Jaber Jehad Badwan via Wikimedia Commons
Monday (28 July) saw the release of hard-hitting reports on Israel’s war in Gaza by two Israeli human right groups. Physicians for Human Rights – Israel (PHRI) report documents what the group says is ‘the deliberate and systematic destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system’. PHRI concluded that the acts it identified were ‘not incidental to war but part of a deliberate policy targeting Palestinians as a group’, and in a manner that fulfilled at least three acts defined in Article II of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, to which Israel is a signatory.
Dr Guy Shalev, executive director of PHRI, said: ‘Silence in the face of genocide is not an option. We want to stress: confronting genocide is not only the responsibility of legal and political institutions. Confronting it demands urgent action from the global health community.’
Israeli-Palestinian human rights group B’Tselem declared Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide in its latest report, titled Our Genocide.
The report states:
‘An examination of Israel’s policy in the Gaza Strip and its horrific outcomes, together with statements by senior Israeli politicians and military commanders about the goals of the attack, leads to the unequivocal conclusion that Israel is taking coordinated action to intentionally destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip.’
It goes on to state: ‘In other words: Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.’
Looking back to the 1948 foundation of the Israeli state, it further states that it ‘had a clear objective from the outset: to cement the supremacy of the Jewish group across the entire territory under Israeli control’.
Accordingly, the state of Israel exhibits ‘settler-colonial patterns, including widespread settlement involving displacement and dispossession, demographic engineering, ethnic cleansing and the imposition of military rule on Palestinians.’ And while it looks back at Israel’s efforts to ‘uphold Jewish supremacy, relying on a false pretence of the rule of law while, in reality, the rights of the Palestinian subjects are left unprotected’, the report notes that this was accelerated after October 7.
‘Israel’s actions in northern Gaza were described by many experts … as an attempt to carry out ethnic cleansing. In practice, by November 2024, some 100,000 people who had lived in northern Gaza had been displaced from their homes,’ the document reads. ‘Nothing prepares you for the realisation that you are part of a society committing genocide. This is a deeply painful moment for us,’ B’Tselem executive director Yuli Novak told a news conference unveiling the two reports. An Israeli government spokesman said it strongly rejected the accusations of genocide, which are the first to be made by human rights groups based in Israel. ‘Our defence forces target terrorists and never civilians. Hamas is responsible for the suffering in Gaza; David Mencer said.
For many readers, these reports must seem ‘too little, too late’, but perhaps a better response is ‘better late than never’. The fact that two Israeli faces are naming Israeli actions in Gaza as genocide for the first time can have an important impact on a state whose citizens, post-Holocaust, have been brought up to view themselves as victims.
Monday also saw the release of an open letter to Netanyahu signed by five heads of Israeli universities and 1,400 faculty members, noting the obligation of academics not to be silent in the face of the ‘mass killing, starvation and destruction that Israel is wreaking in Gaza’. It is signed by the heads of Tel Aviv University, the Hebrew University, the Weizmann Institute, the Technion and the Open University. The heads of Haifa, Ben-Gurion, Bar-Ilan and Ariel universities have not signed.
With President Macron promising France will recognise Palestine as a state Alon Liel, former charge d’affaires at Israel’s Embassy in Ankara and former secretary of the Foreign Ministry, described the international developments as a turning point. ‘A year ago, Spain, Norway, Ireland, and Slovenia did it, but now it has come to the point that France is doing it. I welcome it very much. I think it’s extremely important … And if Great Britain, Canada, and Australia will join, much better, of course,’ he told Anadolu.
Liel said that while Israel withdrew ambassadors from countries that recognised Palestine — going so far as to shut its Embassy in Ireland — it would not be able to do the same with major allies like the UK or Canada. ‘The important thing is if the public will be noticing it and will be affected by it,’ he stressed. ‘I think the recognition by France and Britain will come as a shock to the Israeli public because these are two of the five permanent members of the Security Council. … This can bring things closer to a full membership of Palestine in the UN. Of course, the Americans can veto it, but I don’t know how long they can veto it’ asserted Liel.
Liel does, however, point out that recognising Palestine as a state is a soft option designed to ensure France, the UK, Canada, etc. do not implement sanctions. It does, however, provide a morale booster for the Palestinians. It also builds on a feeling inside Israel that the state is very isolated internationally.
That feeling indeed has a footing in the international community’s protests against Israel’s war on Gaza. On Tuesday, the Netherlands declared two far-right Israeli ministers, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, as personae non gratae. In a recent incident, a pro-Palestinian group in Greece prevented a cruise ship carrying Israeli passengers from disembarking on the island of Syros. More than 300 people were at the island’s port to protest when the liner arrived, preventing about 1,600 Israeli passengers on board the Crown Iris from disembarking. Some passengers aboard the vessel reacted by raising Israeli flags and chanting patriotic slogans, witnesses said.
Only around 16% of Israelis believe peaceful coexistence with Palestinians is possible, according to a June poll by the Pew Research Centre. Meanwhile, 64 per cent of Jewish Israelis believe Israel should temporarily occupy the Gaza Strip, according to a survey by the Jerusalem Centre for Security and Foreign Affairs (JCFA). ‘The government is rushing to erase Gaza, and thank God we are erasing this evil. All of Gaza will be Jewish,’ Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu said on Israeli radio last week. ‘Thank God, we are wiping out this evil. We are pushing this population that has been educated on “Mein Kampf”. ’Eliyahu also said that Gaza will be cleared for Jewish settlement and that Jewish towns won’t be “fenced in inside cantons”.’
In the meantime, Israel has ‘frozen’ plans to build a ‘humanitarian city’ on the ruins of Rafah, where the population of Gaza would be concentrated. Defence Minister, Israel Katz, said last week that once inside, Palestinians would not be allowed to leave, except to go to other countries, Katz said. Former prime minister Ehud Olmert told the Guardian, ‘It is a concentration camp. I am sorry.’
Readers of the liberal Israeli paper Haaretz’s responses to the plan make for an interesting read. One wrote: ‘This sounds a bit familiar. Let’s see; right! Ghettos in Poland!’ Another reads: ‘Do you remember Theresienstadt?’ That’s a reference to the ‘model’ concentration camp the Nazis ran for foreign observers. Eventually, its prisoners were sent to the death camps. Another reader pointed out, ‘pictures of starving, emaciated children in Gaza look like the victims of the Nazi death camps.’
Netanyahu and his supporters will dismiss Haaretz, a trenchant critic of their regime, but again, the psychological effect of such remarks being voiced in Israel cannot be dismissed. For Israeli citizens who believe ‘their’ state is committing genocide and is acting like the Third Reich in the years leading up to the Holocaust, remaining in Israel is going to be very uncomfortable. Over half a million Israelis have already quit the country since the start of the Gaza war, and given the chance, many more might well do so after Iranian missiles breached the Iron Dome.
The fact that Israeli tourists in Europe are getting a hostile welcome because of Gaza points to the fact that Israel is a pariah state internationally. On the one hand, the departure of generally well-educated professionals increases the weight of the settlers and the religious fanatics in the state and society, but it also creates economic and social issues.
Meanwhile, there is more bad news for Netanyahu from the one country that matters. On Tuesday, a Gallup poll found that about six in ten US adults disapprove of the military action Israel has taken in Gaza, up from 45% in November 2023. At that time, 50% said they approved:
‘The 32% approval figure in the latest poll marked the lowest level of support for Israel’s offensive since the question was first asked by Gallup in November 2023, with support among Americans dwindling as the war has continued. In March 2024, about half of US adults disapproved of Israel’s military action in Gaza, which fell slightly as the year wore on.’
That is the effect of pictures of children in Gaza dying of malnutrition as Israel implements a programme of starvation.
Source: Counterfire