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54300
From: chaskuchar@stcharlesmo, [DNS_Address]
Subject: I just listened asila hassim from south Africa before the IJC
| i implore God to stop this tragedy |
54307
From: akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: South Africa Urges ICJ to Halt Israeli Assault on Rafah
URL: https://consortiumnews.com/2024/05/16/south-africa-urges-icj-to-halt-israeli-assault-on-rafah/
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I watched a portion of the hearings. I wonder if any US corporate media outlet reported on it? I'm sure Rachel Maddow devoted an entire show to it.. not. South Africa Urges ICJ to Halt Israeli Assault on Rafah May 16, 2024 On Thursday, South African representatives urged the World Court to see that Israel has not followed its order to prevent genocidal acts by its military forces. Israeli tanks on Gaza side of Rafah crossing, May 7, 2024. (IDF Spokesperson’s Unit, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0) By Julia Conley Common Dreams South African officials on Thursday made their case before the International Court of Justice to stop Israel’s brutal invasion of Rafah, warning once again that Israeli officials have displayed clear “genocidal intent” and “genocidal conduct” in their military campaign in Gaza. The case for the ICJ to stop the attack on Rafah was made by a number of lawyers, legal experts, and ambassadors, with the South African representatives outlining the bare facts of Israel’s military campaign, blocking of humanitarian aid and statements of intent, just as they did when the court heard South Africa’s original claim that Israel is committing genocide. That case, argued in January, resulted in a preliminary ruling in which the court said South Africa had made a “plausible” case and ordered Israel to prevent genocidal acts by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). On Thursday, South Africa urged the ICJ to see that Israel has not followed that order. “It is difficult to imagine that the situation could get worse” than it was in January, international law professor John Dugard told the court. He said: “But unfortunately, it has… Israel has now commenced its long-threatened assault on Rafah. It has ordered the evacuation of Palestinians in Rafah to the barren sand dunes of Al-Mawasi. It has closed critical border crossings to humanitarian aid, medical supplies, goods, and fuel, upon which the population depends.” “Israel’s actions are in violation of fundamental international humanitarian law, but in addition, they provide evidence of the crime of genocide,” Dugard continued. “This attack is the final blow that is intended to destroy the Palestinian group in Gaza.” Watch the livestream of the ICJ hearing below: Full transcript of Thursday’s hearing. The South Africans made their case as the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said Thursday that an estimated 600,000 people have now been forcibly displaced from Rafah by Israel. Despite tepid warnings from the U.S. — the biggest international funder of the IDF — for Israel to avoid attacking “population centers,” the IDF this week has moved into dense residential neighborhoods in central Rafah. The U.S. has also called for Israel to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, but the IDF’s seizure of the Rafah crossing between the enclave and Egypt last week led the World Food Program (WFP) on Thursday to warn that food and fuel rations “will run out in a matter of days.” Dozens of Palestinians have been starved to death so far by Israel’s blocking of relief shipments. “The threat of famine in Gaza never loomed larger,” said the WFP as South Africa made its case in The Hague. Three months after giving a 22-minute speech detailing the numerous statements of genocidal intent made by top Israeli officials since the Gaza assault began in October, South African lawyer Tembeka Ngcukaitobi during Thursday’s hearing, used the more recent words of Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who publicly described the aim of the Rafah invasion as “total annihilation.” In his presentation before the court, Ngcukaitobi invoked Smotrich’s language by arguing that the Rafah incursion “is the last stage of ‘total annihilation’ of Palestinian life.” “For Palestinians to be able to continue to exist as a protected group under the Genocide Convention, they need a place from which to rebuild,” he continued. “Rafah is that place, the last stand… Without Rafah, the possibility to rebuild will be lost forever.” In her speech, Irish lawyer Blinne Ni Ghralaigh outlined other developments in Gaza since the ICJ issued its preliminary ruling that illustrate the need for the court’s “invaluable intervention.” Ni Ghralaigh detailed the destruction of hospitals like Al-Shifa, where mass graves have been found with the remains of women, children, and medical workers, and warned that “the same fate now awaits Rafah’s remaining hospitals, doctors, and medics.” She also pointed to evidence that the IDF is treating evacuated areas as “extermination zones,” where soldiers are ordered to kill any remaining people, and its use of an error-prone AI system to target Palestinians. The South African legal team said the court must order Israel “to immediately take all effective measures to ensure the access of persons able to investigate ongoing atrocities,” and called on the ICJ to “at least modify its provisional measures” from March, when it demanded that Israel allow humanitarian aid into Gaza. “The court has the power to modify or make an explicit order for Israel to cease its military operations in Rafah, Gaza, and to withdraw from the Gaza Strip,” said Ni Ghralaigh, pointing out that the provisional measure from March could only take full effect if a cease-fire agreement was reached. “No such resolution is in place. The court must itself, therefore, create the circumstances necessary for its provisional measures to take full effect. It must order Israel to cease its military operations system finally,” she said. “Enough is enough.” Israel is expected to address the ICJ at a second day of hearings on Friday. Julia Conley is a staff writer for Common Dreams. This article is from Common Dreams. Views expressed in this article and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News. |
54308
From: akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Endgame in which Gaza is utterly Destroyed for Human Habitation
URL: https://www.juancole.com/2024/05/genocide-destroyed-habitation.html
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It's just astonishing that in 2024 the US, of all countries is not only allowing it genocide to happen, but is facilitating it. S. Africa v. Israel on Rafah Genocide: Endgame in which Gaza is utterly Destroyed for Human Habitation JUAN COLE 05/17/2024 Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – South Africa returned to the International Court of Justice in the Hague on Thursday over the Israeli invasion of Rafah, which its attorneys alleged is a further act of genocide in Gaza. South Africa had laid out its initial case in January. The court will take months to come to a decision on whether Israel has violated the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The court ruled on January 26 that it is plausible that Israel is committing genocide and issued the equivalent of a preliminary injunction against the further commission of acts of genocide. It issued a further injunction on March 28. The South African case has now been joined by Ireland, Egypt, Colombia, Libya, and Nicaragua, and Turkey says it too will join shortly. Egypt and Turkey have had strong trade and security relations with Israel and their decision to support Pretoria’s suit is a slap in the face of the Israeli government and a signal that Israel is losing what few friends it had in the region. The Israeli government, given impunity from UNSC sanctions by the Biden administration, thumbed its nose at the injunctions and went on with its slaughterhouse policies. Adilah Hassim, one of several South African attorneys pressing Pretoria’s case, pointed to five pieces of evidence that the Rafah campaign is genocidal. At one point in her detailing of Israel’s atrocities she broke down. She said, (1) First, Israel has continued to kill Palestinians in Gaza, including women and children, at an alarming rate. (2) Second, as a result of Israel’s onslaught, Palestinians in Gaza are facing what the Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations has described as the “worst humanitarian crisis” he has seen for more than 50 years. (3) Third, Israel’s systematic targeting and bombardment of hospitals and medical facilities, and its throttling of humanitarian aid, has pushed Gaza’s medical system to collapse; (4) Fourth, Israel’s direct attack and siege of Gaza’s biggest hospitals has led to the uncovering of mass graves evidencing Israeli massacres of Palestinians seeking shelter and medical treatment; (5) Finally, most recently, Israel has intensified its attacks in the north while pressing on with its Rafah offensive leaving displaced Palestinians nowhere safe to go. Video: Lawyer Adila Hassim Outlines ‘Genocidal Conduct’ in Gaza at South Africa’s ICJ Hearing Against Israel Earlier in the trial, Vaughan Lowe, Chichele Professor of Public International Law in the University of Oxford and himself a barrister, explained that “Israel’s action is directed against the Palestinian people throughout Gaza and the West Bank. South Africa’s request was initially focused on Rafah, because of the imminent prospect of death and suffering on a massive scale resulting from Israel’s attack. Since that request was made, it has become increasingly clear that Israel’s actions in Rafah are part of the endgame in which Gaza is utterly destroyed as an area capable of human habitation.” Professor Lowe is clearly flabbergasted that partisans of the far, far right Netanyahu government continue to attempt to gaslight us all and to assert that nothing out of the ordinary is happening in Gaza. The the contrary, he said, we have the “evidence of continued bombings, attacks on people in so- called ‘safe areas’ to which they have been directed by Israel, attacks on aid convoys, and of mass graves and the horrors of which the corpses speak.” Lowe deals summarily with the smarmy claim that the Israeli government is only exercising its right to self defense: “First, the right of self-defence does not give a State a licence to use unlimited violence. No right of self-defence can ever extend to a right to inflict massive, indiscriminate violence and starvation collectively on an entire people. Second, nothing — not self- defence or anything else — can ever justify genocide. The prohibition on genocide is absolute, a peremptory norm of international law. Third, the Court ruled in 2004 that there is no right of self-defence by an occupying State against the territory that it occupies.” (Emphasis added.) If I owned a fleet of small aircraft I’d arrange for these words to be sky- written over every major city in the world. What Lowe is saying is that in some instances, two legal principles might come into conflict with one another. Where, for instance, does free speech stop and libel begin? But there are some laws that trump others. Genocide is the ultimate in this regard. It trumps every other law. There is no legal principle you can invoke to justify genocide, not even the right to self-defense, which is enshrined in the UN Charter and is generally sacrosanct. Remember this the next time you hear a glib US government spokesman dance around the Gaza genocide by saying that Israel has a right to defend itself from Hamas. Max du Plessis explained Israel’s command that Palestinians who had taken refuge in Rafah must now leave is genocidal in effect: “Not only is there nowhere for the 1.5 million displaced people and others in Rafah to safely flee — so much of Gaza having been reduced to rubble — but that if Rafah is similarly destroyed there will be little left of Gaza or prospects for the survival of Palestinian life in the territory.” In particular, he said, the last functioning hospitals are in Rafah, and if they are destroyed as all the others have been, health care in the Strip will be dead. At the same time, du Plessis pointed out, virtually all aid has now been blocked by the Israel government, which seized the Rafah border checkpoint from Egypt and closed it. Gaza cannot feed itself in the best of circumstances, but it is now a basket case needing hundreds of trucks of food and medical aid a day to survive. Hunger and disease are spreading, since most of the trucks are now barred. Du Plessis said, “Deliberately herding 1.5 million Palestinians into Rafah and then carrying out a full-scale bombardment while sealing off entry and exit for life-saving aid to an already devastated population, while exposing them to famine and human suffering, leaves only one inference, regrettably, and that is of genocidal intent.” Prominent attorney and senior counsel (SILK) Tembeka Ngcukaitobi pointed to the extensive statements made publicly by Israeli officials that prove their genocidal intent: The Israeli Minister of Defence: Yoav Gallant said that Israel is “taking apart neighbourhood after neighbourhood” and “will reach every location” in Gaza. Finance Minister and Cabinet heavyweight Bezalel Smotrich : “[T]here are no half measures. Rafah, Deir al-Balah, Nuseirat — total annihilation.” He goes on to say: “We are negotiating with the ones that should not have existed for a long time.” Ngcukaitobi cited reams of quotations showing genocidal intent from government officials — quotes that somehow I never see quoted by CNN anchors in the United States. On January 26, the court had found that Israel was violating specific provisions of the Genocide Convention, to which Tel Aviv is signatory, regarding targeting a group of people because of their ethnicity: (a) killing members of the group; (b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; and (d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group. All of these genocidal actions have continued and intensified ever since. |
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[54311]
54311
From: chaskuchar@stcharlesmo, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Endgame in which Gaza is utterly Destroyed for Human Habitation
| thank you |
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None
54301
From: akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: I just listened asila hassim from south Africa before the IJC
| come to think of it, why hasn't he? |
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[54302]
54302
From: chaskuchar@stcharlesmo, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: I just listened adila hassim from south Africa before the IJC
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more folks need to be praying for this. i know the folks in gaza are pleading for an end to this. the ones that have died are martyrs and are done with their suffering. |
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