The expert is not the first to warn that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians. Scholars and states, including a case brought by South Africa in December, have warned that offensive acts carried out by Israel in their war against Hamas have amounted to acts of genocide against civilians in the Gaza Strip.
A United Nations-appointed expert has found that there are “reasonable grounds” to believe Israel is committing genocide in the Gaza Strip, according to a report released on Monday. The expert said there are clear indications that Israel has violated three of the five acts listed under the UN Genocide Convention.
“It is my solemn duty to report on the worst of what humanity is capable of and to present my findings,” Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in the Occupied Territories, told the UN Human Rights Council on Tuesday. The Italian lawyer is one of dozens of independent human rights experts mandated by the UN to report and advise on specific themes and crises.
The UN expert wrote that she found “reasonable grounds to believe” that the “threshold indicating the commission of the crime of genocide against Palestinians as a group in Gaza has been met”.
“I implore member states to abide by their obligations, which start with imposing an arms embargo and sanctions on Israel and so ensure that the future does not continue to repeat itself,” she said.
The report, “The Anatomy of a Genocide”, writes that after “five months of military operations, Israel has destroyed Gaza”. It notes that over 30,000 Palestinians have been killed, including more than 13,000 children.
At least 71,000 Palestinians have also been injured, the report says, with many receiving “life-changing mutilations”. At least 70% of residential areas have also been destroyed, and 80% of the whole population has been “forcibly displaced”.
“This report concludes that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating Israel’s commission of genocide is met,” the report writes. “One of the key findings is that Israel’s executive and military leadership and soldiers have intentionally distorted jus in bello principles, subverting their protective functions, in an attempt to legitimize genocidal violence against the Palestinian people.”
Albanese was prohibited by Israel to visit the war-torn region, therefore the report was based on “data and analyses from organizations on the ground, international jurisprudence, investigative reports and consultations with affected individuals, authorities, civil society and experts.”
Nor did the report examine the crimes committed by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups in Israel on October 7—which it “firmly condemns” and urges the accountability of—as it is beyond the “geographic scope” of the expert’s mandate. It also noted that Israel has carried out “five major assaults” on Palestine since it imposed the siege on Gaza in 2007.
“By Day 9, this assault had already caused more deaths (2,670) than Israel’s previous deadliest war against Gaza, in 2014 (2,251). Only a fraction of the mass killing, severe harm and ruthless, life-threatening conditions inflicted on Palestinians over the following five months of assault can be captured in this report,” she writes.
The 1948 Genocide Convention, which was enacted in the wake of the mass murder of Jews in the Nazi Holocaust, defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious groups”. Israel’s diplomatic mission in Geneva has rejected the report and maintained that the war is targeting the Islamist group Hamas and not Palestinian civilians.
An official from the US, Israel’s top ally, told AFP that Washington is “aware” of the report but has “no reason to believe Israel has committed acts of genocide in Gaza”.
“Many could not bury and mourn their relatives, forced instead to leave their bodies decomposing in homes, in the street or under the rubble,” the report writes. “Thousands have been detained and systematically subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment. The incalculable collective trauma will be experienced for generations to come.”
“Israel’s actions have been driven by a genocidal logic integral to its settler-colonial project in Palestine, signaling a tragedy foretold.”
Watch RFK Jr announce his running-mate pick live here…
The Wall Street Journal reports that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has picked Nicole Shanahan, a California-based attorney who was previously married to Google co-founder Sergey Brin, as his running mate for his long-shot presidential bid, according to people familiar with the decision.
Shanahan, 38, also runs a foundation focused on reproductive rights, criminal justice and the environment.
Before backing Kennedy’s independent bid, Shanahan had previously been a donor to Democratic campaigns, including supporting Joe Biden’s election in 2020. Kennedy was slated to announce his choice Tuesday in Oakland, Calif., where Shanahan grew up.
Shanahan, a political novice, was thrust into the spotlight over her public split with Brin amid a brief alleged affair she had with Elon Musk in 2021 that ruptured the billionaires’ long friendship, The Wall Street Journal reported.
After the article published, Musk denied the allegations and Shanahan later followed suit. It isn’t clear yet whether Shanahan plans to assist by tapping into her own wealth.
The Kennedy campaign declined to comment.
Shanahan didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Ahead of the announcement, Kennedy’s campaign manager confirmed on X that Shanahan was under consideration, along with several others including New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers and Mike Rowe, host of Discovery Channel’s Dirty Jobs.
Meanwhile, lured by the promise of turnkey ballot access across the country, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr is seriously considering a run to win the Libertarian Party presidential nomination. However, his stance on the Israel-Gaza war and other issues could make his candidacy a tough sell with non-interventionist libertarians.
Navigating the varied and complex patchwork of state ballot-access qualifying rules is one of the most grueling and expensive impediments to anyone seeking to challenge America’s two-party duopoly — to say nothing of the legal challenges filed by the Republican and Democratic parties along the way. So far, reports Politico, Kennedy’s backers say they’ve cleared the key hurdles in just eight states. Meanwhile, it’s already pretty much a given that the Libertarian Party will be on the ballot in all 50.
The top ticket will be selected by delegates at the party’s national convention in Washington DC over Memorial Day weekend. Selected by state conventions, those delegates are free to vote for whomever they like at the national convention. Kennedy spoke at the the Free State Project’s annual “PorcFest” last summer (Ryan David Brown for New York Times)
Kennedy’s flirtation with Libertarian Party members has been simmering since last year, and has included appearances on libertarian podcasts and an interview with Reason magazine. His most direct outreach came with a February appearance at the party’s California state convention, which has been credited for helping set a new California Libertarian convention attendance record. “I’ve always been aligned with libertarians on most issues,” Kennedy told Reason last summer. “I mean, there’s tweaks that I have.”
Some of those tweaks are doozies. For example, Kennedy said if Congress passed a so-called assault weapon ban, “I would sign it.” (On the other hand, he also said, “Anybody who tells you that they’re going to be able to reduce gun violence through gun control at this point, I don’t think is being realistic.”) He’s also called for a $15 national minimum wage, more free childcare, and abolishing interest on all federal student loans
However, it’s Kennedy’s statements on Israel-Palestine that seem to have caused the most damage to his prospects with staunchly non-interventionist libertarians — which is to say, most libertarians — who oppose entangling alliances, foreign aid, and US-enabled warfare.
Kennedy has called for the United States to arm the “moral nation” of Israel, has expressed skepticism about a ceasefire in Gaza, and said “the Palestinian people are arguably the most pampered people by international aid organizations in the world.” Some libertarians are also put off by Kennedy’s embrace of controversial Israel advocate Shmuley Boteach.
In December, one of Kennedy’s campaign staffers resigned, criticizing him for, among other things, saying that collective punishment in Gaza is “ok” because “for ten years we did collective punishment of Iraq.”
On the other side of the ledger, Kennedy’s opposition to Covid vaccine mandates resonated with libertarians. He’s also pushed for more border security, accused the government of using Ukraine as a pawn to weaken Russia,”and promised to “unwind” the US empire. RFK Jr’s few overlaps with libertarian philosophy aren’t likely to be enough, nor arearguments that Kennedy’s name recognition would result in higher national vote counts for the party and thus easier ballot access going forward.
That’s because, in 2022, the Libertarian Party was taken over by members of the Mises Caucus, a group that counts Ron Paul, Friedrich Hayek, Murray Rothbard and Ludwig von Mises among its chief philosophical influencers.
In February, the Mises Caucus issued a statement flatly refuting any suggestion that it was open to considering Kennedy as a presidential candidate:
“We firmly oppose any strategy that would ‘rent out’ our party’s place on any state’s ballot to RFK, or indeed any candidate who has so many disqualifying deviations from the essential principles of libertarianism.”
The group also reiterated its endorsement of Michael Rectenwald for president and Clint Russell for vice president. Meanwhile, in a fiery but mostly peaceful February tweet, author, podcaster and Libertarian Institute director Scott Horton urged party members to prevent Kennedy from become the Libertarian Party’s standard-bearer:
“Jeffrey Epstein’s blood-guzzling friend RFK Jr. must be stopped. Can you imagine OUR candidate out their shilling for Israel in the middle of a massive ethnic cleansing campaign? Our party back in the hands of those who want to fight Russia and China over not being trans enough? The LP in the hands of libertarians can be the one of the most effective vehicles we have for obstructing the state and spreading the message of liberty. Let’s not blow it now after we’ve already won.”
Following Washington’s intervention, Israel stopped massacring Gazans in order to ethnically cleanse Palestine and expand its settlements. Israel has also agreed to allow humanitarian aid to pass through to the civilians it has trapped.
However, nothing has been resolved by both Benjamin Netanyahu’s revisionist Zionists and Ismail Haniyeh’s Hamas. These two groups, which claim to defend Jews and Arabs respectively, are in fact pursuing the British colonial project, formulated in 1915 by Lord Spencer, of a region incapable of defending itself.
Since 1948, the only solution, which has always been postponed, is that of a single bi-national state, as set out in UN Resolution 181.
Benny Gantz traveled to London to meet with National Security Advisor Tim Barrow. To his surprise, the Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, insisted on talking to him to tell him that there was no question of Israel becoming a state like any other. The British colonial project continues to stand in the way of peace.
The United States, which had planned to provoke early elections in Israel and influence the election of General Benny Gantz, was disappointed [1].
Invited to Washington, Gantz proved less pliable than expected: while he distinguished himself from Benjamin Netanyahu’s “revisionist Zionists” by recognizing the right of Arabs to live on their land, he was determined to eradicate Hamas from Gaza. And yet, the historic Hamas is none other than the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, an instrument of UK domination.
As a reminder, since 2017, Hamas has officially withdrawn from the Brotherhood, but its main leaders are still members and implement its long-term strategy. During the war against Syria, Hamas fought alongside Nato and Israel against the Syrian Arab Republic.
The Hamas current, which broke with the Brotherhood, made peace with Syria. October 19, 2022. President Bashar el-Assad received his leader, Khalil Hayya, in Damascus. On the other hand, he still refused to meet the Muslim Brotherhood current incarnated by Khaled Mechal.
Since the start of Operation Iron Glaive, Israel has been hunting down and killing Hamas members who have joined the Palestinian Resistance, and sparing those who have remained members of the Brotherhood. In Beirut, for example, the Israeli General Staff assassinated Saleh al-Arouri [2] the 2nd in command of the political branch of Hamas. He had been expelled from Qatar because of his opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood.
General Benny Gantz stopped off in London on his way back to Israel. It is known that he himself initiated this stopover, and that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did everything in his power to ensure that he did not enjoy diplomatic immunity in the UK, at the risk of being arrested there for complicity in crimes against humanity Be [3]. that as it may, Benny Gantz made the same remarks in London as he had in Washington: he showed himself anxious both to stop the massacre in Gaza and to continue the operation against Hamas. He confirmed to his astonished interlocutors that he feared as much as they did the threats made by Rabbi Uzi Sharbaf at the “Conference for the Victory of Israel” [4], but that he would also fight the Muslim Brotherhood.
Whatever they say, the British still control the Brotherhood. We saw this during the wars against Libya and Syria. They have taken charge of communications for this secret organization and all the militias that emanate from it. In some cases, they have supplied them with arms and intelligence.
So the Anglo-Saxons are back where they started: in 1915, in Lord Herbert Samuel’s memorandum on The Future of Palestine (i.e., before Lord Balfour’s Declaration), they intended to support an independent Jewish state in Palestine, but not strong enough to defend itself. Subsequently, the followers of Volodymyr Jabotinsky, a historic ally of Benito Mussoloni and therefore a “fascist” in the full sense of the word, broke with London and attempted to pursue their colonial project in the same way as Rhodesia did a little later. The British were forced, along with the Americans, to recycle their enemies during the Cold War. 75 years later, the situation is identical: Israel is not strong enough to defend itself alone, but the Anglo-Saxons refuse to sanction the massacre of the Arabs of Palestine in broad daylight. If they arm Israel, they cover themselves in public blood; if they don’t, they lose the last remnant of the British Empire [5].
Contrary to popular belief, the Muslim Brotherhood has never sought to establish a Palestinian state independent of a Jewish state (as proposed by Lord William Peel’s colonial commission and popularized as the “two-state solution”), nor a Palestinian state federated with a Jewish state within a binational state (as decided by the United Nations). The difference between these two projects is that the former ensures equality between Arabs among Arabs and between Jews among Jews, while the latter is concerned with equality between every man, whether Arab or Jew.
In his letter to the (pro-British) Egyptian Prime Minister Mustafa el-Nahhas Pasha, Hassan el-Banna, the founder of the Brotherhood, asks him to prepare “the restoration of the Caliphate, in application of the unity demanded by Islam”.
Similarly, during its first period, Hamas proclaimed in its charter that it wanted to build a state for Muslims (the Caliphate). However, in 2017, when part of its base rejected the Brotherhood, which had just lost in Syria, it adopted a charter that was in favour of an independent Palestinian state (in the sense of the Peel Commission and the “two-state solution”). However, the latest Hamas brochure, Our narrative… Operation Al-Aqsa Flood [6], marks a step backwards by presenting the eight demands of historical Hamas. It states that Hamas rejects the Israeli occupation, but in particular does not support a Palestinian state, since the Brotherhood’s aim is to re-establish a Caliphate, i.e. a supranational state for all Muslim peoples.
Israel, for its part, is also at an impasse. It no longer knows what to do. The war cabinet (i.e. both Benjamin Netanyahu’s Jewish supremacists and Benny Gantz’s democrats) intends to destroy Hamas, including at Rafah. Yet all the experts, including former heads of the Shin Bet and Mossad, agree that the problem is not a particular organization, but the political situation that fuels the Resistance. Under these conditions, even if Hamas were to be completely destroyed, this would only encourage the creation of a new Resistance network, and would not guarantee that a new October 7th could take place.
Incidentally, the “revisionist Zionists” have not given up their plan to expel the Arabs from Palestine (“a land without a people, for a people without a land”). From their point of view, the Pentagon’s creation, within the next two months, of a floating island off the Gaza coast could revive this plan. As the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (FLPL) has denounced, the landing stage for humanitarian aid could be transformed almost instantly into a landing stage for exile. At the start of the crisis, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, announced in Cairo that the EU was ready to receive one million Gazans. African states had been contacted by Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet. The press cited Chad, Rwanda and Congo, all three of which denied this .
If such a turn were taken, the Egyptian-Palestinian border crossing at Rafah would lose its usefu [7]lness. Israel would take advantage of the situation to exclude Egypt from any political decisions. Cairo has long refused to let Gazans go into exile, and only last month set up a camp to house 1 million of them [8].
In fact, US intervention has forced Israel to cease its ethnic cleansing of Gaza and to agree to let humanitarian aid through. This is an enormous step forward. But Washington has not paved the way for peace, which would require not only the removal of the Jewish fascists, but also the end of the British colonial project in Palestine.
Jeffrey Sachs and Mohammad Marandi speak out, but where is Russia, where is President Putin when it comes to Israel’s atrocities ?!
“Israel has the most extremist religious nationalist government in its history… there’s no end game here politically other than complete domination or ethnic cleansing or slaughter” – Prof. Jeffrey Sachs to Piers Morgan
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Americans do not understand how badly the United States’ reputation has been damaged across the world, which sees Gaza as “a US genocide” and “not just an Israeli genocide,” Mohammad Marandi, a professor of English literature and Orientalism at the University of Tehran told Sputnik’s The Critical Hour on Thursday.
“It’s revealing the reality of [the US] empire in a way that not even [author of ‘A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn] could do because it’s being done in front of our eyes, it’s being done in front of a global audience. We’ve never seen such a thing before,” Marandi said, adding that he suspects that is why the US is attempting to ban TikTok.
“The United States has lost credibility across the world. I don’t think many Americans understand how bad this has become for the United States. People across the world see this as a US genocide, it’s not just an Israeli genocide.”
Co-host Wilmer Leon asked about a recent freeze on Canadian arms shipments to Israel, which Marandi said showed that “public opinion is shifting” but that ultimately “stopping Canadian exports of weapons is nothing.” Marandi said Canada needs to take a much tougher approach.
“They sanctioned Syria… they’ve imposed sanctions on Cuba, on Venezuela, on Iran, on Yemen. Why don’t they impose sanctions on Israel? They’re carrying out a holocaust. Why don’t they hit the economy?” Marandi asked, noting that Israel will, unlike Russia, be allowed to participate in the Olympics. “No one takes this seriously. And, of course, the bulk of the weapons come from the United States anyway.”
“In any case, there is no reason to believe that the Canadian government cares about Palestinians, that they oppose the genocide because they’ve done absolutely nothing to stop it,” Marandi added.
Ultimately, Marandi believes that Israel has laid the path for its destruction through its actions in Gaza. “I believe that the Israelis have made a fatal mistake and that what they’ve done in Gaza will be the beginning of the end of the Zionist project,” he asserted. “The real catastrophe for the Israeli regime is the fact that it’s been carrying out the genocide for almost six months in front of the world and it has demolished the facade that the regime had created for itself… about it being a democracy… All that is gone now and across the board the regime is despised and the image of the United States has been destroyed.” Marandi noted that he has been to China twice and public opinion there has shifted as well. He noted that he does not think China will ever invest in Israel again.
“They see on their own social media networks what you and I are seeing,”he noted.
Max Blumenthal, Editor of Greyzone, has compared Israel’s “wider goal of regime change” to a number of US-led conflicts and chaos of the past.
The US regime has given full throated support to Israel’s murder of police officials in Gaza and the wider goal of regime change
This assault mirrors previous US regime change wars, where state institutions were destroyed, creating a vacuum filled by chaos, famine and despotism… https://t.co/gXETrfFein
Despite Israeli intelligence superiority, Hamas managed to bridge the intelligence gap and plan a precise and well-executed attack.
These capabilities were the result of immense work and effort within the brain battle with the enemy in the intelligence field.
The PDf linked above is a translation of an article in one of the Israeli newspapers about Hamas’s intelligence capabilities in various branches of intelligence work.
A highly recommended read.
Note that this is a rough and a fast translation but covers everything.
Is this the long awaited end of Israel’s thumbing its nose at the rest of the world?
Highest-ranking U.S .Jewish official and the U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer blasts unpopular Israeli PM Netanyahu, calls for new elections in Israel.
The world has changed — radically — since October 7, and Israeli people are being stifled right now by a governing vision that is stuck in the past. Netanyahu’s coalition no longer fits the needs of Israel after Oct 7.Netanyahu has lost his way – Schumer (video).
