More than three quarters of the 99 journalists killed worldwide in 2023 were killed in Gaza

( Globalvoices.org ) – On July 31, Al Jazeera journalists Ismail al-Ghoul and Rami al-Rifi were killed by Israel in the Shati refugee camp in the north of Gaza while reporting on the assassination of Hamas political bureau chief Ismail Haniyya in Iran.

The Israeli army admitted to killing al-Ghoul and al-Rifi, accusing them of being members of Al Qassam, the military wing of Hamas, and of participating in the October 7 attack. This dangerous accusation — thoroughly refuted by the channel — has been used repeatedly by the Israeli side to justify killing journalists, which risks normalizing the targeting of journalists with unfounded accusations.

Al Jazeera said that Al Ghoul, who had previously reported on the Israeli raids of Al-Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza, was detained by Israeli forces in March and released 12 hours later, disproving the claims of his affiliation with Hamas or other organizations.

Nicola Perugini, associate professor of politics and international relations at the University of Edinburgh, warned on X about using such accusations against journalists:

A disturbing pattern

According to preliminary figures from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), at least 113 journalists and media workers have been killed since the war began on October 7, 2023, with three confirmed to have been targeted and 10 more under investigation. The Gaza government media office put the number at 165 Palestinian journalists and media workers killed. 

According to Reporters without Borders (RSF), “29 of [the 120 journalists reported killed by [RSF] have been killed in circumstances that point to intentional targeting, in violation of international law.” Three complaints have been filed with the International Criminal Court (ICC) by the press freedom organization urging independent investigations of these war crimes.

The Al Jazeera Network — banned by Israel since May 2023 — has been heavily targeted, with five of its journalists killed in Gaza since the war began. Hamza al-Dahdouh, son of Gaza bureau chief Wael al-Dahdouh, and Moustafa Thuraya were killed in a January airstrike. The Israeli army also alleged the two men were “members of Gaza-based terrorist organizations,” which was equally refuted by the channel and others.

In February, a drone strike injured Wael al-Dahdouh and killed cameraman Samer Abu Daqqa. Wael’s wife, seven-year-old daughter, and 15-year-old son were also killed in an Israeli airstrike on October 28, 2023.

“These deadly attacks on Al Jazeera personnel coincided with a defamation campaign by Israeli authorities,” according to RSF, warning that “conflating journalism with ‘terrorism’ endangers reporters and threatens the right to information.”

“The killing of al-Ghoul and al-Rifi is the latest example of the risks of documenting the war in Gaza, the deadliest conflict for journalists the organization has documented in 30 years,” Jodie Ginsberg, CPJ’s CEO told Al Jazeera, emphasizing that the killing of journalists by Israel has been a disturbing pattern over the past 20 years. “This appears to be part of a broader [Israeli] strategy to stifle the information coming out of Gaza,” she explained, adding that the ban on Al Jazeera from reporting in Israel is part of this trend.

Trauma and exhaustion

Since October 7, Israel has not allowed any foreign journalists to enter the Gaza strip to report on the ongoing war except if embedded with the Israeli army. This complete ban has meant that local journalists are the ones to bear the brunt of coverage at great personal risk.

The immense trauma and exhaustion experienced by these local journalists, who remain vulnerable despite taking all possible safety measures, was best expressed in a poignant quote from Al Jazeera English journalist Hind Khoudary that went viral after the killing of her colleagues.

Another colleague,  Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Jerusalem, Najwan Simri wrote in a tribute to her colleague Ismail:

It was enough to look into his eyes, and contemplate his features, to feel the depth of Gaza’s sadness and reproach towards us. I always felt that he reproached us with excessive politeness.. and great hope, as if he had not lost hope in us for a moment.

– Najwan Simri (@SimriNajwan) 31 July, 2024

Meanwhile, local journalists in Gaza protested and held a vigil in response to al-Ghoul’s killing expressing their outrage at the perilous conditions they navigate daily and the lack of accountability and protection. Al Jazeera Arabic staff held a silent protest live in their studio.

An emotional video of the moment Al Jazeera Arabic presenter received and shared the news of the killing of Ismail Al Ghoul and Rami Al Rifi, went viral.

Bayan Abusultan, a feminist Palestinian journalist in Gaza tweeted:

They want to silence us.
They threaten all journalists who are still in Gaza city, and the north.

Covering the news here = Being targeted by the israeli forces.

Remember to keep talking about #Gaza even if they got every last one of us.

A history of impunity

Israel has a history of targeting journalists with impunity, as evidenced by the case of Shireen Abu Akleh, killed by the Israeli army while reporting in Jennin in the West Bank on May 11, 2022. Abu Akleh’s killing highlights the dangers faced by Palestinian media professionals due to a lack of accountability.

Carlos Martínez de la Serna of thr CPJ criticized Israel for refusing to cooperate with the FBI and blocking potential ICC investigations into her killing, calling for an end to Israel’s impunity in journalist killings, which have only increased during the ongoing Gaza war.

In 2022, Abu Akleh’s family and Al Jazeera requested the ICC to investigate her killing, but Israel’s leaders, including former prime minister Yair Lapid, resisted any interrogation of IDF soldiers and declined to open a criminal investigation into the killing.

The scale of journalist killing by Israel during this war is best seen when comparing it to the global number. More than three quarters of the 99 journalists killed worldwide in 2023 were killed in the Gaza war according to the CPJ. This alarming number emphasizes the urgent need for accountability and the enhancement of protection measures for journalists everywhere, ensuring the safety and protection of all the journalists who courageously report from the front lines of conflicts.

This post is part of Advox, a Global Voices project dedicated to protecting freedom of expression online. All Posts

 

Written byWalid El Houri

Via Globalvoices.org

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Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

AJ+ “Journalist Ismail Al-Ghoul wrote about bearing witness in #Gaza before his killing”

(The Conversation) – >Assassination is a particular form of murder. Regardless of who carries out the act, on whose orders or why, it is always unlawful.

This is the reason Vadim Krasikov was languishing behind bars in Germany prior to being released on Aug. 1, 2024, as part of a historic prisoner exchange.

Krasikov was serving a life sentence for killing exiled Chechen separatist Zelimkhan Khangoshvili in a Berlin park in 2019.

The German court that sentenced him found that he was carrying out the Kremlin’s orders; his victim had fought Russian forces in the Chechen wars and was suspected of terrorist attacks in Moscow. But neither of these factors provide legal justification for the killing.

The same is true in the case of Ismail Haniyeh, a Hamas political leader. He was killed on July 31, 2024, while in Tehran at the invitation of the Iranian government. The Israeli government, which is widely believed to be behind the killing, has repeatedly expressed a willingness to hunt down Hamas leadership around the world following the group’s deadly attack on Oct. 7, 2023. Israel has carried out many such assassinations in Iran, Lebanon and elsewhere over the years.

Despite these and other international cases, the term “assassination” is not defined under international law. Legal scholars like me rely on standard dictionary definitions where assassination is defined as “murder by sudden or secret attack often for political reasons.” But treaties and other international law do make clear that killing for political reasons by sudden or secret attack is unlawful.

The most important treaty on this question is the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights – adopted in 1966 by the United Nations and binding today on 174 states, including Russia, Israel and the United States. The covenant affirms: “Every human being has the inherent right to life. This right shall be protected by law. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life.”

Treacherous acts

This does not mean that deliberate killing can never be justified. International law contains rules that determine when it is permissible to use deadly force.

In peacetime, it is lawful for police to use lethal force to save lives in immediate danger. Officers killed the man who shot at Donald Trump, for example, to prevent the gunman from shooting again, as lives were in immediate danger.

The use of military force against another state is regulated under the United Nations Charter. The Charter prohibits all uses of force, unless authorized by the U.N. Security Council or in a case of self-defense. The charter allows a state to use force in individual or collective self-defense “if an armed attack occurs” until the Security Council can act.

The U.N.’s International Court of Justice has further clarified that even when a state has the right of self-defense, military action in response must be necessary, proportionate and aimed at a sovereign state responsible for the initial armed attack. The court has repeated these principles in multiple decisions, most comprehensively in a case brought by Iran following lethal U.S. attacks on its oil platforms in the Persian Gulf.

Once an armed conflict has begun, parties to the fighting have the right to use lethal force to defeat the adversary. International humanitarian law permits intentional killing of enemy fighters within legally defined armed conflict hostilities. Even then, no one may be singled out for killing based on what they did in the past. And civilians not participating in the fighting may never be intentionally targeted.

Recent international decisions support the importance of the concept of restricting the killing of fighters to within active zones of hostilities. Outside such areas, the peacetime human right to life applies. The European Court of Human Rights has emphasized this point in a series of rulings, most recently in early 2021.

These decisions contradict an older view held by some in the U.S. military that political or military leaders of a wartime adversary may be killed wherever they are found.

As a political leader of a party at war with Israel in Gaza, Haniyeh might fit this older interpretation. However, it still would not extend to killing “treacherously or perfidiously,” as laid out in the binding regulations annexed to Hague Convention IV of 1907. To kill treacherously or perfidiously means to kill someone who has no expectation of being in danger of death. For example, a soldier who falsely raises a white flag of surrender to lure an enemy in close enough to kill them would be guilty of killing treacherously.

Haniyeh had such an expectation of safety in Tehran, and as such his killing can be seen as treacherous.

A double standard

All principles on the use of lethal force under international law rule out assassination. And yet, countries including Israel, Russia and the U.S. persist in using it. A few others – France, India, North Korea, Saudi Arabia and the United Kingdom – have used it in a few infamous, high-profile cases.

Israel has acknowledged responsibility for assassinations dating to even before its founding.

The U.S. has joined the rest of the world in criticizing these killings. In 1988, for example, Israel assassinated a PLO leader named Khalil al-Wazir in Tunisia. The U.N. Security Council condemned the operation in a resolution that the U.S. refused to veto.

To try to mollify critics, Israel began referring in 2000 to its practice of assassination as “targeted killings.”

The term makes it sound more like the legitimate killing in wartime. In 2001, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk rejected Israel’s attempt to legitimize assassination when he said on Israeli television: “The United States government is very clearly on the record as against targeted assassinations. They are extrajudicial killings, and we do not support that.”

Then the Sept. 11 attacks occurred and the U.S. itself adopted the practice of targeted killing. The first known case was carried out by the CIA against six suspected members of al-Qaida in Yemen in November 2002. The killings were condemned as unlawful by a U.N. human rights expert soon after.

Yet, U.S. killings with drones and other means have continued to this day. All the while, the U.S. has consistently condemned Russian assassinations. What many international law experts, including me, see is a U.S. double standard when it comes to the use of lethal force, including its use in assassination.

While efforts may have been made to mount a defense of assassinations such as that of Hamas’ Haniyeh, there is a simple truth: Lethal force is highly restricted, and assassination is never legal.

Mary Ellen O’Connell, Professor of Law and International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame

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

( Human Rights Watch ) – Less than a year after Human Rights Watch found Saudi border guards had committed widespread and systematic killings of Ethiopian migrants on its border with Yemen, the US appears poised to lift its years-long ban on the sale of offensive weapons to the country.

The ban would be ended despite the lack of accountability for the Saudis’ years of war crimes in Yemen, possible crimes against humanity on the Yemen-Saudi border, and what a US intelligence report concluded was approval of killing the journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s crown prince and de-facto ruler. This would prove to the Saudi leadership that they can get away with murder.

The ban on US sales of offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia originated from a Joe Biden campaign promise to “make sure America does not check its values at the door to sell arms or buy oil,” citing the Saudi-backed war in Yemen.

France 24 English Video: “‘Saudi Crown Prince believes rights are his to give, he’ll prosecute people who demand their rights'”

Last summer, we released a report detailing Saudi border guards’ horrific crimes against unarmed Ethiopian migrants. Among the devastating evidence, a 17-year-old boy told us how he survived an explosive weapons attack on the border between Saudi Arabia and Yemen. While approaching the border with a large group of migrants, he said Saudi border guards fired on them with rocket launchers.

He described seeing the remains of his group—mostly women and children—strewn across the mountain. Somehow, he survived the attack but was then intercepted by Saudi border guards. The next part was hard for him to tell. He said that the border guards forced him to rape another survivor—a 15-year-old girl. He witnessed border guards summarily executing a man who refused to rape her, leaving him with the unconscionable choice of his own death or raping the girl.

The news that Saudi border guards were murdering groups of unarmed migrants horrified people from Brazil to South Korea. Diplomats and politicians spoke out, some calling for an independent investigation. The UN’s senior-most human rights official noted the killings in his opening address at the September Human Rights Council session. The United States and Germany announced they had ended training and financial support of the Saudi border guard force.

Fast forward 10 months and the momentum has not so much stalled as reversed. What’s worse, this comes amid news that the US may soon resume offensive weapons sales to Saudi Arabia.

Despite an initial wave of concern from the international community, there has been no justice or accountability for the killings we documented, nor evidence that the killings have subsided. This is not the first time Saudi Arabia has successfully skirted accountability for grave crimes.

Between 2015 and 2022, Saudi-led coalition airstrikes in Yemen caused nearly 20,000 civilian casualties. For years, Human Rights Watch documented the Saudi-led coalition’s use of US weapons in some of the most devastating unlawful attacks on civilians in Yemen, including attacks on a market and a funeral in 2016 that killed nearly 100 people each, both apparent war crimes.

And yet Saudi Arabia has continued to avoid accountability for scores of unlawful airstrikes and civilian casualties in Yemen. In October 2021, after an aggressive lobbying campaign by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the UN Human Rights Council rejected the renewal of the mandate for the Group of Eminent Experts—the only international, impartial, and independent body investigating and reporting on conflict-related rights violations and abuses in Yemen.

As news that Saudi Arabia and the US are nearing agreement on a new mutual defense pact, concern and alarm for grave crimes committed by the Saudis appears long forgotten. Without accountability these crimes will continue. With a new defense pact and the intention of lifting the ban on the sale of offensive weapons, the Biden administration sends the message that heinous crimes can be committed, even rewarded, for political expediency.

As Human Rights Watch researchers we made a promise to people like the 17-year-old boy that we would tell the world their stories and try to persuade those in charge that brutal crimes like mass killings should not go unpunished.

The Biden administration should maintain its ban on offensive weapons and end arms sales to Saudi Arabia until the country takes meaningful, independently verified steps to end their abuses and hold those responsible for war crimes to account. The Biden administration also should move to apply Leahy Laws and similar standards against providing military aid to abusive entities that would suspend US equipment, arms, and training for units involved in grave human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia and anywhere else US assets are used to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Via Human Rights Watch

Sanders is right to be outraged. But there is a long history of the US Congress asking war criminals, and criminals of other sorts, to address it. Not to mention the war crimes that Congress itself has committed, such as the illegal authorization it issued in 2002 to George W. Bush to invade Iraq, an invasion that killed hundreds of thousands and displaced 4 million people, and left the country a basket case to this day.

In 1959 Congress invited the king of Belgium, Baudouin, to address it. He had been the sovereign over the Congo in the 1950s. Under his rule thousands of mixed-race children were kidnapped by Belgian authorities and transported to Belgium for adoption. Belgian rule in Congo was brutal and heavy-handed. Baudouin later accepted Congolese independence in 1960, but was complicit (a year after he addressed Congress) in overthrowing and murdering its first post-Belgian leader, Patrice Lumumba. The US CIA helped.

In 1978 Congress was addressed by Anwar El Sadat and Menachem Begin. Begin was a war criminal and in some ways the inventor of modern Middle Eastern terrorism.. In the 1940s he commanded the Irgun Zvai Leumi terrorist group in British Mandate Palestine. He instigated the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946 to hit out at British Intelligence, which had an office in the hotel. The bombing killed dozens of innocent civilians. Begin’s Irgun was also responsible for the massacre of over a hundred innocent Palestinian villagers at Deir Yassin in 1948, an action which he justified and boasted about in his autobiography: “Our men were compelled to fight for every house; to overcome the enemy they used large numbers of hand grenades. And the civilians who had disregarded our warnings suffered inevitable casualties.” There is a long history of Israeli terrorists threatening to attack people and attempting to force them from their homes, and then blaming them for being massacred because they didn’t allow themselves to be expelled.

In 1989 Congress in its wisdom decided to be addressed by South Korean strongman Roh Tae-woo, who had engineered the 1979 coup in that country. In 1980 he had been complicit in ordering the crushing of pro-democracy protests in Gwangju. He went on to steal hundreds of million of dollars from campaign funds. Roh Tae-woo was sort of a South Korean Donald Trump and that he was so popular with Congress was maybe a sign that in 1989 the country was already heading in a bad direction.

In 2016 and again in 2023, Congress let the odious Narendra Modi of India soil its halls. Genocide Watch explains, “In 2002, anti-Muslim carnage engulfed the Indian state of Gujarat, killing at least 1,000 people. Most of the victims were Muslims. The Chief Minister of Gujarat was Narendra Modi, a lifelong member of the Hindu extremist RSS. He ordered police not to stop the massacres.” The BBC did a fine documentary on the massacre, which India banned.

Lots of other unsavory people have traipsed through the national legislature’s halls. I’m not sure any of them has killed as many innocents as Netanyahu, the Butcher of Gaza.

The US and Israel have been involved in intense discussions recently about whether Washington will sanction a unit of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) after reports of a string of human rights violations committed against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank before the Gaza conflict began in October.

Netzah Yehuda is an ultra-Orthodox division of the IDF that was established as a way of encouraging Haredi Jews, currently exempted from military service, into the Israeli armed forces. It was reported on April 20 that the Biden administration was considering sanctioning the unit under the “Leahy Law”. This 1997 law prohibits the US government from providing funds to units of foreign security forces where there is credible information implicating that unit in “gross violations of human rights”.

But following a series of exchanges between the US and Israeli government, US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said: “The Israeli government has presented new information regarding the status of the unit and we will engage on identifying a path to effective remediation for this unit.”

The Netzah Yehuda battalion has been mired in misconduct controversies since long before the outbreak of the current hostilities with Hamas. But one incident from 2022 has particularly rankled with Washington as it involved a Palestinian-American former resident of Milwaukee. Omar Assad, 80, died after being forcibly detained and left outside overnight on a construction site near a makeshift IDF checkpoint in his West Bank hometown of Jiljilya.

Assad, who is reported to have been gagged and bound when detained, was allegedly unresponsive when left by the IDF soldiers. He was found dead the following morning. A subsequent Palestinian autopsy found that Assad, who had a history of heart problems, had suffered cardiac arrest caused by stress.

The IDF conducted an investigation and discharged two junior officers from the unit, but no legal action was taken. This is just one episode in a list of human rights violations allegedly perpetrated by members of Netzah Yehuda on Palestinian civilians that have come under investigation by the US government.

Ultra-Orthodox unit

Netzah Yehuda, formerly Nahal Haredi was created in 1999 as an all-male combat unit with the specific goal of enlisting young Jews who had dropped out of ultra-Orthodox Jewish religious schools. Since the establishment of the State of Israel in May 1948, fixed-term military service has been compulsory for all Jewish Israelis. But the ultra-Orthodox – or Haredi – community has been traditionally exempted from conscription.

Al Jazeera English Video: “What is Israel’s Netzah Yehuda battalion? | Al Jazeera Newsfeed”

Netzah Yehuda aims to integrate young Haredim within the ranks of the IDF. By enlisting in this unit they are able to adhere to their strict religious beliefs, one of which involves avoiding interaction with women – who are also required to serve in the military. Netzah Yehuda’s recruits come largely from underprivileged, impoverished and marginalised backgrounds.

A significant group among the Netzah Yehuda are the so-called “hilltop youth”. These are second-generation settlers who were born and raised in the illegal outposts scattered across the occupied Palestinian territories. They consider Judea and Samaria on the West Bank their home, rather than Israel proper.

Former prime minister Ariel Sharon oversaw the exit of Israeli forces from Gaza in July 2005. This was accompanied by the dismantling of Israeli settlers’ communities living in the strip. Since then the number of settlers living illegally on the West Bank has risen to more than 700,000. Hilltop youth have been implicated in numerous reports of violence and aggression against Palestinians there.

One notorious aspect of this has become known as the “price-tag policy”. Also called arvut hadadit (or “mutual responsibility”), it is designed to deter the Israeli government from curbing settlement expansion or forcing settlers to leave their unauthorised outposts in the occupied territories. Young and ideologically motivated settlers exact a “price” for what they consider to be a betrayal by attacking Palestinians and vandalising their homes or holy sites.

The shared ideology and experience of alienation from broader Israeli society tends to foster cohesion within Netzah Yehuda combat unit. This, in turn, leads to the soldiers seeing themselves as separate from the broader IDF ethos.

Netzah Yehuda’s motto is: v’haya machanecha kadosh (and your camp shall be holy). This is a quotation from the Torah, which is taken literally by battalion soldiers to mean – as one commander told the Hebrew Maariv newspaper in 2017 – that they are on a “holy mission”. This contributes to a culture that encourages unrestrained violence against non-Jewish populations in the West Bank.

Targeted sanctions

US sanctions would mean a ban on transferring US weapons or giving military assistance to Netzah Yehuda specifically. It would not necessarily contradict the US president’s often-stated “ironclad commitment” to Israeli security. The announcement that the White House was considering the move came a day after the US Congress approved US$26 billion (£21 billion) in military aid for Israel.

Sanctions would nonetheless send a strong signal to Israel and to the rest of the world. It would be the first time Washington sanctioned the IDF on grounds of non-compliance with international humanitarian law. Despite claiming to be “the most moral army in world”, the IDF has been unwilling to dismantle a battalion which appears to act as an independent militia with scant accountability to central command.

The prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and members of his government reacted angrily to news that the US was considering sanctions against a unit of the IDF. “If anyone thinks they can impose sanctions on a unit of the IDF – I will fight it with all my strength,” Netanyahu said.

National security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, a member of the far-right Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party, said “sanctions on our soldiers is a red line”. His colleague, finance minister Bezalel Smotrich – who represents the far-right Religious Zionist Party, said to impose sanctions on a unit of the IDF “while Israel is fighting for its existence is complete madness”.

The IDF claims Netzah Yehuda “operates in accordance to the IDF Code of Ethics and with full commitment to international law,” and that the IDF “remains committed to continue to examine exceptional incidents professionally and according to law”.

Carlo Aldrovandi, Assistant Professor in International Peace Studies, Trinity College Dublin

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

She said at a pro-Palestinian gathering in Pretoria attended by a number of officials from the ruling African National Congress, “I have already issued a statement alerting those who are South African and are fighting alongside or in the Israeli Defense Forces: We are ready. When you come home, we are going to arrest you.”

Minister Pandor also called on people to create posters saying “Stop Genocide” and to demonstrate in front of the embassies of the “five primary supporters” of the Israeli campaign against Gaza. She did not name them but they certainly include the US and Britain.

There are about 70,000 Jews in South Africa, a country of about 60 million. It wasn’t reported how many of them are dual nationals or are serving in the Israeli army.

The South African government took Israel to the International Court of Justice with a charge that Tel Aviv is committing genocide in Gaza. On January 26, the ICJ issued the equivalent of a preliminary injunction against Israel on this charge, admitting its plausibility.

Hindustan Times Video: “South Africa Vows To ‘Punish’ Own Citizens Serving As Soldiers In Israel Army; ‘Will Strip Your…'”

Minister Pandor maintains that she has been the victim of an intimidation campaign, receiving online hate mail with threats of violence against her and her family that required here to request security from the government. She blames, in part, Israeli intelligence for this campaign.

Her ministry, charmingly called “International Relations and Cooperation,” just last week made a further appeal to the International Court of Justice to intervene to halt the starvation of the people of Gaza. It requested the Court to issue instructions to the effect that:

“All Parties to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide must, forthwith, refrain from any action, and in particular any armed action or support thereof, which might prejudice the right of the Palestinians in Gaza to be protected from acts of genocide and related prohibited acts, or any other rights in respect of whatever judgment the Court may render in the case, or which might aggravate or extend the dispute before the Court or make it more difficult to resolve.

The State of Israel shall take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address famine and starvation and the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians in Gaza, by:

(a) immediately suspending its military operations in Gaza

(b) lifting its blockade of Gaza

(c) rescinding all other existing measures and practices that directly or indirectly have the effect of obstructing the access of Palestinians in Gaza to humanitarian assistance and basic services; and

(d) ensuring the provision of adequate and sufficient food, water, fuel, shelter, clothing, hygiene and sanitation requirements, alongside medical assistance, including medical supplies and support.

The United Nations has warned that a fourth of the people in Gaza are at imminent risk of starvation.

South Africa’s attempt to rally the signatories of the Convention against Genocide of 1948 against Israeli actions, and its raising of the possibility of jail time for soldiers fighting the total war against Gaza, distinguishes it from most other international actors, who have done no more than express regret the for the over 31,000 Palestinian deaths in the war so far, if they have done that much.

Pandor’s comments raise the question of whether dual nationals serving in the Israeli army could be found guilty of being complicit in genocide if they return to their home countries from Israel after the war. While this outcome is difficult to imagine in the case of US returnees, the question remains open in Europe, which has strong human rights laws and European courts bound by international humanitarian law.

They pointed to the obligations laid on states by the Third Geneva Convention to ensure respect for the law: “States, whether neutral, allied or enemy, must do everything reasonably in their power to ensure respect for the Conventions by others that are Party to a conflict. This duty to ensure respect by others comprises both a negative and a positive obligation. Under the negative obligation, High Contracting Parties may neither encourage, nor aid or assist in violations of the Conventions by Parties to a conflict. Under the positive obligation, they must do everything reasonably in their power to prevent and bring such violations to an end.”

They also called for a halt to all transfers of arms to Hamas.

The joint statement said, “All States must ‘ensure respect’ for international humanitarian law by parties to an armed conflict, as required by 1949 Geneva Conventions and customary international law. States must accordingly refrain from transferring any weapon or ammunition – or parts for them – if it is expected, given the facts or past patterns of behaviour, that they would be used to violate international law.”

The experts added, “Such transfers are prohibited even if the exporting State does not intend the arms to be used in violation of the law – or does not know with certainty that they would be used in such a way – as long as there is a clear risk.”

They slammed private arms manufacturers as well, saying “They have not publicly demonstrated the heightened human rights due diligence required of them and accordingly risk complicity in violations.”

As for states, they observed, “International law does not enforce itself. All States must not be complicit in international crimes through arms transfers. They must do their part to urgently end the unrelenting humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.”

They cited approvingly the decision of an appeals court in the Netherlands forbidding the export to Israel from that country of spare parts for the F-35 fighter jet. A Dutch news site quoted Judge Bas Boele as saying, “It is undeniable that there is a clear risk that the exported F-35 parts are used in serious violations of international humanitarian law.” I also noted that the NL Times added that the court said, “Israel does not take sufficient account of the consequences of its attacks for the civilian population. Israel’s attacks on Gaza have resulted in a disproportionate number of civilian casualties, including thousands of children.”

They noted that the Dutch court of appeals pointed to indiscriminate bombing, the destruction of 60% of civilian homes, damage to hospitals, schools, mosques and other facilities, the displacement of 85% of the population, and the very high civilian death toll as indications that Israel is violating the laws of war.

The experts also pointed to the January 26 preliminary injunction against Israel by the International Court of Justice, which found the genocide case lodged against Tel Aviv by South Africa to be plausible and ordered that acts that constitute genocide under international law be halted by Israel.

They said, “The need for an arms embargo on Israel is heightened by the International Court of Justice’s ruling on 26 January 2024 that there is a plausible risk of genocide in Gaza and the continuing serious harm to civilians since then. This necessitates halting arms exports in the present circumstances.”

The 1948 Genocide Convention forbids countries from exporting arms into a situation where it is plausible that genocide is taking place.

The experts said, “State officials involved in arms exports may be individually criminally liable for aiding and abetting any war crimes, crimes against humanity or acts of genocide. All States under the principle of universal jurisdiction, and the International Criminal Court, may be able to investigate and prosecute such crimes.”

Israel’s main arms suppliers since October have been The United States, Germany, France, Britain, Canada and Australia. The experts are saying that the politicians and military men making these arms transfers to Israel could end up being prosecuted for complicity in war crimes, including the crime of genocide.

TRT World Video: “Israeli air strikes kill at least 104 people in Gaza in 24 hours”

Some countries have already halted arms shipments to Israel. They include not only the Netherlands but also Spain, Belgium’s Walloon regional government and Italy. The OHCHR says they lauded the Japanese company Itochu Corporation, as well, for ceasing exports to Israel.

The experts noted an obligation on UN member states to uphold international humanitarian law and urged that states take the following steps with Israel:

Diplomatic dialogue and protests;

– Technical assistance to promote compliance and accountability;

– Sanctions on trade, finance, travel, technology or cooperation;

– Referral to the Security Council and the General Assembly;

– Proceedings at the International Court of Justice;

– Support for investigations by the International Criminal Court or other international legal mechanisms;

– National criminal investigations using universal jurisdiction and civil suits; and

– Requesting a meeting of the parties to the Geneva Conventions.

Note that the ICJ proceedings have already been initiated. The Security Council has three times voted to impose a ceasefire, but the Biden administration vetoed it in each case. The General Assembly has also voted for a ceasefire but has no executive power.

The OHCHR press release listed the experts:

Ben Saul, Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism; Margaret Satterthwaite, Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers; Cecilia M. Bailliet, Independent Expert on human rights and international solidarity; Claudia Mahler, Independent Expert on the enjoyment of all human rights by older persons; Farida Shaheed, Special Rapporteur on the right to education; Livingstone Sewanyana, Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order; Surya Deva, Special Rapporteur on the right to development; Attiya Waris, Independent Expert on foreign debt, other international financial obligations and human rights; Ashwini K.P., Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance; Olivier De Schutter, Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights; Paula Gaviria Betancur, Special Rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons; Siobhán Mullally, Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons, especially women and children; Tomoya Obokata, Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, including its causes and consequences; Carlos Salazar Couto (Chair-Rapporteur), Sorcha MacLeod, Jovana Jezdimirovic Ranito, Chris M. A. Kwaja, Ravindran Daniel, Working Group on the use of mercenaries; Robert McCorquodale (Chair-Rapporteur), Fernanda Hopenhaym (Vice-Chair), Pichamon Yeophantong, Damilola Olawuyi, Elzbieta Karska, Working Group on business and human rights; Barbara G. Reynolds (Chair), Dominique Day, Bina D’Costa, Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent; Balakrishnan Rajagopal, Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing; Dorothy Estrada Tanck (Chair), Claudia Flores, Ivana Krstić, Haina Lu, and Laura Nyirinkindi, Working group on discrimination against women and girls; and Francesca Albanese, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967; Reem Alsalem, Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, its causes and consequences; Fabián Salvioli, Special Rapporteur on truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence.

The statement is endorsed by: Aua Baldé (Chair-Rapporteur), Gabriella Citroni (Vice-Chair), Angkhana Neelapaijit, Grażyna Baranowska, Ana Lorena Delgadillo Perez, Working Group on enforced or involuntary disappearances; Mary Lawlor, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders; Nicolas Levrat, Special Rapporteur on minority issues; and David R. Boyd, Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment.

The Special Rapporteurs, Independent Experts and Working Groups are part of what is known as the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council. Special Procedures, the largest body of independent experts in the UN Human Rights system, is the general name of the Council’s independent fact-finding and monitoring mechanisms that address either specific country situations or thematic issues in all parts of the world. Special Procedures’ experts work on a voluntary basis; they are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work. They are independent from any government or organisation and serve in their individual capacity.

The figure of 85,750 is a worst case scenario and deaths would reach that level only if the military assault on Gaza escalates and if the poor hygienic conditions of the 1.9 displaced Palestinians cause epidemics.

But if an immediate ceasefire were achieved and no epidemics break out, a further 6,550 excess deaths would occur, or 11,580 if there are epidemics.

If there is no epidemic and if the Israeli military campaign continues on its current pattern without a significant escalation, then the death toll would rise by 74,290 over the next six months.

Since the Israeli military had already killed at least 29,313 people in Gaza, 70% of them women and children and the bulk of the remainder being non-combatant men, the study is saying that the total death toll is now fated to rise to between 35,800 and 40,893 even if not another shot is fired.

If Israel goes on fighting for another six months just at its current pace, the death toll rises to 103,603 in the absence of major disease outbreaks.

It seems unlikely that the fighting will go on at the current pace for six months. But it seems highly likely that there will be epidemics. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported yesterday,

The dire water and sanitation conditions are also aggravating the state of health in Gaza, with more than 300,000 reported cases of acute respiratory infections and more than 200,000 reported cases of acute watery diarrhoea, of whom more than half are children under five, among other outbreaks.

The authors of the “Crisis in Gaza” report say, “Our projections indicate that even in the best-case ceasefire scenario, thousands of excess deaths would continue to occur, mainly due to the time it would take to improve water, sanitation and shelter conditions, reduce malnutrition, and restore functioning healthcare services in Gaza.”

The report only appears to consider deaths from military attacks and disease, and factors in hunger mainly as enabling the latter. People weak with hunger cannot fight off diseases and famine and epidemics go along with one another.

OCHA quotes Dr. Mike Ryan of the World Heath Organization as saying, “Hunger and disease are a deadly combination. Hungry, weakened and deeply traumatised children are more likely to get sick, and children who are sick, especially with diarrhea, cannot absorb nutrients well. It’s dangerous, and tragic, and happening before our eyes.”

Palestinians are also exposed to the cold and wet weather of February in the Levant, which weakens immunity.

France 24 English Video: “War-torn Gaza children ‘disproportionately impacted’ by acute malnutrition, family separation, death “

But I think they should have considered deaths from hunger alone, since the Israeli government appears to be deliberately keeping the civilian, noncombatant population malnourished by limiting the number of aid trucks, the goods of which are allowed to enter the Strip. The fascist Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, has refused to allow US shipments of flour to reach Gaza, reneging on a promise made to President Joe Biden by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. On February 5, Israeli troops in Gaza fired on a food aid convoy they had previously authorized, destroying the food.

OCHA points out that the relief organization Anera “highlighted the ‘silent crisis’ of hunger-induced deaths: ‘In the tragic circumstances of starvation in Gaza, there’s a compounding issue: many who perish from starvation-related symptoms aren’t accurately documented. Their deaths often get attributed to other physical causes, masking the true toll of starvation.’”

I have argued, based on Gaza health statistics, that thousands are already dying silently of hunger in Gaza. I wrote, “OCHA says that the Israeli campaign has left 378,000 people at catastrophic phase 5 levels of starvation. US AID explains that Phase 5 levels of starvation indicate that “acute malnutrition levels exceed 30 percent, and more than 2 per 1,000 people are dying each day.” Given that 378,000 people are being categorized by the UN as at phase 5, this definition suggests that 756 Palestinians in Gaza are dying of hunger each day, which comes to a projected 22,680 deaths from starvation over the next month.”

OCHA observes,

“Catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity are reportedly intensifying across Gaza, with growing reports of families struggling to feed their children and a rising risk of hunger-induced deaths in northern Gaza. The Global Nutrition Cluster is reporting a steep rise in malnutrition among children and pregnant and breastfeeding women in the Gaza Strip. The situation is especially serious in northern Gaza where 1 in 6 children under the age of two (15.6 per cent) who were screened at IDP shelters and health centres in January were found to be acutely malnourished, a decline in a population’s nutritional status that is unprecedented globally in three months. In comparison, 5 per cent of children under the age of two in Rafah were found to be acutely malnourished, evidence that access to humanitarian aid can help prevent the worst outcomes.”

Let me just reiterate that the finding is that among the 150,000 people left in North Gaza, 1 in six children under the age of two are “severely malnourished.” Severe malnutrition has skyrocketed under the Israeli military’s reckless disregard for civilian life.

The London/ Johns Hopkins study concurs: “Before the current conflict, the global acute malnutrition (GAM) and severe acute malnutrition (SAM) prevalences were low amongst children 6-59 months (3.2% and 0.4%, respectively). As of 7 Feb 2024, we project they had already risen significantly (14.1% and 2.8%, respectively), albeit with likely geographical variations.”

They don’t think a ceasefire will help with this issue of child malnutrition very much, with GAM and SAM only reduced slightly — “(12.4% and 2.7% at 6 months, respectively.” In contrast, they fear that if the military campaign continues for six months, child malnutrition will increase many times over.

As for the possibility of epidemics, they write: “If epidemics also occur, those that are projected to cause the most excess deaths are cholera (3,595-8,971), polio (both wild-type and vaccine-derived; 1,1145-2,444), measles (260-793), and meningococcal meningitis (24-143).”

So cholera is the big threat and could cause almost 10,000 deaths over the next six months all on its own. When I lived in Eritrea in the 1960s I knew a teenager who contracted cholera. He survived, but spent days expelling liquid from all his orifices. It was horrible. You die of dehydration.

The citation for the report is: Zeina Jamaluddine, Zhixi Chen, Hanan Abukmail, Sarah Aly, Shatha Elnakib, Gregory Barnsley et al. (2024). Crisis in Gaza: Scenario-based health impact projections. Report One: 7 February to 6 August 2024. London, Baltimore: London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Johns Hopkins University. The pdf is here.

He continued, “It is not a war between soldiers and soldiers. It is a war between a well equipped army on the one hand and women and children on the other.”

Lula is not the first world leader to compare Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to Hitler over his actions in Gaza — Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan made the same comparison.

Since Hitler murdered six million Jews, the comparison is hurtful. It could also be rejected on grounds of scale. Hitler not only killed all those European Jews, he also killed 6 million Poles. And consider Ukraine: “of the 41.7 million people living in Ukrainian Soviet Republic before the war, only 27.4 million were alive in Ukraine in 1945. Official data says that at least 8 million Ukrainians lost their lives: 5.5 – 6 million civilians, and more than 2.5 million natives of Ukraine were killed at the front. The data varies between 8 to 14 million killed, however, only 6 million have been identified.”

The Times and the Sunday Times Video: “Brazil’s Lula likens Gaza war to Holocaust”

While Netanyahu’s policies are not like those of Nazi Germany in almost any respect if we consider absolute numbers and consider the scale of killing, Lula is not completely in error if we consider more qualitative aspects of history and look to European fascism as a whole and not just the German National Socialists (who were peculiar in many ways).

FIRST: KEEPING PEOPLE STATELESS ON THE BASIS OF ETHNICITY

For instance, the Fascists stripped citizenship from millions of people and made them stateless, without the rights that come from a direct relationship to a state of their own. Chief Justice Earl Warren defined citizenship as “the right to have rights.”

Hitler took citizenship from German Jews but also from the Roma and from persons of African heritage.

Netanyahu keeps 5.5 million Palestinians in the occupied territories stateless and without citizenship. So his policies in this narrow regard are similar to those of the National Socialists in the 1930s. In essence, the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are living under something like the Nuremberg Laws. Their establishments and homes are attacked by militant Israeli squatters with impunity in a sort of rolling Kristallnacht.

Note that by Israeli law, Israeli squatters in the occupied Palestinian territories have all the citizenship rights of other Israelis. So the lack of rights on the West Bank is not territorial. It is by ethnicity.

Netanyahu has boasted about derailing the Oslo Peace Accords and presents himself as the only one who can prevent a Palestinian state from being established. He reiterated his opposition to any international diplomatic track that leads to a Palestinian state just this weekend.

SECOND: DEPRIVATION OF BASIC INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS

Another feature of Fascism, underlined by Robert Paxton, is the elimination of individual rights. Israel’s regime over the occupied, stateless Palestinians fully demonstrates this feature. Palestinians can be arrested under “administrative detention” without charge or trial or habeas corpus and held for months or years. We have seen a treatment of detained Palestinians in Gaza that constitutes war crimes. It is alleged that forms of torture are practiced.

THIRD: TOTAL WAR

Netanyahu’s Gaza campaign has demonstrated a reckless disregard for the lives of innocent noncombatants, who make up nearly all of the nearly 30,000 people so far killed, and who have been deprived of domiciles and sufficient food and potable water by the Israeli military.

Total war was adopted as a military strategy by fascist states, according to historian Alan Kramer. One academic summarized his argument: “Kramer indicated a very interesting question regarding the specificity of the kind of war implemented by fascist regimes during the thirties and the forties, characterized by its genocidal nature and opened, according to him, with the colonial war launched by Italy in Abyssinia [Ethiopia] in 1935. Kramer underlined that the specificity of this particular way of waging war typical of fascism would define itself by the final elimination of the «distinction between combatants and non-combatants», pointing how in the six years of this conflict between 350.000 and 760.000 Ethiopians were killed, victims of an asymmetric war based on the overwhelming use of air force, chemical weapons and politics of collective terror against any sign of real or imagined resistance.”

The fascist way of war eliminates the distinction between combatants and non-combatants and wreaks mass death on the latter to achieve military aims. There doesn’t seem much doubt that Netanyahu is waging total war on Gaza and Israel’s President Isaac Herzog and a whole plethora of Israeli officials have repeatedly insisted that there are no innocent civilians in Gaza. This, even though half of Gaza’s population consists children.

Total war easily leads to genocide, of course, which is why the International Court of Justice has found it at least plausible that Netanyahu is waging a genocide in Gaza, attempting to destroy a people in part or in whole because of who they are.

So, no, Netanyahu is not a Hitler. But, yes, his policies bear a strong resemblance to those of inter-war Fascism.