{"id":248809,"date":"2023-11-27T12:00:58","date_gmt":"2023-11-27T12:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=248809"},"modified":"2023-11-21T04:39:11","modified_gmt":"2023-11-21T04:39:11","slug":"activating-the-genocide-convention","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2023\/11\/activating-the-genocide-convention\/","title":{"rendered":"Activating the Genocide Convention"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Still from a U.N. film strip on the 1948 Genocide Convention, circa 1949. (U.N. Photo)<\/p><\/div>\n

There is no room to doubt that Israel\u2019s bombing of Palestinian civilians and depriving them of food, water and other necessities of life are grounds to invoke the 1948 Genocide Convention.\u00a0<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

19 Nov 2023<\/em> – There are 149 states party<\/a> to the Genocide Convention<\/a>. Every one of them has the right to call out the genocide in progress in Gaza and report it to the United Nations.<\/p>\n

In the event that another state party disputes the claim of genocide \u2014 and Israel, the United States and the United Kingdom are all states party \u2014 then the International Court of Justice is required to adjudicate on \u201cthe responsibility of a State for genocide.\u201d<\/p>\n

These are the relevant articles of the genocide convention:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cArticle VIII<\/strong>
\nAny Contracting Party may call upon the competent organs of the United Nations to take such action under the Charter of the United Nations as they consider appropriate for the prevention and suppression of acts of genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in article III.<\/p>\n

Article IX<\/strong>
\nDisputes between the Contracting Parties relating to the interpretation, application or fulfilment of the present Convention, including those relating to the responsibility of a State for genocide or for any of the other acts enumerated in article III, shall be submitted to the International Court of Justice at the request of any of the parties to the dispute.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Note that here \u201cparties to the dispute\u201d means the states disputing the facts of genocide, not the parties to the genocide\/conflict. Any single state party is able to invoke the convention.<\/p>\n

There is no doubt that Israel\u2019s actions amount to genocide. Numerous international law experts have said so<\/a> and genocidal intent<\/a> has been directly expressed by numerous Israeli ministers, generals and public officials.<\/p>\n

Definition of Genocide<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Palestine solidarity march in London on Oct. 9. (Alisdare Hickson, Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0)<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

This is the definition of genocide in international law, from the Genocide Convention:<\/p>\n

\u201cArticle II<\/strong>
\nIn the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
\n(a) Killing members of the group;
\n(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
\n(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
\n(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
\n(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group\u201d<\/p>\n

I can see no room to doubt whatsoever that Israel\u2019s current campaign of bombing of civilians and of the deprivation of food, water and other necessities of life to Palestinians amounts to genocide under articles II a), b) and c).<\/p>\n

It is also worth considering Articles III and IV:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cArticle III<\/strong>
\nThe following acts shall be punishable:
\n(a) Genocide;
\n(b) Conspiracy to commit genocide;
\n(c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;
\n(d) Attempt to commit genocide;
\n(e) Complicity in genocide.<\/p>\n

Article IV<\/strong>
\nPersons committing genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in article III shall be punished, whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or private individuals.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There is, at the very least, a strong prima facie case that the actions of the United States and United Kingdom and others, in openly providing direct military support to be used in genocide, are complicit in genocide.<\/p>\n

The point of Article IV is that individuals are responsible, not just states. So Israel\u2019s Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu, U.S. President Joe Biden and U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak bear individual responsibility. So, indeed, do all those who have been calling for the destruction of the Palestinians.<\/p>\n

TO READ FULL REPORT Go to Original – consortiumnews.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

19 Nov 2023 – There is no room to doubt that Israel\u2019s bombing of Palestinian civilians and depriving them of food, water and other necessities of life are grounds to invoke the 1948 Genocide Convention.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":232778,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[224],"tags":[87,865,1643,88,427,124,1025],"class_list":["post-248809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-human-rights","tag-gaza","tag-genocide","tag-genocide-convention","tag-israel","tag-palestine","tag-united-nations","tag-west-bank"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248809"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248809\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":248811,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248809\/revisions\/248811"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}