WHO led two crucial missions to transfer 32 critical patients from Nasser hospital, in southern Gaza on 18 and 19 February 2024. Credit: WHO/Christopher Black

By Julia Conley
NEW YORK, May 27 2024 (IPS)

A widely respected humanitarian law expert who has resisted using the term “genocide” for Israel’s killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza—a word used “sparingly” in the international human rights movement, he noted—said he has concluded a genocide is indeed taking place, evidenced particularly by Israel’s blocking of humanitarian aid.

Aryeh Neier, who co-founded Human Rights Watch in 1978, served as its executive director for 12 years, and also led the American Civil Liberties Union and the Open Society Foundations, noted in an essay in The New York Review of Books that his organizations have used the term “genocide” to describe few mass killings.

Neier was not convinced of South Africa’s genocide claim against Israel when it argued its case with the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in January, even though he was “deeply distressed” by the human impact of Israel’s relentless U.S.-backed bombing campaign in Gaza.

The 2,000-pound bombs being used against Gaza’s population of 2.3 million Palestinians were “clearly inappropriate,” wrote Neier in the magazine’s June 6 issue. “Yet I was not convinced that this constituted genocide.”

Neier wrote that he believed at the time that Israel’s retaliation against Hamas for the October 7 attack it led in southern Israel could “include an attempt to incapacitate” the Palestinian group, necessitating the wide-scale assault on Gaza, where it operates.

“I am now persuaded that Israel is engaged in genocide against Palestinians in Gaza,” wrote Neier, whose family escaped Nazi Germany as refugees when he was an infant. “What has changed my mind is its sustained policy of obstructing the movement of humanitarian assistance into the territory.”

Israel’s intent to block aid—and to treat Gazans as “collectively complicit for Hamas’s crimes”—has been clear since shortly after the October 7 attack, when Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said: “There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly.”

“I am now persuaded that Israel is engaged in genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. What has changed my mind is its sustained policy of obstructing the movement of humanitarian assistance into the territory.”

The result of that policy, wrote Neier, has been the deaths of at least 28 Palestinian children from starvation, according to numbers released by the Gaza Health Ministry in April.

“That number could multiply many times over if reports on food insecurity are valid,” he wrote, citing warnings from U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Samantha Power and World Food Program Executive Director Cindy McCain that famine has already taken hold in parts of Gaza.

Under the “complete siege” ordered by Gallant and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, noted Neier, Israel has severely restricted the number of aid vehicles allowed into Gaza, where the population relied on deliveries from about 500 aid trucks per day before the current escalation. Trucks have been subjected to “time-consuming and onerous inspections,” with shipments turned away for including items like children’s medical scissors and maternity kits.

Neier also cited Israel’s killing of more than 200 aid workers and its persuading of international donors to stop funding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA)—based on unproven allegations that a dozen of its 13,000 Gaza-based staffers had connections to Hamas—as evidence that Israel is taking numerous steps to stop aid from getting to Gaza’s starving population, while killing at least 35,173 Palestinians.

Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, said in response to Neier’s essay that “no one has more authority among human rights advocates than” the author.

“Aryeh Neier is an immensely respected—and not at all politically radical—figure in the human rights community who can’t be credibly accused of having any sort of obsession with Israel,” said writer Abe Silberstein.

Neier wrote that after working to protect human rights for more than six decades, “there is much about [Israel’s attack on Gaza] that is deeply depressing, including how difficult it is to find a way to give victims any hope that justice will eventually be done.”

“I myself hope that the frequent citation of international humanitarian law as the standard for judging the conflict will have a positive effect,” he wrote. “Whatever else emerges from this war, and whatever judgment comes from the International Court of Justice (ICJ), it is evident that Israel has done itself as well as its Palestinian victims long-term harm.”

The ICJ is currently considering South Africa’s claim that Israel is committing genocide, having issued a preliminary ruling in January that the case was “plausible” and that Israel must take steps to prevent genocidal acts. (Since then, ICJ has delivered its judgment)

Although the ICJ does not have jurisdiction to adjudicate war crimes or crimes against humanity charges, wrote Neier, “if it ultimately finds that Israel has committed genocide, that will be a resounding defeat for a state that was born in the aftermath of a genocide that many of its founders had barely survived.”

Julia Conley is a staff writer for Common Dreams.

Source: Common Dreams

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Jadallah Northern Gaza lies in ruins after months of bombardments. Credit: WFP/Ali

By Julia Conley
NEW YORK, May 2 2024 (IPS)

The report from Amnesty International USA comes ahead of a May 8 deadline for the Biden administration to certify that Israel is complying with international and domestic laws.

With just over a week until the deadline for the Biden administration to certify that Israel’s use of U.S.-supplied weapons is adhering to domestic and international law, Amnesty International USA submitted a report to the federal government detailing how American bombs and other weapons have been used in Israeli attacks that could constitute war crimes.

The White House, said the human rights group, must inform Congress that Israel is violating humanitarian laws by May 8 as part of the National Security Memorandum on Safeguards and Accountability with Respect to Transferred Defense Articles and Defense Services (NSM-20) process, and “must immediately suspend the transfer of arms to the Israeli government.”

Amnesty’s report focuses on several attacks on civilian infrastructure in which Israel used bombs and other weapons made by U.S. companies including Boeing, as well as practices used by the Israeli government and Israel Defense Forces (IDF) since they began bombarding Gaza in October in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack.

Four of the IDF attacks took place in Rafah, where Israel is reportedly preparing a ground offensive after forcibly displacing more than 1 million Palestinians to the southern city and carrying out airstrikes for months.

The four strikes in December and January killed at least 95 civilians, including 42 children, despite the U.S. and Israel’s repeated claims that the IDF is targeting Hamas fighters.

“The evidence is clear and overwhelming: the government of Israel is using U.S.-made weapons in violation of international humanitarian and human rights law, and in a manner that is inconsistent with U.S. law and policy.”

“In all four attacks,” reported Amnesty, “there was no indication that the residential buildings hit could be considered legitimate military objectives or that people in the buildings were military targets, raising concerns that these strikes were direct attacks on civilians and civilian objects and must therefore be investigated as war crimes.”

The strikes, which included one on a five-story building inhabited by the Nofal family, were carried out with GBU-39 Small Diameter Bombs—made in the U.S. by Boeing.

“The evidence is clear and overwhelming: the government of Israel is using U.S.-made weapons in violation of international humanitarian and human rights law, and in a manner that is inconsistent with U.S. law and policy,” said Amanda Klasing, national director for government relations with Amnesty International USA. “In order to follow U.S. laws and policies, the United States must immediately suspend any transfer of arms to the government of Israel.”

Boeing was also the manufacturer of Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs) that were used in October 2023 in “two deadly, unlawful airstrikes on homes full of Palestinian civilians,” according to satellite imagery examined by Amnesty’s weapons experts and remote sensing analysts.

Those attacks killed 43 civilians, nearly half of whom were children.

Other patterns in Israel’s assault on Gaza, including its use of a 24-hour mass evacuation notice early on in its current escalation, ordering more than 1.1 million people in Gaza City and northern Gaza to go to the southern part of the enclave; its use of indiscriminate attacks with both U.S.- and Israel-made weapons; its use of arbitrary “administrative detention”; and its denial of humanitarian assistance, all show that the Biden administration’s continued material support for the IDF violates U.S. and international law, Amnesty said.

As progressives in the U.S. Congress have warned, Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 (22 U.S.C. 2378-1) bars the federal government from providing military aid to any country that is blocking U.S. humanitarian aid.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s announcement on October 9, 2023 of a “complete siege on Gaza” with “no electricity, no food, no water, no gas” allowed in has deprived the enclave of equipment needed to provide healthcare to tens of thousands of people wounded in Israel’s attacks, as well as pregnant women and newborns, the elderly, and people facing chronic illnesses.

It has also placed Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians at risk of a “government-engineered famine,” said Amnesty, with dozens of people, including children, already having starved to death.

“It’s shocking that the Biden administration continues to hold that the government of Israel is not violating international humanitarian law with U.S.-provided weapons when our research shows otherwise and international law experts disagree,” said Klasing.

“The International Court of Justice found the risk of genocide in Gaza is plausible and ordered provisional measures. President [Joe] Biden must end U.S. complicity with the government of Israel’s grave violations of international law and immediately suspend the transfer of weapons to the government of Israel.”

The report comes days after Biden signed a military aid package including $17 billion more for the IDF, after approving multiple weapons transfers to Israel since October.

Ahead of the May 8 NSM-20 deadline, a coalition of more than 90 lawyers—including at least 20 who work in the Biden administration—is preparing to send a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland warning that Israel’s practices in Gaza likely violate the Arms Export Control Act, the Leahy Laws, and the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit disproportionate attacks on civilians.

While spokespeople for the Biden administration have repeatedly said publicly that the White House does not accept allegations that Israel has violated international humanitarian law—and made the U.S. complicit—the letter is just the latest sign of widening dissent within the government regarding Gaza.

Senior U.S. officials recently told Secretary of State Antony Blinken in an internal memo that Israel lacks credibility as it continues to claim it is adhering international law.

“This is a moment where the U.S. government is violating its own laws and policy,” a Department of Justice staffer who signed the new letter, told Politico. “The administration may be seeing silence or only a handful of resignations, but they are really not aware of the magnitude of discontent and dissent among the rank and file.”

Julia Conley is a staff writer for Common Dreams.

Source: Common Dreams

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