Nation whose case put Israel formally on trial for genocide joins Nicaragua in turning its sights on accomplices in genocide
A team of almost fifty South African lawyers is preparing a legal case to bring to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the United Nations’ top court, against the US and UK, for their complicity in Israel’s array of war crimes in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
South Africa’s successful ICJ case against Israel last month led to Israel being put formally on trial for genocide and resulted in a string of binding orders on Israel to stop its slaughter of Gazans and even to protect Palestinians from harm, as well as to ensure adequate aid reaches the strip’s 2.5 million people, many of whom are now starving and homeless.
Israel has flouted the rulings, continuing and even intensifying the mass murder and blockade, and is being supported in its flagrant disregard for international law by the UK and US, who are providing both material and financial aid, and giving political cover by refusing to condemn Israel’s actions or to call its crimes what they are, instead casting doubt on the mass deaths and brutality and denigrating the Court’s ruling.
The team of lawyers, which already numbers around fifty, is likely to grow further as more lawyers are set to join from other nations. Wikus van Rensburg, who is leading the action, said that it was time for the US and other complicit nations to “be held responsible for [their] crimes”.
A Palestinian flag flies near the Peace Tower during a rally on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Nov. 4, 2023. | Spencer Colby / The Canadian Press via AP
TORONTO—Peace and solidarity activists across Canada were pleased to see the government support the United Nations vote on Dec. 12 calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. They should be pleased—it was their efforts which helped make it happen.
Without the continuing mass mobilizations against Israel’s war in communities large and small, the Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau would surely not have felt compelled to shift from its two-month-long refusal to support a ceasefire.
At the same time, the same activists are rightfully disgusted that the government took so long to take even a modest stand against a bloody siege that many rightfully recognize as a genocide.
In the time it took for Ottawa to decide that a ceasefire was worth supporting, over 18,000 Palestinian people have been killed and nearly 50,000 wounded. The majority of the people killed and wounded are women and children. Eighty-five percent of the people in Gaza have been displaced by the siege, according to the U.N.—this would be like having over 32 million of Canada’s 38 million people displaced.
The government’s public statements on the ceasefire vote have been contradictory, leaving many people concerned that the Liberals will quickly weasel their way out of any commitment to action. When Trudeau has used the word “ceasefire” (which is not very often), he has stressed that it must be “sustainable” but has avoided saying it must be permanent.
His government took great pains to amend the previous U.N. resolution for a ceasefire, on Oct. 27, to make it explicitly condemn Hamas. When the amendment failed, Canada abstained from voting on the resolution. Trudeau’s current qualified call for a “sustainable ceasefire” suggests that the government is still guided by the same thinking.
The Canadian government needs to issue a clear, public call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire, beginning with and focused on Israel’s vicious offensive against the people of Gaza. Imposing conditions through an assumed moral equivalency between Israel’s violence and that of Hamas will only stall a ceasefire before it can even begin.
Ottawa also needs to back up a real call for a ceasefire by ending its military support for the genocidal siege itself. Canada can and should immediately halt shipments of arms to Israel. Where the government has so far failed to do this, protesters have tried by blockading arms manufacturers like L3Harris and Lockheed Martin.
Certainly, it is positive that Canada has finally been pushed to support a ceasefire. But this only makes the work of the peace and solidarity movements more urgent and more important. Over the past nine weeks, millions of people in this country have protested and petitioned the government, and that wave of mobilization needs to continue—and grow—if Ottawa is to be pushed from words to real action.
Demonstrators demanding a Gaza cease-fire protest outside Penn Station in New York City on December 18, 2023. (Photo: caren/X)
“We must stand up and not be silent to this injustice,” said one rabbi taking part in the demonstration.
A coordinated wave of demonstrations against what activists called Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza targeted New York City transit hubs Monday afternoon, with protesters demanding an immediate cease-fire as heavy Israeli bombardment of the besieged strip pushed the death toll from 73 days of attacks to nearly 20,000.
Protesters marched from Grand Central Station to the Port Authority Bus Terminal and then on to Penn Station, where at least hundreds of activists gave police the slip and occupied Moynihan Hall. Many participants prayed for peace before leaving the station.
“We must stand up and not be silent to this injustice,” Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss toldamNewYork Metro outside Grand Central Station. “We hurt and cry with the people who are dying and suffering under the stranglehold of the Zionist occupation. We want the world to know that we hurt because we are Jews, we will not be silent because we are Jews.”
#BREAKING Pro-Palestinian Protesters rushed the entrance of Penn Station as cops ran closely behind them, they are now occupying Moynihan Hall inside.
Independent photojournalist Katie Smith followed the entire demonstration—which was coordinated by the group Within Our Lifetime—documenting incidents including police “violently engaging with protesters” and a confrontation between the actor Alec Baldwin and activists.
According to Smith, activists later marched to a building in Greenwich Village where a fundraiser for the Israel Defense Forces was reportedly being held.
Monday’s actions followed recent protests in New York, including a Manhattan march led by artists remembering the life and work of Refaat Alareer—a Gaza poet and professor killed last week in an Israeli airstrike—and calling on Israel to free political prisoners including the members of Freedom Theater recently arrested in Jenin in the illegally occupied West Bank.
In recent days, large protests for Gaza have also taken place in U.S. cities including Houston, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C., as well as in cities in countries including the U.K., Canada, France, Belgium, Norway, and Germany.
In California, workers at Google and allies held a Thursday die-in at the tech giant’s San Francisco office “to demand the company stop powering Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza” through the $1.2 billion Project Nimbus cloud computing contract.
More protests are planned for this week, including a nationwide action by Mennonites on Tuesday and a rally by over 80 groups on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. that same day.
Sponsored by the Action Center on Race and Economy, Adalah Justice Project, Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, and the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, Tuesday’s D.C. event is being held to “demand a permanent cease-fire in Gaza and oppose the Biden administration’s proposed military aid package sending billions of taxpayer dollars to Israel, U.S. southern border militarization, and immigration enforcement.”
A view of empty shelves are seen at a supermarket amidst Israel’s bombardments as Palestinians have trouble finding necessary food in Khan Yunis, Gaza on November 11, 2023. (Photo: Mustafa Hassona/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“It’s critical to understand this is not simply a byproduct of the conflict, an unfortunate result of a terrible situation,” said one campaigner. “It is Israeli government policy.”
From bombing food production hubs and systematically razing crop fields to halting aid deliveries, Israel is waging a multi-pronged effort to starve the people of Gaza amid the Israel Defense Forces’ bombardment of the enclave, Human Rights Watch said in a report Monday—with evidence drawn from the Israeli government’s own statements as well as survivors’ accounts.
The group demanded that countries such as the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and others that have provided Israel with military aid and other support since the country began its latest escalation against Gaza in October speak out against the use of starvation as a weapon of warfare—a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
“For over two months, Israel has been depriving Gaza’s population of food and water, a policy spurred on or endorsed by high-ranking Israeli officials and reflecting an intent to starve civilians as a method of warfare,” said Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch (HRW). “World leaders should be speaking out against this abhorrent war crime, which has devastating effects on Gaza’s population.”
The Israeli government is using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare in the Gaza Strip.
HRW pointed to satellite imagery it has collected in northern Gaza since the IDF began its air and ground assault in retaliation for an attack by Hamas on southern Israel on October 7.
The images have shown orchards, greenhouses, and farmland that have been razed over the last two months, “apparently by Israeli forces, compounding concerns of dire food insecurity.”
Only sand and dirt have been left behind where farmers in northeastern Gaza grew citrus, potatoes, dragon fruit, and prickly pear since Israeli forces took control of the area in mid-November and “systematically razed” the fields, said the group.
🚨The 🇮🇱Israeli government is using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare in the occupied Gaza Strip.
Palestinians in Gaza, home to about 2.3 million people, have lost the ability to grow their own food as Israel has refused to allow food, water, and fuel deliveries into the enclave, leaving bakeries and grocery store shelves empty.
Before the Israeli bombardment began, about 500 aid trucks filled with food and other goods entered Gaza on a daily basis to provide sustenance amid Israel’s unlawful occupation and its land, air, and sea blockade that began 16 years ago. Israel has allowed only 100 aid trucks to cross through Egypt’s Rafah crossing since October 7. The U.N. humanitarian coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Lynn Hastings, said earlier this month that fuel deliveries—needed for farming, cooking, water desalination, healthcare operations, and other necessities—have been “utterly insufficient.”
Prior to the current escalation, about half of Gaza’s population was facing acute food insecurity and 80% were reliant on humanitarian aid.
The World Food Program (WFP) at the U.N. said earlier this month that 9 in 10 households in northern Gaza and 2 in 3 homes in the south had been without food for at least one full day and night since Israel’s assault. It also warned that 38% of families who had been displaced from their homes in northern Gaza were experiencing “severe levels of hunger” and that the enclave faces a “high risk of famine.”
“It’s critical to understand this is not simply a byproduct of the conflict, an unfortunate result of a terrible situation. It is Israeli government policy,” said Andrew Stroehlein, European media and editorial director for HRW.
In addition to the halting of aid and the destruction of Gaza’s agricultural sector, the last operational wheat mill was bombed on November 15 ensureing “that locally produced flour will be unavailable in Gaza for the foreseeable future,” said HRW.
The group interviewed 11 civilians who described their struggles with finding sufficient food in recent weeks.
A man identified as Taher said that after his family fled south to Gaza City in November, they resorted to eating “just once a day to survive.”
“The city was out of everything, of food and water,” he told HRW. “If you find canned food, the prices were so high… We were running out of money. We decided to just have the necessities, to have less of everything.”
Majed, who left his home in the north after his house was bombed, killing his six-year-old son, said he, his wife, and their four surviving children had no way of making bread for more than a month when they temporarily stayed in Gaza City.
“In those 33 days we didn’t have bread because there was no flour,” he said. “There was no water—we were buying water, sometimes for $10 a cup. It wasn’t always drinkable. Sometimes, [the water we drank] was from the bathroom and sometimes from the sea. The markets around the area were empty. There wasn’t even canned food.”
HRW noted that the Israeli government itself has made numerous statements in recent weeks pointing to the deliberate destruction of Gaza’s food access and the starvation of civilians.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant infamously called Palestinians in Gaza “human animals” when he announced the “complete siege” and cutting off of aid into the enclave on October 9.
“No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel—everything is closed,” Gallant said.
Col. Yogev Bar-Shesht, deputy head of the Civil Administration, said in an interview that eliminating Palestinians’ ability to grow food is a deliberate tactic.
“Whoever returns here, if they return here after, will find scorched earth,” he said. “No houses, no agriculture, no nothing. They have no future.”
HRW’s report came as the death toll in Gaza hit at least 19,453, with more than 50,800 injured and thousands believed to be buried underneath rubble.
Article 54(1) of the First Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions and Article 14 of the Second Additional Protocol both prohibit starvation of civilians as a method of warfare.
“Although Israel is not a party to Protocols I or II, the prohibition is recognized as reflective of customary international humanitarian law in both international and noninternational armed conflicts,” said HRW.
The worsening humanitarian catastrophe, and Israel’s refusal to operate within the bounds of international law, “calls for an urgent and effective response from the international community,” said Shakir.
“The Israeli government is compounding its collective punishment of Palestinian civilians and the blocking of humanitarian aid,” he said, “by its cruel use of starvation as a weapon of war.”
Business leader says government tax credit for oil and gas ‘extends the life of Canada’s largest industrial sector.’
The government of Alberta, home to the tar sands pictured here, has announced taxpayer funding in the range of $3.5 billion to $5.3 billion for CCS projects. Credit: (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
As world leaders meet in Dubai for the COP28 climate negotiations, federal and provincial governments in Canada are preparing to give an estimated $15.3 billion in new subsidies to oil and gas companies, and other heavy emitters, for expanding the production of fossil fuels, according to climate experts.
Those subsidies are taking the form of massive new tax credits for carbon capture and storage (CCS), which is a technology that companies use to grow their extraction of oil and gas while burying a fraction of their greenhouse gas emissions underground.
“I completely agree that Canada’s tax credit for carbon capture and storage is a subsidy to the oil and gas industry,” Jason MacLean, an adjunct professor who studies climate policy at the University of Saskatchewan, told DeSmog in an email.
The federal Canadian government is close to announcing details on a tax credit that will go to top oil and gas companies like Suncor, Cenovus, and Imperial Oil, along with other major industrial polluters. Policymakers previously estimated the value of these investment tax credits to be $10 billion. The government of Alberta, home to the tar sands, has meanwhile announced taxpayer funding in the range of $3.5 billion to $5.3 billion for CCS projects.
The Pathways Alliance, an industry lobbying and marketing group representing 95 percent of tar sands production, says these tax credits are essential for oil and gas producers to lower their emissions in line with achieving “net-zero emissions” by 2050. Reaching “net-zero” entails stabilizing global temperature rise at 1.5 degrees Celsius, a level beyond which scientists warn the impacts to humankind could be catastrophic.
Yet, in submissions to the federal government, the Pathways Alliance explained that lowering a portion of oil sands emissions via carbon capture will create opportunities for the industry to expand globally — even as other countries move away from fossil fuels. “We believe Canada should seek to increase its market share for responsibly produced, lower emissions energy, even if global market demand, as a whole, begins to decline,” the group said in one submission.
“We need to keep in mind that this is about reducing emissions and not reducing production,” the organization said last year in a separate submission, as revealed by DeSmog.
Representatives of the Pathways Alliance are among the 35 people with ties to the fossil fuel sector who are part of Canada’s official delegation to COP28 this year. At the climate talks, they are pushing for policies supporting global deployment of carbon capture, which will allow companies to keep producing oil as countries get stricter about regulating emissions.
“It is really important for the energy industry in Canada because it extends the life of Canada’s largest industrial sector and maintains our competitiveness over the long term,” Scott Crockatt of the Business Council of Alberta told the Calgary Herald last month.
However, tax credits supporting carbon capture risk accelerating already dangerous levels of global temperature rise, MacLean argues. Even if the technology can fully capture emissions from the production of oil and gas in Canada — which is an expensive and uncertain proposition — the vast majority of climate impacts occur when fossil fuels are burned in places like car and truck engines and house furnaces.
“No possible innovation or improvement to [carbon capture technology] can change the fact that it applies only to the direct and upstream greenhouse gas emissions arising from the production of oil and gas, not the downstream emissions resulting from the combustion of oil and gas, which represent approximately 85 percent of the total emissions,” MacLean told DeSmog.
Allowing oil and gas to expand while relying on carbon capture could result in the release of 86 billion additional tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide between 2020 and 2050, according to a new analysis from the organization Climate Analytics. This “86 billion tonne carbon bomb” could derail efforts to keep global warming from exceeding dangerous thresholds, the group argues.
The Canadian government earlier this year unveiled detailed plans to remove “inefficient” oil and gas subsidies, with Environment and Climate Minister Steven Guilbeault saying at the time that “the simple reality is that it’s no longer free to pollute in Canada.”
But climate campaigners say that promise risks being completely undermined by the new carbon capture tax credits.
