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Tag: International Court of Justice (ICJ)

  • ‘Baseless Lies Meant to Sanitize His Genocide’: Mamdani Hits Back After Netanyahu’s Attacks During UN Speech

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

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu holds up a pager as he speaks during the 81st United Nations General Assembly at UN Headquarters in New York on September 24, 2026.
     (Photo by Timothy Clary/AFP via Getty Images)

    “No lie can change the fact that he remains the subject of an International Criminal Court arrest warrant alleging war crimes and crimes against humanity,” New York City’s mayor said of the Israeli prime minister

    New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani hit back Thursday after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took to the United Nations General Assembly podium to accuse him of supporting Hamas and making Jewish New Yorkers feel unsafe—remarks that came after delegates from scores of countries walked out of the chamber to protest the far-right fugitive’s presence.

    Refuting allegations that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza—where Israeli forces have killed more than 73,000 Palestinians, including more than 21,500 children, since the Hamas-led attack of October 2023—Netanyahu said, “To all those spreading these lies about my country and about our brave soldiers, whether they sit in this hall or in the office of the antisemitic mayor of New York City, I say this: Shame on you.”

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    “Mr. Mamdani, since you were elected mayor of this city, many Jews no longer feel safe in New York,” the prime minister claimed. “It’s no wonder… You falsely and repeatedly accuse Israel of genocide. Israel didn’t commit genocide. Israel prevented genocide. And that’s exactly what Mr. Mamdani’s Hamas buddies would have done to us had we not stopped them. They would have killed every last one of us.”

    Mamdani issued a statement later Thursday saying: “As he has done time and again, Prime Minister Netanyahu used his speech to repeat baseless lies meant to sanitize his genocide of Palestinians. Yet no lie can change the fact that he remains the subject of an International Criminal Court arrest warrant alleging war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

    Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister, are fugitives from the International Criminal Court, where they are accused of murder and forced starvation of Palestinians in Gaza. The ICC also issued arrest warrants for three Hamas leaders, but Israel assassinated them.

    While neither Israel nor the United States is a party to the Rome Statute governing the ICC, the treaty states that people from nonsignatory states who commit alleged crimes in states that are party to the treaty—as Palestine is—can be arrested in third countries and subsequently tried by the court.

    Mamdani has said that Netanyahu should be arrested and brought before the Hague-based tribunal for trial, but that he lacks the legal authority to apprehend the prime minister in New York.

    The International Court of Justice—also located in The Hague, Netherlands—is currently processing a genocide case filed against Israel by South Africa and formally supported by nearly 20 nations. The case is based on what the ICJ called the plausibility that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. The court has issued a series of provisional orders for Israel to adhere to the Genocide Convention—orders that critics say Israel has simply ignored.

    Last year, an independent UN commission of inquiry found that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza, a conclusion shared by the International Association of Genocide Scholars and other experts including many Israeli and diaspora Jewish academics, jurists, human rights campaigners, and others.

    As Netanyahu prepared to deliver his UN speech Thursday, delegates from a reported 77 nations walked out of the chamber in protest.

    “If there are any other moral cowards who haven’t yet left this hall—please do so now,” the prime minister said. “Thank you very much.”

    While some observers applauded the display of solidarity with Palestinians, others expressed disgust that Netanyahu was allowed to address the world body and that he has not yet been brought to justice.

    “The head of the genocidal Israeli apartheid regime, a fugitive indicted for crimes against humanity, was allowed to enter the US and to address the UNGA today, without arrest,” said Craig Mokhiber, a former senior UN official who resigned in protest of what he described as the world body’s failure to stop Israel’s genocidal war.

    “Netanyahu insulted delegations, openly celebrated the regime’s many crimes, bragged about its terrorist pager attacks on Lebanon, repeated the regime’s debunked genocide propaganda, defended the illegal occupation of Palestine and Syria, lied incessantly, called violent, racist, illegal Zionist settlers ‘peaceful’ and ‘honorable people,’ labeled human rights defenders as ‘antisemites,’ even arrogantly attacked American citizens and officials for speaking out against the regime’s crimes,” he continued.

    “This violent psychopath cannot hide behind [US President Donald] Trump’s skirts forever,” Mokhiber added. “He (and his collaborators) must be captured and brought to justice. And the UN must finally act to isolate the regime and hold it accountable. ”

    Referring to Netanyahu’s address and Trump’s threat on Tuesday to “annihilate” Iran during his rambling, lie-laden General Assembly speech, University of Colorado Law School associate professor Maryam Jamshidi said on social media, “Between Trump threatening Iran w/annihilation and Netanyahu bragging about Israel’s pager attacks, the UN podium has become a venue for promoting genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.”

    Meanwhile, people took to the streets of New York to protest Netayahu’s presence in the city, US complicity in Israeli crimes, and to show solidarity with Palestinians.

    Hundreds of protesters gathered outside UN headquarters in Turtle Bay for a sit-in demonstration led by Jewish Voice for Peace. Demonstrators blocked roads while chanting slogans including, “Netanyahu you can’t hide, you are wanted for genocide!”

    As Common Dreams reported earlier Thursday, more than 100 demonstrators were arrested.

    Among those reportedly arrested were progressive congressional candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier; actors Susan Sarandon, Hannah Einbinder, and Cynthia Nixon; New York state Assemblymember Emily Gallagher (D-50); Democratic New York City Councilmembers Chi Ossé and Alexa Avilés; former Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning; and Palestinian American political activist Linda Sarsour.

    “I will never, ever be silent,” Sarsour said on Facebook. “I will never just accept the world as it is. I want history to record for future generations of Palestinians that we fought. At every turn. In every way. When it was easy and when it was hard.”

    “I want Palestinian girls in Gaza to see me in my hijab and my unapologetic Palestinian blood fighting for them to live FREE,” she added. “This is bigger than all of us. Netanyahu is a war criminal and belongs in The Hague, not the United Nations.”

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

    Climate science denier Donald Trump confirms that he knows nothing about democracy and that more liquid gold is being secured according to his policy of global privateering.
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  • How Israel’s arms industry is integrated into Britain’s military

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    https://www.declassifieduk.org/how-israels-arms-industry-is-integrated-into-britains-military/

    Elbit has an MoD contract to provide a simulation trainer for Challenger 3 tanks (Photo: Stephen Bardens / Alamy)

    Ed Miliband’s decision to leave the military relationship with Israel intact raises serious concerns about Britain’s compliance with international law.

    …

    Genocide scholar Martin Shaw told Declassified: “The government’s acceptance that the occupation is illegal means that it should act against Israel itself, not just the settlers it has installed. 

    “The ICJ was clear that states must do nothing that provides ‘aid or assistance’ to Israel in maintaining the occupation, and must ‘ensure that any impediment’ that the occupation causes to the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination ‘is brought to an end’. 

    “Through the UK’s military alliance with Israel and its comprehensive military-industrial cooperation, Labour still appears to be failing in these legal duties, despite Miliband’s announcements”.

    …

    Omar Barghouti, co-founder of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement for Palestinian rights, told Declassified: “This important investigation exposes precisely why the UK government’s recent measures are largely performative and designed to whitewash the multifaceted, shameless complicity of the UK with Israel’s regime of settler-colonialism, illegal occupation, apartheid and genocide.

    “The UK has failed to end the economic relationships, trade agreements and academic relations with Israel that may contribute to its unlawful presence and apartheid regime in the occupied Palestinian territory, as it is obliged to do in order to comply with the ICJ ruling. 

    “It is absurd for the UK to sanction settlements while simultaneously purchasing and integrating Israeli surveillance and weapon systems that are field-tested on Palestinians into its own armed forces.

    “Comparing these largely symbolic measures with the far-reaching sanctions imposed by the UK on Russia after its invasion of Ukraine affirms the UK’s colonial hypocrisy and loss of credibility on the international stage”.

    …

    In addition to military collaboration, Britain’s intelligence relationship with Israel will be untouched, according to Miliband, and there are no signs that either the 2020 UK-Israel military cooperation agreement, nor the 2023 Road Map for UK-Israel bilateral relations will be suspended.

    In response to Britain’s sanctions, Israel has said it will close the British consulate in East Jerusalem, remove UK representatives from the International Gaza Support Centre in Kiryat Gat, and terminate Britain’s role in training Palestinian Authority forces in the West Bank.

    Omar Barghouti added: “The UK has very clear obligations under international law, as triggered by the ICJ decisions of 2024 about Israel’s plausible genocide and its illegal occupation and apartheid.

    “The UK must end all military, intelligence, trade, financial, academic and other relations with Israel that enable its illegal occupation, apartheid or genocide, as the ICJ has called for”.

    See the original article at https://www.declassifieduk.org/how-israels-arms-industry-is-integrated-into-britains-military/

    UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham admits to blatently lying and engaging in deception to become leader of the UK Labour Party and Prime Minister.
    UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham admits to blatently lying and engaging in deception to become leader of the UK Labour Party and Prime Minister.
    Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza's hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel. New Labour UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham continues Labour party policy of active support and complicity in Israel's genocide.
    Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel. New Labour UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham continues Labour party policy of active support and complicity in Israel’s genocide.
    Experiencing issues with this image not appearing. I suspect because it's so critical of Zionist Keir Starmer's support of and complicity in Israel's genocides.
    Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpA

  • E1: the illegal settlement at the heart of the UK’s West Bank trade ban

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    Israeli soldiers provide security at a new Israeli settlement near the West Bank village of Dura on August 31. Abir Sultan / EPA

    Rory McCarthy, Durham University

    Israel has been building settlements in the occupied West Bank for decades. But Britain’s new ban on the import of settlement goods comes in a response to a major escalation in construction over the past four years, which an International Court of Justice advisory opinion in 2024 concluded is illegal and must stop.

    Most striking are recent steps to build a new settlement bloc known as E1 on the outskirts of Jerusalem. First planned as long ago as 1999, but progressing significantly over the past year or so, the E1 bloc would mark a major change to the geography of the West Bank.

    Current plans allow for thousands of housing units in the settlement, as well as commercial properties and regional services. The project would establish a new urban area that would connect the large settlement of Maale Adumim with East Jerusalem.

    The international community has long seen the construction of E1 as a red line for three main reasons. First, it would isolate East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank, including major Palestinian cities like Ramallah and Bethlehem. This matters because East Jerusalem is the proposed capital of a Palestinian state in any future two-state agreement to end the conflict.

    Second, because E1 reaches across the West Bank at its narrowest point, it would also disrupt the connections between the north and south of the territory. Fragmenting the West Bank in this way would again undermine efforts to develop a future Palestine state.

    And third, the construction of E1 would involve the displacement of Palestinians. This includes people in the community of Khan al-Ahmar, which Israeli authorities ordered should be evacuated in May 2026 ahead of the new settlement construction.

    The Maale Adumim settlement in front of the Palestinian town of al-Eizariya.
    The Maale Adumim settlement next to the Palestinian town of al-Eizariya, pictured in 2015. ChameleonsEye / Shutterstock

    Israeli government ministers have been explicit that E1 would suffocate any future Palestinian state. In September 2025, when announcing new progress on E1, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: “We are going to fulfil our promise that there will be no Palestinian state.” His finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, has also said E1 would “bury the idea of a Palestinian state”.

    The E1 project has advanced considerably in recent times, after years of delay. In August 2025, final planning approval was given for more than 3,400 housing units on the site. Then, in August 2026, the first call for construction tenders was issued to build 1,200 residential units in the southern part of E1. The closing date for bidding is on October 19, just before Israeli elections on October 27.

    The UK’s import ban, which seems intended to deter companies from taking part in building E1, has been backed by similar measures announced by countries including Canada, France, Ireland and Spain.

    Mounting international concern

    The ban on settlement goods demonstrates mounting international concern about Israel’s actions. More than 700,000 Israeli settlers now live on land captured in the 1967 six-day war, even though settlements on occupied land are illegal under international law.

    Israeli rights group, Peace Now, reports that more than 102 new settlements have been approved since 2022, most deep inside the West Bank. The Israeli military often supports settlers building new outposts, and the Israeli government provides substantial financial backing to establish settlements.

    The UN says that more than 6,400 Palestinians have been displaced in the West Bank due to settler attacks and access restrictions since January 2023, of which at least 2,500 were displaced in 2026 alone.

    In addition, more than 30,000 Palestinians have been displaced from refugee camps during Israeli military operations in the northern West Bank since late 2024.

    Israel’s expanded control over the West Bank is one element in a broader revisionist policy to push its borders outwards, which marks a step change from a previous strategy of conflict management.

    The new moves come in the wake of the October 2023 attacks, when Hamas gunmen killed more than 1,200 Israelis and captured 250 hostages, and Israel’s subsequent war in Gaza, which has killed more than 70,000 Palestinians and devastated the strip.

    Since the war began, Israel has seized territory as a buffer zone in southern Lebanon against Hezbollah. It has also advanced into Syria, following the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime in late 2024. In Gaza, Israel has now taken control of at least 60% of the strip and is considering building three new military settlements there.

    Israel’s far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, recently again raised the prospect that Israel may seek to expel the 2 million Palestinians in Gaza. Egypt, which has a border with Gaza, and Jordan, which shares a border with the West Bank, are gravely concerned about the risk of mass deportation of Palestinians across their borders.

    The UK government’s action against settlement expansion, accompanied by similar measures introduced by countries elsewhere, signals a new effort to curb these expansionist ambitions.

    Rory McCarthy, Associate Professor in Politics and Islam, Durham University

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

  • MPs and Peers call on Burnham to uphold Palestinian rights

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    https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/mps-and-peers-call-burnham-uphold-palestinian-rights

    Displaced Palestinians lineup to receive donated food at a community kitchen in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, July 23, 2026

    …

    EIGHTY MPs and peers have written to new Prime Minister Andy Burnham urging decisive action to uphold Palestinian rights and impose comprehensive sanctions on Israel.

    The cross-party group of politicians demanded in an open letter today that Britain recognise the UN’s findings on genocide and implement the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling in full.

    They also called for the imposition of sanctions, including a full arms embargo and a ban on trade that supports Israel’s illegal settlements.

    PSC deputy director Peter Leary said: “This timely letter from MPs and peers echoes the views of millions of people across Britain.

    “For far too long the British government has wilfully ignored its responsibilities under the Genocide Convention and the findings of the International Court of Justice while actively supporting Israel’s atrocities against the Palestinian people.

    “If Andy Burnham really intends to break from the toxic legacy of his predecessor, he must start by imposing wide-ranging sanctions against Israel, including a full arms embargo and a total ban on all trade that aids or assists Israel’s violations of international law.”

    …

    https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/mps-and-peers-call-burnham-uphold-palestinian-rights

    Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza's hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.
    Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.

  • Who Does Wes Streeting Think He’s Fooling on Gaza?

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    https://novaramedia.com/2026/06/05/who-does-wes-streeting-think-hes-fooling-on-gaza/

    Wes Streeting. Jaimi Joy/Reuters

    Noone’s buying the crocodile tears.

    At a Westminster event on Monday, Emily Thornberry spoke of her pride in Britain “always” realising the “importance of international law”. To this rage-bait statement she added: “But when it comes to our record on Palestine, I am afraid we have fallen well short and in doing so we have failed the Palestinian people.”

    This is the same Thornberry who, while shadow attorney general, refused to say whether cutting off food, water and power to people in Gaza was against international law. Spoiler: it is. According to Thornberry, however, “Israel has a right to defend itself”.

    Then, on Tuesday, former health secretary Wes Streeting told the Guardian he was “horrified by the war in Gaza”, claiming that he “did everything [he] could behind the scenes to get the government to act”, including sharing a dossier of eyewitness testimony from doctors on the ground with his cabinet colleagues.

    While I really hate to sound cynical, I can’t help but wonder if there could possibly be some job openings at the very top of the party of government on the cards?

    Remember that in 2023, Streeting rejected calls for a ceasefire and told those advocating for one that they needed to be “realistic”, while toeing the party line on pushing for the cowardly obfuscation of ‘humanitarian pauses’. Months later, he dubbed South Africa’s comprehensive genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) a “distraction”.

    By July 2025, Streeting was privately recognising that “Israel is committing war crimes before our eyes”. But he never made a public statement, and didn’t resign his cabinet position over his government’s complicity in the genocide – in Israel’s unrelenting atrocities, the damage or destruction of every single hospital in Gaza, or the kids having their limbs amputated without anesthetic.

    …

    South Africa’s application to the ICJ stated: “South Africa is also acutely aware of its own obligation – as a state party to the Genocide Convention – to prevent genocide.”

    By contrast, the government and its senior cabinet ministers failed in every single legal obligation under treaty and international law. It has been complicit, and also – as Jeremy Corbyn’s Gaza tribunal found in March – an active participant in Israel’s live-streamed genocide.

    …

    https://novaramedia.com/2026/06/05/who-does-wes-streeting-think-hes-fooling-on-gaza/

    Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza's hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.
    Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.
    Vote Labour for Genocide.
    Vote Labour for Genocide.