March 28, 2024
Over 9,000 Palestinian women have
been killed since the start of the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip. Mothers have
been the largest share of Israeli killings, at an average of 37 mothers per day
since October 7.
The numbers above, from the
Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza and the Red Crescent Society respectively,
only convey part of the suffering experienced by 2.3 million Palestinians in
the Strip.
There is not a single section in
Palestinian society that has not paid a heavy price for the war, although women
and children are the ones who have suffered most, constituting over 70 percent
of all victims of the ongoing Israeli genocide.
True, these women and their children
are killed at the hands of Israeli soldiers, but they are murdered with
US-western supplied weapons.
Now, however, we are told that the
world is finally turning against Israel, and that the west’s nod of approval to
Tel Aviv to carry on with its daily massacres may soon turn into a collective
snub.
This claim was expressed best in the
March 23 cover of the Economist magazine. It showed a tattered Israeli flag,
attached to a stick, and planted in an arid, dusty land. It was accompanied by
the headline “Israel Alone”.
The image, undoubtedly expressive,
was meant to serve as a sign of the times. Its profundity becomes even more
obvious if compared to another cover, from the same publication soon after the
Israeli military conquered massive Arab territories in the war of June 1967.
“They did it,” the headline, back then, read. In the background, an Israeli
military tank was pictured, illustrating the west-funded Israeli triumph.
Between the two headlines much, in
the world and in the Middle East, has changed. But to claim that Israel now
stands alone is not entirely accurate, at least not yet.
Though many of Israel’s traditional
allies in the west are openly disowning its behavior in Gaza, weapons from
various western and non-western countries continue to flow, feeding the war
machine as it, in turn, continues to harvest more Palestinian lives.
This compels the question: Does
Israel truly stand alone when its airports and seaports are busier than ever
receiving massive shipments of weapons coming from all directions? Not in the
least.
Almost every time a western country
announces that it has suspended arms exports to Israel, a news headline appears
shortly afterwards, indicating the opposite. Indeed, this has happened
repeatedly.
Last year, Rome had declared that it
was blocking all arms sales to Israel, giving false hope that some western
countries are finally experiencing some kind of moral awakening.
Alas, on March 14, Reuters quoted
the Italian Defense Minister, Guido Crosetto as saying that shipments of
weapons to Israel are continuing, based on the flimsy logic that previously
signed deals would have to be ‘honored’.
Another country that is also
‘honoring’ its previous commitments is Canada, which announced on May 19,
following a parliamentary motion that it had suspended arms exports.
The celebration among those
advocating an end to the genocide in Gaza were just getting started when, a day
later, Ottawa practically reversed the decision by announcing that it, too,
will honor previous commitments.
This illustrates that some western
countries, which continue to impart their unsolicited wisdom about human
rights, women’s rights and democracy on the rest of the world, have no genuine
respect for any of these values.
Canada and Italy are not the largest
military supporters of Israel. The US and Germany are.
According to the Stockholm
International Peace Research Institute, in the decade between 2013 and 2022,
Israel has received 68 percent of its weapons from the US and 28 percent from
Germany.
The Germans remain unperturbed, even
though five percent of the total population of Gaza has been killed, wounded or
are missing due to the Israeli war.
Yet, the American support for Israel
is far greater, although the Biden Administration is still sending messages to
its constituency – majority of whom want the war to stop – that the president
is doing his best to pressure Israel to end the war.
Though only two approved military
sales to Israel have been announced publicly since October 7, the two shipments
represent only 2 percent from the total US arms sent to Israel.
The news was revealed by the
Washington Post on March 6. It was published at a time when US media was
reporting on a widening rift between US President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“That’s an extraordinary number of
sales over the course of a pretty short amount of time,” a former senior Biden
Administration official told the Post. Jeremy Konyndyk reached the obvious
conclusion that the “Israeli campaign would not be sustainable without this
level of U.S. support”.
For decades, the US military support
to Israel has been the highest anywhere in the world. Starting 2016, this
unconditional support exponentially increased during the Obama Administration
to reach $3.8 billion per year.
Immediately after October 7,
however, the weapons shipments to Israel reached unprecedented levels. They
included a 2,000-pound bomb known as 5,000 MK-84 munitions. Israel has used
this bomb to kill hundreds of innocent Palestinians.
Though Washington frequently alleges
to be looking into Israel’s use of its weapons, it turned out, according to the
Washington Post, that Biden knew too well that “Israel was regularly bombing
buildings without solid intelligence that they were legitimate military
targets”.
In some ways, Israel ‘stands alone’,
but only because its behavior is rejected by most countries and peoples around
the world. However, it is hardly alone when its war crimes are being executed
with western support and arms.
For the Israeli genocide in Gaza to
end, those who continue to sustain the ongoing bloodbath must also be held
accountable.
Does the Destruction
of Homes in Gaza constitute Genocide?
(The Conversation) – The intentional
destruction of homes — by a government or private entity, during war or
peacetime, on an individual or communal basis — is referred to as “domicide” by
scholars and by Balakrishnan Rajagopal, the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur
on the right to adequate housing.
Domicide can constitute genocide,
crimes against humanity and war crimes. It has been used in armed conflicts in
Ukraine, Syria, Myanmar and now in Gaza, where Israel has destroyed more than
60 per cent of homes. The bombings of Gazan homes have also killed tens of
thousands of Palestinians.
In the wake of Russia’s demolition
of homes in Ukraine in 2022, Rajagopal argued that domicide goes beyond
collateral damage and deserves stand-alone prohibition and punishment in
international law.
Cutting homeland ties
Homes are more than physical
dwellings or property. Widespread domicide extinguishes individual and
collective identity, memory and ties to homeland.
The deep connection of homes in Gaza
to Palestinian land, territory and nationhood renders Israel’s destruction of
them a genocidal tactic. Israel’s long history of intentional and arbitrary
destruction of Palestinian homes, and the subsequent displacement of
Palestinians, have been accompanied by the legalized annexation of Palestinian
land.
This history reveals a strategy of
deliberately targeting homes to harm Palestinians as a national, racial and
ethnic group.
The home is a crucial site of
Palestinian group identity and national belonging.
In the words of social work scholar
Nuha Dwaikat-Shaer: “Palestinians see the home as a symbol of existence and as
a means that connects them to the land.” The UN Commission on Human Rights
further makes note of the deep attachment of Palestinians to their homes and
agricultural land, including olive and citrus trees.
Home is critical to Palestinians as
a group
While the home is central to many
communities, it holds a particular significance to the continued existence of
Palestinians as a national group. The home is where identities, localities,
social relations, cultures and nationhood are produced, as feminist historian
Rosemary Sayigh has argued.
In a volume of studies into the 1948
Nakba — the mass dispossession and displacement of more than 750,000
Palestinians during the creation of Israel — by political scientist Ahmad Sa’di
and anthropologist Lila Abu-Lughod, ethnographic accounts document how the
Palestinian home is a site of individual and collective memory passed on
generationally. In the face of the ongoing erasure of Palestinian experiences,
culture and places, that memory is also political.
Memories of the Nakba continue to
infuse present-day Palestinian life. Subsequent displacements are being
collectively experienced as a continuation of Nakba.
Under constant threat and attack by
Israel, the security and meaning of the home have become central to Palestinian
national existence and identity. As Palestinian legal scholar Nadera
Shalhoub-Kevorkian explains, the Palestinian home is “responsible for the
preservation of psychological and social life and the prevention of social
death.”
As a site of collective
memory-making, the home is also essential to the preservation of Palestine as a
national homeland with territorial sovereignty and the continuation of
Palestinians as a distinct national group protected by the United Nations Genocide
Convention.
Domicide as genocide
Under the 1948 Genocide Convention,
when “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national,
ethnical, racial or religious group,” acts causing serious bodily or mental
harm or deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about a
protected group’s physical destruction constitute genocide.
Both of these prohibited acts are
implicated by the destruction of Palestinian homes in Gaza. As South Africa
argued at the International Court of Justice in November 2023 — in reference to
crimes committed by Hamas and militants from other armed groups on Oct. 7, 2023
and the continued holding of Israeli hostages — “no matter how outrageous or
appalling an attack or provocation, genocide is never a permissible response.”
Domicide inflicts deep emotional
trauma that is passed on to future generations. In Gaza, the tragic last public
words of journalists, poets, academics, doctors and medical personnel,
residents and international aid workers bear witness to Israel’s widespread
destruction of homes, forcible displacement and the mental and physical
suffering in the ensuing long journeys to the southern Gaza Strip.
Israel has displaced 75 per cent of
Gaza’s 2.3 million people at a staggering pace.
Approximately 1.5 million
Palestinians in Gaza are concentrated under abominable conditions in Rafah,
forced to sleep in the street and burn garbage to cook while being subjected to
frequent bombings.
Domicide and mass displacement have
also created conditions for greater suffering and loss of life due to
inadequate shelter, disease, starvation and lack of medical care.
It has exacerbated the vulnerability
of children, disabled people, the elderly, LGBTQ2A+ people and women, exposing
them to severe physical and mental harm.
Doctors have described the horrors
of Gazan children losing limbs and being operated on without supplies or
anesthesia and losing their entire families — now referred to by the acronym
WCNSF (wounded child, no surviving family).
The dehumanizing statements by
senior Israeli officials about Palestinians along with the staggering violence
in Gaza — sometimes graphically celebrated by Israeli soldiers — suggests an
intention to bring about the total or partial destruction of Palestinian life.
Recognizing domicide in Gaza
The illegality of disproportionate
destruction of civilian property and dwellings is currently recognized under
international law. However, the significance of the destruction of the home
warrants further attention. Whether through its existing role in international
crimes or additionally as a separate crime, the atrocities in Gaza highlight
the need to recognize domicide as deliberately furthering the destruction of a
group.
When Israel attacks Palestinian
homes in Gaza, it is doing more than destroying property — it is demonstrating
a genocidal intention to destroy Palestinians as a group.
Given the widespread current
destruction, the indications of an intent to destroy Palestinians as a group
and the International Court of Justice’s ruling on the plausibility of genocide
in Gaza, there are compelling reasons to assess Israel’s destruction of
Palestinian homes as genocide.
No comments:
Post a Comment