4 days ago
No intervention means Gaza genocide continues
RIGHTS groups, lawyers and some governments are describing the Gaza war as "genocide" and calling for a ceasefire but Israel, created in the aftermath of the Nazi Holocaust of Jews, vehemently rejects the explosive term.
Israel's military offensive on Gaza since October 2023 has killed 54,677 people, mostly civilians, according to the Health Ministry in the occupied Palestinian territory.
The United Nations has said the territory's entire population of more than two million people is at risk of famine, even if Israel said last month it was partially easing the complete blockade on aid it imposed on Gaza on March 2.
Despite international calls for an end to the war, a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas remains elusive.
In December 2023, South Africa brought a case to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the United Nations' highest judicial organ, alleging that Israel's Gaza offensive breached the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
In rulings in January, March and May 2024, the ICJ told Israel to do everything possible to "prevent" acts of genocide during its military operations in Gaza, including by providing urgently needed humanitarian aid to prevent famine.
Amnesty International has accused Israel of carrying out a "live-streamed genocide" in Gaza, while Human Rights Watch has alleged it is responsible for "acts of genocide".
A UN committee in November found Israel's warfare in Gaza was "consistent with the characteristics of genocide".
And a UN investigation concluded in March that Israel carried out "genocidal acts" in Gaza through the destruction of the strip's main IVF (in vitro fertilisation) clinic and other reproductive healthcare facilities.
Omer Bartov, an Israeli scholar of the Holocaust, wrote in August last year that "Israel was engaged in systematic war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocidal actions".
Fellow Israeli historians Amos Goldberg and Daniel Blatman in January co-wrote an article in which they said: "Israel is indeed committing genocide in Gaza."
France's President Emmanuel Macron has said it is not up to a "political leader to use the term but up to historians to do so when the time comes".
But Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has used it and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has accused Israel of "premeditated genocide".
The International Criminal Court (ICC) in November issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant over alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Israel's war in Gaza — including starvation as a method of warfare.
In the case of Rwanda, in which the UN said extremist Hutus killed some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 1994, it took a decade for the International Criminal Tribunal to conclude genocide had happened.
It was not until 2007 that the ICJ recognised as genocide the murder by Bosnian Serb forces of almost 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in 1995 during the Bosnian war.
French-Israeli lawyer Omer Shatz said "there is no doubt that war crimes, crimes against humanity are being committed" in Gaza. But the international law expert agreed intent was more difficult to prove.
That is why, after the ICC issued an arrest warrant against Netanyahu and Gallant, Shatz filed a report with the court in December arguing they were among eight Israeli officials responsible for "incitement to genocide in Gaza".
"If incitement is established, that establishes intent," he said.
His 170-page report lists such alleged incitements, including Gallant at the start of the war saying Israel was fighting "human animals" in Gaza and far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich urging "total extermination" in the Palestinian territory.
Mathilde Philip-Gay, an international law expert, warned: "International law cannot stop a war. The judiciary will intervene after the war.
"The qualification (of genocide) is very important for victims but it will come later."
The 1948 Genocide Convention says signatories can call on UN organs "to take such action... for the prevention and suppression of acts of genocide".
