Pope Francis speaks on December 25, 2023 in the Vatican City.(Photo: Alessandra Benedetti/Corbis via Getty Images)
The pontiff’s call comes as the International Court of Justice is reviewing evidence in a South Africa-led genocide case against Israel.
In a new book set to be released this week, Pope Francis I endorsed a genocide investigation into Israel’s war on Gaza—which has killed or maimed more than 150,000 Palestinians and forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened millions more over the past 13 months.
“In the Middle East, where the open doors of nations like Jordan or Lebanon continue to be a salvation for millions of people fleeing conflicts in the region: I am thinking above all of those who leave Gaza in the midst of the famine that has struck their Palestinian brothers and sisters given the difficulty of getting food and aid into their territory,” the pontiff wrote in his latest book, which goes on sale in some countries on November 19.
“According to some experts, what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of a genocide,” the Pope added. “It should be carefully investigated to determine whether it fits into the technical definition formulated by jurists and international bodies.”
The Pope’s words echo last week’s finding by a United Nations expert panel that Israel’s annihilation of Gaza is “consistent with the characteristics of genocide.”
The International Court of Justice—a U.N. organ—is currently weighing a South Africa-led genocide case against Israel backed by more than 30 nations and regional blocs as well as hundreds of groups and experts around the world.
Meanwhile, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court is seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israel Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as three former Hamas leaders assassinated by Israel, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, including extermination.
Many jurists, scholars, and other experts—including some of Israel’s leading Holocaust historians—have called Israel’s policies and actions in Gaza genocide. Early in the war, Raz Segal—an Israeli historian and professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Stockton University in New Jersey—called Israel’s Gaza onslaught “a textbook case of genocide.”
Many Palestinian Christians have been killed, injured, or otherwise harmed by Israeli forces during the bombardment, invasion, and siege of Gaza. With just 800 to 1,000 people believed remaining in Gaza, members of the world’s oldest Christian community warned early in the war that they were “under threat of extinction.”
In their most infamous attack on Gaza Christians, Israeli forces bombed the 12th century Saint Porphyrius Greek Orthodox Church, Gaza’s oldest, in October 2023, killing 18 Palestinians including numerous children. Among the victims were two women and an infant related to former Republican U.S. Congressman Justin Amash of Michigan.
After an Israeli sniper fatally shot an elderly woman and her daughter on the grounds of a Catholic church in Gaza City last December, Pope Francis condemned what he called an act of “terrorism.”
Amid the death and destruction wrought by Israel’s assault on Gaza, last December’s Christmas celebrations were canceled in Bethlehem, the purported birthplace of Jesus Christ.
“How can we celebrate when we feel this war—this genocide—that is taking place could resume at any moment?” asked Palestinian Lutheran pastor Munther Isaac at the time.
Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) gestures toward a photo of Fadi al-Zant—a Palestinian boy from Gaza who nearly died of starvation—during a speech in the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington, D.C. on November 14, 2024. (Photo: Rep. Rashida Tlaib/X screen grab)
“No nation blocking U.S. humanitarian assistance can receive U.S. weapons,” said Rep. Rashida Tlaib. “The Biden administration cannot pick and choose when they comply with our own laws.”
Progressive Democratic Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib of Michigan on Thursday urged U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to resign for breaking federal laws against arming human rights violators by lavishing Israel with tens of billions of dollars in American weapons used to harm Palestinians—more than 150,000 of whom have been killed or maimed in Gaza.
Speaking on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington, D.C., Tlaib—the only Palestinian American member of Congress—argued that “Secretary Blinken has continued to lie to Congress and should resign.”
“U.S. law is very clear. No nation blocking U.S. humanitarian assistance can receive U.S. weapons,” she stressed. “The Biden administration cannot pick and choose when they comply with our own laws.”
The Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 and Leahy Laws prohibit military aid to security forces that commit gross human rights violations, although in practice, the U.S. has sent weapons to many countries guilty of grave abuses, including the perpetrators of several genocides.
Tlaib disdainfully referred to the Biden administration’s deadline for Israel to improve humanitarian conditions in Gaza or face a possible suspension of arms transfers.
“I want to talk about, quote, Biden’s 30-day humanitarian deadline,” she said. “The Biden administration has continued to ignore reports from its own experts, international human rights organizations, and the United Nations that the Israeli government is blocking humanitarian aid in Gaza.”
Although the deadline passed earlier this week without full Israeli compliance with any of the 19 demands made by Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, the State Department determined that Israel is not violating U.S. law, sparking global outrage.
“The Israeli government is using starvation as a weapon of war,” Tlaib said.
Earlier this year, as Gazan children began dying from malnutrition and lack of medical care, the International Court of Justice in The Hague—which is weighing a South Africa-led genocide case against Israel—ordered Israeli authorities to stop blocking aid from entering Gaza. Critics accuse Israel of flouting this and two other Gaza-related ICJ orders.
Pointing to a photo of Fadi al-Zant, a 6-year-old Gaza boy who nearly starved to death, Tlaib continued: “Look at this picture. It is evident that blocking U.S. humanitarian aid… is happening, and it is a blatant violation… of the Foreign Assistance Act.”
“The Israeli government is using starvation as a weapon of war.”
“In a letter to the Israeli government on October 13, Secretary Blinken acknowledged that the Israeli government is violating U.S. law by blocking aid and gave them 30 days to comply,” she noted. “The letter demanded that 350 trucks be allowed into Gaza per day. And guess what? According to Israel’s own data and own government, only 57 trucks were allowed into Gaza per day in October.”
“On November 1, top United Nations officials said, ‘The entire Palestinian population in northern Gaza is at imminent risk of dying from disease, famine, and violence,'” she added. “This week… Secretary Blinken exposed his lie by announcing that there will be no change to any policy, despite admitting that the Israeli government has still failed to comply with all of their demands.”
Members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right Cabinet have suggested that Blinken personally endorsed Israel’s policy of bombing aid trucks.
Palestinian groups and individuals in Palestine and the U.S. unsuccessfully sued President Joe Biden, Blinken, and Austin for their failure to prevent and complicity in Israel’s genocide.
Also on Thursday, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) condemned the Biden administration’s failure to take any punitive action against Israel for its assault on Gaza, which a United Nations panel that same day called “consistent with the characteristics of genocide.”
“Despite [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s failure to meet the United States’ demands, the Biden administration has taken no action to restrict the flow of offensive weapons,” Warren said in a statement. “The failure by the Biden administration to follow U.S. law and to suspend arms shipments is a grave mistake that undermines American credibility worldwide.”
“If this administration will not act, Congress must step up to enforce U.S. law and hold the Netanyahu government accountable through a joint resolution of disapproval,” Warren asserted, adding that she has endorsed resolutions led by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and others aimed at blocking a series of proposed arms sales to Israel. Sanders said Wednesday that he will soon seek a floor vote on the resolutions.
“There is no longer any doubt,” Sanders said Wednesday, “that Netanyahu’s extremist government is in clear violation of U.S. and international law as it wages a barbaric war against the Palestinian people in Gaza.”
Protesters hit out at fossil fuel corporations fuelling the climate crisis and profiting from genocide in Gaza
Activists demonstrate for climate justice and a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas at the COP29 U.N. Climate Summit, November 11, 2024, in Baku, Azerbaijan
PROTESTERS hit out at oil giant BP “hijacking” Cop29 while profiting from the genocide in Gaza as the international climate summit kicked off in Azerbaijan today.
Palestine and climate campaigners protested outside the firm’s London headquarters as world leaders headed the latest round of international climate talks.
As the UN warned 2024 is set to be the hottest year on record, Fossil Free London activists held a banner reading “BP, stop fuelling genocide and climate breakdown.”
They demanded BP stop its oil and gas extraction, “hijacking” the Conference of the Parties (Cop) process in Azerbaijan’s capital Baku and “profiteering from genocide.”
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Human rights experts have warned that countries and corporations supplying oil to Israeli armed forces may be complicit in war crimes and genocide following an International Court of Justice ruling on Israel.
Joanna Warrington, a campaigner with Fossil Free London, said: “It’s the very same fossil fuel giants that profit from the suffering of billions as our climate tips closer to collapse, which are fuelling and enabling Israel’s horrific colonial genocide.
David Lammy, the U.K.’s secretary of state for foreign, commonwealth, and development affairs, signs an agreement during his first foreign visit to Africa in Abuja, Nigeria, on November 4, 2024. (Photo: next24online/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
David Lammy’s recent comment to Parliament, the coalition said, “at best, has injected a deeply troubling ambiguity in respect of these pivotal issues in light of the mass atrocities perpetrated against civilians in Gaza.”
Fallout over remarks that David Lammy, the U.K.’s secretary of state for foreign, commonwealth, and development affairs, recently made to the House of Commons about the Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip continued on Tuesday with a letter from 37 rights organizations.
“We call on the foreign secretary, as a matter of urgency, to make a statement clarifying the government’s understanding of i) genocide in international law; ii) the scope of the U.K.’s international obligations pursuant to the Genocide Convention and Rome Statute; and iii) what steps must be taken to fulfill such obligations,” the coalition wrote.
The groups pointed to an exchange between Lammy, of the Labour Party, and Conservative Member of Parliament Nick Timothy on October 28, when the foreign secretary said that the way words like genocide are being used now “undermines the seriousness of that term.”
Israel faces a South Africa-led genocide case at the International Court of Justice over its 13-month assault on Gaza, which has killed at least 43,391 Palestinians and wounded another 102,347, according to officials in the Hamas-governed enclave. The ICJ initially ordered Israel to “take all measures within its power” to uphold its obligations under the Genocide Convention in January.
Lammy’s response to Timothy last week, “at best, has injected a deeply troubling ambiguity in respect of these pivotal issues in light of the mass atrocities perpetrated against civilians in Gaza,” the coalition argued Tuesday. He “chose to undermine international law and answer in opposition to the International Court of Justice.”
“If Labour is indeed the party of international law, Foreign Secretary David Lammy must align with, rather than undermine, the courts.”
Despite Lammy’s suggestion, the Genocide Convention contains no numerical threshold and “is clear that the crime of genocide is not only perpetrated through mass killing,” the groups noted, highlighting Israeli attacks on food production, water infrastructure, healthcare facilities, and civilian housing, shelters, and camps.
In northern Gaza, “Palestinian civilians are being killed through starvation and dehydration, disease, deprivation of lifesaving medical intervention, and constant bombardment and targeting by weaponized drones,” they wrote. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres “has warned of the ethnic cleansing of Gaza by Israel while the U.N. Commission of Inquiry has concluded that the Israeli authorities have committed the crime against humanity of extermination of part of the civilian population in Gaza through direct and indirect means.”
“These assessments raise the specter of genocide and support the findings of other experts who have long concluded that genocide is taking place,” the coalition continued. “This makes it imperative for the foreign secretary to revisit his comments and to clarify the government’s understanding of the crime of genocide.”
Amichai Stein, a correspondent for state-owned Israeli broadcaster Kan, said on social media Tuesday that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced “the division of the northern Gaza Strip into two parts has been completed, and we getting closer to the complete evacuation of the northern part from civilians and terrorists: ‘This time there is no intention to allow the residents of the northern Gaza Strip to return to their homes and that humanitarian aid will regularly enter the southern Gaza Strip.'”
In other words, as Drop Site News‘ Ryan Grim put it, “Israeli media reporting that the IDF is declaring northern Gaza effectively ethnically cleansed, not even a hint of pretense now that it’s Election Day” in the United States.
While the U.S. has repeatedly faced global condemnation for arming Israel over the past year, the rights coalition on Tuesday focused on the U.K. government, emphasizing that “to the extent that the ICJ has already ordered provisional measures, the U.K. is on notice that a plausible risk of genocide exists, triggering third-state responsibility.”
Signatories to the letter include ActionAid U.K., Christain Aid, Council for Arab-British Understanding, Democracy for the Arab World Now, Gender Action for Peace and Security (GAPS), Global Justice Now, Jewish Network for Palestine, Medical Aid for Palestinians, Quakers in Britain, and War on Want.
GAPS director Eva Tabbasam told Middle East Eye that the language used to describe the war in Gaza “is essential to recognize the suffering of Palestinians and consider all possible actions the U.K. has to contribute to stopping what is a plausible risk of genocide.”
“If Labour is indeed the party of international law, Foreign Secretary David Lammy must align with, rather than undermine, the courts,” Tabbasam said. “He should have already done so months ago when the court first published this language, but the second best time is right now.”
Separately, War on Want on Tuesday published an analysis detailing how “Israel is committing genocide of the Palestinian people” and arguing that “the U.K. government is failing to uphold international law, and is complicit in Israel’s crimes, as it continues to export weapons and technology used by Israel against the Palestinian people.”
“Palestinians have long struggled for their rights and for justice. During the 1947-8 ethnic cleansing of historic Palestine—the Nakba (Arabic for ‘catastrophe’)—around 750,000 Palestinians were forced from their homes and lands by armed groups, to live under Israel’s system of apartheid,” the group noted. “Israel has carried out its ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people, unlawful occupation, apartheid, and blockade of Gaza—the ongoing Nakba—with impunity and has now escalated its actions into genocide.”
The London-based organization is also circulating a petition in response to the foreign secretary’s remarks from last week, which says in part: “David Lammy is misleading parliament and the U.K. public. He must tell the truth—that this is genocide—and immediately take action to stop the genocide, and the U.K.’s complicity.”
Other responses to Lammy’s comments have included public criticism from What Is Genocide? author Martin Shaw and dozens of public figures in the Arab British community demanding an apology.
UK Labour Party Shadow Foreign Secretary repeatedly heckled at a speech to the Fabian Society over his and the Labour Party’s support for and complicity in Israel’s genocide of Gaza.UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy says that UK is suspending 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.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/O74hZCKKdpAVote For Genocide Vote Labour.
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.”
“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.”
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.
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.
“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.
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/O74hZCKKdpAUK 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.
