclaimed.

Israel’s Strategy to Defeat South Africa’s Case

Israel and its chief patron, the United States, understand the magnitude of South Africa’s ICJ application, and they are livid. 

Israel usually thumbs its nose at international institutions, but it is taking South Africa’s case seriously. In 2021, when the International Criminal Court launched an investigation into Israel’s alleged war crimes in Gaza, Israel firmly rejected the legitimacy of the probe.

“Israel generally doesn’t participate in such proceedings,” Professor Eliav Lieblich, an international law expert at Tel Aviv University, told Haaretz. 

“But this isn’t a UN inquiry commission or the International Criminal Court in the Hague, whose authority Israel rejects. It’s the International Court of Justice, which derives its powers from a treaty Israel joined, so it can’t reject it on the usual grounds of lack of authority. It’s also a body with international prestige.”

[See Craig Murray: Activating the Genocide Convention; Craig Murray: Stopping Genocide and Craig Murray: A Shift Against Impunity for Genocide]

A Jan. 4 cable from the Israeli Foreign Ministry says that Israel’s “strategic goal” is that the ICJ reject South Africa’s request for an injunction to suspend Israel’s military action in Gaza, refuse to find that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and rule that Israel is complying with international law.

“A ruling by the court could have significant potential implications that are not only in the legal world but have practical bilateral, multilateral, economic, security ramifications,” the cable states. 

“We ask for an immediate and unequivocal public statement along the following lines: To publicly and clearly state that YOUR COUNTRY rejects the outragest [sic], absurd and baseless allegations made against Israel.”

The cable instructs Israeli embassies to urge diplomats and politicians at the highest levels “to publicly acknowledge that Israel is working [together with international actors] to increase the humanitarian aid to Gaza, as well as to minimize damage to civilians, while acting in self defense after the horrible October 7th attack by a genocidal terrorist organization.”

“The State of Israel will appear before the ICJ at The Hague to dispel South Africa’s absurd blood libel,”Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spokesperson Eylon Levy declared. South Africa’s application is “without legal merit and constitutes a base exploitation and contempt of court,” he said.

Israel is pulling out all the stops, including disingenuous accusations of “blood libel,” an anti-Semitic trope that erroneously accuses Jews of the ritual sacrifice of Christian children.

“How tragic that the rainbow nation that prides itself on fighting racism will be fighting pro-bono for anti-Jewish racists,” Levy added ironically. He made the astonishing claim that Israel’s military campaign to destroy Hamas in Gaza is designed to prevent the genocide of the Jews.

As the old adage goes, when you’re being run out of town, get in front of the crowd and act like you’re leading the parade.

The Biden regime rose to defend its staunch ally Israel. U.S. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby lambasted South Africa’s ICJ application as “meritless, counterproductive and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever.” 

Kirby claimed, “Israel is not trying to wipe the Palestinian people off the map. Israel is not trying to wipe Gaza off the map. Israel is trying to defend itself against a genocidal terrorist threat,” echoing Israel’s preposterous assertion.

Kirby’s contention that Israel is trying to prevent genocide is particularly absurd, given that since Hamas killed 1,200 Israelis on Oct. 7, Israeli forces have killed at least 22,100 Gazans, about 9,100 of whom are children. At least 57,000 persons have been wounded and at least 7,000 are reported missing. Untold numbers of people are trapped beneath the rubble.

Provisional Measures for Immediate Impact

South Africa is requesting that the ICJ order provisional measures (interim injunction) in order to “protect against further, severe and irreparable harm to the rights of the Palestinian people under the Genocide Convention.” 

South Africa is also asking the court “to ensure Israel’s compliance with its obligations under the Genocide Convention not to engage in genocide, and to prevent and to punish genocide.”

The provisional measures South Africa seeks include ordering Israel to “immediately suspend its military operations in and against Gaza” and to cease and desist from killing and causing serious bodily or mental harm to Palestinians, inflicting on them conditions of life intended to destroy them in whole or in part, and imposing measures to prevent Palestinian births. 

South Africa wants the ICJ to order that Israel stop expelling and forcibly displacing Palestinians and depriving them of food, water, fuel, and medical supplies and assistance.

The judicial arm of the United Nations, the ICJ is composed of 15 judges elected for a nine-year term by the U.N. General Assembly and the Security Council. It is not a criminal tribunal like the International Criminal Court; rather it resolves disputes between countries.

If a party to the Genocide Convention believes that another party has failed to comply with its obligations, it can take that country to the ICJ to determine its responsibility. This was done in the case of Bosnia v. Serbia, in which the Court found that Serbia violated its duties to prevent and punish genocide under the Convention.

The obligations in the Genocide Convention are erga omnes partes, that is, obligations owed by a state towards all the states parties to the Convention. The ICJ has stated, 

“In such a convention the contracting States do not have any interests of their own; they merely have, one and all, a common interest, namely, the accomplishment of those high purposes which are the raison d’être of the Convention.”

Article 94 of the U.N. Charter says that all parties to a dispute must comply with the decisions of the ICJ and if a party fails to do so, the other party may go to the U.N. Security Council for the enforcement of the decision.

An average ICJ case from start to finish can last several years (it was nearly 15 years from the time that Bosnia first filed its case against Serbia in 1993 to the issuance of the final judgment on the merits in 2007). 

However, a case can have an immediate impact. The filing of a case in the ICJ sends a strong message to Israel that the international community will not tolerate its actions and seeks to hold it accountable.

Provisional measures can be issued quickly. For example, the ICJ ordered measures 19 days after the Bosnian case was initiated. Provisional measures are binding on the party against whom they are ordered, and compliance with them can be monitored by both the ICJ and the Security Council.

Judgments on the merits rendered by the ICJ in disputes between parties are binding on the parties involved. Article 94 of the United Nations Charter provides that “each Member of the United Nations undertakes to comply with the decision of [the Court] in any case to which it is a party.” The judgments of the court are final; there is no appeal.

Public hearings on South Africa’s request for provisional measures will take place this Thursday and Friday at the ICJ which is located in the Peace Palace in The Hague, Netherlands. 

The hearings will be livestreamed from 4:00-6:00 a.m. Eastern/1:00-3:00 a.m. Pacific on the Court’s website and on U.N. Web TV. The court could order provisional measures within a week after the hearings.

Other States Can Join 

Other states parties to the Genocide Convention can either request permission to intervene in the case filed by South Africa or file their own applications against Israel in the ICJ. 

South Africa’s application identifies several countries that have referred to Israel’s genocide in Gaza. They include Algeria, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Iran, Palestine, Türkiye, Venezuela, Bangladesh, Egypt, Honduras, Iraq, Jordan, Libya, Malaysia, Namibia, Pakistan and Syria.

On Jan. 5, Quds News Network tweeted, 

“Jordan’s minister of Foreign Affairs, Ayman Safadi, announces that his country backs South Africa’s genocide case against Israel in the ICJ. He added that the Jordanian government is working on a legal file to follow up on the case. Turkey, Malaysia, and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) had announced that they back the case too.”

The newly formed International Coalition to Stop Genocide in Palestine, endorsed by more than 600 groups throughout the world, has convened to urge states parties to invoke the Genocide Convention.

The coalition contends, 

“Declarations of Intervention in support of South Africa’s invocation of the Genocide Convention against Israel will increase the likelihood that a positive finding of the crime of genocide will be enforced by the United Nations such that actions will be taken to end all acts of genocide and those who are responsible for the acts will be held accountable.”

[See: US Citizens Push Embassies to Back SA’s Genocide Charge]

During the first week of January, delegations of “grassroots diplomats,” spearheaded by CODEPINK, World Beyond War and RootsAction, mounted a campaign across the United States urging nations to submit Declarations of Intervention in South Africa’s case against Israel in the ICJ. 

Activists traveled to 12 cities, visiting U.N. missions, embassies and consulates from Colombia, Pakistan, Bolivia, Bangladesh, the African Union, Ghana, Chile, Ethiopia, Turkey, Belize, Brazil, Denmark, France, Honduras, Ireland, Spain, Greece, Mexico, Italy, Haiti, Belgium, Kuwait, Malaysia and Slovakia.

“This is the rare case where collective social pressure urging governments to support the South African case can be a sharp turning point for Palestine,” said Lamis Deek, a Palestinian attorney based in New York, whose firm convened the Palestinian Assembly for Liberation’s Commission on War Crimes Justice, Reparations, and Return. “We need more states to file supporting interventions — and we need the court to feel the watchful eye of the masses so as to withstand what will be extreme U.S. political pressure on the Court.”

Suzanne Adely, president of the National Lawyers Guild, noted, “The increasing global isolation of Israel and the U.S. and their European allies is an indicator that this is a key moment for popular movements to move their governments in the direction of taking these steps and being on the right side of history.” 

Indeed, since Oct. 7, millions of people throughout the world have marched, protested and demonstrated in support of Palestinian liberation.

RootsAction and World Beyond War have created a template that organizations and individuals can use to urge other states parties to the Genocide Convention to file a Declaration of Intervention in South Africa’s genocide case against Israel in the ICJ.

Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, and a member of the national advisory boards of Assange Defense and Veterans For Peace, and the bureau of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. She is founding dean of the People’s Academy of International Law and the U.S. representative to the continental advisory council of the Association of American Jurists. Her books include Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral and Geopolitical Issues. She is co-host of “Law and Disorder” Radio.

This article is from Truthout

https://consortiumnews.com/2024/01/09/israel-terrified-of-genocide-case-at-the-world-court/

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BY Jonathan Cook

Israel’s allies aren’t just turning a blind eye to Gaza’s killing fields. They have cheered on the bloodshed, provided diplomatic cover and supplied the arms

Middle East Eye – 9 January 2023

Israel is urging western states to rally to its side as the International Court of Justice prepares to hear this week South Africa’s case that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

The court is being asked by Pretoria to issue an immediate injunction ordering Israel to halt its military assault on the tiny enclave, to avoid further casualties.

Some 23,000 Palestinians are known to have been killed by Israel so far, a majority of them women and children, and many thousands more are believed to be lying under the rubble. Tens of thousands are seriously wounded. A majority of the population have lost their homes to the three-month bombing campaign. 

Israel has intensively and repeatedly targeted the supposedly “safe zones” to which it has ordered Palestinian civilians to flee.

It has destroyed almost all of Gaza’s infrastructure and is blocking most aid from reaching the enclave. Famine and disease are likely to rapidly increase the death toll.

South Africa’s 84-page brief argues that Israel’s bombing campaign and siege breaches the 1948 Genocide Convention, which defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”.

Israel expects support from western capitals because they have nearly as much to fear from a verdict against Israel as Israel itself. They have staunchly backed the killing spree, with the US and UK, in particular, sending weapons that are being used against the people of Gaza, making both potentially complicit.

According to a cable from the Israeli foreign ministry, leaked to the Axios website, Israel hopes that, given the difficulties of making a legal case in defence of its actions, diplomatic and political pressure on the court’s justices will win the day instead.

The Biden administration led the way late last week in dismissing South Africa’s detailed legal brief as “meritless, counterproductive and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever”.

That would sound patently ridiculous to western audiences had they been provided with serious coverage of Gaza. But Israel has been heavily restricting access to the enclave, while killing Palestinian journalists there at an unprecedented rate to stop their reporting.

In addition, western media are willingly – and secretly – submitting to an onerous Israeli censorship regime.

Israel’s “strategic goal” at the court, according to the leaked cable, is to dissuade the judges from making a determination that it is committing genocide. But more pressing is Israel’s need to prevent the Hague court from ordering an interim halt to the attack.

Israeli officials will argue, Axios reports, that its sustained assault on Gaza fails to reach the threshold of genocide, which requires “creating conditions that don’t allow the survival of the population, together with the intent to annihilate it”.

Israel will try to convince the judges that it has been seeking to increase humanitarian aid to Gaza and minimise the toll on civilians. 

Its argument flies in the face of the evidence South Africa has amassed. 

Its brief contains nine pages of declarations by Israeli leaders showing clear genocidal intent, including statements from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, senior figures in the cabinet, President Isaac Herzog and many serving and former Israeli military commanders. 

Giora Eiland, an adviser to war council minister, Benny Gantz, has called Israel’s goal the creation of “conditions where life in Gaza becomes unsustainable”. An Israeli military spokesman stated from the outset that the aim was to inflict “maximum damage” on Gaza.

Herzog suggests the entire civilian population is a legitimate military target, while Netanyahu refers to the Palestinians as “Amalek”, a biblical enemy. In the Old Testament, God commands the Israelites to annihilate the Amalekites, putting “to death men and women, children and infants”.

One of the provisions of the Genocide Convention is an absolute prohibition on incitement to genocide. Israel’s most senior politicians and military commanders have indisputably breached that section of the convention. 

A letter to Israel’s attorney general last week from a group of Israeli academics, lawyers, human rights activists and journalists underscored that point. They warned that incitement to genocide had become “an everyday matter in Israel”.

The letter added: “Normalised discourse which calls for annihilation, erasure, devastation and the like is liable to impact the manner by which soldiers [in Gaza] conduct themselves.”

But dehumanisation – the precursor to genocide – is not the only problem.

Israel’s prosecution of what it terms a “war to eradicate Hamas” has fully met its own definition of genocide. “Conditions that don’t allow the survival of the population” were already being created long before the onslaught Israel unleashed immediately after Hamas broke out from Gaza on 7 October. Some 1,140 Israelis and other nationals were killed in the ensuing carnage. 

Mostly forgotten in the back and forth about what is unfolding in the enclave is the context: United Nations officials warned nearly a decade ago that Israel’s siege of Gaza – now 17 years in duration – was designed to make the enclave “uninhabitable”.

In other words, Israel was precisely “creating conditions that don’t allow the survival of the population”. 

Even before its current, extended assault, Israel had placed severe restrictions on access to water for the enclave’s 2.3 million inhabitants. As a direct result, overstretched aquifers under Gaza were allowing in seawater, making the enclave’s drinking water unfit for human consumption.

Food was similarly in short supply. Back in 2012, Israeli human rights groups managed to make public a secret document showing that the army had been tightly controlling food going into Gaza from 2008 onwards. As a result, two-thirds of the population was food insecure, and every 10th child was stunted by malnutrition. The aim was to induce long-term food poverty, effectively putting the population on a starvation diet. 

Israel’s repeated attacks on Gaza over the past 15 years – what Israel calls “mowing the grass” – destroyed many of its homes and much of the infrastructure, creating ever greater overcrowding and unsanitary conditions.

Israel’s repeated bombing of Gaza’s only power station, and its chokehold on supplying additional energy, limited electricity to a few hours a day.

The Israeli siege blocked medicines and medical equipment from entering the enclave, often making serious health conditions difficult or impossible to treat. And given the Israeli-imposed restrictions of goods in and out of Gaza, the economy was already in ruins, with nearly half the population unemployed.

Long ago, back in 2016, the head of Israeli military intelligence, Herzi Halevi, warned that the catastrophe Israel was engineering in Gaza could blow up in its face – as indeed it did on 7 October.

Israel’s three-month rampage has simply accelerated and intensified all the genocidal policies that had long been established. Hamas’s break-out simply gave Israel licence to take the gloves off. 

This is why the UN’s head of humanitarian affairs, Martin Griffiths, declared last week that Gaza had reached the point where it was indeed “uninhabitable”.

He added: “People are facing the highest levels of food insecurity ever recorded. Famine is around the corner.”

With the vast majority of the population homeless and most hospitals no longer functioning, infectious disease was spreading. 

Israel’s “complete siege” policy meant aid could not get in. According to Griffiths, Israel had destroyed roads, blocked communication systems, and was shooting at UN trucks and killing aid workers. 

Returning from a visit to the border crossing with Egypt, two US senators observed at the weekend that Israel had imposed unreasonable conditions creating endless delays that prevented aid from reaching the people of Gaza.

In other words, Israel has now successfully “created conditions that don’t allow the survival of the population”. 

The aim of the 1948 Genocide Convention, drafted in the immediate wake of the Second World War and the Nazi Holocaust, was not simply to punish those who carry out genocides.

It was designed to help identify a genocide in its early stages, and create a mechanism – through the rulings of the International Court of Justice – by which it could be halted.

In other words, the purpose of South Africa’s case is not to arbitrate what happens once Israel has annihilated the Palestinians of Gaza, as far too many observers appear to imagine. It is to stop Israel from annihilating the people of Gaza before it is too late.

Based on strange logic, Israel’s supporters imply that the genocide charge is unwarranted because the real aim is not to exterminate the Palestinians of Gaza but to induce them to flee. 

Israeli leaders have encouraged this assumption. In an interview on Sunday, the national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, noted of Gaza’s population that – after being bombed, made homeless, starved and left vulnerable to disease – “hundreds of thousands will leave now”. Duplicitiously, he termed this a “voluntary” mass emigration.

But such an outcome – itself a crime against humanity – entirely depends on Egypt opening its borders to allow Palestinians to flee the killing fields. If Cairo refuses to submit to Israel’s violent blackmail, it will be Israel’s bombs, the famine it inflicted, and the lethal diseases it unleashed that decimate Gaza’s population.

The International Court of Justice must not adopt a wait-and-see approach, pondering whether Israel’s bombing campaign and siege lead to extermination or “only” ethnic cleansing. That would strip international humanitarian law of all relevance.

If Israel and its western allies fail to bludgeon the court into submission, and South Africa’s case is accepted, it will not only be Israel in legal difficulties. 

A genocide ruling from the court will impose obligations on other states: both to refuse to assist in Israel’s genocide, such as by providing arms and diplomatic cover, and to sanction Israel should it fail to comply.

An interim order halting Israel’s attack will serve as a line in the sand. Once made, any state that fails to act on the injunction risks becoming complicit in genocide. 

That will put the West in a serious legal bind. After all, it has not just been turning a blind eye to the genocide in Gaza; it has been actively cheering it on and colluding in it. 

Leaders in the UK such as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and opposition leader Keir Starmer have steadfastly opposed a ceasefire and thrown their weight behind a central pillar of Israel’s genocidal policy: the “complete siege” of Gaza that has left the population starving and facing lethal epidemics.

The British and US governments have rejected all calls to stop the flow of arms. The Biden administration has even bypassed Congress to speed up the supply of weapons to Israel, including indiscriminate “dumb” bombs that are laying waste to civilian areas.

Israel’s ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, has regularly been featured by British media making genocidal statements. Just last week, when an interviewer noted that she appeared to be calling for the destruction of the whole of Gaza – every school, mosque and home – she answered: “Do you have another solution?”

British and US media have given airtime to Israeli officials who openly incite genocide.

All that would have to stop immediately after a ruling. The police in western nations would be expected to investigate and the courts prosecute those inciting genocide or providing a platform for incitement. 

States would be expected to deny Israel weapons and impose economic sanctions on Israel – as well as on any states that collude in the genocide. 

Israeli officials would risk arrest for travelling to western countries. 

In practice, of course, none of that is likely to happen. Israel is far too important to the West – as a projection of its power into the oil-rich Middle East – to be sacrificed. 

Any effort to enforce a genocide ruling through the UN Security Council will be blocked by the Biden administration. 

Meanwhile, the UK, along with Canada, Germany, Denmark, France and the Netherlands, have already demonstrated how unabashed they are about their own double standards. 

Weeks ago they submitted formal arguments to the International Court of Justice that Myanmar was committing genocide against the Rohingya ethnic group. Their central argument was that the Rohingya were being subjected “to a subsistence diet, systematic expulsion from homes, and the induction of essential medical services below minimum requirement”.

But none of these western states is backing South Africa’s genocide submission to the same court – even though conditions in Gaza engineered by Israel are even worse. 

The truth is that a genocide ruling by the court will open up a can of worms for the West, and its readiness to accept that the provisions of international law apply to it too.

Israel has been at the forefront of efforts to unravel international law in Gaza for more than a decade. Now it is ostentatiously flaunting its perpetration of the crime of genocide, as if daring the world to stop it. 

Perversely, it is reversing the very international safeguards put in place to stop a repeat of the Nazi Holocaust. 

Will the West defy Israel or the court? The post-war consensus that serves as the foundation for international law – already shaken by the failure to address the West’s war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan – is on the verge of complete collapse.

And no one will be happier with that outcome than the state of Israel.

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https://www.jonathan-cook.net/2024-01-09/dock-israel-genocide-court/

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South Africa presents its genocide case against Israel in Gaza and will ask the World Court to order Israel to stop its military operation. Live 4 am EST, 10 am The Hague Thursday. Replay afterward. Israel responds Friday.

https://consortiumnews.com/2024/01/10/watch-day-1-of-sa-v-israel-on-genocide-at-world-court/

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https://yourdemocracy.net/drupal/node/45958

https://www.theinteldrop.org/2024/01/11/watch-22-minute-speech-details-israeli-officials-genocidal-statements-at-icj/

South African attorney Tembeka Ngcukaitobi on Thursday used the words of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other high-ranking officials to make the case to the International Court of Justice—and to the world—that Israel’s military is acting with clear genocidal intent in the Gaza Strip.

“Let the prime minister’s words speak for themselves,” said Ngcukaitobi, pointing to Netanyahu’s November remarks urging Israelis to “remember what Amalek has done to you. Netanyahu has repeatedly likened Gazans to the Amalekites, whom the Old Testament God orders King Saul to massacre.

Ngcukaitobi went on to cite the deputy speaker of the Israeli Knesset, who called on Israel’s military to “burn Gaza” to the ground—a statement he reiterated ahead of Thursday’s hearing at the United Nations’ highest court.

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https://yourdemocracy.net/drupal/node/45958

by The Courier of Strategists

In this new year interview, Thierry Meyssan takes stock of the situation in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran. He dissects the assassination of a Hamas leader in Beirut, and explains to us how the Israeli government physically eliminates all Hamas leaders who are not in its pay.

https://en.reseauinternational.net/thierry-meyssan-balance-grave-sur-les-liens-entre-israel-et-les-freres-musulmans-du-hamas/

(IN FRENCH)

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by Claudiu Secara

Let’s say that the 2030 Agenda is late. And let's say that this perception is based on the existence of a grand agreement between the powers that be or PTB (Powers That Be) that all major conflicts must be resolved by 2030, so that the world can begin to focus on the next steps in implementing the much-delayed global management of our planet's uncontrollable dysfunction.

Ukraine is one of these sticking points, as is the Palestinian question, as is Taiwan. Behind them lie major issues with tectonic consequences. The balance of power is shifting; political continental plates are realigning on a geological scale.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a flashpoint that must be resolved. But is it possible? Well over 50% of Israelis are categorically opposed to any concessions to the Palestinians, with the settler group promoting the expulsion of Palestinians from all lands coveted by Jews.

But the method used to bring Israelis to their senses and break their genocidal resolve is the usual method, which is nothing new. This is what the French call “the politics of the worst”. It works the same way as police entrapment. The poor target is tricked into acting recklessly and stupidly, under the impression that they are acting in complete control and with the support of the dark powers.

In this case, it is easy to recognize that the Hamas incursion on October 7 into heavily fortified Israeli territory could not have been possible without the knowledge of the world's greatest spies.1. It is even conceivable that Netanyahu himself knows about it. But not, as Larry Johnson describes in conspiracy theories, with the aim of triggering the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. On the contrary. To accuse the extremists of his own government of compromise, these reckless individuals like Smotrich, Ben Gvir, etc.

Think about it. Israel is killing thousands of Palestinians and we are all witnessing acts of total massacre, where Palestinians, dead or alive, are literally crushed under American bombs and Israeli tanks, hospitals are bombed, schools and mosques are desecrated, pregnant women crushed on their way to the maternity ward, horrific acts of inhumanity, utter barbarity never before seen by the global public live in mass media, a murderous spree unseen in the memory of the world.

Once you have established these facts of war, you then have the next series of events that go against everything the world has been led to believe over the last 70 years or so. A ragtag army in sandals, which couldn't even control its own country – i.e. Yemen's Houthis – is paralyzing global trade by flying drones made locally, or perhaps purchased in China, above the busiest maritime artery, the Red Sea. And what do the superpowers decide to do? The American armada, the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier strike group, says it must weigh anchor and leave the theater of war, in which it was supposed to take an active interest, and return to its home base. Norfolk, United States. At the same time, the US Secretary of Defense is bedridden in an intensive care facility without anyone in the government knowing. And what does the Chinese commercial flotilla do when its main business is attacked by the sandal-wearing Houthis? She announced the suspension of trade with Israel and the embargo on its ports.

It is almost impossible to understand how the people of Hamas managed to build an army under conditions of total surveillance. They seem to have access not only to unlimited quantities of equipment and know-how to manufacture weapons and ammunition, but also to the most modern tools, such as drones and highly professional video filming equipment. Under the “full control” of the Israeli military, they can communicate freely, broadcasting daily video feeds directly from the so-called underground tunnels. One of the clues given to us is that, supposedly, Hamas was indeed a proxy army organized and financed by, or with the knowledge of the Israelis, as a force aimed at undermining the Palestinian Authority. Was this partnership between Israel and Hamas interrupted at some point, or what do Israelis know about their own creation today?

In one way or another, some important actors have been involved in organizing, supplying, equipping and facilitating this shadow army, under the eyes of the powerful Israeli police state. Was the Israeli police state itself, and still is, behind Hamas, as some have suggested?

Then there is Russia. Where is Russia in this war? Not a clear word from Moscow. Does he condemn Netanyahu for the atrocities committed in Gaza? Not really. Hamas? They held talks with Hamas in Moscow, but there was no word of any animosity between the two. At the same time, Russia maintains a very cordial line with Netanyahu himself.2

While the Western media remains more or less silent, the world is flooded with scenes depicting the vile Israelis. A newly created cottage industry in the alternative media space brings together former stars like Tucker Carlson and Judge Napolitano, to name a few, who now broadcast the same spokespeople from the old media ranks, rewriting history before the eyes of a hypnotized populace. The same guys appear on all the alternative channels: Scott Ritter, Larry Johnson, Jeffrey Sachs, John Mearsheimer, etc.

A slow rise of emotion is turning world opinion against the Israelis, and that's not all: they are now considered exemplary monsters, far surpassing the Nazis in their personification of inhumanity. This suddenly overturns 70 years of Holocaust industry mythology and possibly reestablishes “the Jew” as the “Bad Guy” of old traditions.

So we have Netanyahu stuck on one side by the high-profile corruption charges and the popular movement in Israel to put him in prison. On the other hand, we have the far-right criminal settler gang that gets away with getting away with killing innocent Palestinians and stealing everything they own. What a good mix to promote total manipulation and weakening of Israeli society.

It reminds me of Yugoslavia, or more precisely the Serbs. After World War II, the Serbs had a reputation as one of the darlings of the West, the best and most balanced model of the hybrid economic system, as well as a politically astute and non-aligned country. They were presented as the small power capable of resisting the aggression of Stalin's takeover of Eastern Europe, they had a liberal, multi-party system, open to the West, while still maintaining a socialist and workers' economic system.

The West was fighting the communist enemy, the Soviet Union, but Serbia always dared to stand with the West. And this position was only to be strengthened once the communists were definitively defeated. But it turned out that little Serbia was not subject to anyone. They claimed independence from the Soviet Union, but they also claimed the same independence and sovereignty from the West. Thus, our best partner has become our worst enemy, determined to stand up to the language of Eastern or Western vassalage.

A few other small countries, like North Korea, Cuba, Israel, and Hungary, have managed to get past the barrier well past the expiration date, have it both ways, and survive for a long time in a sort of blurred universe, where they maintained the Illusion of national sovereignty.

But there is very little room left in the 2030 Agenda for such political acrobatics. The time has come to remove these thorns that stick out here and there and submit everyone to the system of total vassalage. You go to China, Russia and under the auspices of the United States. No more Israel, Serbia or North Korea who make fun of their masters.

The immediate impact of Israel's intransigence on Israeli society is a shocking defeat. The terror instilled by the deaths of their sons and husbands, comparable to that of the First World War, relative to their size, is sobering. The world's reaction to their atrocities is now causing them to consider what they do with their own future, while even servile Germany dares to question their agenda. The settlers get their share of flesh through the pagan demand for the sacrifice of Palestinian lives, and their rabid hatred and bloodlust3, but at the same time, their indictment before the world court of justice now moves from verbal abuse to the real stage of the Nuremberg trials.

This is, in a nutshell, the story of the war in Gaza. Israel will face the same fate as the rest of the world. Submit to the Almighty; disarm; withdraw its stockpiles of nuclear weapons; and allow the world to create a Palestinian state. Or it will face an even greater threat as a unified state in which Palestinians outnumber Israeli Jews, in which case the situation in Israel will be even more destabilized. The majority of Israelis, who have rallied behind the manifest destiny of Greater Israel, are now faced with the powerful military barrage of the military siege mounted on all sides, economic impoverishment, even a de facto embargo, etc. They slowly come to their senses. The war against the Palestinian people is turning into a civil war within Israel itself. Israel is following the same path of self-destruction that the color revolutions have brought about in country after country, as we have witnessed since the 1980s.

source: Algora Blog via The People's Cause

https://en.reseauinternational.net/guerre-de-gaza-un-coup-monte-la-fin-de-lisrael-que-nous-connaissions/

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DOHA (Sputnik) - The US and the UK are trying to divert attention from the genocide in the Gaza Strip with ill-conceived airstrikes against the Ansar Allah movement, also known as the Houthis, in Yemen, Hezam al-Asad, a member of the movement's political bureau, said on Friday.

The US and the United Kingdom carried out overnight airstrikes against Houthi positions in four governorates of Yemen, including the capital Sanaa and the cities of Al Hudaydah, Saada and Taiz, provincial government officials told Sputnik. The US and UK officials confirmed the airstrikes, saying these were targeting Houthi military facilities and positions in Yemen in response to attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea and not civilian population centers.

https://sputnikglobe.com/20240112/us-uk-trying-to-distract-from-genocide-in-gaza-by-strikes-in-yemen---houthi-member-1116126421.html

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SEE ALSO:

Wait, wait, wait….. the UN voted for a ceasefire in the Red Sea (where the Yemenis harmed 0 humans)…. But has yet to pass a cease fire vote after 30,000+ have been killed (in Gaza)??? Tony Montana @9mmScorpion

On Tuesday, the Houthis launched their largest attack on ships in the Red Sea to date. 21 missiles and drones –that were launched from positions on mainland Yemen– were shot-down by US and British warships patrolling the area. No casualties were reported.

According to a Houthi spokesman, the attack was retaliation for the killing of 10 Houthi militants who were strafed by US helicopter gunships while trying to board the Maersk Hangzhou on Sunday. The western media has omitted this critical fact from their reporting in order to conceal the provocation that triggered Tuesday’s attack on US and UK warships. The Houthis say the Hangzhou refused to respond to radio calls inquiring whether the ship was bound for an Israeli port or not, which prompted their attempt to board the ship. That’s when all Hell broke loose. (The Houthis require that commercial ships acknowledge whether they are linked to Israel or not. The Maersk Hangzhou failed to do so.) Here is a brief summary of Tuesday’s incident from a post at Sputnik International:

Yemeni Ansar Allah claimed responsibility for an attack on a US Navy ship in the Red Sea, after the US attacked Houthi forces, Houthi spokesperson Yahiah Sariah said in an official statement. What is also known: Navy forces, missile forces and unmanned aircraft of Yemen’s Houthis conducted a joint military operation using a large number of ballistic and ship-based missiles and drones, targeting a US Navy ship providing support to Israel; This operation was the first response to an attack on the Houthi naval forces by the US Navy 10 days ago; Ansar Allah troops will continue to prevent ships from sailing to Israel, both in the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, until the aggression against the Gaza Strip ends.@SputnikInt

And here is a summary of the Houthis demands following the killing of 10 of their fighters by US forces last Sunday: (This was not reported in the western media)

https://www.unz.com/mwhitney/major-escalation-biden-launches-war-on-yemen/

https://yourdemocracy.net/drupal/node/45958

This week, the United States and Britain have essentially shown the entire world exactly how dedicated they are to peacefully resolving the Gaza Strip crisis.

Late on January 11, American and British forces launched a string of airstrikes against Yemen, ostensibly in retaliation for the attacks previously conducted by the Houthi rebels against Israeli-linked vessels traversing the Gulf of Aden.

The Houthis started conducting their attacks on Israeli-linked ships in response to Tel Aviv’s brutal invasion of the Gaza Strip, with the United States using the Houthis’ actions as a pretext for launching a joint naval operation off the coast of Yemen – seemingly to protect shipping traffic – and now to directly attack Yemen.

While the threat posed by the Houthis to the “flow of international shipping” through a vital waterway that connects “East Asia with Europe through Bab-el-Mandeb and the Suez Canal and then to the Mediterranean” was indeed one of the factors that led to the joint US-British assault on Yemen, this attack should also be regarded in a different context, says Ayman Yousef, professor of political sciences and international relations at the Arab-American University in Palestine.

https://sputnikglobe.com/20240112/us-uk-seem-bent-on-protecting-israel-by-attacking-yemen-1116129798.html

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