South Africa has launched a case against Israel at the UN’s international court of justice (ICJ) accusing the state of committing genocide in its military campaign in Gaza.
Israel responded to the allegations “with disgust”, calling South Africa’s case a “blood libel” and urging the ICJ to reject it.
Any case at the ICJ is likely to take years to resolve, but South Africa has called for the court to convene in the next few days to issue “provisional measures” calling for a ceasefire. In March 2022, the ICJ ordered Russia to halt its offensive in Ukraine, an order which was supposed to be legally binding, but Moscow ignored it anyway. Any such ruling however is likely to significantly sway international public opinion.
“The acts and omissions by Israel complained of by South Africa are genocidal in character because they are intended to bring about the destruction of a substantial part of the Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group,” the South African application to open proceedings said.
“Provisional measures are necessary in this case to protect against further, severe and irreparable harm to the rights of the Palestinian people under the Genocide Convention, which continue to be violated with impunity.”
Article IX of the Genocide Convention allows any state party to the convention to bring a case against another to the ICJ, even if it doesn’t have any direct link to the conflict in question. Last year, the court ruled that the Gambia could bring a genocide claim against Myanmar. The court also ruled in a case between Croatia and Serbia that depriving a people of food, shelter, medical care and other means of subsistence constitutes genocidal acts.
Search and rescue efforts for those trapped under rubble continue after Israel bombed the Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza on December 25, 2023. (Photo: Ali Jadallah/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“So long as Netanyahu faces no consequences, even more innocent civilians will face death and starvation,” said one U.S. lawmaker.
The Israeli military on Tuesday expanded its ground assault to refugee camps in central Gaza, forcing displaced people to flee in terror from an area that was once considered a relative safe zone as the rest of the strip came under near-constant bombardment.
Over the weekend, U.S.-armed Israeli forces pummeled central Gaza with airstrikes, reducing the Maghazi refugee camp to ruins and killing more than 100 people in one of the deadliest bombings since the devastating military campaign began in early October. Many more people are believed to be trapped under the rubble in Maghazi.
The Associated Press reported Tuesday that the Israeli military has “ordered residents to evacuate a belt of territory the width of central Gaza, urging them to move to nearby Deir al-Balah.” According to the United Nations, more than 61,000 people were sheltering in the area Israel is now targeting.
“Residents of central Gaza described shelling and airstrikes shaking the Nuseirat, Maghazi, and Bureij camps,” AP reported. “The built-up towns hold Palestinians driven from their homes in what is now Israel during the 1948 war, along with their descendants.”
One mother of four told Middle East Eye that she “started crying hysterically” when she heard the news that Israel had deemed areas of central Gaza battle zones and issued evacuation orders.
“Where would I go with these children?” she asked. “We do not have any relatives in Deir al-Balah.”
Seif Magango, a spokesperson for the U.N. Human Rights Office, said in a statement Tuesday that he is “gravely concerned about the continued bombardment of Middle Gaza by Israeli forces.”
“It is particularly concerning that this latest intense bombardment comes after Israeli forces ordered residents from the south of Wadi Gaza to move to Middle Gaza and Tal al-Sultan in Rafah,” Magango continued. “Israeli forces must take all measures available to protect civilians. Warnings and evacuation orders do not absolve them of the full range of their international humanitarian law obligations.”
Israel’s expansion of its ground assault came days after the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) approved a binding resolution calling for an increase in humanitarian aid to Gaza and urgent steps to “create the conditions for a sustainable cessation of hostilities.”
An initial draft of the resolution called for an “urgent and sustainable cessation of hostilities,” but the U.S.—which has veto power at the UNSC—watered the measure down. The U.S. ultimately abstained from the final vote, allowing it to pass.
This is what the US chose. More civilian suffering & death. The impunity must end @IntlCrimCourt@USUN
“Israeli forces on Tuesday expanded their ground offensive into urban refugee camps in central Gaza after bombarding the crowded Palestinian communities”https://t.co/xZWnk6bkT4
Passage of the U.N. resolution has done nothing to deter the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) from intensifying their attacks on areas packed with civilians, many of whom have been displaced multiple times in less than three months.
More than 90% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million has been forced to flee their homes due to Israel’s airstrikes and ground invasion, which began following a deadly Hamas-led attack on southern Israel. Around 60% of Gaza’s housing infrastructure has been destroyed or damaged by Israeli forces, leaving displaced people with nothing to return to—if they’re able to return at all.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly suggested Monday that he’s looking for countries to “absorb” displaced Gazans, intensifying fears that a goal of the ongoing assault on Gaza is the permanent removal of the Palestinian population.
The U.S., meanwhile, has not wavered in its unconditional military support for Israel, even as the country’s government has defied its meager calls for the protection of Gaza civilians. The Biden administration has reportedly delivered more than 10,000 tons of military equipment to Israel since October, including 2,000-pound bombs that Israel has dropped on densely populated areas.
In a social media post on Tuesday, U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) argued that the Biden administration’s “begging Netanyahu to safeguard civilians while sending him weapons and abstaining on even the most modest U.N. resolution has failed.”
“So long as Netanyahu faces no consequences,” Doggett added, “even more innocent civilians will face death and starvation.”
Airplanes are seen on a tarmac. (Photo: Afif Ramdhasuma on Unsplash)
Organizers demonstrated to call attention to the ongoing forced displacement of Palestinians and the denial of their right to return home.
More than two dozen human rights campaigners were arrested on Wednesday for blocking Interstate 678, the Van Wyck Expressway, in New York—the road that leads to John F. Kennedy International Airport—in one of the latest highway protests demanding justice for Palestinians.
The protesters blocked the road at about 11:30 am and continued the action for about 20 minutes, The Messenger reported, displaying banners that read, “Right to Return, Right to Remain” and “Divest From Genocide.”
Independent journalist Talia Jane reported that the protesters aimed to call attention to the Israeli government’s denial of the Palestinian people’s right to return to their homes, which they were forced to flee in 1948 when the state of Israel was created.
Happening now: Activists have blockaded entry to JFK International Airport on one of the busiest travel days of the year to bring attention to the humanitarian right to return home, which has been withheld from Palestinians for decades. pic.twitter.com/p0Hhqv7V4E
The protest was held on the 81st day of Israel’s U.S.-backed bombardment of Gaza, which has killed at least 21,110 people and injured more than 55,000, as well as displacing more than 80% of the blockaded enclave’s population.
The campaigners linked arms and blocked the expressway days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly said the government’s objective is the so-called “voluntary” migration of Gaza’s 2.3 million people—another mass displacement of Palestinians nearly 75 years after they were driven from what is now Israel.
Some travelers headed for JFK on the busy holiday travel day exited their vehicles and walked to the airport with their luggage.
At least one told the demonstrators, “Good luck,” as she climbed over a highway barricade to get to the airport.
26 activists blockading the expressway to JFK Airport have been arrested and loaded into a bus. Travelers exited their taxis and walked to the airport, most silent but one saying “Good luck” and “I support you guys.” pic.twitter.com/968WTmOupX
The Port Authority of New York told The Messenger that 26 people were arrested “for disorderly conduct and impeding vehicular traffic” and that officials dispatched two buses to offer rides to travelers.
The outlet reported that protesters carrying signs that read, “Land Back” also assembled outside Los Angeles International Airport, blocking travelers from entering.
— People's City Council – Los Angeles (@PplsCityCouncil) December 27, 2023
National Jewish-led Palestinian rights groups Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow have blocked bridges and highways and organized mass protests in other travel hubs since Israel began its total blockade and air and ground assault in Gaza, which has threatened the population with starvation and disease as well as bombings.
Neither group had claimed responsibility for Wednesday’s protests at press time.
Reports show that Israeli forces are executing Palestinian civilians in Gaza in front of their families and keeping detainees in open air concentration camps in violation of international laws on warfare
Photo: Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor
A new video has emerged showing occupying Israeli forces using different forms of torture against scores of Palestinian detainees from Gaza in complete violation of established rules of warfare and human rights norms.
The video footage, released this past week by several media channels, showed Israeli forces stripping dozens of Palestinian detainees in an open field (apparently a stadium) and making them sit in a single file line. Some of the Palestinian detainees were blindfolded with their hands tied behind their backs and it is clear that there were children and toddlers among the detainees.
No, this is not a video from Nazi #Germany in the 1940s.
It is a video showing the Israeli occupation rounding stripped #Palestinian detainees in a stadium.
A child and a toddler can be seen in the horrific video.
This was second such incident in less than a month where Israeli forces have been found clearly violating norms of warfare, laws related to prisoners of war, and laws prohibiting torture.
On December 7, a similar set of videos and photos were broadcasted on an Israeli TV channel in which dozens of men stripped to their underwear were seen sitting in the middle of a street or taken away in a truck by Israeli forces. The report had claimed these were men affiliated to Palestinian resistance group, Hamas. Israelis also circulated a video wherein some of the detainees appear to surrender weapons.
Following the publication of those photos and videos, individuals on social media had questioned the claims of Israeli forces and identified their relatives, friends, and colleagues among those detained. They alleged that most of those in the video had nothing to do with Hamas and they were detained, humiliated and tortured by the invading Israeli forces. Many have also claimed that the Israeli forces who had filmed the Palestinian detainees, staged a fake surrender.
Al-Jazeerareported later that most of the men in the video were kidnapped by the Israelis from Khalifa Bin Zayed and New Aleppo schools used by the UNRWA to shelter some of the nearly 2 million displaced Palestinians, forced out of their homes because of Israeli bombings.
Urgent and impartial investigation in Israeli crimes is required
Mustafa Barghouti, head of the Palestinian National Initiative Party wrote on X (formerly Twitter), on December 20, that more than a thousand detainees, including the director of Al-Shifa hospital, are being subjected to brutal torture and severe beatings by the Israeli forces.
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, a Geneva-based human rights organization, has been gathering the testimonies of the Palestinians tortured under Israeli detention, and has called for an urgent and impartial investigation into those allegations of human rights violations and war crimes.
Some of the Palestinians released from Israeli detention narrated their harrowing experience to the media saying that they were drugged and beaten by the Israeli forces to force them to admit they were Hamas fighters.
Some of them had visible marks of torture on their bodies. The released detainees also said that some of their fellow prisoners have not been released and have probably been killed.
Two such former detainees, 22-year-old Nayef Ali and 55-year-old Khamis al-Bardini were quoted by the AFP saying that Israeli forces, after arresting them from eastern Gaza’s Zaitun suburb, tied their hands behind their backs for two full days.
“We were not allowed to eat or drink, neither we were…allowed to use toilets” Nayef Ali had stated. He also added that during the entire time of their detention they were beaten up by the Israeli troops who also “threw cold water on us before transferring us to a prison.” They were beaten up and tortured in the prison as well.
Breaking: Released Gaza residents share harrowing accounts of Israeli forces' brutal torture. From beatings, verbal abuse, and forced hallucinogenic pills for confessions to degrading acts like making them howl like dogs, stripping them naked, and falsely portraying them as Hamas… pic.twitter.com/anmf5roOwv
Israeli soldiers have also been accused of killing Palestinians detainees in Gaza at point blank range on several occasions since October 7. Some of these killings have been acknowledged by the United Nations.
The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) issued a statement on December 20 confirming the news of 11 Palestinians killed in cold blood, in front of their family members, by the Israeli armed forces in Al-Remel neighborhood in Gaza on December 19.
The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor has also documented that one of the camps run by the Israeli forces to keep the Palestinian detainees, Sde Teman, is like a new Guantanamo Bay, the infamous US detention center created during the so-called war on terror on occupied Cuban land used to torture hundreds of detainees allegedly involved in terrorist activities.
Children crying following the Israeli bombing of Khan Yunis, Gaza on October 15, 2023. (Photo by Ahmad Hasaballah/Getty Images)
Congress is poised to send $14.3 billion to Israeli militarism—a “genocide tax” on U.S. taxpayers—without public hearings. What can be done to stop this madness?
The unstoppable Israeli U.S. armed military juggernaut continues its genocidal destruction of Gaza’s Palestinians. The onslaught includes blocking the provision of “food, water, medicine, electricity and fuel,” openly genocidal orders decreed by Netanyahu and his extreme, blood-thirsty ministers.
The stunning atrocities going on day after day is being recorded by U.S. drones over Gaza and by brave Palestinian journalists directly targeted by the Israeli army. Over 66 journalists and larger numbers of their families have been slain. Israel has excluded foreign and Israeli journalists for years from Gaza.
This no-holds-barred ferocity came out of the Israeli government’s slumber on October 7th which allowed a few thousand Hamas and other fighters to take their smuggled hand-held weapons and attack soldiers and civilians before being destroyed or driven back to Gaza.
Seventy-five years of Israel military violence against defenseless Palestinians and fifty-six years of violently and illegally occupying their remaining slice of the original Palestine provides some background for Israel’s Founder, David Ben-Gurion’s candid statement: “We have taken their country.” (See, his full statement here).
The overwhelming military superiority of Israel – a nuclear armed nation – in the Middle East has produced a more aggressive Israeli government. Being more secure than ever before doesn’t seem to temper the expansionist missions of right-wing Israeli colonies in the West Bank.
Presently, the narrow Netanyahu majority in the Parliament believes that “nothing can stop us.” Presently, they are right.
Joe Biden and Congress are vigorously enabling the annihilations. The UN is frozen by the Joe Biden administration’s vetoes in the Security Council against ending the carnage in Gaza. The Arab nations either lay in ruins – Syria, Iraq – or are too weak to cause Israeli generals any worry. The rich Arab nations in the Gulf want to do business with prosperous Israel and, other than Qatar, care little about their Palestinian brethren.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) are no obstacle. Israel, along with Russia and the U.S. do not belong to the International Criminal Court. The Palestinian Authority is a party, but the practical difficulties of investigating Israeli war crimes in Gaza and apprehending the accused are insurmountable. The ICJ’s jurisdiction requires a country to bring Israel before the Court for war crimes or genocide. In any event, the Court’s lead-footed procedures trespass on eternity. So much for international law and the Geneva Conventions. Netanyahu rejects the moral authority of seventeen Israeli human rights groups, including Rabbis and reservist soldiers. Their open letter to President Biden in the December 13, 2023 issue of the New York Times on “The Humanitarian Catastrophe in the Gaza Strip” was ignored by the media despite the truth and courage it embodied.
In the U.S., protests and demonstrations are everywhere. Many are organized by Jewish human rights groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace, If Not Now, Standing Together, Veterans for Peace and various student organizations. Everywhere Biden travels there are people from all backgrounds protesting.
A few days ago, the first protests by labor union members occurred in Oakland, California. Union activists could turn their attention to why, for years, union leaders put billions of dollars into riskier lower-interest Israeli bonds rather than U.S. Treasuries or bond funds investing in America. Like U.S. weapon deliveries, purchases of Israeli bonds by states, cities and unions have surged since October 7th.
Pope Francis, informed of the Israeli attack on the only Catholic Church and Convent in Gaza, which housed people with disabilities, killing and injuring Christians sheltering there, sorrowfully said: “Some would say, ‘It is war. It is terrorism.’ Yes, it is war. It is terrorism.”
In 2015, over 400 Rabbis from Israel, the USA and Canada called on Prime Minister Netanyahu to stop the practice of demolishing hundreds of Palestinian homes as being contrary to international law and Jewish tradition. Their successors Rabbis for Human Rights are being ignored by the regime.
The Head of the U.S. Bishops Conference and the National Council of Churches, representing millions of parishioners, condemned the bombings but received little coverage.
There is only one institution that could stop Netanyahu’s mass military massacres of the Palestinian people. That is the U.S. Congress. As long as over 90% of the politicians there automatically support AIPAC, the Israeli Government Can Do No Wrong Lobby, even a peace-loving Joe Biden cannot deter Netanyahu. Bibi (his nickname) could simply say to a hypothetically transformed Biden “Joe, take it up with OUR Congress.”
How has AIPAC achieved such domination on Capitol Hill? By years of relentless lobbying and the smear of “anti-semitism” to anyone defying them. AIPAC and its chapters don’t bother with marches or demonstrations. They personally focus on the legislator – one by one. Carrots or sticks. Praise, PAC money and junkets are the Carrots. The Sticks are smears and money for selected primary challengers in their Districts or States. Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN) called AIPAC “a Hate Group.”
There are about 300,000 citizens spending significant time back in the states working Congress in AIPAC’s favor. They know the doctors, lawyers, accountants, clergy, local politicians, donors, golf champions and other friends of the Senators and Representatives, and forcefully promote Israeli expansionism backed to the hilt by the U.S. government.
AIPAC is proficient in part for lack of any organized opposition. It is also practicing state-of-the-art non-stop grassroots lobbying.
Congress is poised to send $14.3 billion to Israeli militarism—a “genocide tax” on U.S. taxpayers—without public hearings. While growing public opinion in the U.S. is against unconditional backing of the Israeli regime, it has not changed a single vote in Congress. Someday, more organized support for America’s national interest will.
(For calls to your legislators, the Congressional switchboard is 202-224-3121.)
