the Genocide Convention

‘I Call it Genocide Because IT IS Genocide’ Says UN Palestine Expert Francesca Albanese

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

Francesca Albanese, United Nations special rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, speaks during a press conference at Buswells Hotel in Dublin, Ireland on March 20, 2025. (Photo: Brian Lawless/PA Images via Getty Images)

“To end it, we must first be willing to see it.”

United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese pushed back Tuesday against Israel and its defenders, who for years have attempted to gaslight and malign the Italian legal scholar for tirelessly condemning what an increasing number of international experts—including many Israelis and diaspora Jews—agree is a genocide in Gaza.

“I call it genocide because IT IS a genocide,” Albanese wrote on the social media site X on Tuesday, amplifying a video she recorded last week in which she said that “Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.”

“It’s not an opinion, it’s a fact,” the 48-year-old Georgetown University scholar asserted. “Top international experts, including Israelis, agree upon that.”

Under Article II of the Genocide Convention, the crime of genocide is defined as killing, “causing serious bodily or mental harm” to a group of people, “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part,” “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group,” or “forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

Israel is currently facing a genocide case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) brought by South Africa and supported by dozens of nations, either individually or via regional blocs. The ICJ has issued three provisional orders for Israel to take steps including avoiding genocidal acts and ending weaponized starvation in Gaza. Critics say Israel has violated all three orders.

The International Criminal Court has also issued warrants for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister, for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza including extermination and forced starvation.

“In Gaza, Israel has killed nearly 60,000 people with bombs bullets, and drones, including 16,000 children,” Albanese said in the video. “It has flattened homes, schools, churches, hospitals, water networks, farms, even cemeteries. The death toll from hunger, disease, untreated wounds, an[d] deprivation could reach 300,000.”

“Prisoners, including medics and journalists, have been tortured. Many have been raped, using dogs and sticks; some have died in Israeli prisons,” she continued. “Forced displacement continues in the West Bank, and over 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in 20 months, and 1 in 5 is a child.”

“Beware of those who use Hamas’ crimes or the fate of the hostages to justify this massacre,” she said. “Civilians are never legitimate targets. Israel has masked everything with legal words: ‘evacuations,’ ‘safe zones,’ ‘human shields’—it’s fiction.”

Israel and its leaders deny they are committing genocide and say those who make such allegations—including Jews—are antisemitic. Albanese has been a prominent target of such smears, in which the Biden and Trump administrations as well as members of U.S. Congress, both Democratic and Republican, have taken part while supporting tens of billions of dollars in U.S. armed aid for Israel.

Albanese has called the U.S. and other Western nations that support Israel an “axis of genocide.”

“And what about us? We are failing the test of our humanity.”

Gaza officials say Israeli bombs, bullets, and blockades have left at least 193,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing and millions more forcibly displaced, sickened, or starved— sometimes to death. Israeli forces are currently carrying out a plan by Netanyahu’s far-right government to conquer, indefinitely occupy, ethnically cleanse, and possibly recolonize Gaza, which U.S. President Donald Trump said he wants to make into the “Riviera of the Middle East”—presumably devoid of Palestinians.

“And what about us?” asked Albanese in the video. “We are failing the test of our humanity. Too many media, governments, companies, universities, too many guilty consciences and dirty hands. This genocide bears our fingerprints. It’s under our eyes. Denying it today means being ignorant, or complicit. Stopping it is the only way to remain human.”

“Genocide is a process, not a single act,” Albanese added. “A collective act. A criminal venture. To end it, we must first be willing to see it.”

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

UK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel's Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don't do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.
UK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.

Continue Reading‘I Call it Genocide Because IT IS Genocide’ Says UN Palestine Expert Francesca Albanese

Irish conservatives block proposal by Sinn Féin to restrict Israeli “war bonds”

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Original article by Ana Vračar republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Irish lawmakers during the vote on May 28, 2025. Source: Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign/X

On May 28, center-right lawmakers voted down a Sinn Féin proposal to limit the sale of Israeli bonds used to finance the genocide in Gaza

On May 28, representatives of conservative parties Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, part of the current Irish government, voted down a proposal brought forward by Sinn Féin that would have granted the Minister for Finance the authority to restrict the sale of Israeli bonds. The bill was defeated by a margin of 87 to 75, despite support from opposition parties and independent parliamentarians who vote with the government on other issues.

The debate took place in the context of a broader campaign challenging the role of the Central Bank of Ireland (CBI) in facilitating the sale of Israeli bonds within European financial markets. Under EU law, such bonds cannot be circulated without approval from a central bank in the Union. Activists argue that the CBI’s approval of these bonds – which took place even after the beginning of Israel’s genocide in Gaza – makes Ireland complicit in violations of international law, despite statements by government officials expressing support for the Palestinian cause.

Read more: US and Israel hijack aid, massacre starving Palestinians

According to earlier reports, by the beginning of this year, Israel had raised nearly USD 19.5 billion through the sale of such bonds. Of this amount, close to USD 4.5 billion was raised with the help of major European players such as BNP Paribas and Deutsche Bank, which helped coordinate and recommend bond sales to investors. Israeli officials have made no effort to conceal the planned usage of the funds that were collected. “Israel doesn’t hide the purpose of these bonds,” Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald said ahead of the vote. “They emphasize, quote, ‘the crucial role of Israel bonds during this time of conflict and war.’ Israel openly invites people to invest in genocide.”

The actions of the government and the CBI greatly contrast with the will of the Irish public, which has demonstrated strong support for Palestine. “Allowing the Irish Central Bank to continue to deal in Israeli war bonds is an endorsement of genocide. It makes Ireland, in my view, complicit,” McDonald said in another statement. “It flies in the face of the ordinary people of Ireland who have marched, protested, campaigned and, with everything they have, stood up for the right of the Palestinians to live and live free.”

Read more: Activists urge Spanish government to implement on Israel arms embargo immediately

Widespread grassroots pressure and mass mobilizations has contributed to the country’s formal recognition of the State of Palestine in May 2024. Opposition parties argue that this public sentiment makes the gravity of the government’s inaction even worse.“There is something very perverse about saying to a people faced with genocide that you recognize them, that you stand with them, while at the same time playing a big part in funding the very weapons that are being used to slaughter their children,” McDonald noted.

Both the government and CBI leadership have argued that blocking the sale of Israeli bonds would be legally impossible. CBI head Gabriel Makhlouf defended the approval process, claiming that the bond prospectus in question met relevant criteria of “completeness, comprehensibility and consistency.” However, activists, including those from the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign, have provided detailed evidence that Israel’s claims within the approval process obscure the bonds’ direct links to the genocide. The campaign also warned that CBI’s role in this matter represents a breach of both domestic and international law, including the Genocide Convention.

“Those who finance genocide under the mantra ‘it’s only business’ are complicit in genocide,” said David Landy of Jews for Palestine – Ireland. “By selling Israeli war bonds, the CBI is implicating all of us, all Irish people, in Israel’s war crimes.”

Original article by Ana Vračar republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Continue ReadingIrish conservatives block proposal by Sinn Féin to restrict Israeli “war bonds”