There was a terrorist attack by Hamas on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. This took place in context of long-standing Israeli control of Gaza’s borders and illegal land takeovers in Jerusalem and the West Bank. Israel’s response has been to use massive bombing and ground forces in Gaza and to increase expansion of settlements in the West Bank. (For historical background, see Rashid Khalidi’s book, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine.)

Amid the unfolding and devastating war carried out by Israel in Gaza, the Biden administration has continued to support Israel politically and militarily. Though, as of April 4, President Biden is finally warning Netanyahu that the killing of civilians in Gaza must stop. Up to this time, however, Biden and his administration have failed to have Israel allow meaningful-levels of humanitarian aid to enter Gaza or to institute at least a temporary cease fire. Hence, there is rampant hunger, even starvation, over 33,000 Gazans have been killed, over 70,000 wounded, and buildings, hospitals, and communities have been destroyed.

-----------------

Israel’s brutal war – some effects

Nils Adler and Farah Najjar report for Aljazeera on the death and destruction wrought by Israeli forces on Gaza, bearing in mind that the conditions for the 2.3 million people living in Gaza grow increasingly desperate (https://2024/4/3/israels-war-on-gaza-live-condemnation-of-israel-over-aid-worker-killings).

• Israel continues to block the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) from bringing food and other aid into northern Gaza, the aid agency said.
• Worldwide condemnation rises as Israel’s military stands accused of deliberately targeting charity staff bringing food to thousands of Gaza Palestinians facing imminent famine.
• A UN-World Bank report estimates the infrastructure damage in the Gaza Strip at $18.5bn in the first four months of Israel’s devastating assault.
• UN Secretary-General Guterres says the Israeli attack that killed seven World Central Kitchen staff brings the number of aid workers killed in Gaza to 196 – including more than 175 UN staff. “This is unconscionable.”
• At least 32,975 Palestinians have been killed and 75,577 wounded in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7. The death toll in Israel from Hamas’s October 7 attack stands at 1,139 with dozens still held captive.

U.S. Complicity in Israel’s “Plausible” Genocide

Daniel Warner writes on U.S. complicity in the Israeli genocidal attacks on Gaza

(https://counterpunch.org/2024/03/29/u-s-complicity-in-israels-plausible-genocide). 

Warner quotes Representative Ocasio-Cortez, a proponent for a cease fire in this war. 

“‘Honoring our alliances does not mean facilitating mass killing,’ Representative Ocasio-Cortez said on the floor of the House of Representatives on March 22. ‘We cannot hide from our responsibility any longer.’ ‘Facilitating mass killing’ and ‘responsibility’ could include United States legal complicity.” This is the position taken by the International Court of Justice (ICJ). 

“The ICJ ruled on January 26 that Israel was committing ‘plausible genocide.’ In addition, Warner continues, “in a March 25 Report to the Human Rights Council by the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Francesca Albanese wrote in the Summary: ‘By analyzing the patterns of violence and Israel’s policies in its onslaught on Gaza, this report concludes that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating Israel’s commission of genocide is met.’”

The Oxford dictionary defines genocide as “the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or group with the aim of destroying that nation or group.”

The Genocide Convention

Voker Turk, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, writes that the “Genocide Convention is the first human rights treaty in the history of the United Nations, adopted on the eve of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

“Seventy-five years later, the two foundational agreements remain closely interlinked.

“Despite the lessons of the Holocaust, and the ‘never again’ moment in history that led to the Convention, genocide occurred again and again ever since, inflicting intolerable harm and suffering. Preventing genocide, and bringing its perpetrators to account before all humanity, are imperative to fulfil our human rights.

“The Convention calls on all States, and all of us, to maintain vigilance, and push for action to prevent genocide, everywhere. In reality, genocide is never unleashed without warning. It is always the culmination of serious human rights violations: identifiable patterns of systematic discrimination – based on race, ethnicity, religion or other characteristics – which have been ignored.

“The prohibition of genocide is not an ordinary rule of international law: it is jus cogens – an overriding fundamental principle, at all times and without exception, for all humanity.

Turk urges “all States that have not yet done so, to ratify and accede to this most fundamental of treaties, to protect our common humanity, and advance our universal human rights.”

Complicity 

Daniel Warner (cited above) points out that there are two types of violations to the Genocide Convention. 

“The first violation is that the prevention of genocide is a legal obligation. If a state has knowledge that genocide is being committed and does nothing, if it has knowingly not prevented genocide, the state is complicit. The duty does not require a finding that genocide is occurring; rather, awareness of a serious risk of genocide places an obligation on all States to take whatever action possible and necessary to prevent its occurrence or continuation.” The ICJ’s decision on “plausible genocide” makes this point relevant for the United States as does the Report of the Special Rapporteur. 

The second type of violation “describes a positive act of commission rather than the negative act of not preventing. If a state continues to support the state committing genocide…the supporting state may be held complicit in genocide’s commission.” The United States continues to supply weapons to Israel after October 7. quietly approving and delivering “more than 100 separate foreign military sales to Israel since the Gaza war began Oct. 7, amounting to thousands of precision-guided munitions, small-diameter bombs, bunker busters, small arms and other lethal aid, U.S. officials told members of Congress in a recent classified briefing,” John Hudson wrote on March 6, 2024, in The Washington Post. The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times confirmed this account of the Congressional briefing in similar reports.”

How, Warner asks, does the United States justify its continuing supply of weapons to Israel in violation of the Genocide Convention? “The U.S. Arms Export Control Act does permit exceptions for arms sales to close allies. The United States uses this loophole to continue sending weapons to Israel. But using this loophole to continue sending weapons does not exonerate complicity in genocide. In the least, it is hypocritical. Using the Arms Export Control Act ‘doesn’t just seem like an attempt to avoid technical compliance with US arms export law, it’s an extremely troubling way to avoid transparency and accountability on a high-profile issue,’ according to Ari Tolany, director of the security assistance monitor at the Centre for International Policy think tank….”

Biden supports the Israeli war on Palestinians, while ineffectively pushing for less Israeli violence and more humanitarian aid

Meanwhile, the Biden administration keeps sending arms to Israel  

John Hudson reports on this issue (https://washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/03/29/us-weapons-israel-gaza-war). Here’s some of what he writes.

“The Biden administration in recent days quietly authorized the transfer of billions of dollars in bombs and fighter jets to Israel despite Washington’s concerns about an anticipated military offensive in southern Gaza that could threaten the lives of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians.

“The new arms packages include more than 1,800 MK84 2,000-pound bombs and 500 MK82 500-pound bombs, according to Pentagon and State Department officials familiar with the matter. The 2,000-pound bombs have been linked to previous mass-casualty events throughout Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.” 

“The development underscores that,” as Hudson reports, “while rifts have emerged between the United States and Israel over the war’s conduct, the Biden administration has viewed weapons transfers as off-limits when considering how to influence the actions of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“We have continued to support Israel’s right to defend itself,” said a White House official. “Conditioning aid has not been our policy.”

An Obscenity

Brett Wilkins writes on March 29, 2024, on the “obscenity” of the ongoing U.S. weapons transfers to Israel (https://commondreams.org/news/us-military-aid-to-israel-2667634511). 

“Despite growing worldwide calls for an arms embargo, the Biden administration in recent days has approved the transfer of billions of dollars’ worth of new weapons shipments to Israel, including warplanes and 2,000-pound bombs that have been dropped on densely populated areas of Gaza with devastating results.

“The Washington Post reported Friday that the administration has ‘quietly’ authorized arms shipments including more than 1,800 MK84 2,000-pound bombs and 500 MK82 500-pound bombs, as well as 25 F-35A fighter jets and engines worth approximately $2.5 billion. The transfers are the latest of more than 100 arms shipments authorized by the Biden administration since the October 7 attacks on Israel.

"'Quietly,'" Palestinian American writer and political analyst Yousef Munayyer scoffed in response to the report. ‘This is cowardly from the administration. If you are going to be full backers of genocide, own it. We see you and history sees you as well.’

“‘It is scary to think of the world U.S. support for Israel is creating. A world with no rules, no limits in war, where norms don't exist, and where genocide is supportable,’ he added. ‘Good luck getting anyone to listen to you about international law after this.’"

According to the Post:

“The 2,000-pound bombs, capable of leveling city blocks and leaving craters in the earth 40 feet across and larger, are almost never used any more by Western militaries in densely populated locations due to the risk of civilian casualties.”
 

As of March 29, 2024, after 175 days of the war, 32,600 Gaza residents had been killed and over 75,000 wounded. 

On April 4, 2024, Gaza's health authorities say about 33,000 Palestinians have been confirmed killed, around 40 percent of them children, with thousands more bodies lost under rubble not recovered. More than 70,000 have been wounded, meaning around 5% of the population has been killed or injured, not counting deaths from hunger, unsanitary conditions and the collapse of health care (https://reuters.com/world/middle-east/gaza-war-after-six-months-what-are-the-issues-now-2024-04-04). 

The Biden administration supports Israel at the UN Security Council

Marjorie Cohn considers the Biden administration support of Israel at the U.N. in an article published on Truthout on March 26 2024

(https://truthout.org/articles/israel-remains-intent-on-genocide-despite-world-court-orders).

“Israel is continuing its genocidal campaign against the Palestinians in Gaza and hindering humanitarian relief efforts despite specific orders from the International Court of Justice (ICJ), or the World Court, to refrain from these very actions.”

Cohn continues. “On January 26, in response to South Africa’s genocide case against Israel, the ICJ ordered the following provisional measures be taken:

Israel shall prevent the commission of all genocidal acts, especially (a) killing Palestinians in Gaza; (b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to Palestinians in Gaza; (c) deliberately inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction in whole or in part; and (d) imposing measures intended to prevent Palestinian births in Gaza;

Israel shall immediately ensure that its military does not commit any of the acts listed above and it should 

• punish the direct and public incitement to commit genocide;
• immediately enable urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to Palestinians in Gaza;
• prevent the destruction and ensure the preservation of evidence; and
• submit a report to the ICJ on all measures taken to carry out this order within one month.
• Since the ICJ issued the order, Israel has consistently flouted its mandate.

Cohn adds: “One month after the ICJ’s ruling, Human Rights Watch reported that, “Israel continues to obstruct the provision of basic services and the entry and distribution within Gaza of fuel and lifesaving aid, acts of collective punishment that amount to war crimes and include the use of starvation of civilians as a weapon of war. Fewer trucks have entered Gaza and fewer aid missions have been permitted to reach northern Gaza in the several weeks since the ruling than in the weeks preceding it….”   

Famine 

Cohn writes: “‘The Israeli government is starving Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians, putting them in even more peril than before the World Court’s binding order,” said Omar Shakir, who is Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch. ‘The Israeli government has simply ignored the court’s ruling, and in some ways even intensified its repression, including further blocking lifesaving aid.’”

“On March 18, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, the world’s leading tracker of humanitarian crises, reported that a state of famine is ‘imminent’ in Gaza unless there is an immediate ceasefire and full access granted to protect civilians; provide food, water and medicine; and restore health, water, energy and sanitation services.”

South Africa Asks the ICJ to Order Additional Measures

“In light of Israel’s impending ground offensive in Rafah, South Africa returned to the ICJ on February 12 and requested additional provisional measures, according to Cohn. South Africa noted that Rafah [in southern Gaza] is generally home to 280,000 Palestinians. But as of February 12, 1.4 million people — more than half of Gaza’s population, about half of whom are children — were living there, predominantly in makeshift tents. 

“Pursuant to Israeli military evacuation orders, these people fled to Rafah from their homes and areas that had been largely destroyed by Israel. The International Committee of the Red Cross said there is ‘no option’ for them.

On February 16, the ICJ refused to order additional provisional measures. But the court quoted UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, who said that a large-scale assault against Rafah ‘would exponentially increase what is already a humanitarian nightmare with untold regional consequences.’ The court concluded: “This perilous situation demands immediate and effective implementation of the provisional measures indicated by the Court in its Order of 26 January 2024, which are applicable throughout the Gaza Strip, including in Rafah, and does not demand the indication of additional provisional measures.”

South Africa presses its case against Israel’s war

On March 6, as the slaughter continued, South Africa once again returned to the ICJ and requested additional provisional measures “in order urgently to ensure the safety and security of 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza, including over a million children.” South Africa asked the court to order: “All participants in the conflict must ensure that all fighting and hostilities come to an immediate halt, and that all hostages and detainees are released immediately.

“South Africa also urged the court to order that Israel immediately and effectively ‘enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address famine and starvation and the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians in Gaza.’ The measures South Africa requested would require Israel to (a) immediately suspend its military operations in Gaza; (b) lift its blockade of Gaza; (c) rescind all other existing measures and practices that directly or indirectly obstruct the access of Palestinians in Gaza to humanitarian assistance and basic services; and (d) ensure the provision of adequate and sufficient food, water, fuel, shelter, clothing, hygiene, sanitation requirements and medical aid.”

The ICJ has not yet ruled on South Africa’s March 6 request for additional provisional measures. 

Israel attacks aid workers

On April 1, 2024, as reported by Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan, Israel attacked a World Central Kitchen humanitarian convoy with three separate missile strikes while on a so-called “deconflicted” route in Gaza, killing seven of the aid group’s workers as they coordinated the delivery of hundreds of tons of food (https://democracynow.org/2024/4/4/israel_is_wielding_starvation_as_a). They add,

“The world-renowned chef José Andrés, founder of World Central Kitchen, who has worked in many conflict zones….said the convoy had coordinated their route with the Israeli military. He told Reuters, ‘They were target[ed] systematically, car by car…we were targeted deliberately, nonstop, until everybody was dead in this convoy.’”

“Israeli newspaper Haaretz published a timeline of the attack, describing at least three missile strikes. After the first strike, Haaretz reported, ‘some of the passengers were seen leaving the car after it was hit and switching to one of the other two…seconds later, another missile hit their car.’ Then, ‘the third car in the convoy approached, and the passengers began to transfer to it the wounded who had survived the second strike in order to get them out of danger. But then a third missile struck them.’”

“‘Of course,’ Goodman and Monihan continue, ‘these are not the only aid workers killed so far in Gaza. Jamie McGoldrick, the UN’s Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, stated, As of 20 March, at least 196 humanitarians had been killed in the Occupied Palestinian Territory since October 2023. This is nearly three times the death toll recorded in any single conflict in a year…There is no safe place left in Gaza.”

“The vast majority of those killed were Palestinians who worked for UNRWA, the UN’s principal relief agency in Gaza. +972 Magazine reported this week that the Israeli army has been using AI-driven targeting systems, one called ‘Lavender’ and another called ‘Where’s Daddy?’ that ‘systematically attacked the targeted individuals while they were in their homes — usually at night while their whole families were present. Thus, entire families are wiped out.’”

Some context: Israel control and repression of Palestinians is decades old

Phyllis Bennis reviews evidence on the relevance of Israeli Apartheid in creating the repressive conditions under which Palestinians have lived in an article for In These Times, Oct 12, 2023 (https://inthesetimes.com/article/israel-palestine-apartheid-occupation-war-seige).

Bennis argues this: “The only answer to the horrifying violence is to change the conditions from which it sprang. The first step is an immediate cease-fire.

“The violence in Gaza and Israel is bringing horrifying new levels of human suffering to both Israelis and Palestinians.

“Both sides have committed heinous violations of international law, and all attacks on civilians must be condemned. But if we’re serious about preventing such horrors in the future, we have to go beyond condemnation.

“We can’t understand how we got here — or how to end the crisis — until we grapple with the immensity of Palestinian suffering. And for us in the United States, a big part of the equation means confronting the role our government and tax dollars play in enabling that oppression to continue.”

Bennis continues. “Since 2007, Gazans have lived under siege, prohibited from leaving their open air prison by a high-security militarized wall and platoons of Israeli soldiers.

“Well before the latest escalation, the transit of most goods was banned. Gazans couldn’t get construction materials to repair the apartment blocks, power plants, water treatment facilities, hospitals, school, mosques and churches that Israel bombed repeatedly — in 2008, 2012, 2014, 2018 and 2021.

“Emergency medical permits were often denied, leaving many Gazans to die without care.

“Electricity was already limited. A 72-year-old woman in Gaza told a reporter last January, ​‘It is hard to imagine, but we used to experience 24 hours of electricity each day in Gaza; now we are lucky if we get six.’

“Water was already unavailable except by expensive purchases from Israeli water companies. And food has long been scarce — by the age of two, 20% of Gaza’s children are already stunted.

Now, Bennis reports, the Israeli war is causing even worse outcomes.

“On October 9, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant called for a ​‘total siege’ of Gaza. ​‘No electricity, no food, no water, no gas — it’s all closed,’ he said. For Gaza’s already impoverished and malnourished population, that’s not just collective punishment — it’s genocide.”

“Hospitals will be unable to treat patients. Families will starve or die of thirst.

Gallant is transforming an existing long-term risk of early death into an immediate, lethal threat. It’s a policy consciously and specifically designed to kill innocent children, babies, elders — everyone.”

“For decades, Palestinian resistance has taken overwhelmingly non-violent forms, including the Great March of Return in 2018-2019, a peaceful Gaza protest that was met with overwhelming lethal violence by Israeli forces. But the world didn’t hear — or if it heard, it didn’t answer. When the UN warned in 2012 and 2015 that by 2020 Gaza would be ​‘unlivable’ without a ​‘herculean effort’ by the international community, the world didn’t respond.

“This time the resistance took a violent form, including Hamas targeting civilians in horrifying ways that are illegal under international law. Those illegitimate acts must be condemned. But if we’re serious about preventing violence — all violence — we need to remember they didn’t come out of nowhere.”

Bennis continues. “We need to change the conditions from which this brutality sprang. Sending more bombs, warplanes, guns and bullets won’t solve the problem. We’ve been providing Israel billions of our tax dollars—supplying about 20% of Israel’s entire military budget—for years. And we’ve done it without putting any conditions on an Israeli military that’s enforced a brutal siege and is indiscriminately bombing Gaza today.

“That must end. We also need to stop protecting Israel from being held accountable in the International Criminal Court, and we need to stop vetoing virtually every UN resolution criticizing Israeli violations of human rights.

“We need an immediate cease-fire right now. And we need to hold our own government accountable — which includes stopping Washington’s enabling of Israel’s oppression of Palestinians.

Israel’s apartheid regime

Israel’s 55-year occupation of Palestinian Territory is rooted in an Israeli enforced apartheid system. This is the basic point made by Michael Lynk for the UN, March 25, 2022 (https://ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/03/israels-55-year-occupation-palestinian-territory-apartheid-un-human-rights).

A UN expert, Michael Lynk, called today on the international community to accept and adopt the findings in his current report, echoing recent findings by Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights organizations, that apartheid is being practiced by Israel in the occupied Palestinian territory.

“There is today in the Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967 a deeply discriminatory dual legal and political system that privileges the 700,000 Israeli Jewish settlers living in the 300 illegal Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank,” said Michael Lynk, the UN Special Rapporteur for the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967.

“Living in the same geographic space, but separated by walls, checkpoints, roads and an entrenched military presence, are more than three million Palestinians, who are without rights, living under an oppressive rule of institutional discrimination and without a path to a genuine Palestinian state that the world has long promised is their right.

“Another two million Palestinians live in Gaza, described regularly as an ‘open-air prison’, without adequate access to power, water or health, with a collapsing economy and with no ability to freely travel to the rest of Palestine or the outside world.”

The Special Rapporteur said that a political regime which so intentionally and clearly prioritizes fundamental political, legal and social rights to one group over another within the same geographic unit on the basis of one’s racial-national-ethnic identity satisfies the international legal definition of apartheid.

“Apartheid is not, sadly, a phenomenon confined to the history books on southern Africa,” he said in his report to the Human Rights Council. “The 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court came into law after the collapse of the old South Africa. It is a forward-looking legal instrument which prohibits apartheid as a crime against humanity today and into the future, wherever it may exist.”

Lynk said that Israel’s military rule in the occupied Palestinian territory has been deliberately built with the intention of enduring facts on the ground – primarily through settlements and barricades – to demographically engineer a permanent, and illegal, Israeli sovereign claim over occupied territory, while confining Palestinians in smaller and more confined reserves of disconnected land. 

This has been accomplished in part through a long-standing series of inhuman(e) acts by the Israeli military towards the Palestinians that have been integral to the occupation, he said. Lynk points to arbitrary and extra-judicial killings, torture, the denial of fundamental rights, an abysmal rate of child deaths, collective punishment, an abusive military court system, periods of intensive Israeli military violence in Gaza and home demolitions.

Lynk also refers to a number of recent reports and opinions issued by respected Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights organizations that have come to the same conclusion on the practice of apartheid by Israel. He added that leading international personalities – including former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor and former Israeli Attorney General Michael Ben-Yair – have also all called this apartheid.

The Special Rapporteur said the international community bears much responsibility for this present state of affairs. “For more than 40 years, the UN Security Council and General Assembly have stated in hundreds of resolutions that Israel’s annexation of occupied territory is unlawful, its construction of hundreds of Jewish settlements are illegal, and its denial of Palestinian self-determination breaches international law,” he said.

“To end the practice of apartheid in the occupied Palestinian territory, the Special Rapporteur called on the international community to assemble an imaginative and vigorous menu of accountability measures to bring the Israeli occupation and its apartheid practices in the occupied Palestinian territory to a complete end.”

Ecocide

Ecocide, Jake Johnson reports on March 29, 2024, is a 'Critical Dimension of Israel's Genocidal Campaign' in Gaza (https://commondreams.org/news/ecocide-israel-gaza).

Analysis by a research group found that roughly 40% of Gaza land that was previously used for food production has been destroyed by Israeli forces.

The widespread destruction Israel's military has inflicted on Gaza's farmland and agricultural infrastructure amounts to a "deliberate act of ecocide," according to a new investigation that uses satellite imagery to survey the extent of the damage.

“Released Friday ahead of Palestine's Land Day, the analysis by the London-based research group Forensic Architecture (FA) shows that Israel's ground forces—including tanks and other military vehicles—have advanced over half of Gaza's farms and orchards, critical food sources that the besieged enclave's population has worked tirelessly to cultivate in the face of decades of occupation.

"Since 2014, Palestinian farmers along Gaza's perimeter have seen their crops sprayed by airborne herbicides and regularly bulldozed, and have themselves faced sniper fire by the Israeli occupation forces," FA said. "Along that engineered 'border,' sophisticated systems of fences and surveillance reinforce a military buffer zone."

Comparing satellite imagery from prior to Israel's invasion and the present, FA found that roughly 40% of Gaza land that was previously used for food production has been destroyed by Israeli forces. Nearly a third of Gaza's greenhouses have been demolished, according to the investigation.

"In total, Forensic Architecture has identified more than 2,000 agricultural sites, including farms and greenhouses, which have been destroyed since October 2023, often to be replaced with Israeli military earthworks," the group said. "This destruction has been most intense in the northern part of Gaza, where 90% of greenhouses were destroyed in the early stages of the ground invasion."

“It is no surprise, then, that northern Gaza is currently experiencing famine conditions, with most of the population there at imminent risk of starvation as Israeli forces impede the flow of humanitarian assistance and continue their relentless bombing campaign.”

An expert panel convened by Stop Ecocide International has defined ecocide as "unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts."

Ecocide is officially recognized as a crime in at least 10 countries, including France, Ecuador, Russia, and Ukraine. Earlier this week, the European Council adopted new rules that include a provision criminalizing acts deemed "comparable to ecocide."

FA's analysis argues that Israel's latest military assault on the Gaza Strip and the intentional targeting of the enclave's agriculture is "a critical dimension of Israel's genocidal campaign," fueling both a humanitarian and environmental disaster.

"The targeted farms and greenhouses are fundamental to local food production for a population already under a decades-long siege," the research group said. "The effects of this systematic agricultural destruction are exacerbated by other deliberate acts of deprivation of critical resources for Palestinian survival in Gaza."

"These acts include the well-reported, catastrophic, and Israeli-made famine ongoing in Gaza, continued obstruction of humanitarian aid destined for Gaza, the destruction of medical infrastructure, the destruction beyond repair of other areas of civilian infrastructure, including bakeries, schools, mosques, churches, and cultural heritage sites," the group added.

Concluding thoughts

The U.S. support for Israel with weapons and diplomatically goes back decades. Israel has subjugated the people of Gaza to periodic military onslaughts, ecocide, limited the ability of Gazans to leave this narrow strip of land, controlled access to food, water, health care resources, and left them increasingly desperate just to survive.

The current Israeli war in Gaza just makes their conditions ever-more life-threatening. These are well-known facts. 

In offering unconditional support, the Biden administration is carrying out a long-standing morally corrupt U.S. pro-Israeli policy. It remains to be seen whether Biden will change any of this. If he goes on supporting this war, it does not bode well for his presidential campaign and there is a good chance that he will lose votes in the November presidential election.

At the same time, if Trump and the Republicans win in November, there will be no restraints on U.S. support of Israel’s genocidal policy. Julia Conley reports,

“U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg became the latest Republican lawmaker to openly call for the genocide of Palestinian people in Gaza, saying at a town hall that instead of sending humanitarian aid to starving civilians there, the U.S. should ‘get it over quick’ by dropping a nuclear bomb on the besieged enclave” (https://commondreams.org/news/tim-walberg-gaza). 

What makes better sense is to support a cease fire and peace. This is the message that Ralph Nader and many others are sending to U.S. officials (https://commondreams.org/opinion/biden-give-peace-a-chance). Nader points to the large and active opposition to Biden’s policies.

“…public dissatisfaction with the dictatorial decision-making by the White House and the absence of congressional action is growing rapidly. More and more labor unions are now opposing Biden’s bombings, Jewish Americans working with Jewish Voice for Peace and If Not Now are brilliantly organizing demonstrations. Veterans for Peace’s 27 chapters around the country are in the streets peacefully demanding a cease-fire, cessation of weapons shipments, and major increases in humanitarian aid. They are mostly ignored by the corporate media, NPR, and PBS.

“Religious groups are beseechingly calling for peace. This week in the latest public letter, 140 global Christian leaders, organized by Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP) called on President Biden ‘…to have the moral courage to end U.S. complicity in the ongoing violence and, instead, do everything in [his] power to…’ stop the ‘death and destruction’ in Palestine.”