Ministers could face prosecution for war crimes as the Gaza tribunal today heard that Israeli military deliberately mutilated boys’ genitals for “target practice.”
UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine Francesca Albanese said that British policymakers who green-lit economic ties with Israel, and who allowed the trade of arms during the genocide met the “criminal threshold” for complicity in war crimes.
The Jeremy Corbyn-led tribunal also heard shocking first-hand accounts from medics and humanitarian workers and legal experts who worked in Gaza.
British doctor Nick Maynard, who recently returned on his third trip to Gaza since October 7, told of the injuries he saw while working at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, which he said amounted to a “daily witnessing of war crimes.”
He said that Israeli forces targeted specific body parts of Palestinian children, citing examples of bullet wounds in their head, neck and abdomen.
One day he and his colleagues treated “four young teenage boys” who were all brought to the hospital after they were “shot in the testicles.”
“The pattern of the targeting of specific body parts is something we all recognise within our own specialities, and reinforced by the testimony from the emergency room doctors who saw all these patients,” he told the first day of the tribunal held in Church House, Westminster.
“It was a very stark pattern, which could only be explained as what I describe as target practice by the Israeli soldiers,” he said.
“There is clear evidence of targeting specific body parts — on one day 19 teenage boys were admitted to the ER, all of whom had been shot in the head or neck.”
He went on to describe his “daily witnessing of war crimes” adding that it was clear to him that Israel was taking part in “genocide and ethnic cleansing.”
Ms Albanese said that Britain’s failure to uphold the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide could leave government officials at risk of prosecution.
She said: “This failure to abide by international obligations alone could be sufficient to establish a case for criminal complicity in the actions of Israel.
“Conduct such as the present and moral support [for Israel] has been found to meet the criminal threshold for complicity for individuals before international tribunals.
“Government officials can be held individually responsible if found complicit of crimes .
“This includes [individuals] who have authorised economic ties with Israel, trade that might have contributed to the continuation of crimes, and arms trades, arms transfers — but also intelligence exchanges.”
She added: “But there is something broader. By not protecting [the] international law based order, the UK has contributed to its disfigurement and its erosion.
“This puts all of us in a situation of fragility and illegality. We have entered a phase where might makes right. And none of us have anything to gain from this.”
Doctors Without Borders executive director Natalie Roberts told the tribunal that it has written letters to past and current prime ministers and foreign secretaries asking that Britain “takes action to prevent and punish crimes against humanity and genocide, in line with its international commitments.”
Due to the government’s failure to provide “substantive” answers, she added: “From our perspective, the UK government does not want to acknowledge what we have to say and what we have been seeing [in Gaza].”
Palestine Solidarity Campaign director Ben Jamal added: “This system of oppression could not and would not be sustained without the complicit active support of Western governments.
“We know the British government complicity in supporting this regime of oppression extends back over 100 years.
“The history of this oppression goes back to the British involvement in the zionist establishment 78 years ago. British policy towards the Palestinians since that time has been marked by a refusal to acknowledge the fundamental dynamic of racist domination.”
And socialist MP for Leeds East Richard Burgon said he would be introducing a ‘Sanctions on Israel’ Bill in Parliament. He said : “As with this tribunal, I won’t be waiting on the government to do the right thing.
“Next week, I will be launching a new ‘Sanctions on Israel’ Bill and will be forming a new parliamentary working group for sanctions on Israel.”
Source: Morning Star