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Probing the Depths: Roots of Unspeakable Crimes in Gaza–Criminality and Complicity

10 Jan

[Prefatory Note: the following interview with an Iranian journalist was completed on 1/9/24, during the week when South Africa puts forth its legal argument before the International Court of Justice in The Hague, seeking ‘provisional measures’ designed to stop the Israeli genocide in Gaza. Even if Israel refuses to comply should the World Court respond favorably to this emergency request as I expect it will, the decision will have an historic importance: drawing the West into the orbit of legal accountability by indirectly implementing its complicity with the Israeli attack, by an almost certain escalating effect on pro-Palestinian solidarity initiatives around the world, and by conferring on Israel the labels of ‘rogue state’ or ‘pariah state.’]

  1. At first, there’s a need to contextualize for our readers Israel’s urge to silence pro-Palestinian voices and the voices of the critics of Israel, both in the US and globally. As someone who has experienced it firsthand, can you please explain that urge?

Israel is very sensitive to international criticism, especially by critics associated with its base of support in the colonial settler and European colonial states, which together comprise the White Global West. It is also sensitive to pro-Palestine lawfare associated with international institutions, especially the UN, International Court of Jusstice (ICJ), International Criminal Court, and the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) because its legitimacy as sovereign state partly rests partly claim to be the only democratic state in the Middle East, a (mis)perception reinforced by US at the highest levels of governments pointing to ‘shared values’ that were at the core of ‘the special reliationship,’ overlooking the crimes against the indigenous majority Arab population of Palestine involving massive expulsion in 1948 and exploitative dominance since at least 1967 over the Occupied Palestinian Territories of East Jerusalem, West Bank, and Gaza.

I was the target of Israeli smears and defamatory attacks during the period I served as Special Rapporteur on Israeli Violations of Human Rights in Occupied Pallestine in the period of 2008-2014. The attacks involved slanderous accusations of antisemitism on my part, and also sharp criticism of the UN as biased due to its disproportionate attention given to alleged Israeli wrongdoing. The UN responded defensively doing whatever it could to distance itself from me, especially during the time that Ban Ki Moon was Secretary General. He explained my remaining as Special Rapporteur by reminding Israel and the world that I, as an unpaid appointee of the Human Rights Council, was not part of the UN civil service and hence beyond his disciplinary reach. This was a virtuall admission that the Israel defamatory criticism were justified. Attacking its critics became a policy tool used by Israel and its Zionist support structure in Global West countries with increasing frequency for two reasons: the weakness of Israel’s substantive position creating an incentive to shift the conversation from a focus on its severe violations of law and morality to the credibility of the critics a process that I have called ‘the politics of deflection’ in which the attention of the media is diverted to the messenger rather than the substantive message about Israel’s violations, and the related intimidation directed at activists and others who dare promote nonviolent solidarity initiatives such as BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions). No comparable effort was made to stifle such criticism or activism of South Africa during the apartheid period even though the governments of the US and UK were strategically aligned with apartheid South Africa during the Cold War years. The presence of a pro-Israeli Zionist network that shields Israel from criticism by ‘weaponizing antisemitism’ in varying ways that cause imbalances in the media and infringements upon academic freedom within educational institutions of the West.

  • How can we explain Israel’s tight grip on public discourse on Israel-Palestine issue for so long? How could it accumulate so much power and influence within different states and international entities? If there is a financial aspect to it, how powerful is it?

This is a complex, fundamental question. Israel established its legitimacy as a new state shortly after World War II in the twilight of the European colonial order, imposing its sovereign claim on a resident majority Arab majority that identified as belonging to the nation of the Palestinian people. The Zionist project of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine was a dream of a small dedicated movement in late 19th century Europe that became a political project when the UK pledged its support in the Balfour Declaration (1917) for a Jewish Homeland in Palestine, a purely colonial interference with the self-determination rights of people. The statehood of Israel became an attainable goal during the British mandate period in which the UK administered Palestine as an International Mandate on behalf of the League of Nations, and encouraged Jewish immigration, a process accelerated in response to the rise of fascism in Europe, climaxism of lethal antisemitism in the Holocaust that put to death as many as six millions Jews in Europe, and caused a sense of guilt on the part of Western liberal democracies for their meager efforts to oppose such genocidal behavior.

The British ended their mandate, partly in reaction to Zionist anti-British terrorism dumping on the newly formed UN the daunting challenge of finding a solution to the surging internal conflict in Palestine between settler Jews and indigenous Arabs. The UN relied on British experience with its divide and rule style of colonialism. It established a commission that made recommendations centering on a proposed partition of Palestine into two states with Jerusalem as both their common capital and an international city. The Zionist Movement accepted partition, the representatives of the Palestinian people rejected it. Against this background Israel was established in the aftermath of a war internal to Palestine between Jewish militia forces and the armed forces of neighboring Arab countries, ending with an agreed ‘green line’ that was treated as a provisional internal boundary between the two peoples that enlarged Israel beyond the UN partition territorial allocations, giving the Jewish state 78% of Palestinian territory rather than the 45% contained in the UN plan, and dividing Jerusalem between the two peoples, leaving the control of Palestinian side of the green line to Jordan and Gaza to Egypt.

Even with its military victory and Western diplomatic and economic support, Israel was founded in a context that contained challenges to its legitimacy as a state from its region and indeed from most of the Global South. From the outset Israel realized that its security and status in international life would be greatly helped if it could control the public discourse that shaped international public opinion. Its fragile security was highlighted by the fact that in its early years it was surrounded by hostile larger states that perceived the establishment of Israel in their midst as a territorial, racial, and religious intrusion, a colonialist solution of a European problem at the expense of the Islamic, Arab bloc of countries.

Israel’s success in discourse control was greatly aided by the extent of Jewish influence in the large media platforms of the West, especially in the US and UK, as facilitated by the wealth of Diaspora Jews mobilized after Hitler to support the establishment and development of a Jewish state as a place of secure sanctuary in the event of future outbreaks of lethal antisemitism. This propaganda tool was used in sophisticated ways to create great admiration for Israel as liberal democracy in the Western mold and a modernizing success in contrast to the supposedly backward, stagnant, impoverished Palestinian society. In contrast, Israel was portrayed as socially progressive, economically successful, and even managed to make ‘the desert bloom.’ At first, there were tensions in the West between support for Israel and maintaining reliable access to the huge oil and gas reserves of the region. Israel was able to resolve these tensions with its victory over its Arab adversaries in the 1967 War, as well as occupying the territories allocated to the Palestinians in 1948. And most symbolically important it unilaterally incorporating Jerusalem as the eternal capital of Israel, an initiative that to this day is not accepted by many governments. After 1967 Israel shifted its relationship to the US from that of strategic burden to strategic partner, and became a militarily significant actor throughout the region. Israel was allowed to acquire nuclear weapons in defiance of the non-proliferation treaty arrangements. After the Iranian Revolution of 1978-79 Israel becaame even more valuable as the fall of the Shah meant the loss of the only other strategic ally of the West in a region strategically important for energy and control of major trade routes. 

At the same time as Israel’s apartheid regime engaged in dehumanizing modes of controlling Palestinian resistance and Israel became increasingly clear about its unwillingness to reach a political compromise achieved by bilateral negotiations, resulting in new assaults on its legitimacy became more widely questioned even in Western societies, but not by governments. This process was recently further intensified when the Netanyahu coalition government with Regligious Zionism party took over in January 2023, and immediately greenlighted settler violence on the West Bank, violated the sanctity of Muslim sacred sites (especially Al Aqsa Mosque), and displayed maps at the UN and elsewhere with only Israel present between ‘the river and the sea.’ Throughout this period Israel’s control of the discourse, reinforced by the Zionist well funded network in the Global West used its discourse dominance to demonize its critics. It was helped by the adoption of the IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Asssociation) definition of antisemitism, which treated any sharp criticism of Zionism or Israel, however justified by evidence and reasonable, as antisemitism. With possibly tragic irony such false branding seems to be producing real antisemitism in the world in its authentic form of hatred of Jews as an expression of hostility towards the behavior Zionism and Israel.

  • We hear or read a lot these days about the fact that Israel is an apartheid regime; what is apartheid, and how does Israel qualify as an apartheid state?

Most understandings of the nature of apartheid accept the definition set forth in Article II of the 1973 Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid, which reads as follows:

Article II

For the purpose of the present Convention, the term “the crime of apartheid”, which shall include similar policies and practices of racial segregation and discrimination as practised in southern Africa, shall apply to the following inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them:

(a) Denial to a member or members of a racial group or groups of the right to life and liberty of person:

(i) By murder of members of a racial group or groups;

(ii) By the infliction upon the members of a racial group or groups of serious bodily or mental harm, by the infringement of their freedom or dignity, or by subjecting them to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment;

(iii) By arbitrary arrest and illegal imprisonment of the members of a racial group or groups;

(b) Deliberate imposition on a racial group or groups of living conditions calculated to cause its or their physical destruction in whole or in part;

(c) Any legislative measures and other measures calculated to prevent a racial group or groups from participation in the political, social, economic and cultural life of the country and the deliberate creation of conditions preventing the full development of such a group or groups, in particular by denying to members of a racial group or groups basic human rights and freedoms, including the right to work, the right to form recognized trade unions, the right to education, the right to leave and to return to their country, the right to a nationality, the right to freedom of movement and residence, the right to freedom of opinion and expression, and the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association;

d) Any measures including legislative measures, designed to divide the population along racial lines by the creation of separate reserves and ghettos for the members of a racial group or groups, the prohibition of mixed marriages among members of various racial groups, the expropriation of landed property belonging to a racial group or groups or to members thereof;

(e) Exploitation of the labour of the members of a racial group or groups, in particular by submitting them to forced labour;

(f) Persecution of organizations and persons, by depriving them of fundamental rights and freedoms, because they oppose apartheid.

It was made clear in the understanding of the crime that although South African racial system of exploitative subjugation of the African indigenous population was the model for declaring apartheid to be a Crime Against Humanity, it is applicable to any arrangement that satisfies the treaty definition. It is so regarded by the International Criminal Court, see Article VII(1)(j). In Article VII(2)(h)) the nature of the crime is clarified: (h)  “The crime of apartheid” means inhumane acts of a character similar to those referred to in paragraph 1, committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime”;

In the years since 2017 a series of reports sponsored by the UN and issued by widely respected human rights NGOs have confirmed the credibility of earlier allegations that the treatment of Palestinians qualifies in various ways as apartheid. (See detailed reports of UN ESCWA; Human Rights Watch; Amnesty International; B’Tselem). To some extent, the criminality of Israeli apartheid has been temporarily subordinated to allegations of genoicide following the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023. If Israel’s falls short of its current genocidal effort to coerce Palestinians to leave their homeland, then concerns about Israel’s policies and practices of apartheid would undoubtedly be renewed.

  • Given the recent momentum that the pro-Palestinian movement has gained, especially in the US, do you see any chance for a change in the essence or form of the US support for Israel in the short-term?

There has definitely been a shift in public opinion among the citizenry in Global West countries, but the governments, above all the US and UK continue their support of Israel despite spreading opposition to the devastation of the civilian population of Gaza, making the small crowded region totally unlivable without a massive reconstruction and relief effort.

The governments that continue to support Israel even after its recourse to genocide are influenced by a mixture of strategic interests and what might be called identity politics. The strategic and identity issues converge in relation to Israel as it combines strong military capabilities with a civilizational identity as a high-tech modern society with principal ties to the West, and having a series of hostile Islamic countries and non-governmental movements as its adversaries. If a wider war breaks out it will be viewed as ‘a clash of civilizations’ recalling Samuel Huntington’s 1993 prediction of the world after the end of the Cold War. Part of this overall picture of stability of Israel’s relationship with the liberal democracies of the West despite its unabashed endorsement of genocide in addressing the Palestinian people is best explained by the effectiveness of Zionist funding of political opponents of elected officials critical of Israel, and financing of Israel friendly politicians in these countries where donor leverage that remains strong at the national level. Also important, is the absence of organized Palestinian lobbying capabilities in the West that could somewhat diminish pro-Israeli foreign policy biases.

If Israel succeeds in implementing its population transfer scenario in Gaza, forcing surviving Palestinians to become refugees in the region, ethnic cleansing will be added to the criminality of genocide in the form of a Crime Against Humanity. This would almost surely lead to mobilization of anti-Western forces throught the Middle East, adding dangerous new stresses to the fraying bond tying the Global West to Israel. Also, uncertainties as to Israels reaction to being treated as ‘a pariah state’ subject to boycotts and even sanctions, and surging militancy among global solidarity groups dedicated to a humane future for the Palestinian people, including the 7+ million refugees and exiles living nearby and around the world.

  • As you’ve mentioned in your preface to the book, ‘We Will Not be Silenced’, in Israel’s war against Gaza, “’the people’ become the enemy,” and, therefore, to legitimize such a war, one has to dehumanize that people. How has Israel gone on about doing so from 1948 onwards?

As Edward Said pointed out in his book, Orientalism, the colonial intellectual portrayal of the Arab is a prelude to dehumanization and a sense of Western civilization superiority, especially as assessed through an optic of technocratic modernity. As earlier discussed, Israel was established as the European colonial order was collapsing and in the aftermath of a monstrous genocide that the liberal democratic countries in the West did little to stop until Germany and Japan committed aggression imperiling their overall global hegemony. The early Zionist anticipated the current attempts to erase the Palestinians from their homeland as expressed by the dehumanizing saying: “a land for a people without land for a land without people.”

What has complicated life for Israel is that the indigenous nationalism of the Global South as well as the defeat of European colonialism created a sense of the legitimacy of resistance, even armed resistance that has been incorporated to a controversial extent into contemporary international law. The recognition of the inalienable right of a people to national self-determination results in the settler colonial authority movements as being lawless undertakings, the overt enemy of indigenous populations as denigrated as backward or non-existent. If such tactics do not remove such obstacle, then the settler colonialist move by stages until reaching the genocidal conclusion that unless the indigenous population is utterly marginalized, exterminated, or expelled it will prevail over time. In this sense the settle colonial failed projects of South Africa and Algeria are instructive on the central point that superior military capabilities will not bring the settler regime reliable security, nor  will its cruelty and exploitative policies exhibited by its imposed dominance. Despite the darkness of the skies over Palestine at present, it has never been closer to an achieving some kind of victory and liberation that was unimaginable just a few months ago.

  • As my last question, I want to know, in your opinion, what hope is left for Palestinians? They are witnessing, on a daily basis, what seems to be a deadlock, created by the US’s unconditional support for Israel, and they have no recourse to the international law.

The best hope for Palestine at this time is the escalation of civil society activism to stop the genocide, as sought by South African application to International Court of Justice, and to isolate Israel in meaningful ways through cultural, sports, and all types of boycotts. Within the foreign policy of the Global West and in relation to Israel itself there is no basis for a just and sustainable peace being promoted diplomatically and strategically by leading governments or effectively by the UN. Geopolitical primacy in situations of strategic priority, as is the case for the US and Israel, overrides the guidance of international law and the morality of inter-governmental co-existence. This, short of geopolitical reassessment there is no realistic prospect for any sufficient change in the commitment of the West to Israel’s security as it seeks to pursue it.

As mentioned above, only civil society activism can change the calculus of strategic interests in the West and Israel in the short run of 5-10 years. As the transformation of South Africa made clear, the impacts of becoming a pariah state in a variety of international arenas made it willing to transform the state from an apartheid regime to a constitutional democracy that facilitated transition by outstanding African leadership, a sympathetic world public opinion, and a focus on racial issue and political rights, which respecting the economic rights and social status of the displaced white settler elite. While Israel for all sorts of reasons cannot be compared to South Africa, there exists a zone of uncertainty that may generate some comparable solution that is above all able to find a framework based on racial/religious equality and a coexistence based on respect for the rule of law and human rights for all.

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Gaza Webinar: Is Israel Cornered?

2 Jan

Israel despite a transparent genocidal onslaught in Gaza that has gone on for more than three months may find itself cornered: unable to prevail, unable to accept defeat. What then?

Wed., Jan. 10 at 7 PM Eastern: The Gaza War, Short & Long-Term Diplomatic Imperatives, & Implications for the Middle East and Geopolitics, with panelists Richard Falk, Irene Gendzier, and Assaf Kfoury. Discussing: What must be done to end the war? To prevent escalation to a still more catastrophic regional war? To begin the difficult diplomacy to ensure the rights, dignity, and security of both the Palestinian and Israeli peoples? To create U.S. policies that defuse rather than exacerbate militarism, divisions, and tensions across the Middle East?

Sponsored by: Campaign for Peace, Disarmament, and Common Security

* Richard Falk is Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University

* Irene L. Gendzier isProfessor Emerita at Boston University, Dept. of History and Political Science

* Assaf Kfoury is a professor in the Computer Science Department at Boston University

>>> To register, click at https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_3bx1nQUoQrGAV__F9ZqEkw#/registration

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Declaration of Conscience and Concern of Global Intellectuals on Gaza Genocide

20 Dec

[Prefatory Note: What follows is a Declaration of Conscience of Global Intellectual on Gaza Genocide prepared by Ahmet Davutoglu and myself, with the assistance of Abudllah Ahsan and Hilal Elver. It sought to enlist an initial list of signatories from around the as representative as possbile, and gender balance. We invite others to join by sending their endorsement to <change.org> listed under the heading of Declaration of Conscience. I will post a link as it is available. We view the virtual annihilation of Gaza as a societal grouping and its people as an imminent possibility. As of 12/20.23 it is reported that 88% of the population has insufficient food, and potable water is 90% less that minimum needs for sustainable health.]

On November 30, the Government of Israel resumed the genocidal onslaught it inicted on Palestinians in Gaza after a much overdue but brief “humanitarian pause.” In doing so, Israel has ignored the worldwide protests of people as well as the fervent pleas of moral, religious, and political authority gures throughout the world to convert the hostage/prisoner exchange pause into a permanent ceasere. The overriding intention was to avert the worsening of the ordeal of the Gazan population. Israel was urged to choose the road to peace not only for humanitarian reasons but also for the sake of achieving real security and respect for both Palestinians and Israelis. Yet now the bodies are again piling up, the Gaza medical system can no longer offer treatment to most of those injured, and threats of widespread starvation and disease intensify daily.

Under these circumstances, this Declaration calls not only for the denunciation of Israel’s genocidal assault but also for taking effective action to permanently prevent its repetition. We come together due to the urgency of the moment, which obliges global intellectuals to stand against the ongoing horric ordeal of the Palestinian people and, most of all, to implore action by those who have the power, and hence the responsibility, to do so. Israel’s continuing rejection of a permanent ceasere intensies our concerns. Many weeks of cruel devastation caused by Israel’s grossly disproportionate response to the October 7 attack, continues to exhibit Israel’s vengeful fury. That fury can in no way be excused by the horrendous violence of Hamas against civilians in Israel or inapplicable claims of self-defense against an occupied population.

Indeed, even the combat pause seems to have been agreed upon by the Israeli government mainly to ease pressures from Israeli citizens demanding greater efforts to secure the release of the hostages. The United States government evidently reinforced this pressure as a belated, display to the world that it was not utterly insensitive to humanitarian concerns. Even this gesture was undercut before the pause started by the deant public insistence of Prime Minister Netanyahu to resume the war immediately after the pause. It is more appropriate to interpret these seven days without combat as a pause in Israel’s genocidal operations in Gaza rather than as a humanitarian pause. If truly humanitarian, it would not have crushed hopes of ending the genocide and conjointly resuming efforts to negotiate the conditions for an enduring and just peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

The revival of this military campaign waged by Israel against the civilian population of Gaza amounts to a repudiation of UN authority, of law and morality in general, and of simple human decency. The collaborative approval of Israel’s action by the leading liberal democracies in the Global

West, particularly the United States and the United Kingdom, accentuates our anguish and disgust. These governments pride themselves on adherence to the rule of law and yet have so far limited their peacemaking role to PR pressures on Israel to conduct its exorbitant actions in a more discreet manner. Such moves do little more than soften the sharpest edges of Israel’s genocidal behavior in Gaza. At the same time continuing to endorse Israel’s false rationale of self-defense, which is inapplicable in a Belligerent Occupation framework established by the UN in the aftermath of the 1967 War, shielded this brazenly criminal conduct from legal condemnation and political censure at the UN and elsewhere.

We deplore the reality that these governments continue to lend overall support to Israel’s announced intention to pursue its combat goals, which entail the commission of severe war crimes that Tel Aviv does not even bother to deny. These crimes include the resumption of intensive bombing and shelling of civilian targets, as well as reliance on the cruel tactics of forced evacuation, the destruction of hospitals, bombings of refugee camps and UN buildings that are sheltering many thousands of civilians and the destruction of entire residential neighborhoods. In addition, Israel has been greenlighting settler-led violence and escalating ethnic cleansing efforts in the West Bank. Given these developments we urge national governments to embargo and halt all shipments of weapons to Israel, especially the United States and the United Kingdom, which should also withdraw their provocative naval presences from the Eastern Mediterranean; we urge the UN Security Council and General Assembly to so decree without delay.

We also support the Palestinian unconditional right as the indigenous people of the land to give or withhold approval to any proposed solution bearing upon their underlying liberation struggle.

The deteriorating situation poses an extreme humanitarian emergency challenging the UN system to respond with unprecedented urgency. We commend UNICEF for extending desperately needed help to wounded children as well as to children whose parents were killed or seriously injured every continuing effort. We also commend WHO for doing all in its power to help injured Palestinians, especially pregnant women and children, and to insist as effectively as possible on the immediate reconstruction and reopening of hospitals destroyed and damaged by Israeli attacks. We especially commend UNRWA for continuing the sheltering of many thousands of Palestinians in Gaza displaced by the war and for providing other relief in the face of heavy staff casualties from Israeli repeated bombardment of UN buildings. Beyond this, UNESCO should be implored to recognize threats to religious and cultural sites and give its highest priority to their protection against all manner of violation, especially the Masjid al-Aqsa; the Israeli government should be warned about its unconditional legal accountability for protecting these sites.

We also propose that the UN Human Rights Council should act now to establish a high-profile expert commission of inquiry mandated to ascertain the facts and law arising from the Hamas attack and Israel’s military operations in Gaza since October 7, 2023. The commission should offer recommendations in its report pertaining to the responsibility and accountability of principal perpetrators for violations of human rights and humanitarian norms that constitute war crimes and genocide.

We also view the desperation of the situation to engage the responsibility of governments, international institutions, and civil society to act as well as to speak, and use their diplomatic and economic capabilities to the utmost with the objective of bringing the violence in Gaza to an end now!

As signatories of this Declaration, we unequivocally call for an immediate ceasefire and the initiation of diplomatic negotiations under respected and impartial auspices, aimed at terminating Israel’s long and criminally abusive occupation of Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. This process must be fully respectful of the inalienable right to self-determination of the Palestinian people and take proper account of relevant UN resolutions.

SIGN THE PETITION

Declaration of Conscience and Concern of Global Intellectuals on Gaza Genocide

Signatories

  1. Ahmet Davutoğlu, Former Foreign Minister and Prime Minister, Türkiye;
  2. Richard Falk, UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories Occupied since 1967 (2008-2014), Professor of International Law Emeritus, Princeton University;
  3. Dr. Moncef Marzouki, Former President of Tunisia;
  4. Mahathir Mohamed, Former Prime Minister of Malaysia;
  5. Georges Abi-Saab, Professor Emeritus, Graduate Institute Geneva and Cairo University, Former UN Advisor to the Secretary Generals of the UN; Former Judge of the International Court of Justice, Egypt;
  6. Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Laureate (1976), Member of Russell Tribunal, Northern Ireland;
  7. Amr Moussa, Former Secretary General of the Arab Leauge, Former Foreign Minister, Member of the UN’s High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change for International Peace and Security, Egypt;
  8. M. Javad Zarif, Professor, University of Tehran, Former Foreign Minister, Iran;
  9. Hamid Albar, Former Foreign Minister, First Chancellor of the Asia e University, Malaysia;
  10. Brigette Mabandla, Former Minister of Justice and anti-Apartheid Activist, South Africa;
  11. Judith Butler, Professor, University of California at Berkeley; Feminist Studies, USA;
  12. KamalHossein,FormerForeignMinister,Bangladesh;
  13. PauloSergia,ProfessorofPoliticalScience(USP)andFormerMinisterofHuman Rights, Brazil;
  14. ChrisHedges,Pulitzer-prizeWinningReporterandFormerMiddleEastBureau Chief for The New York Times, USA;
  15. TuWeiming,MemberofUNGroupofEminentPersonsfortheDialogueAmong Civilizations, Professor Emeritus, Harvard University, USA; Founding Director of the Institute for Advanced Humanistic Studies, Peking University, China;
  1. JohnEsposito,ProfessorofInternationalRelationsandtheFoundingDirectorofthe Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, Georgetown University; Member of High Level Group of the UN Alliance of Civilizations, USA;
  2. Arundhati Roy, Author of God of Small Things, Human Rights Activist, India;
  3. SusanAbulhawa,PalestinianNovelist,AuthorofMorningsinJenin,USA;
  4. HansvonSponeck,FormerUNAssistantSecretary-General,FacultyMemberat Conict Research Center, University of Marburg, Germany;
  5. Angela Davis, Berkeley, USA;
  6. HilalElver,ProfessorofInternationalLaw,UNSpecialRapporteuronRighttoFood (2014-2020), Türkiye;
  7. Abdullah Ahsan, Professor of History International Islamic University Malaysia and Istanbul Şehir University, USA;
  8. Phyllis Bennis, Journalist, Author and Social Activist, Institute of Policy Studies, USA;
  9. Noura Erakat, Activist and Professor, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, Co-founder of Jadalliyah, USA;
  10. Jomo Kwame Sundaram, Former UN Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development; Deputy Director UN FAO, Malaysia;
  11. Victoria Brittain, Former Foreign Editor of the Guardian, worked closely with anti-Apartheid Movement, Founder of the annual Palestine Festival of Literature, UK;
  12. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak FBA, Professor, Columbia University, received Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy 2012, India;
  13. Ali Bardakoğlu, Professor of Theology, Former President of Directorate of Religious Affairs, Türkiye;
  14. Mustafa Ceric, Grand Mufti Emeritus of Bosnia, President of the World Bosniak Congress, co-recipient UNESCO Felix Houphouet-Bougny Peace Prize, Bosnia and Herzegovina;
  15. Maung Zarni, Human Rights Activist, Member of the Board of Advisors of Genocide Watch, Co-founder of Free Burma Coalition, Free Rohingya Coalition and Forces of Renewal Southeast Asia, Myanmar;
  16. JosephCamilleri,EmeritusProfessor,LaTrobeUniversity,Co-ConvenerofSHAPE Melbourne, Australia;
  17. Mahmood Mamdani, Herbert Lehman Professor of Government Columbia University, Chancellor of Kampala University, Uganda;
  18. Dayan Jayatilleka, Former Ambassador to UN (Geneva), France; Journalist, Sri Lanka;
  1. Elisabeth Weber, Professor of German Literature and Philosopy, University of Califor-nia at Santa Barbara, Germany/USA;
  2. Marjorie Cohn, Dean of the Peoples Academy of International Law, Professor Emerita, Thomas Jefferson School of Law, USA;
  3. Jan Oberg, Chairman of the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research, Sweden;
  4. Ramzy Baroud, Author, Academic, Editor of The Palestine Chronicle, Palestine/ USA;

33. Saree Makdisi, Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of California, Author of Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation, USA;

  1. Roger Leger, Retired Professor of Philosophy at the Military College of Saint-Jean, Québec, Canada;
  2. Usman Bugaje, Professor, Former Adviser to the Vice President of Nigeria, Nigeria;
  3. ChandraMuzaffar,President,InternationalMovementforaJustWorld(JUST), Malaysia;
  4. Avery F. Gordon, Professor Emerita University of California Santa Barbara, USA;
  5. Arlene Elizabeth Clemesha, Professor of Contemporary Arab History at the University of São Paulo (USP), Brazil;
  6. Ömer Dinçer, Professor, Former Minister of Education, Former President of Şehir University, Türkiye;
  7. Fethi Jarray, Former Education Minister, current Chairperson of the National Mechanism on Torture Prevention, Tunisia;
  8. Alfred de Zayas, Former UN Independent Expert on the Promotion of a Democratic and Equitable International Order, USA;
  9. Walid Joumblatt, Member of Lebanese Parliament, Leader of the Progressive Socialist Party, Lebanon;
  10. Elmira Akhmetova, Professor at the Institute of Knowledge Integration in Georgia, Russia;
  11. Sami Al-Arian, Professor, Director of Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA) at Istanbul Zaim University, Türkiye;
  12. George Sabra, Signatory of the Damascus Declaration (2005), Former President of the Syrian National Council, Syria;
  13. RayMcGovern,Activist,VeteransforPeace,Supporteroftheanti-wargroupNotin Our Name, USA;
  14. Juan Cole, Professor of History, The University of Michigan, Former Editor of The Internatioanl Journal of Middle East Studies, USA;
  1. Penny Green, Professor of Law and Globalization, Director, International State Crime Initiative Queen Mary University of London, UK;
  2. Bishnupriya Ghosh, Professor of English and Global Studies, UC Santa Barbara, USA/India;
  3. Nader Hashemi, Professor, Director of the Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, Georgetown University, USA;
  4. Ahmed Abbes, Mathematician, Director of Research at the Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientiques Paris, France, Tunisia;
  5. Bhaskar Sarkar, Professor of Film and Media, UC Santa Barbara, USA/India;
  6. AkeelBilgrami,ProfessorofPhilosophyatColumbiaUniversity,USA,India;
  7. Assaf Kfoury, Mathematician and Professor of Theoretical Computer Science, Boston University, USA;
  8. Helena Cobban, Journalist, Author, President of Just World Educational, USA;
  9. BilijanaVankovska,ProfessorandHeadoftheGlobalChnagesCenter,Cyriland Mehtodius University, Skopje, Macedonia;
  10. David Swanson, Author, Executive Director of World BEYOND War, USA;
  11. Radmila Nakarada, Professor, Faculty of Political Science, University of Belgrade; Spokesperson of the Yugoslav Truth and Reconciliation Committee, Serbia;
  12. Fredrick S. Heffermehl, Lawyer and Author, Norway;
  13. Anis Ahmad, Emeritus Professor and President Riphah International University Islamabad, Pakistan;
  14. Lisa Hajjar, Professor, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA;
  15. Dr. Sayyid M. Syeed, President Emeritus , Islamic Society of North America, USA;
  16. Muhammed al-Ghazzali, Professor, Judge Supreme Court of Pakistan, Pakistan;
  17. Syed Azman Syed Ahmad, Former Member of Malaysia Parliament, Chairman of Asia Forum for Peace and Development (AFPAD), Malaysia;
  18. Osman Bakar, Al-Ghazali Chair of Epistemology and Civilisational Renewal, International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization, Malaysia;
  19. IbrahimMZein,ProfessorofIslamicStudies,QatarFoundation,Qatar;
  20. Engin Deniz Akarlı, Professor of History Emeritus, Brown University, Türkiye;
  21. Francesco Della Puppa, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice; Italy;
  22. Julio da Silveira Moreira, Professor, Federal University of Latin-American Integration, Brazil;
  1. Nabeel Rajab, Founder and former president of the Gulf Center for Human Rights; Former Deputy Secretary-General of the International Federation for Human Rights, Recipient of the Ion Ratiu Award for Democracy and Human Rights, Bahrain;
  2. Feroz Ahmad, Emeritus Professor of History and Internatiıonal Relations, Harvard University, USA, India;
  3. Serap Yazıcı, Professor of Constitutional Law, MP, Turkish Parliament, Türkiye;
  4. Natalie Brinham, Genocide and Statelessness Scholar, UK;
  5. Ayçin Kantoğlu, Author, Türkiye;
  6. Dania Koleilat Khatib, ME Scholar and President of RCCP TrackII Organisation, UAE;
  7. Imtiyaz Yusuf, Assoc. Prof. Dr., Non-Resident Research Fellow Center for Contemporary Islamic World (CICW), Shenandoah University, USA/Vietnam;
  8. Kamar Oniah Kamuruzaman, Former Professor of Comparative Religion, International Islamic University, Malaysia;
  9. Ümit Yardım, Former Ambassador of Türkiye to Tehran, Moscow and Vienna, Türkiye;
  10. Ahmet Ali Basic, Professor, University of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina;
  11. Kani Torun, Former Ambassador of Türkiye to Somalia, Former Head of Doctors Worlwide, Member of Parlament, Türkiye;
  12. Ermin Sinanovic, Center for Islam in the Contemporary World at Shenandoah University, USA/ Bosnia and Herzegovina;
  13. Nihal Bengisu Karaca, Journalist, Türkiye
  14. Alkasum Abba, Emeritus Professor of History, Abuja, Nigeria;
  15. Hassan Ahmed Ibrahim, Professor of History and Civilization, Former Dean, Faculty of Arts, University of Khartoum, Sudan;
  16. Anwar Alrasheed, Khiam Rehabilitation Center, The victims of Torture (KRC), Representative of the International Council for Fair Trials and Human Rights in the State of Kuwait and the Gulf Cooperation Council Countries, Kuwait;
  17. MohdHishamMohdKamal,Assoc.Prof.Dr.,AhmadIbrahimKulliyyahofLaws, Malaysia/ Indonesia;
  18. Syed Arabi Bin Syed Abdullah, Former Rector, International Islamic University, Malaysia;
  19. Yusuf Ziya Özcan, Former President of Council of Higher Education, Türkiye;
  20. Mohamed Jawhar Hassan, Former Chairman and Chief Executive, Institute of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS) Malaysia;

95. Shad Faruqi, Professor of Law, University of Malaya, Malaysia;

  1. Mohammad Ahmadullah Siddiqi, Professor Emeritus of Journalism and Public Relations, Western Illinois University, Macomb IL USA/India;
  2. Mohamed Tarawna, Judge at the Cassation Tribunal, Jordan;
  3. Etyen Mahcupyan, Author, Former Chief Advisor to Prime Minister of Türkiye;
  4. Khawla Mattar, the Director of the United Nations Information center in Cairo, Former UN Deputy Special Envoy for Syria, Bahrain;
  5. Aslam Abdullah, Senior Journalist, USA/India;
  6. Stuart Rees, Professor Emeritus, University of Sydney, Australia;
  7. Hatem Ete, Academic, Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt University, Department of Sociology, Türkiye;
  8. Karim Makdisi, Professor of Political Science, American University of Beirut, Lebanon;
  9. Camilo Pérez-Bustillo, National Taiwan University, Taiwan;
  10. Bridget Anderson, Professor of Migration, Mobilities and Citizenship, University of Bristol, UK;
  11. William Spence, Professor of Theoretical Physics, Queen Mary University of London, UK;
  12. Mohammad Hashim Kamali, Professor of Law, Founding CEO of the International Institute of Advanced Islamic Studies, Malaysia/Afghanistan;
  13. Ferid Muhic, Prof of Philosophy, Krill Metodius University, Macedonia;
  14. Frej Fenniche, Former Senior Human Rights Ofcer/UN, OHCHR, Switzerland;
  15. Sevinç Alkan Özcan, Associate Professor, International Relations Department, Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt University;
  16. Sigit Riyanto, Professor, Faculty of Law Universitas, Indonesia;
  17. Khaled Khoja, Former President of Syrian National Coalition;
  18. Tarık Çelenk, Former Chairman of Ekopolitik, Türkiye;
  19. M. Bassam Aisha, Human Rights Expert, Libya;
  20. Naceur El-Ke, Academician and Human Rights Activist, Tunisia;
  21. Jean-Daniel Biéler, Former Ambassador, Special Advisor, Human Security Division, Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, Switzerland;

117. Fajri Matahati Muhammadin, Faculty of Law, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia;

  1. Ahmet Okumuş, Chairman of The Foundation for Sciences and Arts (BİSAV), Türkiye;
  2. Khan Yasir, Dr., Director In-Charge, Indian Institute of Islamic Studies and Research, India;
  3. Mahmudul Hasan, Md., Professor, International Islamic University Malaysia/ Bangladesh;
  4. Tara Reynor O’Grady, General Secretary for Human Rights Sentinel, USA;
  5. NurullahArdıç,ProfessorofSociology,IstanbulTechnicalUniversity,Türkiye;
  6. PharKimBeng,FounderandCEOofStrategicPan-PacicArena,Malaysia;
  7. Dinar Dewi Kania, M.M, .M.Sos, Trisakti Institute of Transportation and Logistics. Jakarta, Indonesia
  8. MulyadhiKartanegara,ProfessorofIslamicphilosophyat,UniversitasIslamNegeri Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta, Indonesia;
  9. Habib Chirzin, Academic and Human Rights activist, IIIT, Indonesia

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Gaza: After Genocide What Future?

29 Nov

[Prefatory Note: Responses to questions posed by ODVV (Organization for Defending Victims of Violence). The ODVV website is www.odvv.org. At the moment many prayers call fervently for a permanent ceasefire, but the future is suspended in doubt, and the pre-pause Israeli genocidal onslaught casts a dark shadow over all of humanity. Many innocent lives in Gaza stilll remain in jeopardy if the pause or truce is not converted into a ceasefire and emergency relief on a large scale. My responses waver between fears of a resumed Israeli military operation and hopes of confronting day after issues of post-genocidal economic reconstruction and scenarios of political transformation.]

1.Horrible media outlets focus on the access to food and other essential items for the Gaza civilians. What do you think of the starvation of civilians and children as a tool for war?

Policies of war combatants that deliberately focus on starvation or denial of access to food as a tactic or tool of war are guilty of war crimes. It is usual for such tactics to be disavowed by their perpetrators as collateral damage with no intention to target civilians of any category. If the targeting appears deliberate, continues in similar patterns disregarding predominant civilian targeting, and inflicts heavy civilian casualties, as has been the case with respect to the Israeli attacks in Gaza since the October 7 Hamas attack, it is viewed as criminal activity. The fact that the October 7 itself included severe war crimes does not in any way justify Israeli conduct in a retaliatory mode that is disproportional or criminal. Starvation intentionally directed at civilians is unconditionally prohibited by the Geneva Conventions and an inherent war crime, which if repeated or continuous can be prosecuted as a Crime against Humanity or even Genocide if the instrument of starvation seems to be used for the purpose of destroying a racial, ethnic, or religious group in whole or in part.

2.How do you see the limitation of access to electricity, water, medicine, and hygiene items to be affecting people’s and children’s lives?

In the context of Israel’s ‘war’ on Gaza such restrictions, applied to an impoverished population without qualification, are genocidal examples of aggravated war crimes explicitly prohibited by provisions of the 4th Geneva Convention on Belligerent Occupation. Israel as the Occupying Power does not right enjoy any right of self-defense against an Occupied People, and is under a pervasive duty to protect the civilian population under all circumstances. Israel’s implementation of its government order totally cutting off Gaza’s access to food, fuel and electricity has contributed to the destruction of medical system, imperiling the entire population of Gaza, killing many children and women, as well as men, and the cause of widespread suffering of all Gazans, including children at women. 

Specific provisions are found in the Geneva Convention that confirm this assessment. Article 6 indicates the full reach of the protective legal duties of the Occupying Power to the civilian population under their control. The text of this provision underlies the commitment of International Humanitarian Law to the protection of civilians:

ART. 6. — “The present Convention shall apply from the outset of any conflict or occupation mentioned in Article 2.

In the territory of Parties to the conflict, the application of the present Convention shall cease on the general close of military operations.

In the case of occupied territory, the application of the present Convention shall cease one year after the general close of military operations; however, the Occupying Power shall be bound, for the duration of the occupation, to the extent that such Power exercises the functions of government in such territory, by the provisions of the following Articles of the present Convention: 1 to 12, 27, 29 to 34, 47, 49, 51, 52, 53, 59, 61 to 77, 143.”

Protected persons whose release, repatriation or re- establishment may take place after such dates shall meanwhile continue to benefit by the present Convention.”

In addition, because so responsive to inquiry as to the status of starvation under international humanitarian law, the partial texts of Article 55 & 56 is reproduced below:

ART. 55. — “To the fullest extent of the means available to it, the Occupying Power has the duty of ensuring the food and medical supplies of the population; it should, in particular, bring in the necessary foodstuffs, medical stores and other articles if the resources of the occupied territory are inadequate.”

ART. 56. — “To the fullest extent of the means available to it, the Occupying Power has the duty of ensuring and maintaining, with the co-operation of national and local authorities, the medical and hospital establishments and services, public health and hygiene in the occupied territory, with particular reference to the adoption and application of the prophylactic and preventive measures necessary to combat the spread of contagious diseases and epidemics. Medical personnel of all categories shall be allowed to carry out their duties.“3.Over the decades, the world has witnessed a multitude of various rounds of attacks on Gaza, with no achievements, in your opinion, what is the reason for the inability of the international community to address the gross violations of human rights by Israel?

3.We have witnessed the dreadful attack on Gaza Hospital, what do you think of the air raids that seem to be indiscriminately targeting the places that are supposed to serve as civilians’ sanctuary in wartime?

The wording of the question suggests the confusion surrounding this important dimension of the most serious allegations of ‘indiscriminate targeting’ when contrary to the literalness of the alllegations, the targets are obviously being selected and targeted by Israel’s precision weaponry against just such legally protected sites and civilians, including hospitals, refugee camps, sick and wounded patients, forced civilian evacuees compelled by Israel mandatory order to leave their homes in the north of Gaza for the southern portion of the strip. The entire military operation against Gaza is seemingly intended to create an ethnic cleansing phenomenon comparable to the forced dispossession of more than 700,000 Palestinians. This happened in the final phases of the 1948 War known to Palestinians as the Nakba (or catastrophe)

4.The message that the Palestinians were receiving from pressure against them by Israel including building settlements and killing civilians in Gaza is that Israel is against the two-state solution question. So, it’s a big question mark on the two-state solution. Do you think that a two-state solution is still a valid solution and can be a way to get out of this deadlock and war? or do you believe that these current incident events have also brought this solution to a dead end?

This is a puzzling time for those thinking about a benevolent future for both Palestinians and Israelis. At the moment external voices that are seeking a permanent ceasefire, including the UN Secretary-General, as well as many longtime Jewish supporters of Israel, continue to act as if a two-state is the best and only feasible solution despite seemingly formidable obstacles that are being overlooked. The first set of obstacles is the extensive and militant settler phenomenon, which has been consistently viewed at the UN and most international venues as being in direct violation of Article 49(6) of Geneva IV. There are currently about 250 settlements spread around the West Bank and as many as 500,000 settlers who would resist by force any arrangement calling for their relocation in pre-1967 Israel (as did the 2005 ‘Disengagement’ from Gaza). The second obstacle is the known opposition of Likud leadership, including Netanyahu, to meaningful forms of Palestinian statehood, most dogmatically and openly by Netanyahu’s coalition partner, the Religious Right Party, as most prominently represented in the current so-called ‘uniity government’ by Ben Gvir and Smotrich. A possible third obstacle relates to the likelihood of a Palestinian refusal to accept an inferior form of statehood involving permanent demilitarization, Israel’s retention of West Bank settler enclaves, and some West Bank land transfers to Israel.

A sustainable peace depends on political arrangements based on equality between the two peoples as well as upholding the dignity of other minorities (Druze, Bedoin). If this skepticism about a two-state solution seems to imply a single state it would highlight the principal obstacle that would doubtless come from Zionists who remain deeply committed to a Jewish supremist state and to a lesser extent from Palestinians demanding the full right of return of the five million or more Palestinian refugees and involuntary exiles living in camps or spread around the world. Given the depth of resentment that is associated with events since October 7 even a confederal union of the two peoples is hardlly even thinkable under present conditions. At the same time, to restore the former status quo seems impossible given the devastation of Gaza, underscored by the lingering prospect of mass homelessness affecting the entire populaton of northern Gaza. Innovative solutions involving federation or confederation with either Lebanon or Egypt seems also non-viable at this point, although given the absence of a feasible peace arrangement are making the advocacy of innovative solutions the least bad of plausible day after options.

5.Considering the scope and intensity of the destruction of the civilian infrastructure and the blockade which is imposed on Gaza, in your opinion, what strategy should be implemented to firstly end the siege of Gaza (permanently and not return to the pre-conflict situation that practically turned Gaza a prison) and secondly, what should be done to heal this 75-year-old wound which was created since the establishment of Israel?

These are difficult questions for which there may no satisfactory answers to long as Israel is governed by such an extreme government and continues to enjoy the support of the US and strongest members of the EU. I think that even these governments supporting Israel throughout the horrifying genocidal spectacle feel increasing pressure from their own citizenry to find a more humane future for the people of Gaza and all of occupied Palestine, and in this sense, that the devastation wrought by Israel has backfired as a strategy that coupled security concerns with expansionist ambitions, although it is too soon to be confident of such an assessment.

I think the first priority after a permanent ceasefire is established would be to secure the withdrawal of Israel armed forces from Gaza, followed by an emergency international relief effort that gave priority to rebuilding destroyed residential neighborhoods and family residences, as well as the despatch of some form of international peacekeeping force, whether under UN auspices or otherwise. The forced evacuations together with intensity of bombardment has destroyed over 76% of the residences in northern Gaza. Of course, the rebuilding of hospitals and the repair of damage to UN structures, mosques and churches, and refugee facilities should also be included by international donors in their effort to meet this gigantic challenge of devastation at a time of cold weather and overcrowding.

More difficult by far is to end the iron grip on Gaza that has been maintained in different cruel forms ever since 1967. A first step would be a demand by the UNSC, and possibly such other intergovernmental groupings as the BRICs, to lift the blockade imposed in 2007 and agree with a Palestinian unity governance council on mutually administered border controls and an international protection force to monitor arms inputs ideally to both Gaza and Israel. It is virtually certain that these steps could not be taken until the certain political preconditions were met. Of vital political, perhaps indispensable, importance in day after contexts would be the replacement of the Netanyahu government by a new coalition with a commitment to a sustainable peace.. Hopefully a new Israeli leadership committed to finding a neutral framework for negotiating a genuine political compromise that must finally give recognition to the basic rights of the Palestinian people.

These ideas may seem utopian at present, but they represent the only practical alternative to the sort of exterminist politics that Israel has so far relied upon in responding to the October 7 attack, which were immediately seized upon as an opportunity by the Israeli government to carry out the expansionist final phases of the Zionist Project, which included sovereign control and Palestinian dispossession in the West Bank and overall international erasure of the Palestinian people and extinguishing any remaining statehood expectations. Destroying Hamas was never the entire, and perhaps not the main, rationale for the disproportionate Israeli response, and may have also been motivated by the perceived need of the Tel Aviv leaders to divert attention of Israelis and the world from the inexcusable security failures of the Israeli government that allowed Hamas to plan and carry out its October 7 attack. For Israel to achieve the political space required to fulfill the maximalist Zionist vision required several development: the demonization of Hamas, the exaggeration of future security threats facing Israel, and the genocidal onslaught that inflicted undeserved and horrifying punishment upon 99% innocent and previously victimized Gaza civilians while distracting attention of the world to the wider policy agenda of the Tel Aviv leadership. In thinking about the future it is helpful to separate the humanitarian urgency of funding livable conditions for the people of Gaza from a politics that aimed at the transformation of the underlying conflict. Yet to leave the political track to the parties would invite future tragedies arising from the contradictory goals inherent in settler colonialism and those of a national movement of resistance in a post-colonial setting.

Slaughter in Gaza: The Failures of International law and Responsible Statecraft

5 Nov

[Prefatory Note: A slightly updated and modified interview on Gaza with Zeynep Busra Conkar, an Associate Producer of TRT World, published October 30, 2023, an important Turkish media platform. A link to a short audio excerpt: https://twitter.com/trtworld/status/1719078356577075573]

TRT: Israel’s bloodlust shows international law is ‘a manipulated series of norms.’ Renowned International Law Professor Richard Falk says Western leadership becomes “self-righteous” to enforce international law “when it’s in their interest” while in other cases, they remain silent. TRT Introduction to Q & A follows.

”Many objective observers have noted that how Israel is using force against Gaza constitutes an ongoing case of genocide, which is itself considered the most serious of international crimes and deserves to be stopped by a consensus of inter-governmental action at the UN to stop this kind of extreme violent abuse of state power,” Falk said.

As the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict enters its 24th day, claiming the lives of over 9,800 people – 8306 Palestinians and 1538 Israelis – Tel Aviv refuses to de-escalate or even allow ‘a humanitarian pause’ in its military operations and instead resorts to massive disproportionate and indiscriminate violence on the besieged and defenseless people of densely populated Gaza, striking at targets such as hospitals, medical convoys, refugee camps, religious buildings, UN facilities, schools, and in the process ordering a cruel and impractical forced evacuation of 1.1 Palestinians in the northern part of Gaza, treating those unable or unwilling to leave as aligned with the ‘terrorists,’ that is, Hamas.

The scale of devastation caused by Israeli bombings in Gaza is horrifying. A small enclave of an estimated 2.3 million Palestinians navigating perilous waters over the past 16 years to survive in the face of a comprehensive and punitive economic and social blockade since 2007 proclaimed by Israeli officials as designed to keep Palestinians on ‘a subsistence diet,’ that is ‘a bare life.’ Gaza has in the last weeks once again been subjected to collective punishment on a gigantic scale– further aggravated by Israel’s scandalous targeting of prohibited sites and by through the alleged use of incendiary phosphorus bombs in densely populated civilian areas. Such practices consist of numerous war crimes.

In moments like this, when a staggering death toll of civilians, half of whom are children, isn’t significant enough even to lead the international community to use the same condemnatory language and criticism it has employed against Russia in the course of the Ukraine conflict in far less anguishing circumstances. Western leadership fails once again to convince the world that conformity to its recently much-touted “rules-based order” bears any relationship to either the UN Charter or international law. It exhibits a calculus of friends and enemies, with the former allowed to coerce as they wish, even in monstrous ways.

TRT WORLD: Will Tel Aviv ever be held accountable for the crimes it has committed in Gaza? Considering over 56 years of occupation, an apartheid regime, and countless human rights violations in Palestine, in what ways have the global powers, especially the US, colluded with the Israeli state and enabled near-genocidal violence against Palestinians?

RICHARD FALK: No effective legal remedies have been available to the Palestinians. The UN should take far more responsibility for implementing its own resolution passed in 1947, the so-called partition plan, while disregarding Palestinian their inalienable right of self-determination,  at least promised the Palestinian people a state of their own in historic Palestine. The UN also failed to implement Security Council Res. 242 adopted unanimously after the 1967 War, which called for the withdrawal of the Israeli military presence established by military conquest. Since then, the UN has been blocked in the Security Council by US and sometimes European vetoes; the rest of the UN can authoritatively report on and identify legal and moral wrongdoing doing harm to the Palestinian people, but it lacks the capability to implement its findings without a Security Council decision. The General Assembly is limited to making recommendations based on 2/3s majority,support; even the International Court of Justice’s binding decision requiring Security Council action to compel enforcement. So, the remedies provided by the international legal community in this situation are ineffective if a major geopolitical actor, in this case, the United States, is determined not to shield Israel from accountability to international law. The Palestinians have had law on their side ever since 1948, and yet their subjugation to Israel’s patterns of lawlessness that have gone unchallenged for these many decades.

The UN has policy mechanisms available if a supportive political will exists to use them effectively. In the aftermath of the 1999 Kosovo War it agreed in the Security Council on UN responsibility in situations of precisely the kind present in Gaza, framed as a new norm known as Responsibility to Protect of R2P. It was partly discredited in its first major test in Libya when the NATO countries converted a limited R2P humanitarian mandate in 2011 into a regime-changing intervention that resulted in the execution of the longtime leader and left the country in a worse condition than the one it had undertaken to overcome. Without the political will asserted in manner consistent with the UN Charter ‘effective’ UN action can worsen the situation of a vulnerable and endangered civilian population.

In its decades long occupation, Israel has never hesitated to use excessive force, and the global powers have neither pressured Tel Aviv to withdraw from the occupied Palestinian territories due to its dismal record as the Occupying Power with a duty to protect civilians under its administrative control nor has Israel been warned to stop using violence in ways that violate international humanitarian law.

TRT: Shouldn’t the international community’s ‘Responsibility to Protect’ also apply to Palestine?

RAF: Well, of course. As previously suggested, I believe the international community should have taken R2P action to protect the Palestinians living under Israeli occupation long ago or at the very least debated its relevance. The genocidal onslaught since Oct 7 is so far past the point where it is rationally possible to treat the abuse of Palestinian rights as a matter of internal Israeli security and as somehow a reasonable response to the Hamas attack. The international community has failed miserably so far to offer vital protect an acutely vulnerable, abused, and endangered people. If geopolitics could be put aside, the extreme suffering of Gazans offer the UN an ideal situation where a robust international peace force established in accord with R2P could intervene in ways that might stop the Israeli onslaught, and even made capable of maintaining peace and protecting the Palestinians over time. R2P empowers the UNSC to protect a vulnerable population, and of all the vulnerable peoples in the world, the Palestinians are the ones now most in need of international forcible protection. It is an emergency that has already inflicted a humanitarian catastrophe on the entire population of Gaza, but the continuation of this devastating onslaught will compound the criminality of the attack and the suffering of the people.

But without the political will of all five permanent members of the Security Council, the UN cannot do anything, even rhetorically, that will effectively curtail Israeli violence.  Operationalizing R2P is impossible given the arrogant insistence of the Israeli government that we are now witnessing, whose context is much broader than any claimed right of retaliation against the Hamas attack.

TRT: What about the international media? To what extent is it responsible for dehumanizing Palestinians and justifying Israeli human rights abuses, which many argue amount to war crimes?

RAF: Well, the international media is polarized on this cluster of issues; the Western media and especially in the US and UK, have been one-sided in their approach to the ongoing violence, basically vindicating Israel’s position that it is entitled to use whatever means at its disposal to destroy Hamas and hunt down and kill its leaders who perpetrated the Oct 7 attack. But the daily images on TV of Israeli violence against women, children, and injured people. and the extreme Palestinian suffering that has resulted has somewhat lifted the veil of state propaganda, what Noam Chomsky hears ago in the Cold War context delimited as ‘indoctrination in a liberal society.’

In my view, this grant of discretion to Israel is incompatible with the international humanitarian law arrangement by which Gaza was designated as an occupied territory, and Israel as the Occupying Power. The innocent civilian population of Gaza is estimated to be 2.3 million people, 76 percent of whom are refugees or descendants of refugees basically forced by Zionist forces to leave their homes in the villages of southern Gaza in 1948 and denied their international legal right of return, which they and their descendants have tried to challenge over the years by peaceful means without any success, and often with Israeli violent suppressive action. It’s one of the areas where international law is not implemented because of the regressive myth that legal rights created by geopolitical actors who prove unwilling to implement such rights as the Palestinian people enjoy. People thus victimized by Israel, which enjoys the extra-legal form of impunity, have law on their side but lack any remedy that might provide the protection that should be given.

TRT: If the UN can support Ukraine’s fight against Russia and the Western powers can wholeheartedly support the Ukrainian cause, why not the same response on Palestine? Are we facing a crisis of morality or the legality of human rights is being applied on a case-by-case basis, depending on the skin colour and religion of the oppressed?

RAF: Well, there’s no question about the existence of big differences in the treatment by the Global West of the Russian attack on Ukraine and the Israeli attack on the people of Gaza. These NATO exhibits double standards and moral and legal hypocrisy; in other words, Russia is held accountable, and Israel is given impunity. This suggests that international law isn’t a framework for regulating states on some basis of equality as integral to the rule of law, but it is a manipulated series of norms that serve the purposes and often the contradictory and clashing strategic interests of geopolitical actors. When it is in their interest to enforce international law, these states become very self-righteous about their behavior in condemning the violators. But if it’s in their interest to support the violations of international law, then they will either be silent or, in this case, lend unconditional and mostly, but not totally, indirect support to the government and country that is violating international law in a most extreme fashion. Such a dualistic approach to international law functions both a weapon of aggressive lawfare to be useful against adversaries and a policy instrument of legalistic evasion to be deployed on behalf of strategic partners and ‘friends’ further undermining any claim of international law to be authoritative, and deserving of respect, especially in the domain of peace and security. Enemies are sought to be punished when international law is violated, while strategic allies are inoculated with an impunity serum.

TRT: The UN was originally established to promote peace and security, protect human rights, and uphold international law. Have the founding states of the UN undermined the institution because of power politics, or was the UN always meant to be an institution that serves the best interests of a select few members of the Security Council?

RAF: That is a very important and often overlooked question. The UN was designed to be weak in this regard; otherwise, the veto power given to the five most powerful countries in the world makes no sense who happened to be the winners in World War II and later were the first five country to develop nuclear weapons. The effectiveness and the importance of the veto is to confer on these most dangerous and powerful states an unrestricted option to ignore the UN Charter and ignore other international legal obligations whenever the proposed Security Council action clashes with its strategic interests. There was no willingness on the part of leading governments to create a strong, independent, and suitably empowered war prevention global institution when the UN was established, despite the aspirational language of the UN Charter and especially its preamble as expressive of public expectations that governments will try their best to establish an organization that is entrusted with enough capabilities to secure peace for the peoples of the world.

TRT: Israel has always misused the term self-defense to validate its bloodletting approach to security, but does bombing towns and neighborhood’s into smithereens qualify as self-defense in the face of a few hundred gun-toting militants?

RAF: The scope of self-defense is very contested in international law, so you can find legal authorities to support different interpretations of what is allowed. But it’s not allowed to use high levels of force to target a hostile civilian population. Israel has been guilty over the years, but spectacularly in Gaza in the last weeks, of using military force in a variety of ways that under any conditions, whether or not justified and rationalized, would not be permissible as exercises of self-defense, and thus would constitute war crimes. Beyond this it is questionable whether Israel can even validly rely on self-defense in Gaza, which is an Occupied Territory subject to the constraints of Geneva IV.

Israel as the Occupying Power; cannot rightfully claim to be defending itself against itself. It’s a real puzzle how the international discourse has accepted this misapplication of the idea of self-defense, which makes no sense in the setting of belligerent occupation of an adversary society in whole or part.

TRT: Should Israel be put on trial for war crimes in the International Criminal Court? If yes, what steps need to be taken? If not, why not?

RAF: The answer is the absence of political will to prosecute Israel and the relative passivity and political weakness of the International Criminal Court when it comes to holding major Western states legally accountable. This makes effective use of the ICC a remote possibility in relation to Israel, although it would have made sense if international law was capable of regulating lawless state behavior without deferring to the preferences of geopolitical actors. It is true that neither Israel nor the United States are parties to the Rome Statute and are, therefore, not active in the affairs of the International Criminal Court. But the court’s authority is such that if Palestine, which is a party to the statute, has credibly alleged that it is the victim of crimes committed on its territory, then the ICC is empowered to investigate, indict and prosecute.

And I fervently hope that some effort will be made in the aftermath of the present outbreak of unrestrained violence to strengthen the ICC in relation to geopolitics. It would be naive to become optimistic about achieving any sort of accountability by Israel’s leaders even in the face of what continues to unfold as a textbook case of genocide. That doesn’t mean that it wouldn’t be desirable to submit to the ICC evidence and allegations of Israeli criminality, which by their nature would be convincing to many organs of public opinion and civil society activists. Mere submission plays this important role in what I identify as the domain of symbolic politics, where establishing or challenging the legitimacy of certain claims produces significant political effects.

TRT: Would you like to add anything else on this topic?

This is a crisis moment for the world, for the peoples of the world, and for the UN as well as for the governments that have the responsibility and capability to oppose international crimes at this level of severity. Many objective observers have contended that Israel is using force against Gaza in ways that constitute an ongoing genocide, which is itself considered the most serious of international crimes and should produce a consensus among government and a call for action by the UN to stop this kind of extreme abuse of state power that is generating one of the most flagrant instances of genocide since 1945.. We should become aware that genocide prevention is a legal and moral obligation of all government and a collective responsibility. Until such time as international institutions can provide effective international law the peoples of the world have a valuable opportunity to contribute to a law-governed world by way of constituting a Peoples Tribunal on Genocide Prevention in Gaza or on Israel’s War Against the People of Gaza. It should be recalled that the treaty addressing genocide widely ratified, including by the antagonists in the Gaza violence and its diplomatic encounters, is titled Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1951).



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Can Crimes of Resistance ever justify Genocide? The Tragic Reality of Gaza

3 Nov

[Prefatory Note: This post was published in Middle East Eye on Nov 3, 2023 with the title “Israel-Palestine war: Israel’s endgame is much more sinister than restoring ‘security.'”]

\\Can Crimes of Resistance ever justify Genocide? The Tragic Reality of Gaza

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres was recently pilloried by Israel because he stated a truism, observing that the 7 October Hamas attack “did not happen in a vacuum”.

Guterres was calling the world’s attention to Israel’s long record of severe criminal provocations in occupied Palestine, which have been occurring ever since it became the occupying power after the 1967 war. 

The occupier, a role expected to be temporary, is entrusted in such circumstances with upholding international humanitarian law by ensuring the security and safety of the occupied civilian population, as spelled out in the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Israel reacted so angrily to Guterres’s entirely appropriate and accurate remarks because they could be interpreted as implying that Israel “had it coming” in view of its severe and varied abuses against people in the occupied Palestinian territories, most flagrantly in Gaza, but also in the West Bank and Jerusalem. 

After all, if Israel could present itself to the world as an innocent victim of the 7 October attack – an incident that was itself replete with war crimes – it could reasonably hope to gain carte blanche from its patrons in the West to retaliate as it pleased, without being bothered by the restraints of international law, UN authority, or common morality. 

Indeed, Israel responded to the 7 October attack with its typical skill in manipulating the global discourse that shapes public opinion and guides the foreign policies of many important countries. Such tactics seem almost superfluous here, as the US and EU swiftly issued blanket approval for whatever Israel did in response, however vengeful, cruel or unrelated to restoring Israeli border security. 

Guterres’s UN speech had such a dramatic impact because it punctured Israel’s balloon of artfully constructed innocence, in which the terror attack came out of the blue. This exclusion of context diverted attention from the devastation of Gaza and the genocidal assault on its overwhelmingly innocent, and long-victimised, population of 2.3 million.

Extraordinary lapses

What I find strange and disturbing is that, despite the consensus that the Palestinian fighters’ attack became feasible only because of extraordinary lapses in Israel’s supposedly second-to-none intelligence capabilities and tight border security, this factor has rarely been discussed since that day.

Instead of the morning after being filled with vengeful fury, why wasn’t the focus within Israel and elsewhere on taking emergency action to restore Israeli security by correcting these costly lapses, which would seem to be the most effective way to assure that nothing comparable to 7 October could happen again?

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I can understand Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s reluctance to stress this explanation or advocate this form of response, as it would be tantamount to a confession of his personal co-responsibility for the tragedy traumatically experienced by Israel at its supposedly impenetrable border. 

But what of others in Israel, and among its supporting governments? Undoubtedly, Israel is in all likelihood devoting all means at its disposal, with a sense of urgency, to close these incredible gaps in its intelligence system, and to beef up its military capabilities along Gaza’s comparatively short borders. 

It is not necessary to be a security wonk to conclude that dealing reliably with these security issues would do more to prevent and deter future Palestinian fighters attacks, than this ongoing saga of inflicting devastating punishment on the Palestinian population of Gaza, very few of whom are involved with the military wing of Hamas. 

Genocidal fury

Netanyahu has lent further plausibility to such speculation by presenting a map of the Middle East without Palestine included, effectively erasing Palestinians from their own homeland, during a September UN speech, where he spoke of a new peace in the Middle East amid the prospect of Israel-Saudi Arabia normalisation. His presentation amounted to an implicit denial of the UN consensus on the two-state formula as a roadmap for peace. 

Meanwhile, the genocidal fury of Israel’s response to the Hamas attack is enraging people across the Arab world, and indeed the world over, even in western countries. But after more than three weeks of merciless bombardment, total siege and mass forced displacement, Israel’s discretion to unleash this torrent of violence on Gaza has yet to be challenged by its western supporters. 

The US in particular is backing Israel at the UN, using its veto as needed in the Security Council, and voting with almost no solidarity from major countries against a ceasefire at the General Assembly. Even France voted for the General Assembly resolution, and the UK had the minimal decency to abstain, both likely reacting pragmatically to the populist pressures mounted by large and angry street demonstrations at home. 

It has also been forgotten in reacting to Israel’s tactics in Gaza that from day one, the extremist government has initiated a shocking series of violent provocations across the occupied West Bank. Many have interpreted this undisguised unleashing of settler violence as part of the endgame of the Zionist project, aimed at achieving victory over the remnants of Palestinian resistance. 

There is little reason to doubt that Israel deliberately overreacted to 7 October by immediately engaging in a genocidal response, particularly if its purpose was to divert attention from the escalation of West Bank settler violence, exacerbated by the government’s distribution of guns to “civilian security teams”. 

The Israeli government’s ultimate plan seems to be to end once and for all UN partition fantasies, lending authority to the Zionist maximalist goal of annexation or total subjugation of West Bank Palestinians. In effect, as morbid as it seems, the Israeli leadership seized the occasion of 7 October to “finish the job” by committing genocide in Gaza, under the guise that Hamas was such a danger as to justify not only its destruction, but this indiscriminate onslaught against the whole population. 

My analysis leads me to conclude that this ongoing war is not primarily about security in Gaza or security threats posed by Hamas, but rather about something much more sinister and absurdly cynical. 

Israel has seized this opportunity to fulfill Zionist territorial ambitions amid “the fog of war” by inducing one last surge of Palestinian catastrophic dispossession. Whether it is called “ethnic cleansing” or “genocide” is of secondary importance, although it already qualifies as the predominant humanitarian catastrophe of the 21stcentury. 

In effect, the Palestinian people are being victimised by two convergent catastrophes: one political, the other humanitarian.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

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GAZA in real time: Geopolitics versus Genocide

31 Oct

[Prefatory Note: A modified version of this interview conducted by Daniel Falcone, with a long introduction was published online in Truthout on October 29, 2023, The situation in Gaza and its increasingly regional implications grow more humanly distressing and politically menacing with each passing day. Israel has succeeded in influencing the Global West and its corporate main media platforms to accept two interpretations of events following the Oct 7 Hamas attack that are at best highly contentious and controversial and, in my understanding, deeply misleading and distorting: (1) that Hamas is nothing other than a group of terrorists engaged in barbaric crimes, and should be addressed in the same manner as ISIS and Al-Qaeda; (2) that it is legitimate in such a conflict to override normal rules of international law, even to the extent of engaging in genocidal means of ethnic cleansing.

In my view it is truer to the realities of its existence and behavior to regard Hamas as a political actor, freely elected and in charge of administering Gaza since 2007 despite an Israeli blockade and a pattern of punitive harassment.

Israel from the perspective of international law remains the Occupying Power in Gaza and the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and as such is bound by the 4th Geneva Convention governing Belligerent Occupation. As a result it has extra legal obligations to protect the Occupied People and although entitled to maintain its security by reasonable means. It has no valid basis for claiming  self-defense as if Hamas was a foreign entity.

Israel’s ‘politics of deflection,’ induce its own and world public opinion to overlook the true motivations and goals of Israel in mounting this genocidal response to the Hamas attack. The attack should be further contextualized by reference to the behavior of the extremist Netanyahu government that took over at the beginning of 2023, making issues other than the vengeful retaliation seem more illuminating: Given Israel tactics as articulated by its leaders, especially Netanyahu and Gallant, the behavior is not primarily about countering the Oct 7 attack. In other words it is less about restoring Israeli security than it is devoted to the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. If security was the core concern in the aftermath of October 7, would not Israel have emphasized its all out effort to correct the gaps revealed by the failure of its surveillance capabilities to warn and its military border strength to protect?

Don’t other find it strange that the most obvious, least disruptive Israeli response would have been to restore its own border security with a sense of urgency, negotiating a prisoner exchange for the hostages, and agreeing to a long-term ceasefire with Hamas, which has been proposing for almost a decade? ]

  1. Can you talk about how misinformation and propaganda serves as an extra arm to overall the Israeli military policy?

Israel has long been a master of what is called in Hebrew hasbara, that is the spinning, manipulating, and distorting of public discourse so that it either justifies what Israel is doing or diverts attention from the message of critics and skeptics to the supposedly questionable credibility of the messenger. ‘The weaponizing of anti-Semitism’ is a cynical example of the deployment of hasbara stratagems designed solely to deflect criticism and shift the conversation to persons falsely accused..   Smearing reputable critics and discrediting objective criticism of Israel by giving voice to irresponsible allegations of hatred of Jews that is known by the Zionist apologists to be untrue is reflective of the hasbara mentality. The hasbara mission is to shield Israel from its critics, regardless of whether the criticisms are accurate or not. The quality of hasbara discourse is not evaluated by their truthfulness, but solely by their effectiveness in changing the subject to an attack mode and inflicting a discrediting, undeserved punishment on their target. Such diversionary maneuvers are undertaken whenever substantive arguments in Israel’s defense are weak or non-existent. 

Asa Winstanley has written a powerful book on years of defamatory attacks on political figures or activist citizens who spoke positively about the Palestinian struggle in the UK and advocated that initiatives be taken to put pressure on Israel in influential opinion-forming venues or by way of activism as in the BDS Campaign. Winstanley compiles evidence showing that these tactics were being strongly and materially encouraged by Israeli officials and even subsidized by government money. The book carefully narrates the well-orchestrated campaign to destroy Jeremy Corbyn as a credible political leader of the Labour Party by widely disseminating knowingly false intimations of antisemitism of his part. [Winstanley, Weaponising Anti-Semitism: How the Israel Lobby Brought Down Jeremy Corbyn, (OR Books, 2023)].

Happening to know Jeremy Corbyn I can testify to his absolute acceptance and affirmation of the Jewish people, and his criticisms of Israel are directed at the objectional nature of their apartheid policies and practices, which have been confirmed in elaborate, documented reports of Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International..

The only reasonable conclusion is that hasbara ethos, fully embraced by Israel’s political leaders and pro-Israel lobbying groups around the world is ‘anti-truth,’ and not just ‘post-truth’ in the pre-modern sense of relying on beliefs more than empirical evidence.

Perhaps, as formidable as are these actual attacks on individuals or institutions are the intimidating secondary impacts on the mainstream media and public atmosphere to the effect that any public manifestations of pro-Palestinian views and acts of solidarity will be stigmatized and harmful to individuals in the workplace or social settings. Many persons are made reluctant to take public stands critical of Israel because fearful of Zionist pushbacks. University administrators, at best a timid lot, withhold funds and even discourage the sponsorship of campus events opposed by unscrupulous pro-Zionist groups and individuals, including apolitical cultural gatherings deemed in some sense to be anti-Israeli or pro-Palestinian. It would seem that the motivations for such mounting such hostile pressures is the belief that cultural expression humanizes ‘the enemy’ and renders less tenable the use of the terrorist label to dismiss Palestinian grievances. Wealthy individuals are aware of this sensitivity, and exert donor influence to achieve desired results with an overtness that erodes freedom of expression and rights of dissent in the midst of an ugly political confrontation, which calls for free discussion and a social atmosphere where dissident views are respected..

I have a young relative living in New York City who tells me that even her silence about current events in Gaza is interpreted by her Jewish friends as a covert criticism of Israel, and a colleague in the West who opposes what Israel is doing but keeps his mouth shut because it will harm his business relationships. As much as we in universities complain, we generally do enjoy the benefits of academic freedom not available in the corporate world, and so we have mostly ourselves to blame for not acting as citizens of conscience who express their beliefs rather than keep our true views closeted. Although in academic settings, the last few weeks have seen university administrators run scared, and impose regulations that prohibit shows of support for Palestinian struggle amid some reports of threats against Jewish students. Given the unscrupulous tactics of hasbara practitioners suspicion about the source of such threats, but given what is happening in Gaza it would be irresponsible o ignore them. After 9/11 an atmosphere of Islamophobia existed in the Global West, but it evoked little concern and what may be more relevant, no donor or community pressures.

The principal point is that the distorting impacts of manipulating the news are not just the spontaneous work of Zionist enthusiasts associated with NGOs and Jewish advocacy and lobbying organizations., They follow a deliberate effort by the most influential Israeli think tanks and the highest levels Israeli officialdom to influence, confuse, and if possible, shape public discourse. When in 2001 the International Criminal Court’s decision authorizing investigations of well-grounded Palestinian complaints about Israeli war crimes post-2014 the technical arguments advanced by lawyers on jurisdiction attracted far less public interest than the outburst by Netanyahu that the ICC decision was a display of ‘pure antisemitism.’ Israeli strategic think tanks have long understood that controlling the main arenas of public discourse are as important as battlefield results and military capabilities, including intelligence. As Israel’s regional security have weakened over the years, hasbara has assumed an ever growing strategic importance in the conduct of Israeli foreign policy, which includes obscuring territorial expansionism and intensification of settler violence in the West Bank. This behavior has become more widely appreciated in the one-sided presentations and reactions to the current orgy of violence in Gaza unleashed by Israel after the Hamas attack, especially the defiant rejection of humanitarian claims by Netanyahu and Yoav

Gallant, Minister of Defense. Both rely on false analogies between ISIS and All Qaeda to underpin their claim that their war is similar to that launched by the US after 9/11 against terrorism and for the sake of security or more absurdly, to the US response against the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. All the while ignoring the elephant in the room, that the Hamas attack only occurred because of a barely believable lapse in Israeli security. It would not require a PhD to grasp the fact that Israeli security and reputation would have been dramatically enhanced by so responding, and in the process do something constructive in the face of Palestinian grievances and frustrations. This, of course, was not to be in part because this incredibly violent response, as barbaric, if not more so, than the events of October 7, serves other purposes, above all

Israeli objectives of seizing land and dispossessing people.

Four elements differentiate Israeli hasbara from standard forms of pro-war state propaganda in periods of intense conflict: (1) unscrupulous tactics to discredit views perceived as hostile consisting of lies, defamation, and subsidized campaigns; (2) greater sophistication, including seeking the deflection of criticism by recourse to false allegations and misleading analogies rather than genuine efforts to defend policies under attack; (3) abundant public and private funding of Zionist anti-truth messaging, lobbying, and lawfare to win support and destroy adversaries; (4) an insistence that it is a justification of the Hamas attack to bring up the context of Palestinian long-term and recently acute victimization, which was the sin of Guterres, met with Israelli calls for his resignation.

Only. during the height of the Cold War were criticisms of the American early role in Vietnam met with discrediting responses that such views were tacit endorsements of Communism and disloyal. By and large, efforts to oppose the latter stages of the Vietnam War or to support BDS as part of an anti-apartheid South Africa campaign were opposed by conservatives as impractical or inconsistent with foreign policy priorities, but not giving rise to punitive witch hunts that have been the experience of critics and activists supporting non-violent pro-Palestinian. initiatives. Nor did the governments of South Vietnam or South Africa get seriously involved in shaping the public dialogue within the United States on nearly the scale or style that Israel and its civil society ardent and well-funded Zionist infrastructure have in the main urban sectors of the Jewish global diaspora.

  • For those who rely on local and national news outlets, and for people who just started watching television coverage in recent weeks, how prevalent do you suspect the “both sides are at fault” account for the casual viewer with this war? And where can non-specialists go to find the context and explanations of the ongoing asymmetries with Gaza and Israel?

This is an important observation and question. In my mind to blame ‘both sides’ in contexts of asymmetrical responsibility such as exists between Jews and Palestinians is to consciously and unconsciously divert attention from the essential hierarchical structure of oppression and subjugation, which is the core reality confronting Palestinians. This is especially true for Palestinians living under Israeli occupation since 1967 or even longer in the  refugee camps of neighboring countries,, and to a somewhat lesser extent characterizing the lives of Palestinians living as Israeli citizens within ‘the green line’ since 1948.

Blaming both sides is also a comfort zone for those who are insufficiently informed or uncomfortable about adopting a controversial position. It makes a pretense of accepting the mainstream media orientation, which purports to be objective, proving it by stressing the diversionary argument that both sides are to blame for the failure of the 1993 Oslo Diplomatic Framework to result in Palestinian statehood, the disappointment with the peace process in general, and even the outbreak of violence. For years Israeli leaders and Zionist militants complained that Israel had ‘no partner’ in the diplomatic search for peace, when it was evident that Israel wanted supremacy and expansion

more than it wanted peace and security, The Abraham Accords gave rise to the delusion that they could have both.

I find it to be an insidious line of argument or reasoning if applied to a grossly asymmetric conflict of the sort that has lasted a hundred years in relation to the contested, evolving future of Palestine as a continuous struggle between the indigenous residents and the colonizing immigrants. It has falsely situated the locus of responsibility for a continuation of the prolonged tragic experience of the dispossessed and subjugated Palestinian people as well as facilitating Israel’s continuous settlement expansion, territorial ambitions, and contribution to the creation of conditions that over time have situated the attainment of Palestinian rights and aspirations well beyond horizons of realistic hope. It has been dramatically illustrated in liberal circles addressing the interaction between the Hamas attack and the Israel provocation and response. By characterizing Hamas as ‘terrorists’ with no credibility as representatives of the victimized Palestinian people, and Israel as the democratic government understandably overreacting in its Gaza attack in the spirit of a traumatized victim ‘both sides’ can be blamed, although in this instance in a manner perversely oblivious to the long Palestinian experience of Israeli state terrorism under the umbrella of its international role as Occupying Power.  

To find accounts sensitive to the asymmetries between Israel and Palestine is not a simple matter. There are several authors who have distinguished over time between the two sides in terms of crucial issues. I would recommend the reports of UN Special Rapporteurs for Occupied Palestine, especially the two more recent ones, Francesca Albanese and her predecessor, Michael Lynk. Their illuminating reports can be found on the website of the UN Human Rights Council covering the last seven years. For more reflective perspectives over a longer time period it might be helpful to consult Richard Falk, John Dugard, and Michael Lynk, Protecting Human Rights in Occupied Palestine: Working Through the United Nations (Clarity, 20223). For a crucial depiction of historical background of the asymmetric and hierarchical relationship between the two peoples, I highly recommend the writings of Ilan Pappé, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (One World  Oxford, 2008); for a fictional depiction of this relationship see the novels of Susan Abulhawa, especially Mornings In Jenin (Bloomsbury USA, 2010).

  • Could you explain the bombing of the Gazan hospital? Norman Finkelstein has cited the overwhelming evidence that points to the Israeli targeting of ambulances. What is your take on the hospital bombing? 

Given the pattern of Israel’s indiscriminate and disproportionate bombing, as well as the targeting of UN buildings, medical facilities, including ambulances, and schools,  it is only natural to assume that the bomb dropped on al-Ahli Hospital was part of an Israeli attack, a perception reinforced by Israel’s consistent reliance on faked evidence in the past to evade atrocity allegations. My inclination is to hold Israel responsible for such a hospital strike as its forced displacement and lack of respect for civilian innocence has pervaded its behavior since the Hamas attack, and created a situation where such incidents happen by accident or design. The issue of intentionality measures the depravity involved, but it does not by itself resolve issues of legal and moral responsibility for specific acts.

As of now there is no definitive account of the facts surrounding the case of the al-Ahli bombing. There are conflicting views, reflecting broader alignments, as to whether the damage was done by an Israeli bomb or a Hamas/Islamic Jihad rocket mishap. In such circumstances, we my never know for sure what caused the lethal explosion but does it really matter. If trains carrying Jews to Nazi death camps collided and killed many of the passengers would it be fruitful to inquire into whether the accident was part of the Holocaust or something else? 

  • What are your thoughts on proportionality as a guideline in war regarding this conflict? How many human rights violations has Israel incurred just in the last week in terms of the overall big picture? What does global opinion suggest about Israel’s actions in the conflict, all done in the name of self-defense?

This is quite a bundle of international law questions. The overarching claim of self-defense is both of questionable relevance to specific charges of war crimes or broad contentions of collective punishment, unconditionally prohibited by the 4th Geneva Convention Governing Belligerent Occupation. But there is a prior question about the legal applicability of ‘self-defense. From the perspective of the UN and international law Gaza (as well as the West  Bank and East Jerusalem) are Occupied Territories subject to the constraints of international humanitarian law. Israel as the Occupying Power is entitled to take reasonable steps to main its security (that can be considered a practical equivalent to the frequent affirmation of ‘Israel right to defend itself’), but Israel has no legally distinct right of self-defense against an administrative actor and political movement operating totally within territory it occupies by international writ, such as Hamas that is not the government of another sovereign state. Its October 7th attack on Israeli territory certainly qualifies as terrorism by its modes of enactment, although as a political undertaking it possessed a hybrid character, as besides the criminality of its action on the ground it was a long provoked act of resistance to Israeli crimes associated with its failure to comply with the provisions of Geneva IV, including the protection of civilians living under occupations and the various prohibitions safeguarding the land and societal rights of an occupied people.

The legal constraint of proportionality and discriminate targeting are universally considered to be valid rules of international customary law but have functioned even in modern times more as admonitions than strictly implemented legal constraints, giving way in combat zones to self-justifying of contentions of military necessity.

Israel’s persistent bombing of residential areas and civilian targets, given the precision of modern weaponry at its disposal, seems to amount to war crimes, and as applied to the densely populated demography of Gaza deserves to be treated as a species of collective punishment, especially in conjunction with the blockade imposed since 2007. In the current phase of violence in Gaza the bombing is reinforced by the forced evacuation order applicable to half the population and by the siege decree cutting the delivery of food, water, fuel, and electricity to the whole of Gaza, a policy widely viewed as ‘genocide,’ The accompanying language used by Yoav Gallant, Israel’s Minister of Defense, in decreeing the siege that described Palestinians as ‘human animals’ that deserve to be treated accordingly certainly strengthens and grounds the accusations of genocide. Leaving aside Gallant’s slurred regressive reference to animals this is a clear instance of genocidal language by a highly placed Israeli official, made more authoritative as reflective of the views of the Israel’s government because such language has been neither qualified or withdrawn.

The Israeli order of ‘forced displacement’ within 24 hours of 1.1 million Gazans from their place of residence in northern Gaza to the southern part of Gaza is itself a most serious and cruel. example of collective punishment and a distinct wrong, constituting a gross crime against humanity aggravated by being implemented while the siege and blockade persists, and the prospect dims of allowing those displaced to return to their homes after the end of the military operation..

  • How aware is Israel of the varied perceptions of conducting this war and how does that factor into their decision making? 

Israel has long been cynical and opportunistic in its approach to international law as has been the United States. Both countries invoke international law and moral outrage when it helps validate their bellicose allegations or justify their own controversial behavior. Israel defies international law, or treats it as irrelevant, when it goes against its policies and practices, and refuses to act in compliance with international law or show respect for UN authority. This lawlessness has been a prominent feature of its administration of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza since the IDF occupied Palestinian territories in 1967, most routinely through the continuous expansion of unlawful settlements and the imposition of multiple form of collective punishment, culminating in apartheid, and now in Gaza with the siege, forced displacement, and systemic bombing of civilians and their places of shelter.

Until now Israel has managed to get away with such behavior mainly because it enjoys the unwavering political support of the United States, EU, and other countries. Israel’s diplomacy has managed through its military prowess and political skill to neutralize hostile action by most of its Arab neighbors, including many countries in the Global South, and shift their security away from Israel due to the common threats attributed to Iran. This normalizing dynamic, which has proceeded by way of pushing Palestinian grievances further and further into the background, has now been disrupted, perhaps forever. If Israel persists with its current policy in Gaza, demonstrations around the world will be enlarged and radicalized, exerting increased pressure on governments to act responssively, particularly in the Middle East, despite risks of a wider war involving Iran growing by the day, with potentially disastrous consequences.

On October 18th Biden delivered a dangerously arrogant speech that overlooked numerous experiences of American frustration and political defeat since the Vietnam War, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and Libya. The speech reaffirmed the global role of the United States as leader of the ‘democratic’ forces of good in the historic battle against ‘autocratic’ forces of terrorist evil, referencing Hamas and Putin. With no show of humility Biden ended his talk with these history-defying words reaffirming ‘American exceptionalism’ at one of its darkest hours : “In moments like these, we have to remind — we have to remember who we are. We are the United States of America. The United States of America. And there is nothing, nothing beyond our capacity, if we do it together.” Indeed, we do have to remember who we really are and realize that when we act together. we may pose to others, and ourselves, the greatest danger the world has ever faced. The U.S. Senate shockingly voted 97-0 last week as the tragedy for the people of Gaza daily unfolds and the House of Representatives voted one-sidedly promising Israel ‘no strings’. diplomatic backing along with assurances that funds for weaponry will be available as needed..

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