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Tag: International Court of Justice

  • ‘If It Looks Like Ethnic Cleansing, It Probably Is,’ Says Israeli Newspaper of North Gaza Siege

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

    Forcibly displaced Palestinians flee after an evacuation order by the Israeli military in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip on October 23, 2024.  (Photo: Rami Zohud/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)

    “If this process doesn’t stop immediately, hundreds of thousands of people will become refugees, entire communities will be destroyed and the moral and legal stain of this crime will cling to and pursue every Israeli.”

    The editors of Israel’s oldest newspaper on Wednesday published an editorial decrying the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from northern Gaza amid a ferocious Israeli offensive there that’s killed more than 1,000 people over the past three weeks.

    “For three and a half weeks, Israeli forces have been besieging the northern Gaza Strip,” the editors of the left-wing newspaper Haaretz wrote in Wednesday’s lead editorial. “Israel has almost completely blocked the entry of humanitarian aid, thereby starving the hundreds of thousands of people who live there. Information emerging from the besieged area is only partial, because ever since the war began, Israel has barred journalists from entering Gaza.”

    “Israel says it told the residents that they needed to leave northern Gaza, and even now, they can still move southward on routes the army has designated for this purpose,” the editors noted. “Thus the residents, many of whom have already been uprooted two or three times or even more from the places to which they have fled the terrors of war, are now being asked to move again. Yet Israel has refrained from giving the displaced any guarantee that they will be able to return once the war ends.”

    “Given this,” they added, “it’s no wonder that grave suspicions have arisen that Israel is effectively perpetrating ethnic cleansing in northern Gaza and that this operation is intended to permanently empty this area of Palestinians.”

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    “This suspicion fits with both the principles of the ‘Generals’ Plan’ being pushed by Maj. Gen. (Res.) Giora Eiland—a plan Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has denied implementing—and the demands of the Jewish supremacist parties in the governing coalition that are openly pursuing a policy of mass expulsions and the renewal of Jewish settlement in northern Gaza,” the editorial states.

    Last week, senior Israeli officials including members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Cabinet and far-right Knesset lawmakers gathered near the Gaza border for a conference dedicated to the ethnic cleansing of Arabs and Jewish recolonization in the embattled Palestinian enclave.

    “We came here with one clear purpose: to settle the entire Gaza Strip… Every inch from north to south,” settler leader Daniella Weiss told attendees of the rally, which was backed by Netanyahu’s Likud party. “Each of you will witness how Jews go to Gaza and Arabs will disappear from Gaza.”

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    As the Haaretz editors noted:

    Ethnic cleansing is both a moral crime and a legal one. Criminal law treats mass expulsions as both a war crime and a crime against humanity. Horrifyingly, some members of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government want to commit these crimes. As soon as the war began, they began calling for “erasing Gaza” and for perpetrating a “second Nakba.” But many Israelis made light of such statements, and the law enforcement system, headed by Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, refrained from dealing with this incitement to commit crimes.

    Now, we can see the results: Israel is sliding into ethnic cleansing; its soldiers are carrying out the criminal policies of the messianic, Kahanist right; and even the opposition on the center and center-left isn’t making a peep. This consensus behind ethnic cleansing is shameful, and every public leader who doesn’t demand an end to the de facto expulsion is supporting this crime and has become a party to it.

    “If this process doesn’t stop immediately,” the editors stressed, “hundreds of thousands of people will become refugees, entire communities will be destroyed and the moral and legal stain of this crime will cling to and pursue every Israeli.”

    Israel was founded in 1948, largely through the ethnic cleansing of more than 750,000 Arabs from Palestine during the Nakba, or “catastrophe.” Zionist militias—the two most violent of which were led by future Israeli prime ministers—utilized terror tactics including massacres and a death march to force the Indigenous Arabs from their homeland.

    Israeli ethnic cleansing continued over the following eight decades and, according to critics, currently involves home demolitions and expulsions in the illegally occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, systematic land theft, and pogroms and other violent attacks by Jewish settler colonists backed—and sometimes joined—by Israel Defense Forces troops.

    United Nations officials and international human rights groups said this week’s Knesset vote to ban the life-saving U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) will exacerbate Israeli crimes in Gaza, including ethnic cleansing.

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    “Efforts to eliminate UNRWA are illegal under international law and will only amplify the genocide and ethnic cleansing Israel is enacting in Gaza while also undermining long-term prospects for peace,” the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker group, said Tuesday. “The Israeli government is not only deliberately blocking humanitarian and medical aid to people who are starving and dying, it is undermining support for Palestine refugees and the international legal framework protecting their rights.”

    On Monday, Francesca Albanese, the U.N.’s special rapporteur on Palestine, published a report “contextualizing the situation within
    a decadeslong process of territorial expansion and ethnic cleansing aimed at liquidating the Palestinian presence in Palestine.”

    Albanese’s report was released a day after Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich—who supports the “total annihilation” of Gaza and said that killing 2 million Palestinians would be “justified and moral”—reiterated his call for Israeli annexation of the entire West Bank and the expulsion of the occupied territory’s Palestinians.

    Israel’s policies and practices in Gaza—where more than 150,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded by Israeli forces since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023—are the subject of an ongoing South Africa-led genocide case before the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

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

    Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that his active support and that of UK's air force 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
    Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that his active support and that of UK’s air force 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
    UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy says that UK is suspeding 30 of 350 arms licences to Israel. He also confirms the UK government's support for Israel's Gaza genocide and the UK government and military's active participation in genocide.
    UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy says that UK is suspeding 30 of 350 arms licences to Israel. He also confirms the UK government’s support for Israel’s Gaza genocide and the UK government and military’s active participation in genocide.
    Vote For Genocide Vote Labour.
    Vote For Genocide Vote Labour.

  • ‘Two Genocidaires v. the World’: US, Israel Oppose Lifting Cuba Blockade

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    Original article by Jessica Corbett republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

    Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez speaks during a press conference on the impact of the U.S. embargo in Havana on September 12, 2024. (Photo: Adalberto Roque/AFP via Getty Images)

    “The world has spoken—it’s time for the U.S. to listen and lift the blockade.”

    The United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday once again overwhelmingly urged the U.S. government to end its decadeslong blockade on Cuba, with just the United States and Israel voting against the measure and Moldova abstaining.

    The UNGA’s other 187 members present voted to adopt the nonbinding resolution on “the necessity of ending the economic, commercial, and financial embargo imposed by the United States” against the Caribbean island.

    This is the 32nd straight year that the U.N. body has approved a resolution against the embargo that began in 1962.

    “The U.S. and Israel stand isolated as the only two votes against,” Democratic Socialists of America’s International Committee said after the Wednesday vote. “The world has spoken—it’s time for the U.S. to listen and lift the blockade.”

    Though a few other nations have opposed the resolution over the years, Michael Galant of Progressive International and the Center for Economic and Policy Research noted that this vote was “two genocidaires v. the world.”

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    Israel faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its yearlong assault of the Gaza Strip, which has killed at least 43,163 Palestinians and injured another 101,510, according to local officials in the Hamas-governed enclave. The U.S. Congress and Biden administration have given Israel billions of dollars in weapons and opposed U.N. cease-fire resolutions.

    CodePink’s Medea Benjamin responded to the Wednesday vote with a video shared on social media, saying that Israel “loves blockades, because it’s doing its own blockade of Gaza,” and “is dependent on the United States to carry out its genocide.”

    “Now this is not just some idle vote,” she said of the approved resolution. “This blockade that the U.S. maintains is a form of economic warfare. It’s no exaggeration to say that now, when there is an economic crisis in Cuba, the U.S. blockade, which keeps Cuba from using the financial markets, from having normal trade with countries all over the world, is actually leading to deaths, leading to people going hungry, leading to people lacking food and medicine that are essential for their lives.”

    “And that’s why the United States must be condemned for this ongoing horrific, inhumane, and illegal blockade,” Benjamin added.

    Cuba’s representative delivered similar remarks to the UNGA on Wednesday. As Reutersreported:

    Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez said in a speech before the assembly that what is often referred to as the U.S. trade embargo is a “blockade” because the web of laws and regulations complicate financial transactions and the acquisition of goods and services not just from the United States but internationally.

    “The blockade against Cuba is an economic, financial, and trade war which qualifies as genocide,” said Rodriguez, charging the U.S. policies were deliberately aimed at promoting suffering among the Cuban people to force change in the government.

    Some international observers praised the countries who did condemn the blockade. Middle East expert Assal Rad declared, “This is the real international community.”

    Manolo De Los Santos, a founder of the People’s Forum and a researcher at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, said that “this overwhelming consensus is in contrast with the indifference of the United States, which continues to deny any responsibility for sanctions while tightening its stranglehold on Cuba.”

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    Earlier this month, the People’s Forum published a letter in The New York Times to U.S. President Joe Biden, warning that he has “exactly 90 days to reverse” former Republican President Donald Trump’s “brutal policy on Cuba.”

    Biden was vice president a decade ago when then-President Barack Obama “opened a hopeful new chapter in U.S.-Cuba relations by taking the first steps toward normalization,” the letter details. “People in both countries were optimistic that Cuba and the United States could become neighbors rather than Cold War enemies. However, Trump dismantled that policy, imposing pain and suffering on the Cuban people.”

    “Removing the state sponsors of terrorism designation would allow Cuba to engage in financial transactions and restore its electrical grid, as well as address shortages of food and medicine to alleviate the immense hardship faced by the Cuban people, who have endured over 62 years of economic strife under the embargo,” the letter adds. “It’s time to act. Let Cuba live!”

    Biden faced similar pressure in August, when hundreds of legal experts and groups called on him “to comply with existing international law by ending the use of broad unilateral coercive measures” particularly in “cases such as Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, and Venezuela.”

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    The U.N. vote comes as early voting is underway for the November 5 election in which Trump is facing Biden’s vice president, Kamala Harris.

    Neither campaign provided details on each candidate’s position when contacted by Reuters earlier this week, though Morgan Finkelstein, national security spokesperson for Harris, said that the Democrat “stands with the people of Cuba as they fight for their rights after decades of repression and economic suffering at the hands of the communist regime” and “will stand up to all authoritarians—including the very leaders that Trump has praised and embraced.”

    Original article by Jessica Corbett republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

  • Gaza Doctor Corrects CNN Anchor: ‘This Is Not a Humanitarian Crisis… This Is Genocide’

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

    Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan (left) pushes back on CNN anchor Kate Bolduan’s (center) description of the Gaza genocide as a “humanitarian crisis” during an October 7, 2024 interview. (Photo: CNN screen grab)

    “History books will be written on this and countries will have to reckon—media agencies will have to reckon—with their major role in the genocide,” said Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan.

    Human rights advocates on Friday highlighted a rare instance in which a U.S. corporate media outlet allowed a pro-Palestinian voice to set the record straight about Israel’s crimes against humanity in Gaza.

    Earlier this week, CNN “News Central” aired a panel segment on the anniversary of the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel and Israel’s retaliatory war. Anchor Kate Bolduan noted that around 1,200 people were killed during the Hamas attack—although she did not say that at least some of them were slain by Israeli forces in “friendly fire” incidents and under the Hannibal Directive—and that 250 others were kidnapped.

    Bolduan also acknowledged that nearly 42,000 Palestinians have been killed and another 2 million displaced by Israeli forces, calling the situation in Gaza a “desperate humanitarian crisis.”

    “A humanitarian crisis is what you deal with when you have a hurricane, what you deal with when you have an earthquake.”

    The anchor asked panel participant Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan—an American pediatric intensive care physician who volunteered for two weeks at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip—for her thoughts on the matter.

    “In all honesty, a humanitarian crisis is what you deal with when you have a hurricane, what you deal with when you have an earthquake,” Haj-Hassan replied. “This is not a humanitarian crisis.”

    “Kate, and I’m going to say it very clearly for your viewers to hear, this is genocide,” the doctor stressed.

    Haj-Hassan continued:

    When 70% of the population that are killed are women and children, when the population is starved of food, of water, of medicine, when you have attacks, repeated attacks on all the hospitals, the clinics, the aid distribution sites, the humanitarian aid agencies that tried to help, more [United Nations] workers have been killed in Gaza than in U.N.’s history. When you have over 900 families that have been exterminated, that have been taken off of the civil registry, killed, when you have over 17,000 children that have lost one or both parents, when you have bakeries, aid distribution sites, churches, mosques, schools, and in the last three days—in the last 24 hours in fact—a hospital today that was bombed, as you just reported, the hospital where I personally was working, and I can tell you, they are working every second of every day to try and sustain life.

    “And so it’s really hard to hear it over and over and over again, framed in the way that it’s being framed in the media, which, frankly, Kate, is very misleading,” Haj-Hassan said. “It is very misleading. Three hundred and sixty-five days of this. Death tolls that are so far outdated we have… no idea how many people are killed.”

    “But I am… genuinely afraid about what we’re going to find out when the dust settles. History books will be written on this,” she added. “And countries will have to reckon—media agencies will have to reckon—with their major role in the genocide of an entire population and in the destruction of humanitarian law and rule of order.”

    Some observers noted the absence of voices like Haj-Hassan’s in U.S. mainstream media coverage of Gaza, which is overwhelmingly pro-Israel and almost never airs the word “genocide”—even as Israel is on trial for the crime at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

    The New York Times, for example, ordered journalists covering the war in Gaza to eschew terms including “genocide,” “ethnic cleansing,” and even “occupied territory,” even though Israel has indisputably occupied Palestine for over half a century and the ICJ recently ruled that the Israeli occupation is a crime of apartheid that must end immediately.

    “The media may be forgiven for missing a carefully hidden story. For missing some details,” Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft executive vice president Trita Parsi said Friday on social media. “But when a genocide is there for everyone to see and you help conceal it, forgiveness is not in the cards.”

    Another social media user offered mild praise for Bolduan—who has been criticized by Israel supporters for previous interviews in which Palestine defenders accused Israel of genocide—writing that the anchor “didn’t seem happy” to hear what Haj-Hassan was saying.

    “Hard to say whether it was because the truth is so horrible or because CNN doesn’t want to report that truth—but she did let her say it,” the user said of Bolduan.

    Allegations of Israeli genocide remain highly contentious—even taboo—in the United States, which provides the key Mideast ally with tens of billions of dollars in military aid and diplomatic cover including multiple vetoes of United Nations Security Council cease-fire resolutions that were overwhelmingly supported by other countries.

    In the United States, Palestinians, Palestinian Americans, and human rights groups are asking the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to revisit a lawsuit they filed accusing President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin of complicity in the Gaza genocide.

    In July, a three-judge panel of the federal court dismissed the lawsuit, in which the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California previously found that “the current treatment of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip by the Israeli military may plausibly constitute a genocide in violation of international law,” but dismissed the case on jurisdictional grounds.

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

  • ‘An Extremely Dark Place in History’: UN Panel Says Israel Violated Child Rights Treaty

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    Original article by Jessica Corbett republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

    Palestinian Ahmad Yunis and his three-year-old son, Sami, who were both injured in an Israeli bombing in the Bureij refugee camp, sit outside the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip on September 8, 2024. (Photo: Eyad Baba/AFP via Getty Images)

    “I don’t think we have seen before, a violation that is so massive, as we are seeing in Gaza now,” said one committee leader.

    A United Nations committee on Thursday called out Israel for “serious violations” of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in the occupied Palestinian territories, particularly with its nearly yearlong assault on the Gaza Strip.

    “The outrageous death of children is almost historically unique. This is an extremely dark place in history,” said Bragi Guðbrandsson, vice chair of the U.N. Child Rights Committee, which also released its findings on five other parties to the global treaty—Argentina, Armenia, Bahrain, Mexico, and Turkmenistan.

    Since the Hamas-led October 7 attack on Israel, Israeli forces have killed at least 41,272 Palestinians in Gaza and injured another 95,551, according to local officials. Many more remain missing and are believed to be dead and buried in the rubble of bombed civilian infrastructure. The vast majority of the enclave’s 2.3 million residents have been displaced, often numerous times.

    Earlier this week, the Gaza Health Ministry publicly identified 34,344 Palestinians who have been killed in the Hamas-governed enclave as of August 31. The document spans 649 pages, the first 14 of which are filled with the names of babies. In total, there are 11,355 children.

    The U.N. report states that “the committee is gravely concerned about… the outrageously high number of children in Gaza who continue to be killed, maimed, injured, missing, displaced, orphaned, and subjected to famine, malnutrition, and disease, as well as the multiple displacements of the Gazan population, as a result of the state party’s indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks on Gaza using explosive weapons with wide-area effects in densely populated areas and its denial of humanitarian access, with at least 1 million children displaced, 21,000 children reported missing, 20,000 children who have lost one or both parents, 17,000 children unaccompanied or separated from their families in Gaza, dozens of child deaths due to malnutrition, and 3,500 children at risk of death due to malnutrition and lack of food.”

    The panel also expressed alarm over “attacks on and destruction of hospitals, schools, residential buildings, refugee camps, and essential infrastructure, including power facilities and water tanks, by the armed forces, restricting access to health services, education, and housing for the nearly 1 million children living in Gaza.”

    Guðbrandsson said that “I don’t think we can identify any measure that was taken to save children’s lives in this military operation in Gaza.”

    “I don’t think we have seen before, a violation that is so massive, as we are seeing in Gaza now,” he noted. “These are extremely grave violations that we do not often see.”

    As Reuters reported:

    Israel, which ratified the treaty in 1991, accused the committee of having a “politically-driven agenda,” in a statement sent by its diplomatic mission in Geneva.

    It sent a large delegation to a series of U.N. hearings in Geneva in early September where they argued that the treaty did not apply in Gaza or the West Bank and said that it was committed to respecting international humanitarian law.

    It says its military campaign in Gaza is aimed at eliminating the Palestinian enclave’s Hamas rulers and that it does not target civilians but that the militants hide among them, which Hamas denies.

    Anne Skelton, chair of the U.N. committee, pushed back against Israel’s position on Thursday, telling journalists, “They were not, in our view, facing up to the reality that 17,000 children are dead and that there have been repeated attacks on schools and hospitals.”

    The report also addresses Israel’s claims, saying that “the committee deeply regrets the state party’s repeated denial of its legal obligations under the convention in the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT) based on its position that the convention ‘does not apply… to areas beyond a state’s national territory’ and ‘was not designed to apply in situations of armed conflict,’ and that international humanitarian law is the relevant and specific applicable body of law in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.”

    “The committee also regrets the limited information it received on the situation of children living in the OPT due to such a position,” the 22-page “concluding observations” document continued. “The committee is of the view that the state party’s denial of the application of the convention cannot be used to justify its grave and persistent violations of international human rights and humanitarian law.”

    The panel cited the International Court of Justice advisory opinion from July that found “international human rights instruments are applicable.” The ICJ—which has taken up a genocide case against Israel—also said at the time that the decadeslong Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is illegal and must end “as rapidly as possible.”

    The new report says that the Child Rights Committee, “aligning its position with the position of the ICJ, reiterates that the convention applies to all children at all times and is directly applicable in all territories over which the state party exercises effective control, and reminds the state party of its legal obligations both under the convention and international humanitarian law concerning children in the OPT.”

    Skelton also argued that “the only real way to serve children’s rights in this situation is a cease-fire.”

    However, Israel has shown no signs of ending its assault on the Palestinian enclave—in fact, fears of a wider regional conflict are heightened this week due to bombings of pagers, walkie-talkies, and other devices across Lebanon, attacks supposedly targeting Hezbollah members that Israeli and U.S. officials attributed to Israel’s military and intelligence operatives.

    The Child Rights Committee’s report follows U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres adding Israel to the so-called “List of Shame” of nations that kill and wound children during armed conflicts, a June decision that outraged Israeli officials but was praised by human rights advocates as long overdue.

    Original article by Jessica Corbett republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

  • In Overwhelming Vote, UN General Assembly Demands Swift End to Israeli Occupation

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    Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

    The U.N. General Assembly approves a resolution calling for an end to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories on September 18, 2024. (Photo by Selcuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty Images)

    “The vast majority of countries have made it clear: Israel’s occupation of Palestine must end, and all countries have a definite duty not to aid or assist its continuation.”

    The United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday passed a resolution demanding that the Israeli government end its occupation of Palestinian territories within 12 months, affirming a recent International Court of Justice opinion that deemed the decadeslong occupation unlawful.

    The Palestine-led resolution, co-sponsored by dozens of nations, calls on Israel to swiftly withdraw “all its military forces” from Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. The final vote tally was 124 member states in favor and 14 against, with 43 nations abstaining.

    Unsurprisingly, Israel and the United States—Israel’s top ally and arms supplier—were among the 14 countries that opposed the resolution, which is not legally binding. The United Kingdom, which recently suspended some arms export licenses for Israel, abstained from Wednesday’s vote, a decision that the advocacy group Global Justice Now (GJN) said shows “complete disregard for the ongoing suffering of Palestinians forced to live under military-enforced racial discrimination.”

    “The vast majority of countries have made it clear: Israel’s occupation of Palestine must end, and all countries have a definite duty not to aid or assist its continuation,” said GJN’s Tim Bierley. “To stay on the right side of international law, the U.K.’s dealings with Israel must drastically change, including closing all loopholes in its partial arms ban and revoking any trade or investment relations that might assist the occupation.”

    The Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) Movement welcomed passage of the resolution, noting that the U.N. General Assembly voted “for the first time in 42 years” in favor of “imposing sanctions on Israel.”

    The resolution specifically calls on all U.N. member states to “implement sanctions, including travel bans and asset freezes, against natural and legal persons engaged in the maintenance of Israel’s unlawful presence in the occupied Palestinian territory, including in relation to settler violence.”

    The resolution’s passage came nearly two months after the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the U.N.’s highest legal body, handed down an advisory opinion concluding that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories is illegal and must end “as rapidly as possible.”

    The newly approved resolution states that “respect for the International Court of Justice and its functions… is essential to international law and justice and to an international order based on the rule of law.”

    The Biden administration, which is heavily arming the Israeli military as it assails Gaza and the West Bank, criticized the ICJ’s opinion as overly broad.

    Nihad Awad, national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), said in a statement Wednesday that “the Biden administration should join the overwhelming majority of nations around the world in condemning these crimes against the Palestinian people, demanding an end to the occupation, and exerting serious pressure on the Israeli government to comply.”

    “We welcome this U.N. resolution demanding an end to one of the worst and ongoing crimes against humanity of the past century,” said Awad.

    Ahead of Wednesday’s vote, a group of U.N. experts said in a statement that many countries “appear unwilling or unable to take the necessary steps to meet their obligations” in the wake of the ICJ’s opinion.

    “Devastating attacks on Palestinians across the occupied Palestinian territory show that by continuing to turn a blind eye to the horrific plight of the Palestinian people, the international community is furthering genocidal violence,” the experts said. “States must act now. They must listen to voices calling on them to take action to stop Israel’s attacks against the Palestinians and end its unlawful occupation. All states have a legal obligation to comply with the ICJ’s ruling and must promote adherence to norms that protect civilians.”

    Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).