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International Law

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.

Thousands To Protest Netanyahu Congressional Visit In Washington, DC

July 19, 2024 People's Dispatch. , , , ,
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to speak on July 24 in front of the United States Congress following an invitation by leading politicians from both mainstream parties. Netanyahu is considered a war criminal internationally, with the ICC expected to issue a warrant for his arrest within the next two weeks—however, he is completely safe in the United States, which is not a state party to the Rome Statute of the ICC.  Both the Israeli Prime Minister and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are wanted for “war crimes and crimes against humanity.” In May, Chief ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan applied for arrest warrants for the two officials, which are expected to be issued within the next two weeks.

Top US Law Schools Present Undeniable Evidence Of Israel’s Gaza Genocide

June 21, 2024 Kit Klarenberg, MintPress News. , , , , , ,
On May 15, the University Network for Human Rights (UNHR), a U.S.-based advocacy group training undergraduates in human rights law at colleges and universities worldwide to counter abusive state, corporate, or private conduct, published a 105-page analysis of international law and its application to Israel’s military actions since October 7, 2023. Drawing on extensive evidence and historical legal precedents, the findings leave no doubt that Israel has committed horrific breaches of the 1948 Genocide Convention in Gaza. A collaborative effort by some of the West’s most prestigious law schools, the report has now been submitted to the United Nations.

The US List Of Countries Allegedly Sponsors Of Terrorism

June 20, 2024 Alfred De Zayas, Scheer Post. , , ,
In the US State Department’s toolkit, unilateral coercive measures (UCMs) are used to blackmail, bully and intimidate States that do not readily accept US hegemony. Placing a country in the US list of countries sponsors for terrorism is intended to lend some phony legitimacy to UCMs imposed against targeted States. Unilateral Coercive Measures are not “sanctions”, since the US has no legal or moral right to sanction or “punish” other states.  Nor do the American UCMs satisfy the legal criteria to be considered “retorsion” or “countermeasures” for purposes of the International Law Commission’s code on State responsibility. 

Israel Claims Others Are Shredding International Law As It Does So

June 16, 2024 Sam Husseini. , , , , ,
One of the things my dad, who was driven out of Palestine in 1948 and tried to scrutinize every move on Palestine for decades, taught me is that there’s this trick of a thief crying “thief!” to divert attention from his crimes. It’s a mantra on X/twitter now that for Israel, every accusation is a confession. An example of that which was clear to me in October was: “Israel Falsely Claimed Hamas Slaughtered Babies So It Could Actually Slaughter Babies” And that has been borne out by various investigations since, from Al Jazeera and most recently by David Sheen from the Electronic Intifada for example.

United Kingdom Foreign Office Revolt Over Gaza

June 5, 2024 Matt Benson, Consortium News. , , , ,
Amid Britain’s ongoing complicity and support for Israel’s “plausible genocide” in Gaza, an increasing number of staff in the Foreign Office, I’m told up to 300, have formally raised concerns with ministers, seeking a change of course. They are questioning ministers’ actions and policy in relation to Gaza and asking to see the legal advice they received that this is based on — advice that they have so far refused to publish, despite calls to do so from some in Parliament. But Foreign Secretary David Cameron has not responded to these concerns directly. Instead, he sent the Foreign Office’s political director, Christian Turner, to have a meeting with a small contingent of those raising concerns about U.K. policy and breaches of international humanitarian law in Gaza.

‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 234: Israel Bombs Displaced Palestinians

May 28, 2024 Qassam Muaddi, Mondoweiss. , , , , , ,
Israeli forces killed at least 40 Palestinians in multiple airstrikes that targeted a makeshift tent camp of displaced Palestinians in the northwestern part of Rafah. The bombed area is part of the Israeli-designated “humanitarian safe zone,” where the Israeli army ordered Palestinians to flee on May 6 as it began its ground invasion of the southern Gaza Strip city. The tent camp is adjacent to an UNRWA warehouse. Local media sources said that some eight Israeli missiles fell on the crowded camp after midnight, killing and wounding dozens of people and causing fires to spread across the camp. The Palestinian civil defense said its teams had to use all the remaining fire trucks in the Rafah governorate to put down the fires, while the Palestinian Red Crescent Society spokesperson, Nibal Farsakh, said that the PRCS teams rescued people with severe burns and wounds who “where trapped in the flames” for a long time before being rescued.
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