Skip to content

International Law

Getting Serious About Halting Israeli Genocide

December 15, 2023 Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies, Popular Resistance. , , , , , , ,
Many experts compare apartheid Israel to apartheid South Africa. Speeches at the UN may have helped to bring down South Africa’s apartheid regime, but change didn’t come until countries around the world embraced a global campaign to economically and politically isolate it. The reason Israel’s die-hard supporters in the United States have tried to ban, or even criminalize, the campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) is not that it is illegitimate or anti-semitic. It is precisely because boycotting, sanctioning and divesting from Israel may be an effective strategy to help bring down its genocidal, expansionist and unaccountable regime.

Dutch Court Case Looks To Cut Off Military Supplies To Israel

December 12, 2023 David Kattenburg, Mondoweiss. , , , ,
Strolling down the street or along a green pathway in the southern Netherlands, it’s not uncommon to see F-35 stealth bombers roaring overhead. They could be heading up to the Netherlands’ largest F-35 base in northern Leeuwarden, or to another airfield in the southeast. Or, perhaps, returning from an F-35 maintenance base in the southwest, near the small town of Woensdrecht. Woensdrecht Air Base, at the top of the Scheldt estuary, is one of three European ‘logistics hubs’ for Lockheed Martin’s “lethal,” “survivable” and “connected” F-35 Lightning II stealth bomber. F-35 users from across Europe (and Israel) go there to pick up spare parts, under a general license applying to all members of the “international F-35 program.”

The Fatal Post World War II Contradiction

December 6, 2023 Lawrence Davidson, Consortium News. , , , , , , ,
Human Beings are not showing off their best abilities of late. They appear to have mostly failed when it comes to climate change. For instance, “By 2100, average temperatures in the U.S. are expected to increase by approximately 8°F or more (4.4°C)” if the current high rate of greenhouse gas emissions is maintained. If “immediate and rapid greenhouse gas reductions” are achieved we can keep the warming down to “approximately 2.5°F (1.4°C).” Given our lack of international institutions with the capability of enforcing agreements and treaties, which do you think is more likely? Actually, we have been coming up short like this for a while.

Australia Too Is Aiding Gaza Massacre

November 28, 2023 Kellie Tranter, Consortium News. , , , , , , , ,
Australian-equipped Israeli Air Force F-35 Joint Strike Fighters are being used to commit what amounts to war crimes in Gaza by bombing civilians and providing aerial support for a murderous ground invasion. The Lockheed-Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter global supply program is a co-operative partnership, with Australia an enthusiastic member and part of the global supply chain. The Australian government cannot escape the uses to which these aircraft are being put. A week ago came news that Israel is stockpiling spare parts from the global supply chain, that Australia contributes to, for its F-35 ‘Adir’ fighter out of a central distribution hub in Europe.

Activating The Genocide Convention

November 20, 2023 Craig Murray, Consortium News. , , , ,
There are 149 states party to the Genocide Convention. Every one of them has the right to call out the genocide in progress in Gaza and report it to the United Nations.  In the event that another state party disputes the claim of genocide — and Israel, the United States and the United Kingdom are all states party — then the International Court of Justice is required to adjudicate on “the responsibility of a State for genocide.” Note that here “parties to the dispute” means the states disputing the facts of genocide, not the parties to the genocide/conflict. Any single state party is able to invoke the convention.

Chris Hedges: The Horror, The Horror

November 13, 2023 Chris Hedges, Scheer Post. , , , , ,
Doha, Qatar: I am in the studio of Al Jazeera’s Arabic service watching a live feed from Gaza City. The Al Jazeera reporter in northern Gaza, because of the intense Israeli shelling, was forced to evacuate to southern Gaza. He left his camera behind. He trained it on Al-Shifa hospital, Gaza’s largest medical complex. It is night. Israeli tanks fire directly towards the hospital compound. Long horizontal red flashes. A deliberate attack on a hospital. A deliberate war crime. A deliberate massacre of the most helpless civilians, including the very sick and infants. Then the feed goes dead. We sit in front of the monitors. We are silent. We know what this means. No power. No water. No internet.

The Right Of Self-Defense

November 13, 2023 Craig Murray, Consortium News. , , , , ,
Israel does have the right of self-defence, but only in precisely the same way other countries do. In fact, the only unique factor about Israel here is that it is the only country to have been found by the International Court of Justice specifically to have abused and exceeded the concept of right of self-defence, in its treatment of the Palestinians. In 2004 the International Court of Justice, in an advisory opinion to the U.N. General Assembly, ruled illegal Israel’s construction of its great Wall, which is a fundamental part of the Israeli apartheid system. The court considered Israel’s argument of self-defence and ruled that this did not justify the numerous breaches of international law represented by the Wall.

The ‘Genocide Moment’

October 30, 2023 Gareth Porter, Consortium News. , , , , , ,
Israel's systematic and wanton destruction of Gaza has raised long-standing issues of its political and legal culpability over the treatment of Palestinians to a new level of seriousness.  It obviously poses familiar issues of Israeli war crimes, and Amnesty International had already clearly designated it as such after just the first week. The human rights organization also asked the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to “urgently expedite” its investigation of the aims of all parties. But this Israeli campaign now poses the even graver issue of genocide of Palestinians as a nation. The utter devastation of Gaza and the vast numbers of civilians facing death from bombardment and from deliberately engineered starvation and sickness already presents the world with a spectacle of mass murder of unspeakable proportions. 

Here Are Some War Crimes Committed By Israel In Gaza

October 27, 2023 Mnar Adley, MintPress News. , , , ,
Amidst extensive media coverage of the atrocities in Gaza, an unsettling pattern emerges. Media reports often document Israel’s airstrikes on civilian areas, hospitals, schools, and UN shelters. Yet, they consistently accompany these accounts with a disclaimer, attributing these actions to a response to the Hamas attacks of October 7. This narrative not only justifies Israel’s collective punishment of Gaza but also depicts Palestinians as mere collateral damage, implying their lives hold little worth. This soft propaganda, being pushed upon billions of people by the media, effectively whitewashed Israel’s crimes instead of holding it accountable for its wanton breaches of international law. 

Rights Lawyers Release Legal Analysis Of US Complicity In Israel’s Genocide

October 23, 2023 Center for Constitutional Rights. , , , , ,
On the heels of President Biden’s visit to Israel and as the Palestinian death toll in Gaza passes 3,300, expert attorneys from the U.S.-based Center for Constitutional Rights released a legal and factual analysis of Israel’s unfolding crime of genocide against the Palestinian people and U.S. complicity in this grave international law violation. The emergency briefing paper comes soon after the U.S veto of a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning both Hamas’s attack on Israel and all violence against civilians and calling for humanitarian access to Gaza. It also comes as President Biden seeks to secure additional, unconditional military support for Israel.

United Nations Committee Releases Exhaustive Study On Israeli Occupation

September 6, 2023 Jeff Wright, Mondoweiss. , , , ,
Last week, the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP) issued a study two years in the making: The Legality of the Israeli Occupation of the Occupied Territories, Including East Jerusalem. Committee Chair Ambassador Cheikh Niang introduced the study commissioned by the CEIRPP and prepared by the Irish Human Rights Centre of the National University of Ireland in Galway. Niang said, “The relevance and urgency of this study cannot be overstated… It is incumbent upon us, the international community, to deepen our understanding of the legal issues raised by this prolonged occupation and its profound impact on human rights, peace, and stability in the region.”

Nicaraguan Officials Hit With Sanctions Based On False Accusations

July 31, 2023 John Perry and Erik Mar, Covert Action Magazine. , , ,
On December 9, 2022, the government of the United Kingdom imposed sanctions on Sadrach Zelodón Rocha and Yohaira Hernández Chirino, the well-known Sandinista mayor and vice mayor of Matagalpa, Nicaragua, accusing both of “promoting and supporting grievous violations of human rights.” The sanctions, subjecting both to “an asset freeze and travel ban,” also extended to members of their immediate families. As one of us has known Zeledón Rocha and the rest of his immediate family for more than 30 years, the accusations struck us mostly as false. Furthermore, if they turned out to be true, the punishments seemed strangely irrelevant given the magnitude of the crimes, since they almost certainly would have close to zero personal impact.

NATO Against Evo Morales

July 3, 2023 Sacha Llorenti, Resumen English. , , ,
Those who only read the title of this article may find it overstated or exaggerated. However, remembering  10 years ago an episode that put the whole planet on alert, you will realize that the title is appropriate. Evo Morales was in Moscow, attending the Forum of Gas Exporting Countries. On July 2, 2013, he boarded the FAB 001 presidential plane to return to Bolivia. While he was flying through European skies, in a flight that seemed routine, Portugal, Spain, Italy and France set up an impassable siege, abruptly canceling the flight permits they had previously granted.

Alex Saab, Three Years As A Kidnapped Diplomat

June 24, 2023 Teri Mattson, WtF is Going on in Latin America and the Caribbean. , , ,
June 12, 2023 was the third anniversary of the illegal kidnapping and imprisonment by the US of Alex Saab. Because the brutality and cruelty of the US blockade was wreaking havoc on the economy and millions of the most vulnerable in Venezuela were being deliberately denied their human rights to the most basic necessities of daily life, President Nicolas Maduro tasked Saab with traveling around the world procuring food, medicines and fuel for his country. Breaking every treaty, protocol, law and norm of international diplomacy, the US plotted to have Saab arrested while in transit to Iran to fulfill his diplomatic mission, by pressing the Cape Verde government to illegally arrest him on June 12 2020.

US Imperialist Gangsterism And Cuba

June 14, 2023 Ajamu Baraka, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a Rogue State as “a nation or state regarded as breaking international law and posing a threat to the security of other nations.” This simple and neat definition not only perfectly captures the character of the relationship between Cuba and the United States, but also the character of U.S. policies toward the nations and peoples of our region and the world since its ascendancy as a global power at the end of the second imperialist war in 1945. And what was the driving interest for much of U.S. policies during the period since 1945? To prevent authentic decolonization in the Global South by incorporating emerging nations into its orbit of control.
«12345678910»