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crimes against humanity
As US Keeps Arms Flowing, UN Panel Says Israeli Assault on Gaza 'Consistent With Genocide'
"Israel is intentionally causing death, starvation, and serious injury, using starvation as a method of war, and inflicting collective punishment on the Palestinian population."
Nov 14, 2024
Less than 48 hours after the Biden administration said it does not believe Israel is unlawfully obstructing humanitarian assistance in Gaza, a United Nations special committee issued a report Thursday arguing that the Israeli military's actions in the Palestinian enclave bear "the characteristics of genocide."
"Since the beginning of the war, Israeli officials have publicly supported policies that strip Palestinians of the very necessities required to sustain life—food, water, and fuel," said the U.N. committee. "These statements, along with the systematic and unlawful interference of humanitarian aid, make clear Israel's intent to instrumentalize lifesaving supplies for political and military gains."
"Through its siege over Gaza, obstruction of humanitarian aid, alongside targeted attacks and killing of civilians and aid workers, despite repeated U.N. appeals, binding orders from the International Court of Justice, and resolutions of the Security Council, Israel is intentionally causing death, starvation, and serious injury, using starvation as a method of war, and inflicting collective punishment on the Palestinian population," the panel added.
The new report examines in detail Israel's relentless and large-scale aerial assault on the Gaza Strip, which Israeli missiles and bombs—many of them provided by the United States—have rendered a "wasteland of rubble, garbage, and human remains," as one U.N. expert recently put it. Women and children have made up nearly 70% of those killed by Israeli forces in Gaza over the past 13 months.
The near-constant bombing since the Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023 has devastated Gaza's civilian infrastructure, including water and sanitation systems, sparking a massive public health crisis that has compounded the humanitarian impacts of the military assault.
Israeli forces have also systematically targeted Gaza's agricultural land and infrastructure, which along with Israel's suffocating blockade has created famine conditions across the enclave.
"By destroying vital water, sanitation, and food systems, and contaminating the environment, Israel has created a lethal mix of crises that will inflict severe harm on generations to come," the U.N. committee said in a statement Thursday.
"It is the collective responsibility of every state to stop supporting the assault on Gaza and the apartheid system in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem."
It is rare for a U.N. body to characterize a member nation's actions as genocidal, a fact that underscores the severity of the special committee's description of Israel's war on Gaza as "consistent with genocide."
"It is the collective responsibility of every state to stop supporting the assault on Gaza and the apartheid system in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem," the committee said Thursday. "Upholding international law and ensuring accountability for violations rests squarely on member states. A failure to do so weakens the very core of the international legal system and sets a dangerous precedent, allowing atrocities to go unchecked."
The panel's report comes days after the Biden administration said it has not assessed that Israel is illegally obstructing American humanitarian aid following a 30-day period in which the U.S. demanded improvements to conditions on the ground in Gaza. The latest U.S. assessment allows American military aid to continue flowing to Israel.
The humanitarian situation in Gaza didn't just not improve during the 30-day period—it deteriorated further, according to aid groups.
"Israel not only failed to meet the U.S. criteria that would indicate support to the humanitarian response, but concurrently took actions that dramatically worsened the situation on the ground, particularly in northern Gaza," a coalition of aid groups said earlier this week. "That situation is in an even more dire state today than a month ago."
Continued U.S. military assistance is enabling what Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Thursday called "war crimes and crimes against humanity" across the Gaza Strip. The group pointed specifically to the "massive, deliberate forced displacement of Palestinian civilians," which has "caused grave harm" without any "plausible imperative military reason."
"The United States, Germany, and other countries should immediately suspend weapons transfers and military assistance to Israel," HRW said. "Continuing to provide arms to Israel risks complicity in war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other grave human rights violations."
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'Crime Against Humanity': UN Inquiry Details Israeli 'Extermination' of Gaza Healthcare
"Israel must immediately stop its unprecedented wanton destruction of healthcare facilities in Gaza," the head of the inquiry stressed.
Oct 10, 2024
For the second time this year, a United Nations commission tasked with investigating Israel's conduct during its yearlong invasion and blockade of Gaza has found that the U.S.-armed Israeli military is committing crimes against humanity against Palestinians.
The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory released a report Thursday detailing how "Israel has perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy Gaza's healthcare system as part of a broader assault on Gaza, committing war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination with relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities."
"The commission also investigated the treatment of Palestinian detainees in Israel and of Israeli and foreign hostages in Gaza since October 7, 2023 and concluded that Israel and Palestinian armed groups are responsible for torture and sexual and gender-based violence," the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said in a summary of the report.
The report cites the U.N. World Health Organization's findings that Israel carried out 498 attacks on healthcare facilities in the Gaza Strip between October 7, 2023—when Hamas launched the deadliest-ever attack on Israel—and July 30, 2024.
"A total of 747 persons were killed directly in those attacks, and 969 others were injured, and 110 facilities were affected," the publication states. The report calls the attacks "widespread and systematic."
The commission continued:
Israeli security forces carried out air strikes against hospitals, causing considerable damage to buildings and surroundings, as well as multiple casualties; surrounded and besieged hospital premises; prevented the entry of goods and medical equipment and exit/entry of civilians; issued evacuation orders but prevented safe evacuations; and raided hospitals, arresting hospital staff and patients. Israeli security forces also obstructed access by humanitarian agencies.
"Israel must immediately stop its unprecedented wanton destruction of healthcare facilities in Gaza," said commission chair Navi Pillay. "By targeting healthcare facilities, Israel is targeting the right to health itself with significant long-term detrimental effects on the civilian population. Children in particular have borne the brunt of these attacks, suffering both directly and indirectly from the collapse of the health system."
OHCHR said that "attacks on medical facilities in Gaza, particularly those devoted to pediatric and neonatal care, have led to incalculable suffering of child patients, including newborns."
"In continuing these attacks, Israel has violated children's right to life, denied children access to basic healthcare, and deliberately inflicted conditions of life resulting in the destruction of generations of Palestinian children and, potentially, the Palestinian people as a group," the agency added.
The commission's inquiry found that as of July 15, "113 ambulances had been attacked and at least 61 had been damaged," including vehicles used by the U.N., International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS), and other organizations.
"Access was also reduced owing to closure of areas by Israeli security forces, [and] delays in coordination of safe routes, checkpoints, searches, or destruction of roads," the report notes.
The commission investigated the January 29 attack that killed 6-year-old Hind Rajab and six of her relatives, as well as two paramedics who had Israeli permission to attempt to rescue them.
"They were attacked while trying to evacuate in their car," the report said of the family. "The ambulance, carrying two paramedics, Yousef Zeino and Ahmed al-Madhoun, was dispatched after its route had been coordinated with Israeli security forces. It was hit by a tank shell at a distance of some 50 meters from the family's car."
"Hind was still alive at the time that the ambulance was dispatched," the publication noted. "The presence of Israeli security forces in the area prevented access. As a result, the family members' bodies could not be retrieved from their bullet-ridden car until 12 days after the incident."
Israel Defense Forces officials have repeatedly claimed that no IDF troops were in the area at the time of the attack. Multiple journalistic investigations, including one published Tuesday by Sky News, showed that Israeli tank and machine gun fire killed the family and paramedics.
The new report's authors also noted that "hundreds of medical personnel, including three hospital directors and the head of an orthopedic department, as well as patients and journalists were arrested by Israeli security forces" during raids on Gaza medical facilities.
"Reportedly, 128 health workers remain detained by Israeli authorities as of July 15, including four PRCS staff members," the publication states.
"The institutionalized mistreatment of Palestinian detainees, a longstanding characteristic of the occupation, took place under direct orders from the Israeli minister in charge of the prison system, Itamar Ben-Gvir, and was fueled by Israeli government statements inciting violence and retribution," said OHCHR.
The commission report also detailed crimes committed by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups against Israelis on and after October 7, 2023, when more than 1,100 Israelis and others were killed—at least some by so-called "friendly fire" and under the fratricidal Hannibal Directive—and over 240 people abducted.
Hostages "were mistreated to inflict physical pain and severe mental suffering, including physical violence, abuse, sexual violence, forced isolation, limited access to hygiene facilities, water and food, threats and humiliation," OHCHR said. "Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups committed the war crimes of torture, inhuman or cruel treatment, and the crimes against humanity of enforced disappearance and other inhumane acts causing great suffering or serious injury."
In June, the same U.N. commission found Israel's far-right government responsible for a range of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip, including "extermination, torture, forcible transfer, and the use of starvation as a weapon of warfare."
Over the course of its 370-day assault on Gaza, Israeli forces have killed at least 42,010 Palestinians in the coastal enclave—most of them women and children—and wounded more than 97,700 others, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health and international agencies.
At least 10,000 Palestinians are missing and believed to be dead and buried beneath the rubble of hundreds of thousands of bombed buildings. Israel's "complete siege" of Gaza has forcibly displaced more than 90% of Gaza's 2.3 million people, and has contributed to the starvation and sickening of hundreds of thousands of Gazans.
Israel is on trial for genocide at the U.N. International Court of Justice. Meanwhile, International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan is seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders—at least one of whom, political chief Ismail Haniyeh, has been assassinated—for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, including extermination.
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Families Flee Khan Younis 'Wasteland' as Israel Hammers Gaza With US-Supplied Bombs
"The most effective action the U.S. could take to halt Israel's genocidal war would be cutting off weapons."
Aug 09, 2024
A wave of fresh bombings and military ground operations by Israel were underway in the city of Khan Younis on Friday as images of Palestinian families once again forced to flee plastered global news sites and world leaders, including the United States, refused to intervene to stop the relentless assault being inflicted on the people of Gaza.
Al-Jazeerareports the southern city—which its reporter on the ground, Hani Mahmoud, described as "uninhabitable" and turning into a "wasteland"— was bombed approximately 30 times in "just a few hours" overnight. With evacuation orders by the Israeli military sweeping up and down the Gaza Strip week after week, the internally displaced population is forced to move time and again.
"What we see on the ground is recurrent displacement for many families who just made their way back to their homes," Mahmoud reported early Friday.
With tanks on the ground, adding shelling to the bombs being dropped from the air, Reutersreports how families "fled eastern Khan Younis in vehicles and on foot, belongings heaped on donkey carts and motorcycle rickshaws as they made their slow escape along congested roads."
Ghazi Abu Daka, one evacuee fleeing Khan Younis, told the Associated Press Thursday that this was was the fourth time he and his family had been forced to flee the city.
"Every day there is war. Every day there are rockets. There is no safe place in the eastern area. Now, we are displaced in the streets and don't know where to go," he said, carrying his son in his arms in the scorching heat.
The intensified overnight bombing came just hours after a joint statement Thursday evening from the United States, Qatar, and Egypt signaled a fresh round of mediated negotiations between Israel and Hamas to end the onslaught in exchange for the release of Israeli prisoners still being held since last year's cross-border attack on October 7 of last year.
"There is no further time to waste nor excuses from any party for further delay," the joint statement read in part, indicating that a framework for an agreement would be the basis for the new round of talks that were derailed completely last month after Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated, almost certainly by Israel, in Tehran last month.
While French President Emanuel Macron welcomed news of news talks, posting on X that the "war in Gaza must stop," the United States, under President Joe Biden, has continued to give Israel the green light to carry out its campaign—and provided many of the weapons to sustain it—despite months of presented evidence that the nature of Israel's assault has resulted in war crimes and crimes against humanity.
At a rally in Detroit, Michigan on Wednesday evening, protesters calling for an end to the genocidal assault on Gaza demanded that Vice President Kamala Harris, now the presidential Democratic nominee, commit to supporting an arms embargo against Israel as a way to bring the war to an end.
While Harris suggested a willingness to engage with those interrupting the rally and address their concerns, members of her team later clarified Harris "does not support" such an embargo.
Despite miniscule hopes that fresh talks next week could broker some progress, Drop Site journalist Jeremy Scahill Thursday agreed with those who argue that the "most effective action the U.S. could take to halt Israel's genocidal war would be cutting off weapons."
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