DAILY TRIFECTA: International Lawlessness
Why are Gazans left unprotected by the Geneva Conventions? Aren't they "human beings"? Or has their legally-defined humanity been revoked?
TITLE: How Israel’s Army Uses Palestinians as Human Shields in Gaza
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/14/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-military-human-shields.html
EXCERPTS: After Israeli soldiers found Mohammed Shubeir hiding with his family in early March, they detained him for roughly 10 days before releasing him without charge, he said.
During that time, Mr. Shubeir said, the soldiers used him as a human shield.
Mr. Shubeir, then 17, said he was forced to walk handcuffed through the empty ruins of his hometown, Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, searching for explosives set by Hamas. To avoid being blown up themselves, the soldiers made him go ahead, Mr. Shubeir said.
In one wrecked building, he stopped in his tracks: Running along the wall, he said, was a series of wires attached to explosives.
“The soldiers sent me like a dog to a booby-trapped apartment,” said Mr. Shubeir, a high school student. “I thought these would be the last moments of my life.”
An investigation by The New York Times found that Israeli soldiers and intelligence agents, throughout the war in Gaza, have regularly forced captured Palestinians like Mr. Shubeir to conduct life-threatening reconnaissance missions to avoid putting Israeli soldiers at risk on the battlefield.
While the extent and scale of such operations are unknown, the practice, illegal under both Israeli and international law, has been used by at least 11 squads in five cities in Gaza, often with the involvement of officers from Israeli intelligence agencies.
Palestinian detainees have been coerced to explore places in Gaza where the Israeli military believes that Hamas militants have prepared an ambush or a booby trap. The practice has gradually become more widespread since the start of the war last October.
Detainees have been forced to scout and film inside tunnel networks where soldiers believed fighters were still hiding. They have entered buildings rigged with mines to find hidden explosives. They have been told to pick up or move objects like generators and water tanks that Israeli soldiers feared concealed tunnel entrances or booby traps.
The Israeli military said in a statement that its “directives and guidelines strictly prohibit the use of detained Gaza civilians for military operations.” It added that the accounts of the Palestinian detainees and soldiers interviewed by The Times would be “examined by the relevant authorities.”
International law forbids the use of civilians or combatants as a shield against attack. It is also illegal to send captured combatants to places where they would be exposed to fire, or to force civilians to do anything related to the conduct of military operations.
TITLE: ‘Slow Death’ as Genocide: The Convention Was Written for Gaza
http://opiniojuris.org/2024/10/14/slow-death-as-genocide-the-convention-was-written-for-gaza/
EXCERPTS: The two Gaza genocide cases pending in the International Court of Justice bring into prominence a form of genocide that is not what constitutes the crime in the public mind, but that was very much on the minds of the drafters of the Genocide Convention. The outright killing of populations of people is one form of genocide, but populations can be destroyed as well by depriving them of the means of survival. The ICJ cases filed by South Africa against Israel, and by Nicaragua against Germany highlight both forms. South Africa charges genocide by Israel for killing Palestinians, but also for subjecting them to death by forced privation. Nicaragua, accusing Germany of complicity with Israel by providing armaments, similarly notes both acts of killing and acts of subjecting the population to conditions that will result in deaths. The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide recites, in Article II(a), that a population group can be destroyed by outright killing, but as well, in Article II(c), by “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”
Both forms of genocide figured prominently when the United Nations set about writing a treaty on the subject in 1948. Three lawyer consultants appointed by the UN Secretariat composed a Draft Convention on the Crime of Genocide, with a clause defining genocide to include “subjection to conditions of life which, by lack of proper housing, clothing, food, hygiene and medical care, or excessive work or physical exertion, are likely to result in the debilitation or death of the individuals.” The three lawyers added a commentary to the clause, explaining, “This is what may be termed ‘slow death.’” So while genocide could be committed by acts that cause instant death, it could equally be committed by creating conditions that result in deaths over time.
This clause did not come out of nowhere. Raphael Lemkin, Henri Donnedieu de Vabres, and Vespasian Pella were criminal law experts who had just lived through the horrors of the war in Europe. Pella, as Romania’s ambassador in Switzerland, had saved Romanian Jews from deportation to death camps. Lemkin had studied Nazi practices as a consultant to the US Government, producing a tome titled Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. Donnedieu de Vabres had been a judge on the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, where he heard evidence about how Nazi officials had confined Jews in Warsaw to a ghetto in which thousands died of starvation and disease.
This draft was opened to governments for comment. The United States, among others, wrote in favor of a “conditions of life” clause, suggesting (at p. 35) that it read: “Subjection to conditions of life wherein, by lack of proper housing, clothing, food, hygiene and medical care, or excessive work or physical exertion, the individuals are doomed to weaken or die.” No government suggested deleting the clause.
The United States took the lead at the next stage in the drafting, in what was called the Ad Hoc Committee on Genocide, set up by the UN Economic and Social Council on March 3, 1948. This was a committee of states. Members were China, France, Lebanon, Poland, USA, USSR, and Venezuela.. The US representative, John Maktos, an Assistant Secretary of State, became chair.
The Ad Hoc Committee was lobbied by the World Jewish Congress, which applauded the inclusion of a “conditions of life” clause. “In view of the possibility of weakening or destroying human groups by economic and other measures short of the actual destruction of life,” the Congress plead (p. 8), “the Convention should prohibit any action likely to lead ultimately to the partial or total destruction of a human group.”
The population of Gaza is confined to a small territory, comparable to a ghetto. They lack hygiene services, medical services, housing, namely, “the means of existence.” They lack access to food and, given frequent evacuation orders, are unable to provide food for themselves, for example, by farming or fishing. The Gaza population is suffering the “slow death” identified by the drafters of the Genocide Convention. The Secretariat’s consultants, the Ad Hoc Committee, and the General Assembly described the “conditions of life” clause in ways that fit the situation in Gaza. The documentation recording these three stages of drafting provides essential moorings for the ICJ as it assesses Israel’s actions under the Genocide Convention.
TITLE: Netanyahu mulls plan to empty northern Gaza of civilians and cut off aid to those left inside
https://apnews.com/article/hamas-israel-generals-plan-eiland-gaza-219d7eb9a3050e281ccc032d5a56263c
EXCERPT: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is examining a plan to seal off humanitarian aid to northern Gaza in an attempt to starve out Hamas militants, a plan that, if implemented, could trap without food or water hundreds of thousands of Palestinians unwilling or unable to leave their homes.
The plan proposed to Netanyahu and the Israeli parliament by a group of retired generals would escalate the pressure, giving Palestinians a week to leave the northern third of the Gaza Strip, including Gaza City, before declaring it a closed military zone.
Those who remain would be considered combatants — meaning military regulations would allow troops to kill them — and denied food, water, medicine and fuel, according to a copy of the plan given to The Associated Press by its chief architect, who says the plan is the only way to break Hamas in the north and pressure it to release the remaining hostages.
Human rights groups say the plan would likely starve civilians and that it flies in the face of international law, which prohibits using food as a weapon and forcible transfers. Accusations that Israel is intentionally limiting food to Gaza are central to the genocide case brought against it at the International Court of Justice, charges Israel denies.
A coalition of Israeli NGOs on Monday urged the international community to act, noting that “there are alarming signs that the Israeli military is beginning to quietly implement” the plan.
“States have an obligation to prevent the crimes of starvation and forcible transfer,” they wrote, warning that continuing a “‘wait and see’ approach will enable Israel to liquidate northern Gaza.”
SEE ALSO:
Gazans burnt alive in tent camp after Israeli air strike
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/10/14/gazans-burned-alive-in-tent-camp-after-israeli-air-strike/
Germany says images of burned civilians by Israel bombing in Gaza are 'horrendous'
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20241014-germany-says-images-of-burned-civilians-by-israel-bombing-in-gaza-are-horrendous/
Children ‘Shot In The Skull’—Why News Outlets Should Authenticate Images
https://www.forbes.com/sites/larsdaniel/2024/10/13/seeing-isnt-believing-why-media-should-authenticate-images-in-our-age-of-digital-deception/
They shoot children, don’t they?
https://www.imt.ie/opinion/demonstrably-true-that-the-israeli-army-is-targeting-children-in-gaza-11-10-2024/