Updated 4 15 2024 Peter Haass, a journalist who has covered genocide in Bosnia and sees something very similar happening in Gaza, provides a very sobering opinion piece in the Washington Post. If you have access to the Washington Post, read it. I am not the only one to see what the Israel/Gaza conflict has in common with Bosnia, with which I am personally familiar. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/04/09/israel-gaza-war-crimes-genocide/
In this December 2023 blog post, I look at it from both the October 7 Hamas atrocities and the Israeli response. Hamas has as its goal genocide and wiping out Jews in Israel. In response, Israel's carpet bombing and later restriction of humanitarian aid and food, leading to famine for survivors and the horrific death of thousands of children and noncombatants, make them liable for charges of genocide as well. Israel's actions are far more intentional than claiming the death of civilians is not just collateral damage. It appears that it is to destroy the lives of both civilians and Hamas fighters in Gaza. What they have done in restricting humanitarian aid cannot be rationalized as "collateral damage", but additional evidence of their intent to kill as many Gazans as they can. Both Hamas and Israel should be the subject of international court actions for years in the future for their crimes against humanity.
Updated 1/26/2024 Top U.N. court orders Israel to prevent genocide in Gaza, but not to cease fire (msn.com)
Update January 14, 2024 https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/south-africa-accuses-israel-of-genocide-and-urges-top-un-court-to-halt-gaza-war/ar-AA1mOAaU?ocid=socialshare
Home | INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE (icj-cij.org)
This is an update of an earlier post on the Israel-Hamas war. It reflects what reports and punditry of what I have been hearing and close-hand experiences with ethnic cleansing conflict and my experience with international courts concerning my intense focus and observations of international court proceedings in the wars of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia.(a subject of personal experiences and views in this blog and many published columns)
The Hague ruled today when South Africa filed a complaint with the International Court This is an update of an earlier post on the Israel-Hamas war. The Hague checked in when South Africa filed a complaint with the International Court that Israel was conducting ethnic cleansing by killing so many civilians in Gaza. The court replied quickly and they did not rule to stop Israel from waging the war, but gave a series of guidelines of protecting civilian lives.. As of today, there is more talk that negotiations are still moving along to provide a month or more of cease-fire to get aid to the devastated and suffering Palestinians trapped in Gaza with the goal of liberating the estimated 130 surviving hostages. It appears to those not in Israel is the question rests now on Netanyahu and does he really cares enough to truly make hostage release a priority and the amount of pressure from within Israel and the voters to see it is in his political interest to do so. Biden and his diplomats have been negotiating with this goal, using hostage release in mind. The Hague judgment gives Israel cover to continue to keep up the fighting yet while reducing civilian casualties. Hamas is also loathe to release hostages because they are their human shields and their best bargaining chip to achieve a cease-fire. It is a horrible situation because the victims, the Palestinians, are the ones suffering..that Israel was conducting ethnic cleansing by killing so many civilians in Gaza. The court replied quickly, and they did not rule to stop Israel from waging the war but gave a series of guidelines for protecting civilian lives. needed to avoid being guilty of crimes against humanity.
As of today, there is more talk that negotiations are still moving along to provide a month or more of cease-fire to get aid to the devastated and suffering Palestinians trapped in Gaza with the goal of liberating the estimated 130 surviving hostages. It appears to those not in Israel that the question rests now on Netanyahu and whether he really cares enough to truly make hostage release a priority. It is in his political interest to do so to make no deal. The US is in a dilemma of how to deal with a stubborn Netanyahu and his right-wing cabinet, who have opposed and still oppose the Biden goal of the two-state solution and oppose pauses to allow the humanitarian aid to reach the civilians. Biden believes he cannot dictate Israeil's internal politics, and others say he should not continue funding Israel's war efforts. Nothing will change until the Israeli government leadership changes, and that will only happen in elections are held because Netanyahu also has personal reasons not to resign, opening him up to continuing criminal prosecution on corruption charges. Biden and his diplomats have been negotiating with this goal, using hostage release nonetheless, as a quiet way of encouraging internal Israeli forces in opposition to Netanyahu.
The Hague judgment gives Israel cover to continue to keep up the fighting, yet they give directions to reducing civilian casualties. An observer of the toothless court was to give Israel a yellow card as in a soccer violation and to move the issue to the UN Security Council where the US has a veto. The charges of Israel's criminal actions against humanity through international tribunals will continue. Hamas is also loathe to release hostages because they are their human shields and their best bargaining chip to achieve a cease-fire. It is a horrible situation because the victims, the Palestinians, are the ones suffering..
Whether Israel is found guilty of genocide or not depends on findings like all crimes that there was intent to commit it.. Were the Gaza civilian casualties collateral damage as two brutal forces fought it out, or did Israel's callousness signify an intent to wipe out Palestinians as a group? That is going to take years of investigation and testimony to resolve.. What surprises me is that Israel has not charged Hamas in the Hague with an intent to wipe out Israel beginning on October 7. The genocide of Jews is the Hamas printed charters. Their intent is no secret and easy to prove. My guess is the death toll of Palestinians caused by Israel's indiscriminate bombing is far in excess of those Israelis killed so brutally by Hama terrorists on Oct.7. All of this is legalistic back and forth, and in the meantime, the suffering of humanity continues.
Continuing with the original posting:
I have refrained from jumping on stories presented from either side in this awful conflict because I am so appalled and horrified by the death and destruction of so many women and, children, and non-combatants. I am also conditioned enough to take many reports that could be used and inflated as wartime propaganda. While rape has a long history as a war weapon, and it seems particularly brutal in wars between ethnic and religious combatants, the horror of the issue arises again. Defiling women's bodies seems like an intentional and extra hateful act in conflicts fueled by hate.. It appears there are videos as evidence of rape and utilization of women by Hamas on October 7, and I take the body count of 15,000 in Gaza as believable, just looking at the physical damage reported in our media. Their bodies tell their stories. They’re not alive to speak for themselves. (nbcnews.com) What stories like this mean is that the international court in the Hague will be jammed with war crimes cases, with both sides being defendants. So long as the leadership on both sides remains the same, I see no hope, even for the two-state solution I support. I am dismayed. how many children civilians killed so far in gaza - Google Search
For differences between war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide go to:
https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/Countries/CD/FS-2_Crimes_Final.pdf.
Listen up, young people. Before demonstrating on behalf of one side or the other, your ire needs to be directed toward ethnic hatred by anyone. My reaction is more than just a plague on both of your houses, and it is clear the conflict was intentionally begun by Hamas on October 7. Other facts are emerging Mistakes in judgment, an ideologically driven incompetence of Israel by a controversial president who was off on West Bank right-wing tangent, overreacted, in spite of warnings against doing that by the US, with inhumane carpet bombing of civilians as if killing many might get a few perpetrators of the attack killed, too., though they were safe in tunnels. The attacker bent on the ethnic cleansing of all Jews in their sworn mantra, and pledges also make this more than just a plague on both houses. A leader who appears to care little about hostages and whose settlement policy stoked more hatred is likewise worthy of condemnation. There has been a handwringing that October 7 was the first time rape was used as a weapon. Rape has always been the hallmark of barbaric invaders, or the spoils of war have often been gifted to their foot soldiers, permitting their perverse minds to carry out their sick fantasies. After World War II in Berlin, rape of surviving women by Soviet soldiers was well known. (. In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_during_the_occupation_of_Germany) My husband as a 12-year-old in Yugoslavia, saw mutilated men dead in the streets, then, too. Nazi ovens were a fact. I am old enough to have met survivors in person. In recent times, in the 1990s in Europe in Bosnia, the same outcry about the Bosnian Serb technique of using rape as a weapon of a war of ethnic hatred was heard and was widely reported. "Estimates of the number of women and girls raped range from 12,000 to 50,000, the vast majority of whom were Bosniaks raped by Bosnian Serbs. The ICTY estimates between 20,000 and 50,000 rapes and that 80% of those happened over a prolonged period of imprisonment. UNHCR experts have claimed 12,000 rapes. (Rape during the Bosnian War - Wikipedia)"
It is. an age-old technique to scare those they hated into flight, clearing out an area they had as a goal to conquer. In the Bosnian conflict, Bosnian Serbs marched into a killing field of every male in the town of Srebrenica. Over 7000 were executed and plowed under in a mass grave for one reason: their religion. They were Muslim. The masterminds of this, if still alive, are sitting in prison for their crimes due to the Hague prosecutions. https://www.britannica.com/event/Srebrenica-massacre
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