Skip to content

International Law

Overcoming Obstacles To United Nations Maintenance Of Peace

January 25, 2024 Lawrence Wittner, Counter Punch. , , ,
Although, according to the UN Charter, the United Nations was established to “maintain international peace and security,” it has often fallen short of this goal. Russia’s ongoing military invasion of Ukraine and the more recent Israeli-Palestinian war in Gaza provide the latest examples of the world organization’s frequent paralysis in the face of violent international conflict. The hobbling of the Security Council, the UN agency tasked with enforcing international peace and security, bears the lion’s share of the responsibility for this weakness. Under the rules set forth by the UN Charter, each permanent member of the Security Council has the power to veto Security Council resolutions.

Palestinian-Led Initiative Warns European Officials Of Intention To Prosecute Over Complicity With Israel

January 24, 2024 Justice and Accountability for Palestine, Popular Resistance. , , ,
The Justice and Accountability for Palestine Initiative has issued a stark warning to European public officials of the Austrian, French, German and Dutch governments that they could be individually liable for their role in aiding and abetting Israeli war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of Genocide through their involvement in providing military, economic, and political support to Israel.  Sustaining such assistance implicates European public officials in the perpetration of war crimes and crimes against humanity as well as failure to prevent the crime of genocide. This may render officials criminally liable for violating international law by ‘aiding and abetting’  Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people. 

South Africa’s Case Against Israel Is ‘Make Or Break’ For International Bodies

January 22, 2024 Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG. , , , , , ,
Beginning on January 11, the International Court of Justice held two days of testimony regarding the case brought by South Africa against the state of Israel calling on The Court to impose provisional measures to stop Israel from committing acts of genocide against Palestinian people. Clearing the FOG speaks with South African lawyer and activist, Azhar Sakoor, about the significance of the case and other legal efforts aiming to hold all who are complicit with genocide in Palestine accountable. Sakoor also describes the current legal efforts as a 'make or break' moment for international institutions such as the United Nations that will determine whether they continue to exist or are replaced by other institutions and methods of upholding international law.

Global South Takes Israel To Court

January 19, 2024 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. , , , , , ,
On 11 January, Adila Hassim, an advocate of the High Court of South Africa, stood before the judges of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and said: ‘Genocides are never declared in advance. But this court has the benefit of the past 13 weeks of evidence that shows incontrovertibly a pattern of conduct and related intention that justifies a plausible claim of genocidal acts’. This statement anchored Hassim’s presentation of South Africa’s 84-page complaint against Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Both Israel and South Africa are parties to the 1948 Genocide Convention.

As US Veto Power Enables Genocide, There Are Options to Protect Gaza

December 27, 2023 Marjorie Cohn, Truthout. , , , , , , , ,
As Israel continues its genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza — with the death toll now exceeding 20,000 (about 70 percent women and children) — the world seems powerless to stop the slaughter. The Biden administration, Israel’s chief enabler, defanged the resolution that was ultimately passed by the UN Security Council on December 22, rendering it merely symbolic. The final resolution calls for humanitarian assistance but not for a ceasefire which would allow aid to reach the people of Gaza. The U.S. saved diplomatic face by not employing its customary veto, but it did not vote for the resolution, electing instead to abstain.

Venezuela Secures Release Of Government Envoy Alex Saab

December 20, 2023 José Luis Granados Ceja, Venezuelanalysis. , , , , ,
Venezuela successfully negotiated the release of Alex Saab, a government envoy who spent more than three years detained. Saab landed in Caracas on Wednesday afternoon and was greeted by his family and Venezuelan government officials. His release comes as a result of a negotiation between the Nicolás Maduro government and the Joe Biden administration that will see the release of up to 36 people, 10 of them US citizens, currently detained in Venezuela. The Maduro government envoy was arrested during a refueling stopover in Cape Verde in June 2020 on his way to Iran to negotiate food and fuel import deals amidst US sanctions.

The JFK Assassination Was Good For Zionist Israel

December 17, 2023 Rick Sterling, MintPress News. , , , ,
President John F. Kennedy was assassinated sixty years ago. If he had lived and won a second term, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would have evolved differently. Possibly, the path toward Israeli apartheid and genocide in Gaza could have been avoided. In his short time in office, Kennedy significantly changed U.S. foreign policy. As documented in the book “JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Still Matters,” JFK resisted the CIA and military-industrial complex in the policies he set regarding the Third World and the Soviet Union. The Vietnam War, the assassination of Indonesia’s President Sukarno, and continued hostility to Cuba and the Soviet Union would not have happened had Kennedy lived and won a second term.

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. 
«12345678910»
assetto corsa mods

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

Donate Here

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! 

Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

Donate Here
Sign Up To Our Daily Digest

Independent media outlets are being suppressed and dropped by corporations like Google, Facebook and Twitter. Sign up for our daily email digest before it’s too late so you don’t miss the latest movement news.