The lead prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has announced that he is seeking arrest warrants for Benjamin #Netanyahu and Yahya #Sinwar, along with senior figures of their respective regimes, for the commission of #WarCrimes and #CrimesAgainstHumanity.
Amidst the predictable performative outrage from the US political elite, one fact is barely reported upon: the US is amongst a handful of nations that does not recognise the #ICC, and has on its books a 2002 law (colloquially dubbed 'the Hague Invasion Act') threatening war upon the #Netherlands (!) should any US citizen (or the citizen of any US ally) be brought for trial before the ICC.
Given the fact that the #US routinely fails to follow its own laws, let alone #InternationalLaw, when it comes to war crimes and crimes against humanity, the chances of an actual US invasion of the European lowlands is scant. Nonetheless, the rogue nature of #USexceptionalism is the always the elephant in the room when it comes to all discussions of accountability for the most egregious crimes of #geopolitics.
Of course, it is worth noting that the so-called Hague Invasion Act is itself a crime under international law, as are all the current US and Israeli threats being made against the ICC.
Dangerous feelings the new IDGAF can help protect you against include:
• insecurity
• vulnerability
• empathy
• intellectual curiosity
• human kindness
• what happened to all my money?
• am I supporting fascism with this purchase?
• does my narcissism look big in this?
Given its myriad other highly-publicised crimes in recent months, perhaps it is understandable that #Israel's deadly (#USA-backed) attack on a consulate of #Iran inside #Syria ten days ago didn't get an enormous amount of attention. This is a big deal. It was an open act of war between two of the most heavily armed nations in the region. Iranian retaliation in some form is very likely, which will undoubtedly be used by western governments and media as justification for further warmongering and escalation (or simply as a useful deflection from the ongoing #GazaGenocide).
If you're a fan of a rules-based international order, or simply hope for societal relationships based on things other than power and violence, notice who follows widely-agreed upon rules, who openly flouts them, and who promotes them when it suits but turns a blind eye when it doesn't.
How can we help those around us from falling prey to jingoistic manipulation that tries to scare us into granting a social licence for more imperial violence?
(If you think diplomatic conventions and international law are useless bunk because everything always ultimately comes down to violence, then I pity you your loneliness.)
Electric vehicles are making an increasingly bigger dent in oil use, both globally and in Australia. In 2022, they displaced the use of 1.5m barrels of oil a day. Daily global oil demand is around 97m barrels, so there's a long way to go.
But it is not electric cars doing most of the work. It is e-bikes and mopeds. These #micromobility devices are ten times as common as electric cars globally (led by widespread adoption in #China), and twice as popular as e-cars in Australia. In 2022, electric micromobility devices globally displaced more than four times as much oil as electric cars.
If you've never tried one, consider giving it a go. Most bike shops will give you a free test ride. Personally, getting an #ebike has been one of the best decisions I've made in the last few years and has been one important way of maintaining our household record of never having owned a car.
Most years, amidst the horrors & disappointments of life, Christmas and Easter have provided comfort, hope and challenge: seasons to reflect and recommit, chances to once more receive divine gifts freely and dedicate myself to the good of my neighbours (near and far), to solidarity in suffering, struggle and in seeing those sometimes only momentary glimpses of how another world is possible.
But this Christmas, Christian communities across #Palestine cancelled Christmas celebrations. #Bethlehem was raided by the #IDF (while far worse atrocities were being inflicted on #Gaza just miles away). How then could we sing "O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see you lie"?
And this Easter just passed, nearly all the Christian communities in the holy land, descendents of those who have lived & worshipped there for almost 2,000 years, were refused access to #Jerusalem, while the survivors from the tiny Christian communities in Gaza huddled together–hungry, wounded, scared, grieving–amongst the rubble of their lives and society.
The weapons killing them were supplied by wealthy western nations, whose Christian leaders remain largely silent.
@freeschool Thank you - I often intend to use this for sharing videos, but then in the heat of the moment writing a post, I forget. Thanks for the reminder!
The UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, is an expert on #HumanRights and #InternationalLaw.
She is widely published, holds a number of academic positions, and has ten years experience advising various international bodies on human rights.
She has just delivered her latest report to the UN Human Rights Council, in which she summarises the patterns of violence in #Gaza and public statements by Israeli officials before reaching this conclusion: "The only reasonable inference to be drawn is a state policy of genocidal violence against Palestinians."
It is worth watching the 12 minute summary of her report.
I appreciate the way that when she is discussing the victims of the #GazaGenocide, #FrancescaAlbanese doesn't stop with the more than 32,000 Palestinians who have been confirmed killed by direct Israeli violence. She makes sure to include the 12,000+ Palestinians who are missing, presumed dead under the rubble, and the 71,000+ Palestinians who have been wounded, most of them with 'life-altering' injuries.
She also mentions (without putting a figure on it) the many who are dying of #starvation, disease and the collapse of the healthcare system due to targeted, systematic attacks by the Israeli military. Most of these deaths are not included in the above figures. There are tens of thousands of cancer patients, pregnant people and all kinds of other life-threatening chronic medical conditions going untreated in #Gaza right now. The total number of people killed by Israel's genocidal violence already far, far exceeds the widely quoted figure of ~32,000. And thousands more are going to die deaths of deprivation in the weeks ahead, living out their last agonising days as their bodies waste away from lack of food, clean water, adequate shelter and medical care.
Many tens of thousands of lives still hang in the balance, depending how quickly #Israel (armed by western governments) is stopped.
Both the UN Secretary General, António Guterres, and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, have now described the extreme hunger crisis in Gaza "man-made", naming that the government of Israel has been deliberately depriving a civilian population of the necessities of life, that is, using #starvation as a weapon of war.
This notion was treated by much of the western media as a dubious/extreme/fringe position as recently as a few weeks ago, even though humanitarian organisations, UN rapporteurs, and experts in international law had been saying the same thing for the last few months.
Indeed back in the opening days of the escalation, Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant announced, “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.”
I wonder, as a matter of communication strategy, why this is hasn't been used more frequently as a widespread description for the criminal acts of the #IDF and #Israeli citizens participating in the blockade of #Gaza. Is it simply because it is not as well known (and so has less emotional resonance) as genocide?
Under international law, there is also the crime of #starvation, which is distinct as well, which has its own standards.
Though it wasn't until the 1970s that starvation was accepted by the US and its western allies as a crime against humanity. Even after the horrors of #WWII (including especially the Siege of #Leningrad, the most destructive and fatal siege in human history), the US and its allies still wanted to maintain the right to use starvation as a weapon of war.
So it seems that the same events and actions could potentially be prosecuted under murder, extermination, starvation or genocide, with each crime requiring somewhat different levels and types of evidence to prove.
@bifouba Ah, of course - I hadn't put that together.
BTW, I agree that the extreme violence of the Israeli government/military (esp in conjunction with public statements) is genocidal—with the aid of foreign governments arming & providing political cover, with the backing of a large segment of Israeli voters & with the active participation of those citizens blockading aid).
My original comment wasn't questioning the wisdom or appropriateness of seeking to prosecute that case through the IJC, nor the use of that language in public discourse.
I had just noted that when it comes to public discourse, many pro-Palestinian activists (at least those trying to address western liberal audiences) seemed to be using a strategy of starting with discussion of war crimes (easiest to prove), moving to ethnic cleansing and then on to genocide, hoping to bring as much of their audience as far along as possible (i.e. "you think Israeli violence is justified? They are committing war crimes. You think they are committing a few war crimes? There's a pattern and stated intention of ethnic cleansing. You think they are pursuing ethnic cleansing but are unsure of their willingness to go beyond that? Well what happens to a campaign of ethnic cleansing if the targeted population can't or won't leave?")
@bifouba And then had wondered whether another step along this path might be to get people to admit that the violence clearly fits the criteria for extermination as a crime against humanity (even if they are not yet ready to admit the further step).
Surprising precisely no-one, it turns out that the #DirtyEnergy industry has been polluting public discourse and policy development for even longer than previously thought, according to the latest historical research into the lobbying and PR efforts of the companies who openly publish business plans incompatible with a habitable planet.
Every single week for the last 21 weeks upon #Gadigal land, there have been thousands upon thousands (sometimes easily tens of thousands) of people gathering in support of a #ceasefire in #Gaza and calling upon the Australian #Albanese government to stop supporting #Israel in its #genocide.
Every Sunday in Hyde Park at 1.30pm,* we've listened to #Aboriginal speakers, #Palestinian speakers, #Jewish speakers, politicians of various stripes (though neither of the major parties, of course, as they both remain complicit in support of the government responsible for most of the slaughter), elders who lived through the #Naqba, teenagers organising #StudentStrike4Palestine, community leaders, poets, faith leaders and more, with perhaps 75% of the speakers being women, and almost all being people of colour (most of the exceptions being MPs).
*Except when #NSWpolice has dictated otherwise, giving priority to (much smaller and only) occasional pro-Israel rallies and forcing a shift to Saturday a couple of times, under threat of #PoliceViolence.
Then we've marched (or rolled) with flags, banners, signs, drums and (loud!) voices: Arab, Aboriginal, African, Anglo, Asian and more; from those too old to walk (in wheelchairs) to those too young to walk (in strollers).
Indeed, there is a clear pattern in nearly all Australian media reporting that has even mentioned the existence of this weekly act of bearing witness against the slaughter of children at a rate unprecedented this century: we are only ever mentioned if there is a pro-Israel event to contrast us with. Though there will of course be plenty of coverage of those occasional events that doesn't even mention the larger pro-Palestinian event, typically held nearby on the same weekend, and the previous one, and the previous one, and the previous one, etc.
Pointing out #MediaBias is hardly groundbreaking, I know, but sometimes the patterns are so blatant as to be worth a little repetition.
6/6
The best of a bad lot is probably this ABC piece from November, which at least notes (unlike most) that the pro-Palestine rallies are:
a. weekly,
b. happening in many locations around the country,
c. are significantly larger than the contrasting one-off pro-Israel events the media always feels they need to justify covering pro-Palestinian activism in the first place.
Very few Oz media pieces touching upon pro-Palestinian activism have mentioned even one of those three points.
There are still numerous criticisms to be made of this article, but it's better than any other article from the mainstream press I've seen.
A five minute video from AJ+ displaying the name & face of one (or more) human being killed by Israel's #genocide in #Gaza for each day of the escalation since #7thOctober, along with confirmed daily death tolls from the Gazan health ministry, occasionally interspersed with major developments, such as the temporary #ceasefire at the end of Nov 2023 or the #ICJ ruling finding South Africa's genocide case against Israel plausible on 26th Jan 2024.
And this is the confirmed death toll of those whose identities are known. There are many thousands more missing, most of their bodies still lying under rubble. And yet more have been disappeared by Israeli military forces, some of whom later reappear, most with accounts of suffering various forms of torture & degradation during their time in Israeli captivity.
Finally, as I understand it (please correct me if I'm wrong), these numbers only include people directly killed by weapons of war, & may exclude those dying of thirst, starvation, disease, exposure, infection or despair, also caused by Israel's violence.
In years to come when experts examine the full impact of this conflict on the population of Gaza, we'll likely discover that the official death toll only ever told some fraction of the overall slaughter.