02 April 2024 | International Solidarity Movement | Deir al Balah, Gaza
Following the offloading of a desperately needed 100+ tons of humanitarian aid into a Deir al Balah aid storage warehouse, a seven-person, three-vehicle World Central Kitchen convoy was traveling a deconflicted coastal road when the first Israeli army targeted strike hit one of their vehicles. As the surviving injured desperately scrambled into the two other vehicles in the convoy, occupation forces fired again, and again until each of the three clearly marked aid transports were destroyed and all seven foreign aid workers dead.
A Vehicle in the WCK Convoy attacked by IOF. Photo Source: Ali Jadallah/Anadolu via Getty Images
News began flashing across global media as World Central Kitchen confirmed the occupation forces’ precision attack on their volunteer aid workers of which included foreign nationals of the U.K.,Poland, Australia, a Canadian/American dual-citizen, as well as their Palestinian driver; 26 year old Seif Issam Abu Taha. They had been coordinating all movements on the ground with Israeli occupation forces, including the movement of their convoy from Deir al Balah which was almost immediately pursued and horrifically attacked again and again by the IOF to ensure the destruction in-totality of all life inside the three vehicles.
World Central Kitchen statement confirming the murder of aid volunteers
In a statement on its massacre of the aid workers’ convoy which was unarmed, emblazoned with the World Central Kitchen logo on all sides and on the top of their vehicle and posing no threat who had communicated this movement with the IOF, Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged the “tragic mistake” which killed “innocent people” and stated that “such things happen in war.” The killings of clearly marked humanitarian aid workers has been a routine strategy of the IOF who has, to date, murdered 196 volunteers doing critical aid work on the ground in Gaza as genocide, famine and ethnic cleansing across the strip move unabated across the threshold into its seventh month.
The passports of the murdered WCK aid workers. Photo Source: Associated Press
World Central Kitchen, who had been serving over 10,000 life-sustaining meals in Gaza daily, have now ceased all operations in the area as occupation forces continue the daily murder of unarmed Palestinian civilians, journalists, medical staff and aid workers. A large portion of the humanitarian supplies shipment WCK volunteers were preparing to receive through established maritime aid channels is now headed back to Cyprus from where it shipped and was due to be supplied to Palestinians who are currently, and purposefully, being starved to death by Israeli forces.
12 January 2024 | International Solidarity Movement | The Hague, Netherlands
One day after a chilling presentation by South Africa’s legal team, constructing a sweeping case against Israel for genocidal intent and acts amounting to genocide of the Palestinian population in Gaza, Israel took its place before the 15 judge panel to try and convince the world that 3 months of mechanized, relentless mass-killing should escape the designation. Despite a trove of documentary evidence to the latter, Israel contended before the court that it is not committing genocide in Gaza.
Israel’s legal team in the International Court of Justice. Photo credit: The Independent
The “right to self-defence” was the main argument that the Israeli legal team, lead by British lawyer Malcolm Shaw KC, brought forward at the second and final day of the preliminary hearings at the International Court of Justice for the case brought by South Africa while denying that Israel is carrying out a genocide in the brutal attack on Gaza.
Opening statements in today’s hearing were made by Co-Agent of Israel, Tal Becker who expressed what he termed as Israel’s ‘singularity’ in understanding the birth of the Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide for which the state is evidenced to be committing.
Becker’s claim that Israel is “defending itself in a war it did not start” showed yet again the blatant denial of a 75-year history of land grab, abuses, violation of human rights, illegal occupation, as well as an illegal 16 year blockade on Gaza. “Israel is in a war of defense against Hamas, not against the Palestinian people.”
The duality of Becker’s statements on what he states to be the “outrageous” nature of the use of the word genocide to explain Israel’s actions in Gaza stood out sorely in juxtaposition to Professor Malcom Shaw who next assumed the floor to dismiss statements of genocidal intent distributed from the highest political offices in Israel, offices which are directing military operations on the ground in Gaza.
From Becker’s court address, “We live at a time when words are cheap. In an age of social media and identity politics, the temptation to reach for the most outrageous term, to vilify and demonize, has become for many irresistible. But if there is a place where words should still matter, where truth should still matter, it is surely a court of law.” Indeed. The point was made the day prior when South Africa legal team lawyer Tembeka Ngcukaitobi stood before the International Court of Justice presenting testimony related to Israel’s genocidal intent expressed by Israeli authorities of the highest order.
Ngcukaitobi platformed the frequent and routine nature of genocidal discourse spoken explicitly and how it translates into real-world violence on the ground by occupation foot soldiers. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Isaaz Herzog and the Israeli Minister of Defense’s explicit exterminationist rhetoric were highlighted to support the case for intent. Yet, that incontrovertible evidence was dismissed in court today by Professor Shaw as not legally significant. “Sometimes statements are made which are nothing more than a part of the recent war-time rhetoric intending to put the blame and shame on the other side.” Shaw further stated that they were “not to be ascribed an importance…nor of legal significance.” To counter, using Tal Becker’s words, “if there is a place where words should still matter… it is surely a court of law.”
Galit Raguan addressed the panel on Israel’s behalf to argue the “facts on the ground.” Most shocking of all was her claim that “hospitals have not been bombed” when, in fact, Israel struck several hospitals including the Indonesian Hospital, the International Eye Care Centre, the Al-Nasr Children’s Hospital among others.
With three quarters of Gaza’s hospitals profoundly destroyed to the point of relegation to non-functional status, Raguan stated that while “Hospitals have not been bombed; rather, the IDF sends soldiers to search and dismantle military infrastructure, reducing damage and disruption.” If the reduction of damage and disruption are what Israel’s military in Gaza were seeking to achieve, they have failed beyond measure. We have seen successful Israeli military surgical operations unfold which spared civilian life in the very recent past during its breaking of another international law when it assassinated Hamas Deputy Leader Saleh al-Arouri in a residential structure in Beirut, Lebanon. One imagines if Hamas fighters were positioned in a hospital in Israel, operations would be similarly surgical in nature.
In an attempt to justify the atrocities committed, Galit Raguan claimed that “urban warfare will always result in tragic deaths, harm and damage,” saying that these are the “desired outcomes of Hamas.” While Raguan explained away three months of mass civilian murder, ascribing the most morally sound intentions and actions on occupation forces, her only roadblock to successfully making the case were the countless occupation foot soldiers who have filmed themselvescommitting atrocities on deceased Palestinian bodies, blowing up entire residential blocks as birthday gifts to their family, looting Palestinian civilian homes, raising the Israeli flag over the wreckage of Mosques, holding skits where they lie in Palestinian children’s beds in homes they have bombed and dancing gleefully amid the wreckage and body parts of Gaza’s people while singing explicit songs about ethnic cleansing.
Throughout the hearing, no address was made as to why clearly marked journalists, ICRC medics, UN staff, humanitarian aid workers and Palestinian Civil Defense rescue workers were massacred in targeted killings. No argument was made to explain the moral navigation involved in documented occupation forces committing of extrajudicial executions or the rounding up, blindfolding, stripping, shackling and abduction of Palestinian civilians, nor of the doctored videos where Palestinian civilians were directed to act on film as though they were surrendering Hamas fighters.
Further, Raguan’s assertion several times that Israeli occupation forces had acted to explicitly mitigate civilian harm flies in the face of prolific genocidal rhetoric from the Israeli political and military directors of this onslaught which is being acted out on the ground in real time. While Raguan touted the supposed Israeli humanitarian mobilization to bring critical supplies into Gaza, it would seem counterintuitive for the very same politicians and ministers of the Israeli government to be simultaneously touting their starvation and total siege of the “human animals” of the Gaza Strip.
Omri Sender assumed the floor to address the condition of risk of irreparable harm and urgency. Sender’s opening sentiments were the wholesale blaming of what he recognized as a “grave” humanitarian situation, on Hamas “prosecuting war from under, and within, the civilian population.” Sender’s statement continued to fly the torch carried by his predecessors speaking in Israel’s defense in that it painted Hamas as an agent of terror that Israel was battling to protect Palestinian civilians from. A common sentiment expressed publicly among Israeli political and social society is that “there are no innocent civilians in Gaza.”
Sender touted its opening of the Kerem Shalom crossing for aid delivery to enter three months, thousands of dropped bombs and tens of thousands of murdered civilians later. Gaza’s population is now starving. As Sender’s statement to the court focused on Israel’s direction of aid in recent history to enter through Gaza’s border crossings, the entire problem was missed; the fact that Israel is controlling the land, air and sea borders of another people and has unilateral say over what comes in and what goes out, when it wants to starve the population and when it will open a crossing under conditions of a looming famine to allow a truck to enter for which its entry will be used to exhibit Israel’s kindness to the Palestinians it is mass murdering at the very moment the words were spoken to the court.
Christopher Staker was the next speaker for the Israeli defense. He did so to denounce the context for requested provisions as made by South Africa on the first day of the hearing. His argument centered around the sentiment that neither South Africa, nor Palestinians, “have a plausible right” to request provisional measures and went point by point through South Africa’s 9 provisional requests in this manner.
The final speaker was Co-Agent of Israel, Gilad Noam who concluded Israel’s arguments through requesting the International Court of Justice “(1) Reject the request for the indication of provisional measures submitted by South Africa; and (2) Remove the case from the General List.” With the final words of their arguments brought to a close, Israel has now requested the judges of the ICJ to refuse the words of every humanitarian agency who has worked on the ground in Gaza, the millions of Gazans who have filmed their own destruction and the tens of millions of horrified people across the world who have watched this massacre unfold for over 90 days, and to instead find Israel not guilty of violating the 1948 Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide.
The final day of the court hearing occurred during another day of the active destruction of Gaza itself as she is reduced to mass rubble fields, indistinguishable from the universities, hospitals, schools, shops, residential blocks, utilities buildings, Mosques, Churches and shelters which once comprised her streets. With Oxfam noting that the “Israeli military is killing 250 Palestinians per day with many more lives at risk from hunger, disease and cold,” during the course of the two-day hearing on whether Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, 500 Palestinians were massacred.
11 January 2024 | International Solidarity Movement | The Hague, Netherlands
It came through a series of damning statements. A striking case for genocidal intent and acts tantamount to genocide by Israel against the totality of Gaza’s Palestinian population, was presented in a powerful, if gut wrenching, presentation by South Africa’s legal team this morning in a landmark case in the International Court of Justice. The charge, submitted to the ICJ on December 29th, seeks provisional measures for Israel to end its onslaught in Gaza related to clear violations of the 1948 Convention of the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide. A final ruling may be years in the making.
A fifteen judge panel heard the case laid out sharply by South Africa’s robust legal team. The most incriminating evidence could arguably be the presentation of the systematic normalization of genocidal rhetoric conveyed by Israel’s highest political offices and understood as state policy by the foot soldiers of the occupation army on the ground who made props and tiktok backdrops of their razing of entire residential blocks, universities and hospitals. Occupation forces on the ground comfortably filmed themselves committing shocking and prolific atrocities against Palestinians in Gaza without any attempt to hide their identities, painting a picture of collectively understood intent and impunity.
Here are the points of the case as laid out by South Africa before the International Court of Justice at the Hague.
Opening the hearing, lawyer Adila Hassim outlined, point by point, a case for Israel’s actions in Gaza as tantamount to genocide including the intentional destruction of infrastructure, the blocking of aid delivery, humanitarian mission denial and the intentional creation of conditions that would ravage survivors of bombardment with forcible starvation and infectious disease. Hassim cut to the bone of the ethnic cleansing project the world has witnessed in horror, “Reproductive violence against Palestinian women, children and babies,” held the intention of Israel’s war purveyors to, “impose measures to prevent birth in a group.”
Hassim carefully laid out the sheer breadth of the devastation Israel has wrought onto Gaza through “large-scale homicidal destruction,” before addressing the court for the closure of her remarks, “In sum, Madame President, all of these acts individually and collectively, form a calculated pattern of conduct by Israel indicating a genocidal intent.”
Lawyer Tembeka Ngcukaitobi followed up with more pointedly platformed statements of genocidal intent by high ranking members of the Israeli government. He referenced the “extraordinary features” of explicit language expressing intent to exterminate the Palestinian population of Gaza. Presenting a litany of exemplary evidence of rhetoric born in high political offices of the Israeli government, he then noted that the sentiments were, in turn, “repeated by Israeli soldiers on the ground in Gaza.”
Making a case for the normalization of rhetoric of intent, Ngcukaitobi presented quote after quote distributed from the upper echelons of Israel’s political and social bodies utilizing explicit exterminatory discourse with regards to the Palestinian population of Gaza, not of Hamas, which he then expertly threaded to statements and actions on the ground by occupation forces; the correlation of violence vocalized and violence committed. “Genocidal utterances, are therefore not in the fringes, they are embodied in state policy.”
Israeli society and occupation forces alike have an understanding of their government’s intent for the destruction of Gaza interwoven so deeply that, as Ngcukaitobi explained, they rose up in anger at talks of a limited trickle of aid entering the embattled Strip because it was a violation of Israel’s promises to starve Gaza’s population.
Arguing the question of jurisdiction and the existence of a dispute between South Africa and Israel, International Law Professor John Dugard assumed the floor and noted the recognition that Gaza “is now turned into a concentration camp where genocide is taking place.” He traced the steps which led from South Africa’s condemnation of Israel’s genocidal acts in the Security Council to the emergency special session of the General Assembly to its filing on December 29th with the ICJ seeking provisional measures for immediate cessation of genocidal acts on Gaza’s Palestinian population.
On outlining the pathway to the ICJ, Professor Dugard concluded his statements on the Republic of South Africa’s charge, “Despite these harsh accusations, Israel has persisted in its genocidal act against the population of Gaza.”
South African advocate Professor Max Du Plessis addressed the court for a statement on “the rights that South Africa seeks to preserve through its application.” He painted a picture of a trapped population existing piecemeal to this point on rights deprivations imposed by the occupying force “for more than half a century” in a world where Israel has operated as though it were “above and beyond the law.”
Arguing South Africa’s intention against turning the court “into a theater for spectacle,” the presentation of videos representative of convention violations were decided against. However, an unobjectionable case was made for provisional measures as the reality on the ground in Gaza reflects, as Professor Du Plessis pointed out, beyond a doubt, genocidal act definitions warned against in the 1948 convention including defined-group persecution of which Palestinians in Gaza represent and are being slaughtered as members thereof. Invoking provisional measures rulings in the cases of Ukraine, Bosnia and Gambia, Du Plessis contended that “Palestinians in Gaza are no less worthy of this court’s considerable protective power… to issue provisional measures.”
He then called Tshidiso Ramogale speaking to the “urgency and irreparable harm” conditions needed for the provisional measures bar to be met. Contexts on the ground in Gaza were expressed before the court in shocking detail. Food insecurity, looming specter of famine and daily births in a war zone.
“It is becoming ever clearer that huge swathes of Gaza; entire towns, villages, refugee camps are being wiped from the map.” From death littered streets to mass amputations to the fact that two mothers an hour are massacred in this aggression, Ramogale constructed rubble-wrought Gaza in the courtroom, in explicit retelling, to support South Africa’s case.
“There is an urgent need for provisional measures to prevent imminent, irreparable prejudice to the rights and issue in this case.” Hers was an aching expression of the real time genocide being narrated by Israel and witnessed by the world at large. “The situation could not be more urgent.”
Also making the case for precedent set by the court in prior rulings, the irreparable prejudice argument was exhibited aptly through stories “expressing scenes from a horror movie” through the stripping and humiliation of rounded up Palestinians to associated harms of infrastructure destruction to impromptu abductions by occupation foot soldiers.
Professor Vaughan Lowe appeared next, making the case that requirements of the convention have been met in order to urgently usher in provisional measures to halt the onslaught and promote the “right of the group to not be physically destroyed” as the death toll arches to 25,000 with masses of Palestinians still missing and presumed trapped in the rubble.
Stated plainly, Professor Lowe asserted that “Israel’s actions have violated its obligations under the genocide convention, they have continued to violate them and Israel has asserted that it intends to continue them.”
Palestinians gather in Ramallah’s Mandela Square in the occupied West Bank in support of South Africa’s genocide charge. Photo credit: ISM
Friday’s hearing will conclude with Israel’s utilization of the 3-hour case presentation allowable by the court to convince a horrified world that their prolific incitement to genocide and genocidal acts committed on the ground against the Palestinian population of Gaza is an act by any other name.
02 January 2024 | International Solidarity Movement | Gaza
To whatever extent extermination rhetoric is a common tool of war, Israeli politicians and public figures have prolifically furnished the relentless and ongoing bombardment of the Gaza Strip with the language of genocide and ethnic cleansing. Those drums are being hammered with an ever accelerating pace as the Israeli government fights to control the narrative that the force of millions across the planet have wrested free. The global conscience has centered the lens squarely on the systemic mechanisms of Palestinian displacement, occupation and siege that uphold the state of Israel.
That frantic grappling for the incautious ear of the world has led to a stunning display of genocidal sentiment and the normalization of language blatantly expressive of the end game ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinian population, by prominent Israeli political and social figures. It is a self-fueling phenomenon which has spawned colossal quantities of disturbing social media fare including occupation army troops in Gaza using her devastated wreckage as background props to dances, marriage proposals and choreographed skits mocking the destruction of homes and holy sites alike.
Websites educating on the process of genocide such as Genocide Watch feature the haunting map of organized mass killing, The Ten Stages of Genocide. The 2016 document precedes the listed steps by stating that “Genocide is a process that develops in ten stages that are predictable but not inexorable. At each stage, preventive measures can stop it.” By every account with regards to the massacre of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, Israel is in the extermination phase. One step away from completion.
Ten Stages of Genocide. Source: www.genocidewatch.net
Below is a truncated display of the predominant rhetorical drumbeat to genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza from the lips of occupation forces, Israeli politicians and public figures.
Invoking an old testament verse in a statement on the onslaught in Gaza, Benjamin Netanyahu urged the public, “You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible – we do remember.” The verse, as has been noted, is “among the most violent.” In full it states, “I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.”
Calling for the “annihilation” of Gaza, Moshe Zalman Feiglin, the leader of the libertarian zionist party Zehut has stated publicly that “Gaza should be razed and Israel’s rule should be restored to the place. This is our country.”
Israeli journalist David Mizrahy Verthaim made this admission on X, formerly Twitter, “We need a disproportionate response. If all the captives are not returned immediately, turn the strip into a slaughterhouse. If a hair falls from their head – execute security prisoners. Violate any norm, on the way to victory.”
Via Israeli parliamentary member Ariel Kallner, “Nakba to the enemy now! This day is our Pearl Harbour. We will still learn the lessons. Right now, one goal: Nakba! A Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of 48. A Nakba in Gaza and a Nakba for anyone who dares to join!” He is joined by other public figures in casual use of a nuclear option in Gaza.
In the Knesset, member Galit Distal Atbaryan posted on social media in support of “erasing all of Gaza from the face of the Earth. Gaza needs to be wiped out.”
Likud member in parliament Amit Halevi publicly stated his “goals for this victory. One, there is no more Muslim land in the land of Israel. After we make it the land of Israel, Gaza should be left as a monument, like Sodom.”
A disturbing and now viral tiktok video features a member of occupation forces declaring that, “All people in Gaza need to die,” before admitting to killing two Palestinians followed with a celebratory dance. “I want to kill more, more.” Nothing about this video is stand-alone as across all social media platforms, recorded statements normalizing the murder of Palestinians are in shocking abundance.
Ten Stages of Genocide. Source: www.eachother.org
The brazen use of extermination rhetoric points to Israel’s long understood exemption from consequence for horrific international law and human rights violations as Israeli anti-zionist Neta Golan points out, “Usually people who commit genocide don’t say that they’re going to commit genocide but Israelis have experienced impunity for so long that they think they can announce their intent to commit genocide, commit genocide and get away with it.” She concludes with a sentiment that may have a growing wind behind the actualization of it, “We hope they’re wrong about that.”
Enter South Africa.
Themselves victorious in overthrowing the brutal white-ruled system of racial apartheid in the 1990’s, South Africa’s government has filed charges against Israel for committing genocide in Gaza with the International Court of Justice, both for their brutal bombardment as well as for collective punishment of water, food, fuel and medical siege in the Gaza Strip. Israel will appear before the ICJ in the Hague to answer to these charges. Given the trove of genocidal rhetoric confidently streaming out of Israel, coupled with the real-time documentation by Palestinian journalists and civilians on the ground, it is difficult to imagine the anatomy of a defense to these charges.
These words, and many like them, alongside the actions carrying them out (including the indiscriminate bombing and murder of 22,000 people, three quarters of them women and children) act as proven intent on the part of the perpetrators to carry out genocide.
There is an understanding that is born out of all of these horrors. For the far right, extremist Israeli government, the destruction, cleansing and ultimate plan for the erasure of Gaza has nothing to do with liberating hostages. Hostage negotiators in real time communication with hostage takers act carefully, they walk lightly, they speak softly. They do not incite as their language can ignite the wick of an incendiary escalation of hostility which can lead to the death of those whose release they are working to secure.
Yet occupation authorities have inflamed tensions, antagonized Palestinians across the Gaza Strip and incited violence every step of the way. They have acted with pure provocation and blatant endangering of hostages lives along with the Palestinian civilians and children who they have mass murdered in the indiscriminate bombardment. They have bombed and flooded likely hostage positions on the ground. If hostages were liberated, it would remove the performative pretense behind this wholesale slaughter.
This onslaught is about the intentional extermination of a people and the theft of their ancestral land and resources. It is the mass-killing and replacement of the indigenous Palestinian population and the smothering of their culture.
In an age of disinformation, spectacle, and erasure, remembrance is revolutionary. Palestine has a rich 20,000 year history. Amid an ongoing catastrophe in the Holy Land that rivals the nakba in 1948, people in Nablus are keepers of memory.
One such project is the The Cultural Center of the Palestinian Narrative which raises awareness about Palestinian history, including mapping what Palestine was like pre-1948, and archiving witness testimony of ethnic cleansing.
Interactive Palestinian history archive from The Cultural Center of the Palestinian Narrative
Tanweer, another cultural center in Nablus, in addition to current efforts to introduce art, joy, and more freedom into the public sphere, has chosen to uncover the ancient names of the springs in the Old City of Nablus and surrounding areas. After rediscovering the names, they create and install signs to connect the present with the past and remind people what has been and what will be. In Arabic, the word for spring also means way or path. Names of words and places, like names of people, are often repositories of ancient wisdom.
Spring sign in Nablus (photo credit: ISM)
Fitra is an Arabic word meaning “original disposition” or “innate nature”. It is common belief in Palestine and throughout the Arab and Muslim world that every person is born innocent with innate goodness, and only through social conditioning are people led to oppression and injustice. And so the inner work that must be done isn’t achieving something far removed from one’s self, but rediscovering, reconnecting with, and remembering one’s original nature.
Some of the people honored by Palestinians at the Tanweer Center include ISM activists killed while doing solidarity work (photo credit ISM)
Just as Jewish people throughout the United States, Europe, and the Middle East remember the horrors of their past and honor those who maintained their humanity amid the inhumanity around them, Palestinians remember the horrors of their past (and present), honor those who maintain their humanity amid the inhumanity around them, try to make a way where there is no way, and hope that the people of the world will not watch from afar their extermination, but instead, choose to remember their essential, original, buried under the rubble humanity.
