Daily Archives: 19 October 2023

800+ Legal Scholars Say Israel May Be Perpetrating ‘Crime of Genocide’ in Gaza

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Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Residents seek safety amid destroyed buildings and debris around the Palestinian Telecommunications Company in the Gaza Strip on October 10, 2023. (Photo: Ashraf Amra/Anadolu via Getty Images)

“The ongoing and imminent Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip are being conducted with potentially genocidal intent.”

More than 800 scholars of international law and genocide have signed a public statement arguing that the Israeli military may be committing genocidal acts against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip as the total siege and relentless airstrikes continue to inflict devastation on the occupied territory.

“As scholars and practitioners of international law, conflict studies, and genocide studies, we are compelled to sound the alarm about the possibility of the crime of genocide being perpetrated by Israeli forces against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip,” reads the statement. “We do not do so lightly, recognizing the weight of this crime, but the gravity of the current situation demands it.”

The scholars noted that Israel’s yearslong blockade on Gaza—which has left much of the territory’s population impoverished and without access to basic necessities—had previously been described as “slow-motion genocide” and cited a United Nations warning about Israelis’ use of dehumanizing language, which is often a prelude to mass atrocities.

But the new statement contends that Israel’s current assault on Gaza, launched in the wake of a deadly Hamas attack on October 7, is “unprecedented in scale and severity.”

“The Gaza Strip has been subjected to incessant and indiscriminate bombardment by Israeli forces,” the scholars wrote. “Israel’s defense minister ordered a ‘complete siege’ of the Gaza Strip prohibiting the supply of fuel, electricity, water, and other essential necessities. This terminology itself indicates an intensification of an already illegal, potentially genocidal siege to an outright destructive assault.”

The scholars also pointed to Israel’s evacuation order aimed at the entire population of northern Gaza—roughly 1.1 million people—and subsequent Israeli attacks on civilian convoys fleeing to the south.

“Statements of Israeli officials since 7 October 2023 suggest that beyond the killings and restriction of basic conditions for life perpetrated against Palestinians in Gaza, there are also indications that the ongoing and imminent Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip are being conducted with potentially genocidal intent,” the scholars wrote.

They continued:

Language used by Israeli political and military figures appears to reproduce rhetoric and tropes associated with genocide and incitement to genocide. Dehumanising descriptions of Palestinians have been prevalent. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant declared on 9 October that “we are fighting human animals and we act accordingly.” He subsequently announced that Israel was moving to “a full-scale response” and that he had “removed every restriction” on Israeli forces, as well as stating: “Gaza won’t return to what it was before. We will eliminate everything.”

On 10 October, the head of the Israeli army’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), Maj. Gen. Ghassan Alian, addressed a message directly to Gaza residents: “Human animals must be treated as such. There will be no electricity and no water, there will only be destruction. You wanted hell, you will get hell.” The same day, Israeli army spokesperson Daniel Hagari acknowledged the wanton and intentionally destructive nature of Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza: “The emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy.”

Under international law, a party is guilty of genocide if it kills or severely harms members of a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group with the “intent to destroy” that group.

Raz Segal—an Israeli historian, associate professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Stockton University, and signatory of the new statement—argued in Jewish Currents last week that Israel’s actions in Gaza since October 7 constitute “a textbook case of genocide.”

“Indeed, Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza is quite explicit, open, and unashamed,” Segal wrote. “Israel’s goal is to destroy the Palestinians of Gaza. And those of us watching around the world are derelict in our responsibility to prevent them from doing so.”

Segal and the 800 other statement signatories implored nations around the world to swiftly “take concrete and meaningful steps to individually and collectively prevent genocidal acts, in line with their legal duty to prevent the crime of genocide.”

“We call on all relevant U.N. bodies, including the Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect, as well as the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to immediately intervene, to carry out the necessary investigations, and invoke the necessary warning procedures to protect the Palestinian population from genocide,” they added.

Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Continue Reading800+ Legal Scholars Say Israel May Be Perpetrating ‘Crime of Genocide’ in Gaza

‘Not In Our Name!’ Hundreds Arrested at US Capitol as Jewish-Led Protest Demands Gaza Cease-Fire

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Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Jewish Americans and allies are lined up after being arrested during an October 18, 2023 protest calling for a cease-fire in Gaza at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Ariel Gold/X)

“Cease-fire is the first step to stop the ongoing genocide by the Israeli military of the over 2 million Palestinians in besieged Gaza,” asserted Jewish Voice for Peace.

Hundreds of Jewish Americans and allies were arrested at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday during a protest demanding members of Congress push Israel for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza, where nearly 3,500 Palestinians have been killed over 12 days of relentless Israeli bombardment.

Thousands of protesters led by members of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), IfNotNow, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ), and other groups rallied on the Capitol grounds and inside the building, where hundreds of people took part in a sit-in.

Their chanted slogans—including “not in our name” and “cease-fire now”—resounded thunderously under the Capitol Rotunda, while at other times they clapped their hands and sang with solemn determination in Hebrew.

“We’re here to say: not in our names, and never again,” JVP declared. “And we’ll continue our civil disobedience until Congress calls for a cease-fire in Gaza, or until they force us to leave.”

“Cease-fire is the first step to stop the ongoing genocide by the Israeli military of the over 2 million Palestinians in besieged Gaza, unable to leave,” the group continued. “In the past week, over 3,000 Palestinians, including 1,000 children, were murdered by Israeli and U.S. bombs. Over 1 million people are displaced. We have the power to stop this violence.”

“What we know from past Israeli state atrocities against Palestinians is that the bombs only stop once there is a sufficient mass outcry from the international community,” JVP added. “It’s on us to build that outcry—as fast as we possibly can.”

Speaking outside the Capitol, U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.)—the only Palestinian American in Congress—said that “the majority of Americans are literally against oppression.”

“They are,” she insisted. “They are against occupation. They are against human rights violations. If you just tell them the truth, they will be on our side. So we have to speak the truth.”

Tlaib had a message for President Joe Biden, who has declared his “rock-solid and unwavering support” for Israel, which he visited Wednesday and receives nearly $4 billion in annual U.S. military aid.

“I want him to know, as a Palestinian American and also as someone of the Muslim faith: I’m not gonna forget this,” she vowed. “And I think a lot of people are not gonna forget this.”

Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.), who led a resolution with Tlaib and 14 progressive co-sponsors calling on Biden to push for a cease-fire, also spoke at the rally.

“We thank our Jewish community for being out here saying ‘Never Again’,” she said.

Author and activist Naomi Klein told the demonstrators that “it’s crucial that we become huge, become unignorable, and throw all our support behind this brave legislation.”

JVP, IfNotNow, and peace activist Ariel Gold—who was at the event—said hundreds of protesters were arrested.

Wednesday’s protest and arrests followed a string of Jewish-led peace demonstrations across the nation, including two major rallies in Washington, D.C. IfNotNow’s website lists many events planned in cities around the country in the coming days.

“The Israeli military is preparing for a massive ground invasion of Gaza. Israeli and American leaders are dehumanizing Palestinians with vitriolic rhetoric that calls to mind the most hysterical days of… [the] War on Terror,” JVP said Wednesday. “We know where this will lead: genocide.”

“Many of us are mourning our Israeli and Palestinian friends and loved ones,” the group continued. “We are in pain and grief, trying to process a week of horrific violence that has left so many that we know injured, traumatized, kidnapped, or killed.”

“But we refuse to let our grief be weaponized to justify the murder of more Palestinians,” JVP added. “As American Jews, we demand a cease-fire now. No genocide in our name.”

Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Continue Reading‘Not In Our Name!’ Hundreds Arrested at US Capitol as Jewish-Led Protest Demands Gaza Cease-Fire

Just signed up to march with Just Stop Oil

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Having watched these 2 videos by some of the founders of Just Stop Oil, I’ve committed to join them marching from 29 October.

Just stop oil

Indigo Rumbelow at Green Gathering, Chepstow 5 August 2023

Roger Hallam at Green Gathering, Chepstow 5 August 2023

22/10/23 10.30pm Full disclosure: An imbecile in a car drove into me on my bicycle, expect that you cyclists are well aware that they often don’t pay attention of follow the rules of the road. I’m not seriously injured but injured enough that it is unlikely that I will be marching with JSO on this occasion.

Continue ReadingJust signed up to march with Just Stop Oil

Health professionals risk arrest with road occupation, ‘die-in’ and ‘climate inquest’ outside JP Morgan

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Health for Extinction Rebellion protests at JP Morgan Chase’s London Embankment offices 19 October 2023.
Health for Extinction Rebellion protests at JP Morgan Chase’s London Embankment offices 19 October 2023.

As part of the Oily Money Out week of protests, over 60 health professionals are risking arrest this morning by staging a ‘die-in’ and ‘climate inquest’ in the road outside JP Morgan Chase’s London Embankment offices.

The protest is designed to highlight the bank’s leading investment role in the new fossil fuel extraction which is driving increasing levels of climate-related death and suffering. 

Health for Extinction Rebellion, who have a long running campaign against JP Morgan’s fossil fuel investments (HXR, 2021, 2022, 2022-2, 2022-3, 2022-4), sought to emphasise, through their action today, the intolerable and growing human health impacts of the climate and ecological crisis, and the complicity of firms, like JP Morgan, who continue to drive fossil fuel extraction.

The action comes as the ‘Energy Intelligence Forum’, being held in London this week, is the focus of major protests and demands to get “Oily Money Out” of our politics, out of COP 28, and out of power.

Banner reads Oily Money Out. Protests London 18 October 2023.
Banner reads Oily Money Out. Protests London 18 October 2023.

Today’s action saw 14 health professionals lay themselves, shrouded, in the road outside the conference in military hospital style. Other health professionals circled amongst them, tending their ‘fallen’ colleagues, and laying headstones indicating the climate health impact each represented. A mock inquest was then held, in which health-workers gave testimony on the deaths already caused by the planetary emergency. These included among others, the 6 million deaths every year resulting from air pollution (Fuller, 2020), the 5 million deaths globally each year from extreme temperatures (Zhoa. 2021),  and the 43,000 who died from the climate-change associated drought and famine in Somalia last year (WHO/Unicef, 2021)  

Following the action the group will be handing in a letter addressed to Luke Nelson, JP Morgan Chase’s head of sustainability. It reads:

“Society in the future is likely to judge companies that continue such fossil fuel investments as both immoral and as operating outside international law. What does JP Morgan plan to do right now to avoid such a judgement?”

New extraction goes against the explicit warning of the International Energy Agency (IEA, 2021) and the United Nations (UN news, 2022), yet politicians, lawyers and financiers continue to support a fossil fuel industry that has known for decades that fossil fuels cause deadly global warming (Scientific American, 2015). To emphasise this complicity, health workers today also held ‘Cigarette-style’ Health warnings, and banners reading ‘Fossil Fuels Kill’, and “Cause of Death = Fossil Fuel Finance”. The action sought to draw a direct parallel with the Tobacco industry which was complicit in 100,000’s if not millions of deaths, by knowingly misleading the public around the health impacts of smoking. 

Despite the bleak reality of the climate crisis, the action also emphasised the numerous potential benefits for human health of climate action (The Health Foundation, 2023), and the need to galvanise mass support for the appropriate action needed to safeguard a healthy future.

Health for Extinction Rebellion previously wrote to JP Morgan Chase’s CEO Jamie Dimon,  ( 3rd September 2021 to outline their concerns and to suggest a positive route forward for the bank, but have yet to receive a reply. They have returned on numerous occasions speaking ‘off record’ with concerned employees. 

“During the August heatwave of 2022 my father suffered a heart attack and died the following week. He had chronic physical health problems and like many of the most vulnerable in our society could not manage the extreme heat that climate change is bringing to us. This is not a problem of the future. It is a health catastrophe that we are living through right now”.

Dr Jethro Purkis Specialty Doctor Bristol 

“Governments and companies that continue to finance and license new coal, oil and gas are doing so at the expense of their citizens. Fossil fuels are the drivers of deadly climate change and air pollution in our communities. This is an industry that has delayed and denied climate change for decades in the name of greed, putting profit above all else, and from a health and a moral perspective it’s beyond time to shut it down” 

Dr Juliette Brown, Consultant Psychiatrist

“I am here demonstrating for my pregnant patients, for the new mums and for their babies that I see on a daily basis, I am also here for my own children to say that the fossil fuel companies are destroying any chance of our children being able to live any sort of “normal” future.  That the burning of fossil fuels have caused irreversible damage to our planet and that we need companies to stop all new fossil fuel exploration and to start being world leaders in green energy.  It is possible, we just need them to start putting the planet and people before profit”.

Charlotte Francis. Perinatal Pelvic Health Specialist Physiotherapist

“I am a retired GP and  to my last breath I will endeavour to spread the scientific truths which the powers-that-be try so desperately to conceal from the public. I will always denounce the greed and self-interest borne of their grotesque worship of money which has clearly eaten away at their consciences, even their very humanity, to the extent that they are apparently unable to relate to the  enormous suffering already in the southern hemisphere, let alone envisage the horrors ahead if they continue their love-affair with Fossil Fuels”.

Dr Valerie Davies,  Retired General Practitioner
Continue ReadingHealth professionals risk arrest with road occupation, ‘die-in’ and ‘climate inquest’ outside JP Morgan

Government has ‘no plans’ to stop arms sales to Israel despite civilian deaths

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Original article by Adam Bychawski republished from OpenDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

Human rights groups say UK is ignoring its own rules on arms exports after hundreds of Palestinians killed

Campaigners block the road in East London outside the DSEI arms fair Photo: @CAATuk / Twitter
Campaigners block the road in East London outside the DSEI arms fair Photo: @CAATuk / Twitter

The UK government has no plans to suspend arms sales to Israel, despite human rights campaigners warning its exports have been used to kill civilians, openDemocracy has been told.

The UK has approved millions of pounds worth of licences for military equipment to Israeli forces since 2015. They include components for F-35 fighter jets, which can deliver ground strikes and have been recently pictured in social media posts from the Israeli Air Force.

In response to Hamas’ attack on Israel which killed hundreds of civilians, Israeli forces have fired thousands of bombs into Gaza since 7 October. As of yesterday, 2,750 Palestinians have been killed and 9,700 wounded in Israeli air strikes on the Gaza strip, according to the Palestinian health ministry. This figure was given before an attack on al-Ahli Arab hospital that reportedly killed 500 people.

Francesca Albanese, the UN’s special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, warned last week that “Palestinians are in grave danger of mass ethnic cleansing”.

openDemocracy asked the Department of Business and Trade if it would suspend and review its export licences for arms to Israel in light of the reported civilian killings. In response, the department said the licences were “under continual review” but there were “no immediate plans to stop arms export licences to Israel”.

Emily Apple, media coordinator for the Campaign Against the Arm Trade, said: “It is disgusting that the Department for Business and Trade is refusing to suspend and review arms licences to Israel given the mounting evidence of war crimes committed by Israel in Gaza.

“UK industry is responsible for 15% of the components used in the F35 stealth combat aircraft that are being used in airstrikes, and the UK is therefore complicit in war crimes committed by the Israeli government.”

Any UK company wishing to export military goods to other nations must apply for a licence to do so. The government has a number of criteria that must be met before licences can be granted. 

One of the criteria is to “not grant a licence if [the department] determines there is a clear risk that the items might be used to commit or facilitate a serious violation of international humanitarian law”.

Officials are also told not to grant licences if there is a “likelihood that the items would be used in the territory of another country other than for legitimate purposes including national or collective self defence”.

The campaign group Palestine Action, which has taken direct action in the UK against Israeli arms company Elbit, said it was “no surprise” that the UK government is continuing to allow arms exports.

“Numerous weapons factories, including ones owned by Israel’s largest weapons firm, continue to operate on our doorsteps, who market their weapons as “battle-tested” on the captive population of Gaza,” a spokesperson for the group said.

The UK has in the past paused export licences in response to reports that its criteria may have been breached.

In 2019, the then foreign secretary Dominic Raab suspended arms exports to NATO ally Turkey after it invaded Syria, on the grounds that it risked worsening the humanitarian crisis in the country.

The UK revoked some arms licences to Israel in 2009 after hundreds of Palestinians were killed in airstrikes by Israeli forces. During the 2o14 conflict, the government warned it would suspend licences again if hostilities continued, but ultimately did not go-ahead with the decision.

The decision to continue supplying arms to Israel comes after MPs and campaign groups raised concerns about a growing lack of transparency from the government over exports licences.

In October, an enquiry led by MPs found that despite pledges from the government to improve transparency “progress has been limited” and that “there is a worrying lack of openness and data on compliance”.

The Campaign Against the Arms Trade told openDemocracy that there is a “disturbing lack of transparency over arms sales to Israel”.

“The UK government has hidden behind exemptions and refused to supply CAAT with data regarding recent exports by Elbit subsidiaries, and a large proportion of UK sales are hidden by open export licences where it is impossible to monitor the amount of weapons sold,” it said. 

Sacha Deshmukh, Amnesty International UK’s chief executive, urged the government to reverse its decision to continue supplying Israel with arms.

“The UK’s arms export system is based on the principle of avoiding a clear risk of British weapons being used to commit serious violations of international law. There’s mounting evidence that Israel’s military conduct in Gaza during the last week has included indiscriminate attacks which have killed and injured large numbers of Palestinian civilians.

“The government needs to follow its own rules and urgently suspend export licences for all arms transfers to Israel that risk being used to commit further unlawful attacks.”

Original article by Adam Bychawski republished from OpenDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

Continue ReadingGovernment has ‘no plans’ to stop arms sales to Israel despite civilian deaths