Palestinians inspect the damage caused by an Israeli airstrike on Khan Younis on 7 January. Photograph: Mohammed Dahman/AP
Experts say submission to international court of justice on Myanmar six weeks ago makes stance ‘wholly disingenuous’
The UK is facing accusations of double standards after formally submitting detailed legal arguments to the international court of justice in The Hague six weeks ago to support claims that Myanmar committed genocide against the Rohingya ethnic group through its mass mistreatment of children and systematically depriving people of their homes and food.
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Tayab Ali, the head of international law at Bindmans, said the significance of the UK’s submission on Myanmar “lay in showing the importance the UK attaches to adherence to the [UN] Genocide Convention and in showing the UK took a wide, and not a narrow, definition of acts of genocide, and the intent to commit genocide. It also made clear that the court should take into account risks to life after a ceasefire caused by disabilities, inability to reside in their homes and wider injustices.
“It would be wholly disingenuous if the UK, six week after advancing such a significant and broad definition of genocide in the case of Myanmar, now adopts a narrow one in the case of Israel.”
South Africa is likely to highlight the UK’s arguments about Myanmar, submitted in conjunction with Canada, Germany, Denmark, France and the Netherlands, when it makes its high-stakes accusation of genocide against Israel.
Protesters block Westminster Bridge during a Free Palestine Coalition demonstration in central London, January 6, 2024
PALESTINE campaigners responded with fury today after peer and former Labour MP John Woodcock said protest organisers should foot the bill for policing their demonstrations.
As thousands once again thronged the streets of towns and cities across Britain demanding an end to the slaughter in Gaza, Mr Woodcock, now known as Lord Walney, the government’s independent adviser on “political violence and disruption,” made the call for police costs to be dumped on organisers in a review carried out for the Home Office.
He specifically targeted protests by Palestine supporters who have campaigned tirelessly against Israel’s murderous actions for three months.
The Stop the War Coalition (StWC) accused Lord Walney of attempting to end “hundreds of years of the right to protest” and said it was the police themselves who chose to mobilise thousands of officers for the protests.
Stop the War co-convener Lindsey German told the Morning Star: “This is just the latest scheme to stop the demonstrations.
“The government, the police and Lord Whatever should be clear that the demonstrations will continue as part of our democratic rights.
“We completely reject the idea that we should be paying for the police. We do not ask the police to turn out. We police our demonstrations ourselves.”
BRITISH democracy is under attack. The threat comes not from foreign bogeymen but from our own overbearing state.
Lord Walney — as hard-right ex-Labour MP John Woodcock renamed himself after his ennoblement for services against Jeremy Corbyn — wants to ban protests, at least if they aren’t bankrolled by the rich.
The demand that protest organisers meet the cost of policing demonstrations is as dangerous as it is dishonest.
Woodcock claims “disorder” at Palestine demos justifies billing the organisers.
In fact the mass peace demonstrations (which Woodcock, who called on the public to vote for Boris Johnson in 2019 to dash prospects of a socialist government, terms “anti-Israel marches”) have been strikingly peaceful.
Clashes with police, where they have occurred at all, have taken place away from the main demonstrations and certainly beyond the reach of the organisers’ stewards. They have been rare, with most arrests taking place for allegedly hateful speech or signage rather than violence or vandalism.
It adds insult to injury that Lord Walney advises the Home Office to start charging people to protest when the most serious recent disorder on our streets featured far-right hooligans incited to mob the Cenotaph on November 11 by the then home secretary herself.
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Palestine demos are huge because Westminster is at loggerheads with the people it claims to represent. There is a gulf between the government and opposition’s endorsement of Israel’s murderous war and the popular demand for peace.
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Woodcock was made a lord precisely for betraying his party to help defeat that movement, something Lord Rooker (another ex-Labour MP) described as a “national service.” He was tasked by the serial liar he backed for PM with advising the British state on how to stop such movements arising again.
IAMLA joins UN agencies, UN experts and other lawyers in expressing deep concern that serious violations of international law are being committed in the Middle East conflict.
The Ahmadiyya Muslim Lawyers Association (IAMLA), a global body comprising of more than 900 lawyers, former judges, and legal academics, has condemned the mass killing of innocent civilians in the ongoing conflict between Hamas and Israel.
As part of the Voices for Peace campaign, an initiative to raise voices on behalf of the oppressed and encourage world peace, the Muslim lawyers sent a letter to world leaders in December. The letter calls on all states to prevent acts of genocide in Gaza and warns of serious violations of international law in the commission of war crimes in the conflict. The group says it condemns the ‘abhorrent murder and hostage-taking of innocent civilians by Hamas forces on 07 October as unlawful and contrary to the teachings of Islam.’
They continue how the violations of international law by Hamas forces do not justify violations by Israeli forces.
“We are horrified by the grossly disproportionate bombardment of Gaza by Israeli forces which has killed more than 20,000 people, about 70% of whom are said to be women and children,” the lawyers continue.
Despite Rishi Sunak’s attempts to rally his troops behind his plan and belief that there is a narrow path to victory, one Tory backbencher has candidly admitted that the Tories face ‘obliteration’ at the next general election.
Danny Kruger, the MP for Devizes, and founder of the New Conservatives Group, told a private event of Tory members organised by the thinktank ResPublica last October that the Tories had left the country ‘sadder, less united and less Conservative than we found it.”
The Guardian reported that he told the meeting: “The narrative that the public has now firmly adopted – that over 13 years things have got worse – is one we just have to acknowledge and admit.”
He added: “Some things have been done right and well. The free school movement that Michael Gove oversaw, and universal credit – and Brexit, even though it was in the teeth of the Tory party hierarchy itself, and mismanaged – nevertheless Brexit will be the great standing achievement of our time in office.
A picture taken from Rafah on January 6, 2024 shows smoke billowing over Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip during Israeli bombardment. (Photo: AFP via Getty Images)
“This war should never have started. But it’s long past time for it to end,” said United Nations emergency relief coordinator Martin Griffiths.
The United Nations’ emergency relief coordinator warned Friday that the threat of a broader conflict in the Middle East is growing rapidly as Israel’s assault continues in Gaza, which the U.N. official said has been rendered “uninhabitable” by near-constant airstrikes and a suffocating blockade.
“The specter of further regional spillover of the war is looming dangerously close,” Martin Griffiths, the U.N.’s under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, said in a statement, pointing to the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, mounting Israeli attacks in the West Bank, and rocket attacks on Israel. “Hope has never been more elusive.”
Griffiths, a longtime diplomat who has described the situation in Gaza as the worst humanitarian crisis he’s ever witnessed, issued his unsparing statement at the tail end of a week that saw Israel and the United States launch deadly strikes in Lebanon and Iraq, killing a senior Hamas official and the leader of an Iran-aligned militia.
On Saturday, Hezbollah responded to Israel’s drone strike on an office building in the Lebanese capital of Beirut by firing rockets at a military base in northern Israel, heightening fears of an escalatory spiral.
While the Biden administration insists it wants to avert a regional war, it continues to provide Israel with lethal military aid and oppose international efforts to enact a permanent cease-fire that analysts say is necessary to stop the conflict from spreading. The U.S. is also reportedly drafting plans to bomb Yemen in response to Houthi attacks on vessels in the Red Sea.
The Houthis have said the attacks will stop once Israel ends its catastrophic assault on the Gaza Strip.
The de facto Yemeni government has announced they are fulfilling their obligations under Article 1 of the convention on the prevention of genocide. They say that the blockade of Israeli-bound ships in the Red Sea will end when the attempted genocide ends pic.twitter.com/1sAW8LlmkX
Griffiths said Friday that the situation in Gaza is shockingly dire, with displaced families “sleeping in the open as temperatures plummet” and the territory’s remaining medical facilities “under relentless attack.”
“The few hospitals that are partially functional are overwhelmed with trauma cases, critically short of all supplies, and inundated by desperate people seeking safety,” said Griffiths. “Infectious diseases are spreading in overcrowded shelters as sewers spill over. Some 180 Palestinian women are giving birth daily amidst this chaos. People are facing the highest levels of food insecurity ever recorded. Famine is around the corner.”
“For children in particular,” Griffiths added, “the past 12 weeks have been traumatic: No food. No water. No school. Nothing but the terrifying sounds of war, day in and day out.”
Much of Gaza has been decimated by Israeli bombs, many of which were supplied by the United States. The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said Friday that around 68,000 housing units in Gaza have been completely destroyed by Israeli airstrikes.
Roughly 4% of Gaza’s population—more than 90,000 people—has been killed, wounded, or left missing by Israeli attacks since October 7, the group estimated.
“It is time for the parties to meet all their obligations under international law, including to protect civilians and meet their essential needs, and to release all hostages immediately,” Griffiths said. “It is time for the international community to use all its influence to make this happen. This war should never have started. But it’s long past time for it to end.”
