Senior lawyer says ‘ink is almost dry’ on the guilt of many MPs who have enabled and covered Israel’s atrocities
Keir Starmer, Rishi Sunak and other UK MPs may be looking uneasily over their shoulder tonight after receiving a renewed warning from the lawyer leading a pro-Palestinian justice group about their own guilt regarding Israel’s war crimes, after International Criminal Court (ICC) chief prosecutor Karim Khan announced he has requested arrest warrants for Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and defence minister Yoav Gallant.
Tayab Ali, a partner in Bindmans, one of the world’s leading human rights law firms, and a director of the International Centre for Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) published his stark warning on Twitter/X this evening, telling MPs who have supported and enabled Israel’s atrocities against the people of Gaza that it is now too late for them to do much to avoid their guilt and complicity, because ‘the ink of history on your potential complicity is almost dry and you already made your decision’ – and that ICJP will be demanding personal legal accountability for guilty MPs:
Pro-Palestinian activists from the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign participate in the National March for Palestine on May 18, 2024, in Dublin, Ireland. (Photo: Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Organizers held rallies in the U.S., Europe, and Asia to mark Nakba Day and condemn Israel’s bombing and starvation of Palestinian civilians.
As one United Nations official on Saturday said that “brand new words” are needed to adequately describe the devastation Israel has wrought across Gaza in its U.S.-backed military assault, tens of thousands of people across the globe marched in solidarity with Palestinians to demand an end to the “ongoing Nakba.”
The marches were held to honor Nakba Day, which was marked on May 15—the 76th anniversary of the mass displacement of 700,000 Palestinians who were forced from their homes when Israel declared statehood in 1948. The protesters demanded a cease-fire in Gaza, where Israeli forces have killed at least 35,456 people since October, the majority of them women and children.
Protesters in London carried signs reading, “Solidarity is a verb,” and “The Nakba never ended” as they marched through Whitehall, close to the home and office of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
Palestinian photojournalist Motaz Azaiza, who covered the first months of Israel’s bombardment and evacuated Gaza in January, joined the marchers and told the crowd that mass protests around the world have given Palestinians hope.
“I didn’t believe that I would stay alive to stand here in London today in front of the people, who saw me there under the bombing,” said Azaiza. “Occupation is using all the weapons against us, the bombs, the killing, the starvation, the apartheid in the West Bank, and now killing the people and forcing them to leave their lands… I did my best to show you, and I believe you will do more, we all together will do more to stop this genocide.”
"You make us as the people of Gaza start to feel hope again"
In Dublin, Ireland, where politicians have harshly criticized Israel and its supporters for the assault on Gaza and the near-total blockade on humanitarian aid that has pushed parts of the enclave into famine, more than 100 civil society groups supported a march organized by the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign.
Irish Palestinian Zak Hania, a researcher and translator who was trapped in Gaza until earlier this month when he was finally granted permission by Egyptian and Israeli authorities to leave, thanked the crowd for choosing “to stand with justice and to stand with an oppressed people.”
“I am proud to be an Irish Palestinian,” said Hania. “I am proud to see all of you. It is part of my healing… We inherited a dream from our parents. We are trying for all our lives to fulfill our dreams and our parents’ dreams. My parents are dead, but I will work to fulfill their dreams. Their dream is to have a free Palestine.”
Other protests included a rally outside the German embassy in Bangkok, a march of about 400 people in Washington, D.C., and a demonstration in Brooklyn where police violently arrested at least 34 people, according to The New York Times.
Nerdeen Kiswani, founder of pro-Palestinian group Within Our Lifetime, told the Times she witnessed “police indiscriminately grabbing people off the street and the sidewalk. They were grabbing people at random.”
Independent journalists posted videos on social media of police officers punching and kicking protesters.
The latest show of global outrage toward the Israeli government and the Western leaders who have supported its assault on Gaza came as U.N. humanitarian aid officer Yasmina Guerda told U.N. News about her latest deployment to Rafah, where 900,000 people have now been forced to flee following Israel’s incursion in the city.
“We would need to invent brand new words to adequately describe the situation that Palestinians in Gaza find themselves in today,” said Guerda. “No matter where you look, no matter where you go, there’s destruction, there’s devastation, there’s loss. There’s a lack of everything. There’s pain. There’s just incredible suffering. People are living on top of the rubble and the waste that used to be their lives. They’re hungry. Everything has become absolutely unaffordable. I heard the other day that some eggs were being sold for $3 each, which is unthinkable for someone who has no salary and has lost all access to their bank accounts.”
“Access to clean water is a daily battle,” she added. “Many people haven’t been able to change clothes in seven months because they just had to flee with whatever they were wearing. They were given 10 minutes notice and they had to run away. Many have been displaced six, seven, eight times, or more.“
The daily reality described by Guerda is continuing to unfold as the Israeli forces have prevented 3,000 aid trucks from entering Gaza in the past two weeks, according to the Government Media Office in the enclave. The closure of the Rafah and Karem Abu Salem crossings for the past 13 days, since Israel launched its new offensive in Rafah, has also prevented nearly 700 injured and sick people from leaving Gaza for treatment.
“This constitutes a clear danger in light of the collapse of the health system,” said the office.
On Sunday, U.N. humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths warned that the blockade on aid is leading to “apocalyptic” consequences, with the famine that has taken hold in parts of northern Gaza close to spreading across the enclave.
“If fuel runs out, aid doesn’t get to the people where they need it, that famine, which we have talked about for so long, and which is looming, will not be looming any more,” said Griffiths. “It will be present.”
U.S. and Israeli troops assemble the Trident Pier off the shore of the northern Gaza Strip on April 26, 2024. (Photo: U.S. Army Central Command)
“It’s completely absurd,” said one humanitarian worker. “The solution to the problem here is obvious.”
As humanitarian shipments began trickling into Gaza via a U.S.-built temporary floating pier, Palestinians and aid workers on Friday renewed criticism of what they called an expensive and largely ineffectual publicity stunt that is no substitute for a cease-fire and opening of more land crossings into the besieged coastal enclave.
U.S. Army Central Command said that “trucks carrying humanitarian assistance began moving ashore” at around 9:00 am local time Friday as part of “an ongoing, multinational effort to deliver additional aid to Palestinian civilians in Gaza via a maritime corridor.”
The $320 million Trident Pier—which consists of a floating offshore barge and 1,800-foot causeway to the shore—is expected to eventually accommodate up to 150 trucks per day. According to United Nations agencies, an average of 200 trucks entered Gaza each day last month, far fewer than the prewar daily mean of more than 500 truckloads that U.S. and U.N. officials say are required to meet the needs of a population facing critical shortages of food, water, medicine, and other lifesaving supplies.
“We don’t want ships. We want the border crossing to open for people to come and go. We want safety.”
However, as famine grips northern Gaza—with malnutrition and dehydration killing dozens of people, mostly children—and at least hundreds of thousands of other Palestinians starve, Israel has been accused of blocking aid from those who desperately need it and using starvation as a weapon of war.
“We don’t want ships. We want the border crossing to open for people to come and go. We want safety. We want official borders,” Hassan Abu Al-Kass, a forcibly displaced Palestinian man, toldThe New York Times on Thursday.
Al-Kass compared the pier to the humanitarian aid airdropped by U.S. and other troops over Gaza, whose officials say that more than 20 people have been killed by the parachuting parcels, either by crushing or drowning while trying to reach offshore drops.
“Those planes, as well, that they bring here with the parachutes, and they throw food at us like dogs, like beggars, that does not work,” he said. “It falls on houses. It falls on people. It brings us problems.”
One unnamed humanitarian aid worker told U.S. investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill: “It’s completely absurd. The solution to the problem here is obvious and we need to end the occupation… Once the siege is lifted, humanitarian aid can roll in. A pier is a PR move.”
The fact that the US is establishing a pier off the Gaza coast because the genocidal Israeli government, which the US funds, arms, politically bolsters & shields from international & US law, won't allow aid into Gaza by land is a damning statement about the Biden administration.
Farhan Haq, deputy spokesperson for U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, said Thursday that “to stave off the horrors of famine, we must use the fastest and most obvious route to reach the people of Gaza—and for that, we need access by land now.”
Washington Post columnist Ishaan Tharoor noted on social media Thursday that “no major humanitarian organization has asked for this pier, and most see it as a costly distraction that will do little to make a dent in meeting Gaza’s overwhelming humanitarian needs.”
“For that,” he added, “you need a cease-fire and open border crossings and less military obstruction.”
According to a report published last month, officials at the United States Agency for International Development concluded in a confidential memo to Secretary of State Antony Blinken that Israel is violating a White House directive by blocking humanitarian aid from entering Gaza. Critics pointed to the leaked memo as more evidence that the Biden administration is breaking the law by supporting Israel’s assault on Gaza—which Palestinian and international officials say has killed, wounded, or left missing more than 125,000 people—with arms and diplomatic cover.
Parties to the South African-led genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, as well as human rights groups, accuse Israel of flouting the ICJ’s January 26 preliminary ruling ordering the Israeli government to prevent genocidal acts in Gaza and ensure immediate delivery of humanitarian aid. Israel rejects charges of genocide and blocking aid.
Hundreds of U.N. and other aid workers—overwhelmingly Palestinians—have also been killed or wounded by Israeli forces in Gaza since October 7. Israeli troops have been accused of deliberately attacking both humanitarian workers and Palestinians trying to receive aid, including in the February 29 “Flour Massacre,” in which nearly 900 starving Gazans were killed or wounded while waiting for food distribution south of Gaza City.
.@UNinIndia joins the Govt and people of India & UNSG @antonioguterres in expressing our deep sadness and condolences to the family and loved ones of Colonel Waibhav Anil Kale (retd). A UN Officer in Gaza, Col Kale sacrificed his life serving the high purpose of peace & security pic.twitter.com/o9HCXGVqDD
— United Nations in India (@UNinIndia) May 15, 2024
Critics have slammed U.S. President Joe Biden for offering token aid to Gazans with one hand while lavishing Israel with billions of dollars of weaponry used to kill Palestinians with the other.
Earlier this month, Biden said he would stop sending bombs, artillery shells, and other arms to Israel in the event of a major invasion of Rafah, where more than a million Palestinians forcibly displaced from other parts of the embattled Gaza Strip are sheltering alongside around 280,000 local residents.
However, as Israeli air and ground attacks pound the southern city, killing civilians including 22 members of one family in a single strike, Biden—who previously implored Israel to stop its “indiscriminate bombing” of Palestinian noncombatants—informed Congress this week that his administration will soon send another $1 billion in arms and ammunition, including tank and mortar rounds, to the Israel Defense Forces.
This, despite the Biden administration last week acknowledging “reasonable” evidence that Israel is using U.S.-supplied weapons in the commission of war crimes in Gaza, with the caveat that “we are not able to reach definitive conclusions” on the matter.
Suella Braverman has been ridiculed after an excruciating attempt to engage with students at a protest camp in support of Palestine outside the University of Cambridge.
Visiting the camp on Thursday with GB News presenter Patrick Christys, the Tory MP was met with a wall of silence as she and the presenter attempted to talk with activists.
The former Home Secretary tried a number of times to ask questions, but was met on all occasions with no response during the humiliating two and half minute encounter.
She introduced herself with, “Hi, I’m Suella I’m keen to find out your views and what you’re protesting about.” But protesters didn’t give them the response they were after, instead they just stood and stared back.
Braverman persisted asking questions such as, “I’m interested in why you’re covering your faces. Is it a Covid or a health measure?” and “I’m really keen to hear what your message is to Israel.”
A Palestinian boy observes the site of an Israeli strike on a school sheltering displaced people in the central Gaza Strip on May 14, 2024. (Photo” Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
The University Network for Human Rights report also stresses that other nations are legally obligated to “refrain from recognizing Israel’s breaches as legal or taking any actions that may amount to complicity.”
The University Network for Human Rights on Wednesday released and sent to United Nations offices a 105-page report that it called “the most thorough legal analysis” yet to find “Israel is committing genocide” against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
The network partnered with the International Human Rights Clinic at Boston University School of Law, the International Human Rights Clinic at Cornell Law School, the Center for Human Rights at the University of Pretoria, and the Lowenstein Human Rights Project at Yale Law School for the analysis, which draws from “a diverse range of credible sources” and the territory’s history.
“After reviewing the facts established by independent human rights monitors, journalists, and United Nations agencies, we conclude that Israel’s actions in and regarding Gaza since October 7, 2023, violate the Genocide Convention,” the report states. “Israel has committed genocidal acts of killing, causing serious harm to, and inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza, a protected group that forms a substantial part of the Palestinian people.”
As of May 1, Israel’s assault had killed “more than 5% of Gaza’s population, with over 2% of Gaza’s children killed or injured,” the analysis notes. In recent days, Israeli forces have ramped up their attack on Rafah—where over a million people from other parts of the besieged enclave sought refuge—and the total death toll has risen to 35,233, according to Gaza health officials, with another 79,141 Palestinians injured.
“Israel’s military operation has destroyed up to 70% of homes in Gaza, and has decimated civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, schools, universities, U.N. facilities, and cultural and religious heritage sites,” the document says, noting the “staggering” number of forced displacements. “Civilians in Gaza face catastrophic levels of hunger and deprivation due to Israel’s restriction on, and failure to ensure adequate access to, basic essentials of life, including food, water, medicine, and fuel.”
“Children who do survive this war will not only bear the visible wounds of traumatic injuries, but the invisible ones too. . . . There is a repeated displacement, constant fear and witnessing family members literally dismembered before their eyes” (@MSF).
— University Network for Human Rights (@unitedforrights) May 15, 2024
“Israel’s genocidal acts in Gaza have been motivated by the requisite genocidal intent, as evidenced in this report by the statements of Israeli leaders, the character of the state and its military forces’ conduct against and relating to Palestinians in Gaza, and the direct nexus between them,” the publication continues, pointing to comments from “officials at all levels of Israeli government, up to and including” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Israel has faced mounting allegations of genocide since launching its retaliation for the Hamas-led October 7 attack—including an ongoing South Africa-led case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which found in January that the country is “plausibly” committing genocide.
Bolstering the ICJ’s conclusion, the Wednesday report declares that “Israel’s violations of the international legal prohibition of genocide amount to grave breaches of peremptory norms of international law that must cease immediately.”
“These violations give rise to obligations by all other states: to refrain from recognizing Israel’s breaches as legal or taking any actions that may amount to complicity in these breaches; and to take positive steps to suppress, prevent, and punish the commission by Israel of further genocidal acts against the Palestinian people in Gaza,” the document adds.
The United States has long provided Israel with billions of dollars in military aid and diplomatic support—which have soared since October 7, despite growing pressure on U.S. President Joe Biden to cut off such assistance. The Democrat has incrementally increased his criticism of the Israeli assault in recent weeks, angering far-right leaders in both countries.
The new legal analysis—which was sent to the U.N.’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect, and the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel—came on the same day that 20 human rights groups issued a joint statement.
The rights organizations—including Amnesty International, Mercy Corps, and Oxfam—called on world leaders “to urgently act in bringing to an end, and pursue accountability for,” Israel’s grave breaches of international humanitarian law in Gaza.
Both documents were released on Nakba Day, which commemorates the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians during the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. Some experts and campaigners contend that the Nakba—Arabic for catastrophe—continues today.
