—–

The long struggle in the United States for racial equality, which has thrown up memorable and impassioned phrases, such as “We shall overcome,” “I have a dream,” and “Black lives matter,” has sought procedural equality for minorities, who systematically have been treated differently from the white majority by police. In this light, it has struck me that the Qur’an is remarkably uninterested in any distinction between the self and the barbarian, or between white and black. 

The world of late antiquity, to which the Qur’an was preached, was on the whole hostile to the idea of equality. The rise from the fourth century of a Christian Roman Empire under the successors of Constantine did nothing to change the old Greek and Roman discourse about civilized citizens and “barbarians.”¹ In Iran’s Sasanian Empire, Zoroastrian thinkers and officials made a firm distinction between “Iran” and “not-Iran” (anīrān), and there was no doubt for Sasanian authors that being Iranian was superior in every way.

(The Conversation) – Mark Raphael Baker began writing his final book, A Season of Death, from his hospital bed, in the wake of his terminal pancreatic cancer diagnosis. His second wife, Michelle, would later observe: “More than a comfort or distraction, in him it was a need.” The renowned Jewish Australian author and academic died a year later, after 13 months of illness, aged 64.

In 2022, after nearly four months of misdiagnoses and inaction from doctors – despite persistent complaints of unbearable abdominal pain – an MRI had finally revealed the grave news. Cancer would claim his life, as it had his first wife Kerryn in 2016 (aged 55), and his brother Johnny in 2017 (aged 62).

He wrote:

I kept thinking, this can’t be happening. I was invulnerable. The odds of another person in one family being hit by terminal cancer seemed impossible.

How does one write the essence of a life once it has come to an end? Baker was no stranger to this question.

Review: A Season of Death – Mark Raphael Baker (Melbourne University Press)

His first book, The Fiftieth Gate: a journey through memory (1997), is an exploration of his parents’ Holocaust survival, told through the eyes of a son grappling with his connection to their trauma. When it was reissued for its 20-year anniversary in 2017, it had sold over 70,000 copies. His second book, Thirty Days: A Journey to the End of Love (2017), was written after his first wife, Kerryn, lost her ten-month battle with stomach cancer.

Death shaded much of Baker’s life. Writing was his salve, a window to understanding and hope.

Baker was director of the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation and associate professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Monash University. Religion, which was central to his family and intellectual life, is woven throughout the memoir.

Liminal grief

A Season of Death is short, at 253 pages. It is structured in five parts: Regeneration, Remarriage, Re-Creation, Retribution and Revelation. The repeated prefix “re” (meaning again, or back) speaks to the cyclical nature of life as Baker lived it.

The book begins with Kerryn’s cancer diagnosis, seven years prior to his own. Baker writes, “That experience followed me; every breath I took felt like Kerryn’s last breath.” He continues:

Death and life became inextricably bound; I was unsure which world I belonged to, and in my dreams at night I danced with her spirit, sang the songs of our courtship, reanimated her in my mind and eventually rushed to write a version of our life story, which I completed in thirty days.

Baker writes beautifully and eloquently about the liminality of existing in grief after such a profound death. Less than two years after Kerryn’s passing, Baker’s brother, Johnny, also died of cancer. This death was particularly difficult for Baker’s parents, who both survived the Holocaust.

For many survivors of genocide – who’ve lost their family, their sense of place, everything – children become the centre of their universe. This was certainly the case for Baker’s parents:

What to say to these people whose entire existence revolved vicariously around the successes of their two sons? When my mother was asked about her idea of revenge for what she had suffered, her answer came back without hesitation, “You, my children, are my revenge.”

‘Something was seriously wrong’

The book is written in a fragmented style, traversing past and present, shimmering between early childhood memories and life as an adult.

We are with Baker through his courting of Michelle Lesh, who he had first known as the stepdaughter of his close friend, Raimond Gaita. Their relationship transformed and deepened through their shared intellectual and political interests, particularly concerning Israel-Palestine, and centred around travel and their respective careers. They were married in 2018 and in 2021 welcomed a daughter, Melila.

“Fifty Gates,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3, 2024

We are with him as he reflects on his parents’ survival of Holocaust Europe and the trauma they experienced. (Baker’s father died in 2020, three years after his brother Johnny. Baker’s mother, Genia, was 88 when he died in 2023.)

And we are with him in the doctor’s office as his worst fear becomes reality.

The best word for my reaction was one of bewilderment. Something was seriously wrong. We’d talked about pancreatitis but that was different from pancreatic cancer. I was numb. It didn’t feel possible, but I immediately pictured my death. The only question in my mind was if I would last as long as Kerryn and Johnny.

For anyone touched by cancer, this feeling of bewilderment is familiar. Few diseases have a more profound physical and psychological impact. Baker observes, often with searing clarity, his own corporeal degeneration and his thoughts as he confronts his own mortality.

“While no number of deaths could make me indifferent to what awaits me, watching a sequence of deaths in the family has made me more prepared,” he writes.

I feel as though I have been trained or mentored in the art of dying. My fear is less the prospect of my ultimate demise than the pain I will endure reaching the end.

What is surprising is Baker’s persistent humour and palpable energy, despite the pain and despite the closeness of his ultimate demise.

An act of love

A Season of Death is not an easy read. It is an intimate, at times harrowing portrait of grief and of death. What Baker has written is a final observation of his life, offering a rare perspective on death – and life as it comes to an end.

To persevere with a writing project in the midst of such bodily trauma, to write through and towards death for his children, for his family and descendants, is an incredibly courageous feat.

“Over the course of his illness Mark wrote almost every day, despite the ravages and debilitating side effects of his treatments, which often left him weary in body and mind,” write Lesh and his friend Raimond Gaita, in the book’s postscript.

Baker passed away before the book was published, and Lesh and Gaita brought it to publication in his absence. In their postscript, they observe:

Writing the memoir was an act of love that took possession of him. It gave him comfort and energy. He sacrificed sleep, physical and mental rest, and refrained from engaging with people and aspects of the world to which he had previously given so much of himself.

What lingers with the reader is a sense of the fragility and miracle of being alive for the very short time we each have. We are all going to die, and whether or not this fact is a preoccupation, it is moving to witness, through writing, an at once introspective and philosophical mind work through his imminent death.

There is no linear story, or discrete chapters. There is no Before or After. There is only the projection of what was and what might have been: memory – fickle, pliant, circular, fragmentary.

Tess Scholfield-Peters, Casual Academic, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

For the last year and a half, as students at Columbia University and across the globe have protested against the Israeli government’s genocidal assault on Palestinians after the October 2023 attacks, a response that has resulted in horrendous devastation in Gaza, I have ardently defended students’ right to peaceful protest on our campus and across the country. I truly believed that student engagement with the rights and dignity of Palestinians continued a celebrated tradition at Columbia University of student protest. Instead, the University has allowed its own disciplinary process to be weaponized against members of our community, including myself. I have been targeted for my support of pro-Palestinian protesters – by the president of Columbia University, by several colleagues, by university trustees, and by outside actors. This has included an unjustified finding by the University that my public comments condemning attacks against student protesters violated university non-discrimination policy.

I have come to the view that the Columbia University administration has created such a toxic and hostile environment for legitimate debate around the war in Israel and Palestine that I can no longer teach or conduct research. Effective today, I have reached an agreement with Columbia University that relieves me of my obligations to teach or participate in faculty governance after serving on the Columbia law faculty for 25 years. While the university may call this change in my status “retirement,” it should be more accurately understood as a termination dressed up in more palatable terms. In exchange for my agreement to step down as an active member of the Columbia faculty, the university demanded that I surrender significant rights and privileges that are provided to all retired faculty as a matter of policy. To describe my change in status with the university as a “retirement” is both misleading and disingenuous. Last January I spoke out publicly, defending Columbia students’ right to protest in favor of a ceasefire in the Israeli military assault in Gaza and for Columbia University to divest from Israel, a country that is widely regarded to be engaging in a genocide against Palestinians.

In my statements, including an interview on Democracy Now! on January 25, 2024, I condemned the spraying of pro-Palestinian protesters on our campus with a toxic chemical that caused such significant injuries that several students were hospitalized. In those statements I noted that the parties that sprayed our students with a chemical were Israeli students who were currently enrolled in Columbia’s joint degree program with Tel Aviv University, and who had recently performed military service in Israel. These facts were confirmed both by Columbia University and the Israeli students themselves. I also noted that there had been a history of attacks against Palestinian students and their allies on our campus by Israeli students who had recently completed military service, and that Columbia University was not taking this pattern of harassment seriously enough. I have long had a concern that the transition from the mindset required of a soldier to that of a student could be a difficult one for some people, and that the university needed to do more to protect the safety of all members of our community. Numerous students at Columbia have verified this history of harassment and that they had consulted me about it over the years.

2

In February 2024, two Columbia colleagues filed a complaint against me with the university’s Office of Equal Employment and Affirmative Action, charging that one sentence in my comments on Democracy Now! amounted to harassment of Israeli members of the Columbia community in violation of university policies. As the investigation of these complaints progressed, I insisted that Columbia University could not serve as a neutral investigator or judge of this matter since it was irretrievably biased against me. For example, in April 2024 during a congressional hearing, Congresswoman Elise Stefanik asked then-President Minouche Shafik what disciplinary actions had been taken against “Professor Katherine Franke from Columbia Law School, who said that ‘all Israeli students who have served in the IDF are dangerous and shouldn’t be on campus.’” President Shafik responded, “I agree with you that those comments are completely unacceptable and discriminatory.” President Shafik was aware at that time that Congresswoman Stefanik’s summary of my comments was grossly inaccurate and misleading, yet she made no effort to correct the Congresswoman’s deliberate mischaracterization of my comments. After much insistence, Columbia agreed to appoint an outside investigator of the charges against me, and in late November 2024, the university issued a determination, based on the investigation, that my one sentence of comments on Democracy Now! violated EOAA policies because I referenced a history of harassment of Palestinians and their allies on our campus, and further found that I had retaliated against the complainants in this case by confirming their names to a reporter last summer.

Katherine M.Franke, via her Columbia Law School web page, where she is listed as “retired.”

I filed an appeal of that determination of guilt, and should the determination be upheld, the matter would go to my Dean to impose a sanction. Upon reflection, it became clear to me that Columbia had become such a hostile environment, that I could no longer serve as an active member of the faculty. Over the last year I have had several people posing as students come to my office to seek my advice about student protests while they were secretly videotaping me and then edited versions of those recordings were published on right-wing social media sites. After President Shafik defamed me in Congress, I received several death threats at my home. I regularly receive emails that express the hope that I am raped, murdered, and otherwise assaulted on account of my support of Palestinian rights. I have had law school colleagues follow me from the subway to my office in the law school, yelling at me in front of students that I am a Hamas-supporter and accusing me of supporting violence against Israeli women and children.

Colleagues in the law school have videotaped me without my consent and then shared it with right wing organizations outside the law school. And I have had students enroll in my classes with the primary purpose of creating situations in which they can provoke discussions that they can record, post online, and then use to file complaints against me with the university. I have come to regard Columbia Law School as a hostile work environment in which I can no longer enter the classroom, hold office hours, walk through the campus, or engage in faculty governance functions free from egregious and unwelcome harassment on account of my defense of students’ freedom to protest and express views that are critical of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, treatment that is widely regarded by the most prominent human rights organizations nationally and globally as a genocide.

3

I have also come to regard Columbia University as having lost its commitment to its unique and important mission. Rather than defend the role of a university in a democracy, in fostering critical debate, research, and learning around matters of vital public concern, and in educating the next generation with the tools to become engaged citizens, Columbia University’s leadership has demonstrated a willingness to collaborate with the very enemies of our academic mission. In a time when assaults on higher education are the most acute since the McCarthyite assaults of the 1950s, the University’s leadership and trustees have abandoned any duty to protect the university’s most precious resources: its faculty, students, and academic mission. As Columbia’s Board of Trustees has become constituted largely by hedge fund managers, investment bankers, and venture capitalists, the university has become more of a real estate holding concern than a non-profit educational institution. With this degradation of the university’s leadership has come, in some cases, an inability to resist pressures placed on the university by outside entities carrying a brief for the destruction of higher education, and in other cases, a shared commitment to a right-wing, and pro-Israel, ideology. My commitment to defending the university and our students rendered me an attractive target for the university’s opponents, and they weaponized the EOAA process to chill and punish my advocacy on the students’ behalf. I walk away from an active role on the Columbia teaching faculty now – and at some significant cost – not because this tactic has won, but rather because I aim to refocus my efforts on fighting for the rights and dignity of Palestinians, resisting the pull of a disingenuous distraction at Columbia. I will always be a teacher, and am always learning.

—

Katherine Franke was the James L. Dohr Professor of Law at Columbia University, and Founder/Director of the Center for Gender & Sexuality Law. She serves on the Executive Committees of Columbia’s Institute for Research on Women, Gender and Sexuality, and the Center for Palestine Studies. She is among the nation’s leading scholars writing on law, sexuality, race, and religion drawing from feminist, queer, and critical race theory.

Professor Franke also founded and served as faculty director of the Law, Rights, and Religion Project, a think tank based at Columbia Law School that develops policy and thought leadership on the complex ways in which religious liberty rights interact with other fundamental rights. In 2021, Professor Franke launched the ERA Project, a law and policy think tank to develop academically rigorous research, policy papers, expert guidance, and strategic leadership on the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the U.S. Constitution, and on the role of the ERA in advancing the larger cause of gender-based justice.

Professor Franke also led a team that researched Columbia Law School’s relationship to slavery and its legacies.

Reprinted with the author’s permission.

Dear Representative Jared Golden:

Your decision to vote in favor of sanctioning the International Criminal Court of Justice, (ICC) which had ordered Israel to take steps to prevent genocide in Gaza, was dismaying. This recent vote to sanction the ICC by Representatives of Congress erodes the ability of the high court to adhere to the principles of “ International Humanitarian Law, whose purpose is the reduce suffering during war”. 

The legislators passed this so-called “illegitimate Court Counteraction act” by a vote of 243-140, mostly supported by 198 Republican legislators. The question is why you, Rep Golden, felt it necessary to join this charade in support of a far-right regime in the Israeli Knesset, led by a man who is roundly detested by most citizens of Israel.

The intent of the legislation was to sanction anyone who assists the ICC in its attempts…to prosecute a citizen of an allied country” (ie Israel). In this case, it involved posting arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant for their leadership in promoting genocide in Gaza.

Perhaps it would be to your benefit to do some serious reading on the horrors taking place in Gaza, with 46,500 civilians having been killed, including 16,000 children, by Israel bombs, supplied by the U.S.. 

Several highly regarded Israeli historians have written about the plight of the Palestinians which has now fallen upon extreme destitution, as most of  their homes, hospitals and schools have been destroyed by a continual barrage of  bombing. In addition, even many tents, inhabited by refugee families in  camps, have been bombed.

The Israeli military  (IDF) is being urged on by the extremist  leadership in the Knesset in a process of “ethnic cleansing”.  Israeli historians have taken note of this attempt to exterminate a population, such historians as Avi Shlaim, an Oxford University scholar raised in Israel who served with the IDF; Shlomo Sand who teaches in Tel Aviv University and has written books including “The Invention of the Jewish People”; Ilan Pappe, an historian teaching at Reading University in the UK who has written “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine”.

Rep Golden, with the above in mind, it appears  that you are making decisions based on a very limited understanding of the history of Palestine. Are you aware that 5-6 million acres were expropriated from 750,000 Palestinians in 1947, forcing them into homelessness, and into becoming refugees, many having no choice but to move to Gaza.

It is shameful that you take the part of a right -wing cabal, led by a man totally lacking in empathy, not only for the thousands of children being killed by the IDF bombing, but also, until recently, for his unwillingness to negotiate in good faith, for the release of  Israeli captives. 

“Justice in Chains,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3, 2024

There are over 160 organizations in Palestine/Israel involving hundreds of thousands of people devoted to building a shared society of cooperation, justice, equality and mutual understanding. Such groups as this are among a significant number of Israelis who are opposed to this genocidal bombing and killing that is taking place in Gaza.

Walls of separation between Palestinians and Israelis have, unfortunately, become a major issue.  Such walls are a form of “Apartheid” which our admirable former President, Jimmy Carter addressed in his book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid”. He noted that Israel’s “construction of settlements” has been the primary obstacle to a comprehensive peace agreement. In addition, he wrote: “some Israelis believe they have the right to confiscate and colonize Palestinian land and [then] justify their subjugation and persecution [thus creating a sense] of hopelessness among Palestinians”

I would hope that you had kept  in mind President Carter’s words  when you voted for this repugnant piece of legislation: to sanction the ICC (International Criminal Court) indicates that you did not reflect very deeply on the issues. Instead you supported far-right leaders in the Israeli government. The question that is paramount in my mind is that you might have been  persuaded by financial considerations. After all,  you received from the “American Israel Public Affairs Cmte”, (AIPAC) the sum of  $375,091, making Israel lobbyists your top Contributor for 2023-2024. (as reported by “opensecrets.org/members of congress).  

It may be worthwhile for you to reflect on  the ancestral home of many residents of Maine: Ireland, which recently filed a “declaration with the International Court of Justice (ICC) with their intention to intervene in [the] genocide case against Israel’s tactics in its war on Gaza. Ireland believes that every state, of the 189 nations who have signed the Genocide Convention, “has the right to intervene in the proceedings” based upon the principles expressed in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948.

The essence of Ireland ‘s declaration is that “the crime [of genocide] may also be committed where a perpetrator– regardless of his or her purpose – knows (or should know) that the natural and probable consequence of these acts is either to destroy or contribute to the destruction of the protected group [ie Palestinians] , in whole or part, as such, and [yet] proceeds regardless.”

In conclusion, you still have an opportunity to develop a sense of fairness and justice for all, and not to allow yourself to  be swayed by political contributions meant to influence your vote on crucial issues relating to Palestine and Israel.

( Middle East Monitor ) – Israel’s use of artificial intelligence (AI) funded by European Union research programmes to target civilians is attracting a lot of criticism. Since the Israeli attacks on Gaza began on 7 October, 2023, the EU has provided over €238 million ($246m) to Israeli institutions for research and innovation. The funds are believed to have supported the development of AI-driven “location and killing” technology used by Israel against Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

Nozomi Takahashi, a member of the board of directors of the European Coordination of Committees and Associations for Palestine (ECCAP), told Anadolu that they are aware of allegations about EU funds aiding AI technologies targeting civilians. Takahashi said that they had addressed the issue in letters to high-level EU officials, including former EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell.

She pointed to AI-based systems used by the Israeli army called “Habsora” (The Gospel), “Lavender” and “Where is Daddy?” She said that these systems are used “to identify, locate and kill the targets in the current genocide in Gaza.”

Emphasising that these systems are used indiscriminately against civilians, Takahashi noted that, “Such extrajudicial killing is prohibited by international law. The scale and frequency of civilians killed in Gaza using such AI systems are devastating.”

The ECCAP official highlighted the EU’s particular focus on AI development, and said that Israeli research institutions are also involved in various EU-funded projects in this field. However, identifying which EU-funded project underpins those used by the Israeli army is impossible due to confidentiality and secrecy. “The potential high risk associated with such technology in the hands of a government that has a record of human rights violations should raise the alarm.”

Only civilian projects, added Takahashi, are eligible for funding through the Horizon Europe programme. “The development of such AI technology further blurs the border between civil and military applications.” She criticised the EU for its “narrow focus” when evaluating the goals of the projects that it funds, with insufficient monitoring and overlooking the potential for their use in the military.

Takahashi highlighted that Horizon Europe’s ethical principles require funded projects to uphold “respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and human rights, including the rights of minorities.” However, the research entity’s history with military activities or human rights violations is “neither questioned nor required” during ethics reviews, she claimed.

According to Eman Abboud, a lecturer at Trinity College Dublin, it has been demonstrated that EU funds have financed arms companies under the guise of civil security and tech research. She said that the EU is “culpable” by supporting the military industry in Israel — the state is currently facing genocide charges at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) — through its funding programmes.

“Israeli companies such as Elbit Systems Ltd. and Israel Aerospace Industries, which profit from and are deeply complicit in Israel’s long-term violent oppression and apartheid, as well as the current genocide of the Palestinian people, have received funding for security research from European funding programmes,” explained Abboud.

Criticising the ability of organisations contributing to human rights violations and the undermining of international humanitarian law to benefit from EU funds, she said, “The EU has refused to sever its trade links with Israel or ban them from Horizon Europe,” despite the ongoing ICJ case against the occupation state.

“Lavender Genocide Bot,” Digital, Midjourney, 2024

She referenced EU-GLOCTER, a “counter-terrorism” project involving Israeli institutions, noting the links to Israel’s military and intelligence, including Reichman University’s International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT), which was co-founded by a former intelligence chief. “We must understand that institutions like these provide the means to create the intelligence apparatus that is used to target specific civilians in Gaza and in Lebanon. We cannot separate them, given the strategic dual use of academic research funding and military research funding.”

The AI technology developed within the Israeli military named Habsora, generating automated and real-time targets, frequently strikes civilian infrastructure and residential areas, with the number of civilian casualties always being known in advance.

The Lavender technology analyses data collected on approximately 2.3 million people in Gaza using ambiguous criteria to assess the likelihood of an individual’s connection to the Palestinian resistance group Hamas.

Sources told Tel Aviv-based +972 and Local Call that, early in the Gaza attacks, the military was “completely reliant” on Lavender, automatically targeting males it flagged, without oversight or specific criteria. Lavender has marked approximately 37,000 Palestinians as “suspects”.

Using the AI-based system called “Where is Daddy?” Israel simultaneously tracks thousands of individuals and when they enter their homes targeted individuals are bombed, with no regard for the presence of civilians, including women and children.

These AI technologies are known to make computational errors frequently and disregard the principle of “proportionality”. They have played a significant role in the killing of over 45,850 Palestinians since 7 October, 2023.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

Via Middle East Monitor

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

(The Conversation) – The past year has been the deadliest for journalists since the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) began tracking fatalities in 1992. Since 7 October 2023, at least 146 journalists have been killed in Gaza, the West Bank, Israel, and Lebanon, though the actual numbers are likely much higher, as the CPJ is investigating numerous unconfirmed reports of other journalists being killed, missing or detained. Meanwhile, foreign journalists are denied access to Gaza by Israeli authorities.

Recently, Arne Jensen from the Association of Norwegian Editors and I attended The Cairo Media Conference at the American University in Cairo to discuss challenges of war and conflict journalism with journalists and academics. We encountered profound dedication and enthusiasm, but also a sense of powerlessness, anger, and despair over the dire situation in the region.

“The atrocities in Gaza and Lebanon challenge our shared humanity and test the ethics of journalism,” said Nidal Mansoor, from the Center for Defending Freedom of Journalists in Jordan. He added that “the international legal system has collapsed, and journalism is collapsing with it.”

While we were in Cairo, the UN reported that children aged 5 to 9 make up the largest group of the then 43,500 people killed in Gaza. On average, more than 40 children have been killed daily for over 400 days. How do we process such horrifying statistics? How can journalists cover them?

The training of journalists in safety and security is also facing unprecedented challenges. What advice can we give to journalists operating in situations where mere existence is life-threatening? How do they deal with the unavoidable trauma of reporting on conflicts like this?

Refugee journalists

Two experienced Egyptian journalists and security trainers, Noha Lamloum and Cherine Abdel Azim, were at the conference. They have conducted numerous courses for journalists across the Middle East, and they now work with a group of female journalists from Gaza who have fled to Egypt – 12 women, most of whom have lost everything, including their families and children.

“End of Journalism,” Digital, ChatGPt, 2024

Some of these journalists escaped with small children who cower in fear at any loud noise. These women’s most fervent wish was simply to see the sea. Sitting silently with them on the beach, gazing at the same sea that once bordered their homeland before it was devastated, was profoundly moving.

When the women began to recount their stories, it was as though a floodgate opened – words, tears, and emptiness poured out. The trainers were deeply affected themselves, as are many journalists covering the human suffering. “I live off words,” said one of them. “They were my tools, my joy, but now they bring no comfort. They feel increasingly hollow.”

Journalistic double standards

Ten years ago, in January 2015, many of us proclaimed “Je suis Charlie” in solidarity after the terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris. Where are the voices now for Hamza, Mustafa, Rami, and other journalists who have been targeted and killed?

“Where is the West?” This was a central theme. Where is the international community? Why the glaring double standards?

The violence in Amsterdam on 7 November 2024 between Israeli Maccabi Tel Aviv soccer fans and pro-Palestinian groups was a case in point. Media outlets failed to report that Israeli fans first burned Palestinian flags and shouted inflammatory slogans. Instead, the narrative focused on anti-Semitism driving the violence.

Zahera Harb, a former journalist from Beirut, now at City University in London, highlighted how UK broadcaster Sky News initially covered the provocations of the Israeli fans, but later replaced the segment with an edited version which largely omitted footage of their provocations. Instead it featured statements from Dutch and British officials condemning anti-Semitism. Sky News stated that changes to their coverage were made to meet their standards of “balance and impartiality”.

However, this is not an isolated incident. Insiders at Germany’s public broadcaster Deutsche Welle, and at CNN and the BBC, have recently spoken out over similar double standards, many of which are ingrained in the editorial guidelines that govern their newsrooms.

“Is it Europe’s lingering guilt over the Holocaust that continues to paralyze its response?” asked one prominent editor in Cairo. “It’s horrifying to think that the victims of hatred and genocide in Europe are now implicated in the suffering of another people. The term ‘anti-Semitism’ has become a trump card, nullifying ethical journalistic standards.”

Is Western media failing?

Western media, guided by balance and impartiality, excels in many areas. However, the extremity of the war in Gaza raises questions about whether the pursuit of balance sometimes impedes the pursuit of truth.

During our discussions with journalists in a region ravaged by mass civilian casualties and direct attacks on reporters, our input on war imagery and hate speech felt somewhat inadequate, a token gesture akin to offering inflatable armbands to someone drowning in a violent hurricane.

“Show the pictures of the dead children,” urged a young female journalist who had been in Rafah. “Consideration for the survivors is a luxury we cannot afford,” said an editor, alluding to the difficult ethical discussions in Western newsrooms about what to publish. These debates highlight the gap between young people’s unfiltered reality on platforms like TikTok and the more curated coverage by traditional media.

It is worth noting that “Western media” is a potentially unhelpful category. In Norway, for instance, we pride ourselves on consistently ranking highest in measures of freedom of expression and media independence.

Our ongoing research (Riegert & Orgeret, forthcoming) highlights the exemplary efforts of Norwegian journalists in their coverage of the October 7 attacks on Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza and Lebanon – they have verified facts, demonstrated methodology, and offered essential context. Many Norwegian correspondents have shown the human side of suffering, and collaborated courageously with journalists on the ground.

Yet difficult questions linger: How are we using our freedom? What can we do when our journalistic tools are insufficient against the horrors of relentless war and potential genocide? More than 60 years after Hannah Arendt documented Adolf Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem, her reflections on the banality of evil remain disturbingly relevant.

Kristin Skare Orgeret, Professor of Journalism and Media Studies, Oslo Metropolitan University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

(The Conversation) – What are war crimes and when did they start? – Artie, 12, Queens, New York

I imagine you’re asking about “war crimes” because you’ve heard that term mentioned lately in news about the conflicts underway in Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan. The idea may sound confusing, because war always includes killings and destruction. But special rules restrict how wars can be fought.

I am a professor who studies international law – the set of rules that defines what a war crime is.

Why do we need laws about war?

Historically, war had few limits. Individual societies occasionally attempted to control how wars were fought. But for much of human history, when nations attacked each other, it wasn’t just soldiers who died. Many civilians – ordinary people who weren’t fighting in the war – died, and whole cities were destroyed.

After wars ended, survivors from the losing country might even end up as slaves taken back to the victorious country.

There were no “laws of war” that restricted conquests by the Egyptians and Romans in ancient times between 600 and 30 B.C. No laws limited the Mongol invasions of Europe in the 13th century or the European colonial invasions of Latin American, African and Asian societies in the 18th through 20th centuries.

Even as recently as the 1940s, during World War II, U.S. and U.K. forces killed hundreds of thousands of people in their bombings of German and Japanese cities. Nazi Germany systematically murdered approximately 6 million Jews and others during the Holocaust.

When did war get laws?

There is no supreme world government that can create laws for all countries, so international law is formed by rules that countries agree to respect. These are called treaties.

In the 19th century, countries and many private groups worldwide began working to develop the laws of war.

Early treaties on war were meant primarily to protect soldiers from unnecessary pain and suffering. Countries agreed to stop using really dangerous weapons such as poison gas, for example. They also banned murdering wounded enemies and soldiers who tried to surrender, because those killings aren’t necessary to win a war.

Later, after the horrors of World War II, the laws of war were expanded to protect civilians.

Developing all these rules has taken well over a century. Nations agreed to them because everyone has a shared interest in limiting some of the worst aspects of how war is fought. The goal is to keep everyone caught up in war as safe as possible, while accepting that some innocent people will still die.

What are war crimes?

The rules of war are set out primarily in four treaties from 1949 called the Geneva Conventions. Every country in the world accepts these rules, which have been expanded several times in the years since.

The Geneva Conventions are very specific about what warring nations cannot do during an armed conflict. The things they cannot do are called war crimes.

Here is a partial list of war crimes:

• Deliberate killing that is not justified by a legitimate military objective.
• Torture.
• Inflicting severe harm on enemies.
• Taking hostages.
• Wounding or killing a soldier who has surrendered.
• Attacking civilians not participating in the conflict.
• Using certain prohibited weapons.
• Starving people as a weapon of war.

How are war crimes punished?

Most people generally agree that these are good rules and that warring countries should try to obey them. The problem is enforcement.

War crimes are committed not by entire countries but by individual people, such as soldiers who torture the captured enemy or destroy a family’s crops unnecessarily. Since individuals commit the crimes, individuals must be held responsible.

Many countries have laws stating what can and cannot be done during war. They generally reflect the rules of the Geneva Conventions. However, history shows that governments are often reluctant to prosecute their own soldiers for war crimes. Accusations of such crimes are often ignored, punished lightly or dismissed.

That’s why the International Criminal Court exists. In 1998, representatives from 160 countries met in Rome to create this world court, which can investigate, bring to trial and decide the guilt or innocence of individuals accused of war crimes and certain other international crimes.

“Justices,” Digital, Midjourney, 2025

Today, 124 countries have accepted the court’s authority. If war crimes are committed in these countries, the court can act. In 2014, for example, the head of a rebel force in the Democratic Republic of Congo was convicted of murder and deliberately attacking civilians; he was put in prison for 12 years.

However, several big and powerful countries have not consented to the authority of the International Criminal Court, including the United States, China and Russia. Many countries in which brutal wars have occurred also reject its powers, including Iraq, Israel, Syria, Sudan and Yemen. This limits its powers.

Additionally, the International Criminal Court has no international police force to arrest suspects. It relies on governments to detain people accused of war crimes and deliver them to the court.

Again, not all of them cooperate. National leaders have sometimes traveled abroad after International Criminal Court arrest warrants were issued against them and have not been arrested.

Finally, interpreting international law can be tricky.

It is a war crime to deliberately attack civilians, but countries at war with each other still bomb apartment buildings, hospitals and schools sometimes, claiming enemy forces are inside those buildings. If true, that could make the buildings legitimate military targets – though international law still requires militaries to do everything possible to minimize civilian casualties.

What next?

Right now, you may be thinking: If people aren’t punished for breaking the rules of war, do these rules even matter?

It’s a reasonable question. But consider this: Countries have had criminal laws against murder and robbery for thousands of years, yet these crimes are still committed. The concept of war crimes has been around for a much shorter time. It is not surprising that not all war criminals can be brought to justice, but I think the fact that most countries now agree that war crimes should be prohibited is important.

Plus, when war crimes are investigated and condemned, victims may feel that their suffering will not be forgotten. Even if no one is punished, proving a crime was committed has value.

International law isn’t easy to enforce, but at least most of the world now recognizes that even wars must have their limits.

Hurst Hannum, Professor of International Law, Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy, Tufts University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In addition, at least 14 countries have requested the International Court of Justice to allow them to intervene on behalf of South Africa’s genocide case against Israel, including Ireland, Spain, Belgium, Mexico, Türkiye, Nicaragua, Colombia, Libya, Egypt, Cuba, Palestine, Chile, the Maldives, and Bolivia. Spain, Mexico and Türkiye are in the G20.

On the other hand, the most powerful man in the world, Joe Biden, insisted that what Israel is doing in Gaza is not genocide. In fact, most US politicians of both parties have either issued similar denials or have just been quiet on the issue. US so-called cable “news” has barely mentioned Gaza at all this year, despite the daily carnage wrought by the Israeli military there, and typically does not invite on as commentators guests that might use the “G-word.” I did a database search in broadcast transcripts. CNN mentioned on December 6 that the US State Department had denied an Israeli genocide in Gaza. On November 1, CNN anchors reported that a UN official had resigned, calling Israeli actions in Gaza a textbook case of genocide. On May 24, CNN reported on the South Africa case against Israel at the ICJ for the crime of genocide. In January CNN reported two or three times on the ICJ case pursued against Israel for the alleged Gaza genocide. These six or so mentions seem to be the extent of CNN broadcasting on the genocide issue for the entire year, and mostly they covered denials or things that other people said.

Many of those contesting the charge of genocide against Israel do not understand the current technical definition of the term. It does not require killing millions of people. It cannot be excused by war-fighting, since the laws of war require that everything possible be done to minimize civilian casualties. If a country cavalierly throws aside this requirement and deliberately and consciously adopts rules of engagement allowing a hundred civilian casualties for each high-value militant killed, as both Israel’s +972 Mag and the New York Times say Israel has done, that course of action could fall under the heading of genocide.

“Genocide,” Digital, Midjourney, 2024

Polish attorney and academic Raphael Lemkin, of Jewish heritage, coined the term “genocide.” It is from the Greek genos or people, race, or tribe, and the Latin -cide, having to do with killing. (The modern Greek is γενοκτονία (yenoktonía), from genos and ktonia, which means ‘killing.’ In my view it would have been better to have an all-Greek term rather than a Greek-Latin hybrid.) Lemkin used it in his 1944 book, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. He also invoked it at the Nuremberg war crimes trials and worked to get the 1948 Genocide Convention passed and ratified, in which he succeeded by 1951.

In Axis Rule, Lemkin wrote,

“New conceptions require new terms. By “genocide” we mean the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group. This new word, coined by the author to denote an old practice in its modern development, is made from the ancient Greek word genos (race, tribe) and the Latin cide (killing), thus corresponding in its formation to such words as tyrannicide, homocide, infanticide, etc. Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups. Genocide is directed against the national group as an entity, and the actions involved are directed against individuals, not in their individual capacity, but as members of the national group.

The following illustration will suffice. The confiscation of property of nationals of an occupied area on the ground that they have left the country may be considered simply as a deprivation of their individual property rights. However, if the confiscations are ordered against individuals solely because they are Poles, Jews, or Czechs, then the same confiscations tend in effect to weaken the national entities of which those persons are members.”

In contemporary Ireland, government officials are pushing back against Lemkin’s emphasis on intent and a “coordinated plan,” which are almost impossible to prove. They argue that genocide should be defined not by the intentions of the perpetrator but by the harms experienced by the victim.

This Google Books ngram shows how the use of the term skyrocketed after 1945:

Google Books Ngram for “Genocide.”

Unfortunately, the mentions may be increasing so much because the crime is becoming more common. In 2009 and 2010, the International Criminal Court issued warrants against then dictator Omar al-Bashir of Sudan that included 3 counts of genocide because of his brutal repression of the Fur people in the western Darfur province.

In this century, as Alexander Wentker points out, genocide is increasingly being litigated at the International Court of Justice, which was established by the United Nations to adjudicate disputes between member states. Gambia has filed a case against Myanmar (Burma)’s military junta for genocide against the Rohingya Muslims. Nicaragua filed a case against Germany for abetting Israel’s Gaza genocide, but the ICJ judges turned it back on the grounds that Germany has a robust judiciary that can decide this matter itself. Nicaragua, undeterred, is interested in prosecuting Britain and Canada for complicity in the Gaza genocide, which Wentker suggests may help explain the Labour government’s tepid announcement that some 14 weapons export licenses were being withdrawn from firms selling to Israel.

As South Africa noted in arguments before the ICJ, Article II of the Genocide Convention says,

“In 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:
(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;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group”

This language was adopted into the Rome Statute that underpins the International Criminal Court.

The ICJ judges have taken special interest in the Israeli destruction of hospitals and their displacement of pregnant women to unhealthy rubble and tents, noting that “The WHO has estimated that 15 per cent of the women giving birth in the Gaza Strip are likely to experience complications, and indicates that maternal and newborn death rates are expected to increase due to the lack of access to medical care.” The point is that these actions might constitute “Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.”