Genocide Blog 29 – The More Israeli Madness Exposed the More USA Complicity Confirmed
02.02.2024
In LALIT, I was asked by my colleagues if I would draft this blog as one small part of our on-going collective action against the genocide that Israel is inflicting upon the Palestinian people.
The aim was also to help keep us sane during the awful, truly awful, process of watching a genocide live, while trying to do all in our power to stop it – and knowing it will take time, and knowing “time” means the continued Israeli slaughter of Palestinian children, the infirm, women with babies and the aged, “time” means the Israeli army’s continued herding of the Palestinians in Gaza into a smaller and smaller bit of Gaza near the Sinai Desert in Egypt, all the better to force them to flee once Israel has imposed starvation and epidemics on them, “time” means obliterating all traces of Palestinian culture – the culture of neighbourhoods, of health care, of universities and colleges, or art galleries and zoos for children to visit, of museums, of markets, of coffee shops, of bakeries, of mosques and schools, even cemeteries – in the genocidal aim of leaving nowhere for the Palestinians to return to.
So, part of the purpose of our blog is collective therapy, until and beyond stopping the genocide. We cannot turn our faces away from the horror being perpetrated by the State of Israel. We must confront it, expose it and oppose it.
We have had gains in the struggle against “time”. The International Court of Justice has found that South Africa was right and was acting reasonably to bring a case for genocide against Israel. The Court has found that it is “plausible” that Israel is committing genocide, even before hearing the case, and that it must urgently issue the equivalent of a Writ, an enforceable Writ, for Israel to desist from killing Palestinians, from harming them, from destroying their infrastructure and from preventing them from reproducing. The Writ also calls on Israel to punish “incitement to commit genocide”, after calling out its leaders by name in the judgment: Netanyahu, Herzhog, Gallent. The Court also put a great deal of emphasis on “complicity” with genocide, as if a Warning Class I for the USA and its puppet regimes in the West. And a USA Court yesterday found that Israel is committing a “plausible” genocide, and the executive Branch of the USA government must carefully examine its unconditional support for Israel. These are gains. Massive gains.
Equally important gains are all the demonstrations, bridge blocking, dock workers refusing to load arms for Israel, and the massive support for a ceasefire – 67% are in favour, even in the USA, where there is the most severe pro-Israel propaganda on its TV stations, those “in-bedded” with Biden and those on the extreme right that are even more pro-Israel, if such a thing is possible.
But, as time has passed, Israel has killed or injured over 100,000 Palestinians in these three months of Israeli genocide. Israel has turned living neighbourhoods, meanwhile, into rubble.
And the madness we have to witness has continued.
We wrote about the Pantomimes of Israeli Horror that Biden and Company are continuing to fund even after the ICJ ruling, in our last Blog, number 28 – paid Israeli killers dressed up as health care workers break into a hospital in the West Bank to assassinate a young patient suffering from paralysis from the waist down as he slept in his bed, along with two other sleeping youngsters; Israeli soldiers dump a container full of dozens of dead bodies they had stolen, now badly decomposed and unnamed, unrecognizable, and are now returning to Gaza; the Israeli army blindfolds dozens of Palestinian men, ties their hands behind their backs and dresses them in death robes, forcing them to sit or crouch in excruciating positions on the ground; 16 countries of the West, led by Biden, suspend their aid to UNRWA on the turn of a dime, UNRWA the only organization able to help the dying Palestinians, and even though this is clearly in overt defiance of the ICJ Judgment, and is in response to nothing but habitual Israeli lies; one-third of Netanyahu’s Cabinet dances and sings in a macabre “Conference” of a thousand people held in Jerusalem to plan exactly where in Gaza – a giant map and all – they intend to construct different new Israeli settlement colonies once the genocide against the Palestinians is accomplished. Will this madness, if we just watch it, not make us go mad? How can the West pay for this fascism, give arms to these fascists, bank-roll a genocide, and still pretend to any moral high ground? It is over.
And yet the Israeli madness continues. Biden and Co. continue to support it.
Here are the latest macabre events. Weigh them for their genocidal horror.
After the Israeli army withdrew from north Gaza, in the Khalifa bin Zayed school in Beit Lahia, 30 Palestinian men were found dead, blindfolded, hands tied behind their backs, and apparently executed in cold blood. The Gazan authorities have called for an international inquiry. It seems further proof – if that was needed – of war crimes and genocide. What is this?
Al Jazeera has published a 54-second bit of video-film, of exhausted Palestinian women and children in a biblical scene of being forced by an army to flee from their homeland, while over a vile loudspeaker, Israeli soldiers taunt them as they pass a checkpoint, mocking Hamas leaders, attempting to blame them for the genocide they, themselves are perpetrating: “To the chief of all the Arab armies Abu Khaled, spit on you, shame on you. Look what you did to your people. Look Sinwar, look Abu Al Abed, look Abu Al Waleed Khaled Meshaal. Did you take your suit to the dry cleaners today. Hey, Abu Al Waleed? Did you take your suit so you can look pretty? Turn on, turn on the TV after lunch in the hotel and look at your people. Do look at your people Abu Al Waleed and Abu Al Abed. Yes, continue, continue. Women and children only.” Israeli cruelty knows no bounds. Israeli psychosis knows no bounds. Israeli culpability knows no bounds.
USA complicity knows no bounds.
The USA’s UN ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield claimed that the ICJ’s provisional measures order is in line with her delegation’s belief that Israel has a right to defend itself. Of course, it is not in line with any belief of her delegation, and of course it does not have the right to defend itself.
The Order says nothing of the kind. The only reference to “self-defence” is made by Israel, and this numerous times. Ms. Thomas-Greenfield’s statement is a lie. The ICJ knows only too well that there is already an ICJ judgment on the Israeli Apartheid Wall that says Israel being an “occupying power” does not have this “right” to self-defense. That is the reason Biden and Blinken and Austen are always going on-and-on-and-on about “Israel has the right to defend itself”, precisely because it does not. An occupying power cannot have such a right relative to a State that it occupies militarily. It would be ridiculous, absurd, mad.
But, so that the USA and Israel’s propaganda does not black out the truth, let us print the totality of the ICJ’s instructions to the State of Israel, which the ICJ reminds Israel are binding. Just to remind Ms. Thomas-Greenfield.
“1. The State of Israel shall, in accordance with its obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, in relation to Palestinians in Gaza, take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all acts within the scope of Article II of this Convention, in particular:
“(a) killing members of the group;
“(b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
“(c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; and
“(d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.
“The State of Israel shall ensure with immediate effect that its military does not commit any acts described in point 1 above.”
Israel has continued to kill Palestinians at the rate of over 100 a day, has continued to cause them bodily and mental harm at the rate of thousands a day if not millions, and deliberately continued to inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction in whole or in part of the Palestinian people. One-third of the Israeli Cabinet is even planning to colonize Gaza, and has a map up the wall of exactly how once the physical destruction is over.
“2. The State of Israel shall take all measures within its power to prevent and punish the direct and public incitement to commit genocide in relation to members of the Palestinian group in the Gaza Strip.”
The incitement to genocide has continued, with singing and dancing at the Jerusalem Conference, as have the acts of genocide.
“3. The State of Israel shall take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.” Israel launched a vengeance attack against the UN the day after the UN’s top Court, the ICJ’s judgment. Israel has launched a series of allegations against some staff at the UNRWA, the UN body responsible for the “urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance” mentioned by the ICJ. Not only that. The USA and another fifteen countries have suspended their contributions to the UNRWA on the basis of these hollow allegations about an infinitely small proportion of UNRWA employees being involved in 7 October Hamas attack. This is criminal complicity with the genocidal Israel being committed by these countries. How can we get our head around this? It happens at the same time that the USA and its allies do not suspend arms, money and protection from Israel even when Israel is found to be plausibly, as a whole state, committing genocide. And when one-third of the Israeli Cabinet actually dance and sing around a map of a newly colonized-by-Israel Gaza, the USA continues to foot the bill for a plausible genocide.
“4. The State of Israel shall take effective measures to prevent the destruction and ensure the preservation of evidence related to allegations of acts within the scope of Article II and Article III of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide against members of the Palestinian group in the Gaza Strip.”
Israel continues to aim at and kill journalists and to obliterate other evidence.
“5. The State of Israel shall submit a report to the Court on all measures taken to give effect to this Order within one month as from the date of this Order.”
All of that is in the ICJ judgment. The judgment is certainly not, as the USA’s UN ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield claims, in line with the USA’s belief that Israel has a right to defend itself. It is truly mad. Even when she adds “Israel must respect International Humanitarian Law” while doing so. The fact is, and she cannot pretend it does not exist, the Court has found that Israel is plausibly committing genocide. What do you say to that, Ms. Thomas-Greenfield? And to your country arming and abetting Israel in this plausible genocide?
Lindsey Collen, for LALIT.
