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International Law

The Law Has Failed Palestinians, It’s Time For A Protection Force

September 30, 2024 Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG. , , , , , ,
It has been nearly a year since Hamas and other Palestinian resistance fighters broke out of Gaza and the illegal Israeli occupation launched a devastating and genocidal war on Gaza, which has now expanded to all of the Occupied Palestinian Territory and other countries in the region. Many attempts within the United Nations to stop the war and to hold Israel accountable have failed to protect Palestinians, as have other international bodies. Clearing the FOG speaks with human rights lawyer Ousman Noor, who started a petition demanding that an international protection force be established urgently to protect Palestinians. Noor explains how people can use the petition to pressure nations to take action.

Legal Experts Criticize Biden For Praising Israel’s Killing Of Nasrallah

September 30, 2024 Quds News Network, Orinoco Tribune. , , , , , , , , , , ,
US President Joe Biden issued a statement praising Israel for the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, calling it “a measure of justice” for the victims of Hezbollah’s actions, including Americans, Israelis, and Lebanese civilians. The assassination, carried out by Israeli airstrikes, has killed dozens of civilians in addition to Nasrallah and threatens a full-scale regional war. The US statement has sparked sharp criticism by legal experts who argue that the endorsement of extrajudicial killings undermines international law. Legal scholars and human rights advocates have expressed concern over Biden’s framing of the operation, calling it a dangerous precedent that disregards the rule of law.

Beyond Hegemony

September 29, 2024 Jeffrey Sachs, Scheer Post. , , ,
We are at a new phase of human history because of the confluence of three interrelated trends. First, and most pivotal, the Western-led world system, in which countries of the North Atlantic region dominate the world militarily, economically, and financially, has ended. Second, the global ecological crisis marked by human-induced climate change, the destruction of biodiversity, and the massive pollution of the environment, will lead to fundamental changes of the world economy and governance. Third, the rapid advance of technologies across several domains—artificial intelligence, computing, biotechnology, geoengineering—will profoundly disrupt the world economy and politics.

US Imposes Another Year Of Blockade On Cuba

September 25, 2024 Alejandra Garcia, Resumen English. , , ,
In September, and for the fourth consecutive year, U.S. President Joe Biden renewed U.S. sanctions on Cuba under the Trading with the Enemy Act (TWEA), an archaic 1917 law designed to cut off trade with Germany during World War I and a significant pillar of the blockade. The announcement means that the economic blockade, a policy upheld by both Republican and Democratic administrations for over six decades, will remain imposed on the island through 2025, despite Cuba’s urgent calls for it to end. Let’s not forget that it was Biden, the democrat who while campaigning for president, said he would improve relations with us.

UN General Assembly Vote Could Mark Turning Point For International Law

September 21, 2024 Mitchell Plitnick, Mondoweiss. , , ,
The United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly passed a resolution on Wednesday demanding that Israel end its “unlawful presence” in the occupied West Bank and Gaza within a year. More than that, the resolution called for sanctioning Israel, forbidding any member state from doing business with, promoting the legitimacy of, or in any way helping to sustain Israel’s presence in the West Bank and Gaza. As is always the case with General Assembly resolutions, the resolution is unenforceable and does not have the full weight of international law. But it still matters, which explains why Israel, despite the ongoing and full support of the United States, is concerned about it.

Developing Countries Demand Withdrawal Of Sanctions By US, Allies

September 17, 2024 Abdul Rahman, People's Dispatch. , , ,
In the 57th session of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) held in Geneva on Friday, September 13, China and several other developing countries from across the world denounced all forms of illegal unilateral coercive measures by the US and its allies, demanding their immediate and unconditional withdrawal. The interactive session was held to discuss the latest report submitted by Alena Douhan, the UN special rapporteur on the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures, to the UNHRC on September 9. Representatives from various countries agreed that these unilateral sanctions, as they are commonly referred to, violate basic principles of the UN charter by interfering in other countries’ internal matters and incapacitating governments in the developing world in carrying out basic developmental work.

Legal Experts Push Biden To Drop ‘Punitive And Deadly’ Sanctions

September 13, 2024 Brett Wilkins, AFJG. , , ,
As human rights defenders on August 12th marked the 75th anniversary of the Fourth Geneva Convention and its prohibition of collective punishment, hundreds of legal experts and groups urged the global community—and the United States government in particular—”to comply with international law by ending the use of broad, unilateral coercive measures that extensively harm civilian populations.” In a letter to U.S. President Joe Biden, the jurists and legal groups wrote that “75 years ago, in the aftermath of one of the most destructive conflicts in human history, nations of the world came together in Geneva, Switzerland, to establish clear legal limits on the treatment of noncombatants in times of war.”

Biden’s Memo Invoked To Stop Arms To Israel

September 5, 2024 Julia Conley, Consortium News. , , , , ,
As U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller was telling reporters this week that assessments regarding whether Israel is abiding by international humanitarian law in Gaza are ongoing, more than two dozen rights groups were telling the Biden administration that it need look no further than its own memo released months ago to see that the U.S. must end its support for the Israeli military. Groups including Amnesty International, the Center for Civilians in Conflict and Refugees International were among 25 organizations that signed a letter sent Tuesday to President Joe Biden; Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee; and their foreign policy advisers.

An Arms Embargo On Israel Is Not A Radical Idea, It’s The Law

August 31, 2024 Yoana Tchoukleva, Mondoweiss. , , , , ,
As Israel launches its largest military assault in the West Bank in twenty years, I cannot stop thinking about the people I met in the occupied territory. I think of the mother in Jenin who was on the phone with her two sons seconds before their house was burned in an Israeli raid. I think of the wife of a man who was being held in an Israeli prison without charge or trial asking me, “Is there anything you can do? My husband is dying.” I think of the farmer who gifted me a melon even though he could barely put food on his own table and I was there only for a short period of time, traveling and volunteering with Faz3a, an international protective presence organization.

Palestinians Seek Review Of Case Charging Biden With Enabling Genocide

August 31, 2024 Center for Constitutional Rights. , , , , ,
August 30, San Francisco – Palestinians, Palestinian Americans, and Palestinians human rights groups are urging the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to review their lawsuit charging President Biden and his aides with enabling Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Last month, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit affirmed the decision of a lower court, which dismissed the case on jurisdictional grounds even as it said Israel’s assault “plausibly” constituted genocide. In an en banc petition filed late yesterday, the plaintiffs argue that courts have a constitutional duty to assess the legality of the Biden administration's actions.

Legal Experts: US Unilateral Economic Sanctions Violate International Law

August 13, 2024 National Lawyers Guild International Committee. , , ,
New York, NY — A new letter from legal groups, legal scholars, and attorneys calls on the Biden administration to end the use of broad unilateral economic sanctions, noting their civilian harms and illegality under international law. The letter, sent to the White House today, is signed by 38 organizations and 200 individual attorneys, including dozens of legal scholars. The letter notes that, 75 years since the signing of the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit the collective punishment of civilian populations as a war crime, “collective punishment is a standard practice of US foreign policy in the form of broad, unilateral economic sanctions, such as those imposed on Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran.”

Let’s Think About How To Build A More Peaceful World

August 9, 2024 Lawrence S. Wittner, ZNetwork. , , ,
Although the current U.S. presidential campaign has focused almost entirely on domestic issues, Americans live on a planet engulfed in horrific wars, an escalating arms race, and repeated threats of nuclear annihilation. Amid this dangerous reality, shouldn’t we give some thought to how to build a more peaceful future? Back in 1945, toward the end of the most devastating war in history, the world’s badly battered nations, many of them in smoldering ruins, agreed to create the United Nations, with a mandate to “maintain international peace and security.” It was not only a relevant idea, but one that seemed to have a lot of potential.

Report: One Third Of The World Under US Sanctions

July 27, 2024 News Desk, The Cradle. , , , ,
The US government currently imposes sanctions on a third of all nations on earth in a situation that disproportionately affects low-income countries – 60 percent of which are under US sanctions of some kind – according to an analysis of the White House’s long-standing policy of economic warfare by the Washington Post. This trend spiked during the last four US governments and reached a fever pitch under President Biden, who imposed over 6,000 sanctions in just two years. “It is the only thing between diplomacy and war and, as such, has become the most important foreign policy tool in the US arsenal,” Bill Reinsch, a former Commerce Department official, told the US news outlet.

Netanyahu’s Visit To Congress Underscores US Contempt For International Law

July 26, 2024 Marjorie Cohn, Truthout. , , , , ,
The U.S. has long ignored many commands of international law, but its casual disregard of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has come into sharp focus this week as the U.S. Congress extends a warm welcome to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, just five days after the ICJ notified all UN member states that they have a legal “obligation not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by Israel’s illegal presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.” The World Court’s historic 83-page advisory opinion, which was issued on July 19 and held that the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory is illegal, was quickly hailed by Middle East political expert Nomi Bar-Yaacov as a “legal earthquake” and the strongest decision that the court had ever issued.

ICJ Says Israel’s Presence In Palestinian Territory Is Unlawful

July 19, 2024 Al Jazeera. , , , , , ,
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has ruled that Israel’s continued presence in the occupied Palestinian territory is unlawful and should come to an end “as rapidly as possible”. Nawaf Salam, president of the ICJ in The Hague, read out the nonbinding advisory opinion issued by the 15-judge panel on Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory on Friday. The judges pointed to a wide list of policies – including the building and expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, use of the area’s natural resources, the annexation and imposition of permanent control over lands and discriminatory policies against Palestinians – all of which it said violated international law.
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