Frankly Speaking: Is Israel committing ‘genocide’ in Gaza?

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Updated 12 November 2023
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Frankly Speaking: Is Israel committing ‘genocide’ in Gaza?

  • Official who recently resigned from OHCHR accuses the UN of failing to acknowledge Israel’s “genocide” in latest conflict
  • Craig Mokhiber says Israeli PM Netanyahu’s aim is not to save hostages or overthrow Hamas but remove civilians from Gaza

DUBAI: A senior UN official recently left his post at the UN Human Rights Office, accusing the world body of failing the people of Gaza and showing timidity in confronting the ongoing genocide and apartheid there, despite a wealth of evidence to support these charges.

Appearing on “Frankly Speaking,” the Arab News current affairs show, Craig Mokhiber decried “the hesitancy on the part of the UN officially to talk about Israeli apartheid in Palestine despite the fact that every major international human rights organization … has decided that the crime of apartheid is manifest there. Or, as most recently raised by my (resignation) letter, the question of genocide as defined by UN Convention.”

In a wide-ranging interview, Mokhiber discussed whether his resignation would change anything at the OHCHR, why he says Israeli lobbyists are putting pressure on UN leaders, the need for more empathy for the people of Gaza, and if anyone could put an end to the slaughter of Palestinian civilians.

The UN’s apparent failure to address the worsening situation in Gaza also came in for criticism at the Joint Arab-Islamic Extraordinary Summit in Riyadh on Saturday.

In his opening remarks, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said: “We are witnessing a humanitarian catastrophe that demonstrates the failure of the (UN) Security Council and the international community to put an end to the flagrant Israeli violations of international laws and norms and international humanitarian law.”

The crown prince added that the situation in Gaza posed a threat to international security and stability, and that all leaders must unite to take effective action to confront the situation.




Craig Mokhiber, former director of the New York Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, speaks to Katie Jensen, host of Frankly Speaking, on issues related to the Gaza humanitarian crisis. (AN Photo)

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan said: “We have a responsibility to exercise all possible pressure on the international community, on the United Nations, and on the Security Council, to take up its responsibility for international peace and stability.”

When he stepped down as the director of the New York office of the OHCHR, Mokhiber labeled the US, UK and much of Europe as complicit in the ongoing Israeli military offensive in Gaza. As of Sunday, more than 11,000 people had been killed in Gaza, of whom more than 4,500 were children, according to Palestinian health officials.

Despite being a legal term, genocide is seen as overly politicized these days. But as an international human rights lawyer, Mokhiber is confident that Israel’s actions in Gaza amount indisputably to genocide.

“First of all, I deal with this as a human rights lawyer, and that means that I work from the definition that’s contained in international human rights law in the convention on genocide of the United Nations, where a very clear definition is laid out together with what the elements are,” he told Katie Jensen, the host of “Frankly Speaking.”

He added: “There are basically two pieces there. One is intent to destroy. The second, a catalog of specific acts, is beyond dispute. We are talking about mass killing.

“We’re talking about serious harm being caused, including physical harm, about imposing conditions of life designed to bring about the destruction of the population, again beyond dispute because we’re all well aware of the closure and siege of the Gaza Strip since 2015, which is specifically designed to limit food, medicine, adequate housing, water, sanitation, freedom of movement, all of the conditions of life necessary for survival.”

He continued: “Normally when you’re investigating genocide, you have to dig through dusty archives to find records to prove intent. In this case, because of the climate of impunity over several decades, you’ve got Israeli officials publicly expressing genocidal intent, including the president, the prime minister, senior Cabinet ministers, and senior military officials, explicitly calling for wiping out all of Gaza, explicitly dehumanizing Palestinians, explicitly calling for no distinction between combatants and noncombatants.

“Even the prime minister (Benjamin Netanyahu) invoked a biblical verse, calling for the wiping out of the entire population, sparing none of them, including women, men, children, and suckling babies, as well as their livestock. To quote this biblical verse (was clear) indication of genocidal intent, with such a long catalog of specifically enumerated actions (listed in the genocide convention) taking place.

“In a context where we’ve seen successive ethnic purges going back to 1948 with this intent, this is the clearest prima facie case of genocide that we have seen.”

Mokhiber addressed accusations by some that Palestinian civilians in Gaza were complicit in the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas in southern Israel because they voted for Hamas more than 15 years ago and have refused to overthrow the party. He said this was “further evidence of the kind of genocidal rhetoric, which has gone far beyond government officials and has seeped into the public consciousness as well.”

He added: “If you talk only about Gaza, you’re talking about 2.3 million civilians in a densely populated open-air prison. They are literally caged in that area, can’t move in, can’t move out, are regularly denied adequate food, water, shelter, water sanitation, any of the things necessary for a decent life.”

Talking about his experience living with Palestinians in Gaza in the 1990s, he described the currently embattled enclave as “one of the best places I’ve ever lived — not because of the conditions on the ground, but because of the people that I met.”




In a wide-ranging interview, Mokhiber discussed recently leaving his post at the UN Human Rights Office, accusing the world body of failing the people of Gaza and showing timidity in confronting the ongoing genocide and apartheid there. (AN Photo)

He said: “The images that are portrayed in the media and by politicians do not capture the reality of the Palestinian people. If you’re able to look into the eyes of a Palestinian child or woman or man or grandmother or grandfather, if you’re able to, to know them as a people, to see that just like you, they laugh and they cry, and they fall in love and they have parties, all of the things that your own family does.

“To see the humanity of the Palestinian people, it becomes impossible to pursue these kinds of genocidal policies that many governments are pursuing. It becomes impossible to dismiss them as the ‘other.’ They are not the ‘other,’ they are ‘us.’ They are you. When you’re doing human rights work, you feel a lot of solidarity with the people you work with around the world.

“To see them every day, to see their smiles and their tears and their laughter. To love people from that community, that changes it. And we need a, a heck of a lot more of that, including to know that at this moment, as we’re speaking, there are children and women and men buried under rubble, their bones broken, their skin burned, very little oxygen in the space they find themselves; dying slow, excruciating deaths as people above try to dig them out with their bare hands. That’s what this is.”

Arguing that the Israeli military assault is “not a war on Hamas,” he said the people of Gaza are “not numbers and statistics.”

He said: “This is not some barbarous population living in some obscure place of the world. These are human beings. These are you and me. If we can just get beyond the dehumanization and start thinking of everyone, Christians, Muslims and Jews, as equal human beings, that’s where the solutions are going to be found.”

Mokhiber asserted that Netanyahu’s aim is not to remove Hamas but to remove everyday civilians from Gaza, which amounts to a textbook case of genocide.

“Netanyahu certainly bears responsibility for the violations that cause Hamas to exist in, in the first place. (But) his motives at this moment are clearly not to save the hostages, because they’re dropping bombs on where the hostages are living,” he said.

Referring to the actions of the Israeli military in Gaza, he said: “They’re clearly not just to battle with Hamas because what they are doing is wholesale destruction and slaughter.

“What’s happening in Gaza now is an effort to purge the remaining part of Palestine that is Gaza. Most of it to be bombed to the ground, the rest of it to be rendered unlivable in the hopes that any surviving Palestinians will then be compelled for survival’s sake to leave for the Rafah border and either fade away in the Sinai Peninsula or enter into the Palestinian diaspora. So, the takeover of historic Palestine will then be complete.”

Mokhiber further believes that countries such as the US and the UK are in breach of their international humanitarian law obligations in the Palestinian crisis by providing financing, arms, intelligence and diplomatic support to Israel, and so could face legal liability for their actions.




This picture taken on November 12, 2023 from a position along the border with the Gaza Strip in southern Israel shows a smoke plume erupting during Israeli bombardment on the Palestinian enclave. (AFP)

He said: “The US and the UK are parties to these international conventions. They’re bound by international humanitarian law, international human rights law, which is clear. First, the Geneva Conventions don’t only require that you respect them in your own conduct, they require that all high contracting parties ensure respect vis-a-vis others over whom they have influence, in this case Israel.

“Not only have the US and the UK and others not done what they needed to do to stop this, but they’ve actually been actively complicit. The US, for example, in providing financing, arms intelligence, support, diplomatic cover, even the use of the veto in the Security Council.

“Those are direct acts of complicity in breach of their humanitarian law obligations. The crime of genocide as defined in the convention includes the act of genocide, attempted genocide, incitement to genocide, conspiracy for genocide, and complicity in genocide.

“Active support going on, even while these acts are taking place, exposes the US, the UK and other states that have been involved so directly to legal liability for their actions. What they should be doing is using all their influence, diplomatic and otherwise, to stop what’s happening, including stopping the arming, financing, intelligence support, diplomatic cover (for the Israeli government), so that there is accountability, so that human life can be saved and human dignity protected.”

Asked what took him so long to resign given that he had made clear his concern that the rights of the Palestinian people were not being addressed, Mokhiber acknowledged that the conversation began in March between himself and the OHCHR in the wake of “a series of Israeli atrocities on the West Bank, including some military attacks on civilians in the West Bank and the pogroms by Israeli settlers in Hawara.”

He said: “At that point, I was speaking quite publicly about those violations in public and on social media. The UN was taking a more careful, inappropriately trepidatious, approach to those events.

“I was speaking particularly forcefully about that publicly, as I have on human rights situations in countries around the world for 32 years. But what happened in this case, there was an organized campaign by a group of Israeli lobby organizations that decided to target me by smearing me on social media, and also by (handing a protest note to) the UN in an effort to have me punished, in spite of the fact that I’m a UN human rights official, whose job it is to speak out on human rights violations.

“That created an atmosphere where there was even more trepidation and an effort on the part of the UN to tell me to be silent on these issues, which was something that I clearly could not do.

“So, already in March, as a result of this, I wrote and indicated, one, that I thought that this deference to powerful states — because the critique was coming also from Western countries and to these lobby groups — was undercutting our principled application of UN norms and standards, and that we needed to stand up against these things and not be intimidated into silence by them. To the contrary, I would encourage that we should be speaking out more loudly.”




sraeli army soldiers return after searching for human remains following the October 7 attack carried out by Palestinian militants from the Gaza Strip, near a position along the border with southern Israel on November 12. (AFP)

As opposed to most politicians who are calling for a two-state solution, Mokhiber believes the world must support a single democratic secular state in all of historic Palestine, with equal rights for Christians, Muslims and Jews.

Told that the only other known politician who called for it was the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, he responded that there are a lot of public figures around the world who have been calling for it for “many, many years, including people from the human rights community who see this as consistent with our standards.”

Explaining why he did not consider a single-state solution unconventional, he said: “The interesting thing is that in every other situation around the world, the international community calls for solutions based upon equality between all of the people there. They call for a democratic secular state with equal rights for everybody who is involved in the application of international human rights standards.

“It’s only in this particular situation that there’s been a kind of muzzle around this consistency. So, it’s a very conventional response. It’s just that it’s been constrained by an application in this one case. The reality is that there is already one state de facto: the entire area of historic Palestine in Israel is controlled by the Israeli government. There is nothing left in the West Bank and Gaza for a viable, sustainable Palestinian state as a second state.

“Even if they were to adopt that, it wouldn’t remedy the central human rights challenge because Palestinians inside the Green Line would still be second-class citizens, they would have no right to return, so on and so forth. (The two-state solution) never answered that. And the question is, if we demand equality everywhere else, in this case, equal rights for Christians, Muslims, and Jews, why do we not demand it in the case of Israel and Palestine?”

Mokhiber firmly rejected the notion that advocating for a single state was effectively a call for the end of Israel’s Jewish state status, the existential idea on which the state of Israel was founded some 75 years ago.

“Netanyahu’s government doesn’t even agree with stopping a genocide. They are not my audience,” he said.

“This is not a call for the end of Israel; this is a call for the salvation of Israel and Palestine. It’s a call for the end to apartheid and the end to settler colonialism, and the embrace of the norms and standards of the UN that call for democratic secular states with equal rights for all of the people who are there to be protected.”


Israel hits Beirut’s southern suburbs for first time in days, Reuters witnesses say

Updated 3 sec ago
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Israel hits Beirut’s southern suburbs for first time in days, Reuters witnesses say

BEIRUT: Israel carried out air strikes early on Friday on Beirut’s southern suburbs, Reuters witnesses said, the first strikes there in nearly a week.

At least 46 Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes, hospital hit, says Gaza ministry

Updated 01 November 2024
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At least 46 Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes, hospital hit, says Gaza ministry

  • Strike on hospital torches medical supplies, officials say
  • Israel says militants were hiding in hospital

CAIRO: At least 46 Palestinians were killed in Israeli military strikes across the Gaza Strip on Thursday, mostly in the north where one attack hit a hospital, torching medical supplies and disrupting operations, the enclave’s health officials said.
Israel’s military has accused the Palestinian militant group Hamas of using Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya for military purposes and said “dozens of terrorists” have been hiding there. Health officials and Hamas deny the charge.
Later on Thursday, an Israeli airstrike on two houses in the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza killed at least 16 Palestinians, medics at Al-Awda Hospital in the camp told Reuters. The dead included a paramedic and two local journalists, they added.
Northern Gaza, where Israel said in January it had dismantled Hamas’ command structure, is currently the main focus of the military’s assault in the enclave. Earlier this month it sent tanks into Jabalia, Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya to flush out militants it said had regrouped.
Eid Sabbah, director of nursing at Kamal Adwan — which is in Beit Lahiya — told Reuters some staff suffered minor burns after the Israeli strike hit the third floor of the hospital.
There were no reports of any casualties at the hospital, which Israeli forces stormed and briefly occupied last week. Israel said it had captured around 100 suspected Hamas militants in that raid. Israeli tanks are still stationed nearby.
The health ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip called for all international bodies “to protect hospitals and medical staff from the brutality of the (Israeli) occupation.”
The Israeli military has said its forces are operating in the hospital area based on intelligence about the presence of terrorists and terror infrastructure in the vicinity.
“During the operation, it was found that dozens of terrorists were hiding in the hospital, with some even posing as hospital staff,” said the military in a statement following Thursday’s strike.
Medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said on Thursday that one of its doctors at the hospital, Mohammed Obeid, had been detained last Saturday by Israeli forces. It called for the protection of him and all medical staff who “are facing horrific violence as they try to provide care.”
The Gaza war began after Hamas-led militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages back to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s subsequent assault on Gaza has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians and reduced most of the enclave to rubble, Palestinian authorities say.


Iraq tries to avoid regional fight as militias fire at Israel

Updated 01 November 2024
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Iraq tries to avoid regional fight as militias fire at Israel

  • Kataib Hezbollah, the most powerful of the armed factions, said Israel and the US would have to pay a price for Israel’s strikes on Iran last week

BAGHDAD: Nervously watching Israel’s destructive campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon, Iraq is working to avoid being drawn into the growing regional conflict as Iran-backed armed groups launch attacks on Israel from Iraqi soil, sources familiar with the matter say.
Two decades after the US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, Iraq is experiencing relative stability with high revenue from oil sales funding a service-based agenda that has turned much of the country into a construction site.
Iraq does not have diplomatic relations with Israel and Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani’s government is wary of regional conflicts that could affect its delicate balancing act between Washington and Tehran, both states it is allied with.
Spillover from regional conflict resulted in months of tit-for-tat attacks between Iran-backed armed groups and US forces stationed in Iraq and the region that only subsided after Iran intervened in February.
But Sudani’s government has not been successful in a push to convince the Islamic Resistance in Iraq — a coalition of Iran-backed armed groups — to stop firing rockets and drones at Israel, according to four sources in Iran-backed armed groups and two government advisers.
Two visits to Iran by Iraq’s top security officials in the past two months, seeking Tehran’s help to rein in its allied Iraqi factions, failed, the sources said.
“The Iraqi delegation received a cold reception in Tehran ... The answer was: those groups have their own decision and it is their call to decide how to support their brothers in Lebanon and Gaza,” said a senior Iraqi security official briefed on the visits.
Baghdad turned to Washington, asking US officials to intervene with Israel to prevent retaliation for the attacks, including one that killed two Israeli soldiers and wounded more than 20 on Oct. 4, the sources said, the first time such an attack has been reported to cause fatalities.
“Washington was understanding of the repercussions of possible Israeli strikes in Iraq and pledged to help,” said an Iraqi foreign ministry official.
A spokesperson for the US embassy in Baghdad did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Four militia sources said the Kataib Hezbollah and Nujaba groups, which are leading the attacks on Israel, have warned the prime minister against pressuring them to halt their actions and vowed to continue their attacks as long as Israel continued its Gaza and Lebanon operations.
The issue has divided parties in Iraq’s ruling coalition, all of whom are sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and view Israel as an enemy, though some differ over how involved Iraq should be in the regional confrontation.
Shiite leaders discussed the risk of repercussions from attacks on Israel and possible Israeli retaliation during two meetings in October, said Ahmed Kenani, a Shiite lawmaker from the ruling alliance.
Key players in the Shiite coalition view direct confrontation with Israel as counterproductive and potentially damaging to Iraq, according to four Shiite lawmakers.
“Those groups who have the rockets and drones should go to Gaza and Lebanon to fight Israel rather than pushing Iraq toward destruction,” said Iraqi PM adviser Abul Ameer Thuaiban.
Kataib Hezbollah, the most powerful of the armed factions, said Israel and the US would have to pay a price for Israel’s strikes on Iran last week.
Senior Iraqi security sources told Reuters ahead of that attack that any strike by Israel against Iran outside what the sources called the established rules of engagement could prompt pro-Iran armed groups to significantly expand their attacks on Israel and US assets in the region.


Blinken says ‘good progress’ made toward Lebanon ceasefire deal

Updated 31 October 2024
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Blinken says ‘good progress’ made toward Lebanon ceasefire deal

  • Said that Washington “working very hard” on concluding arrangements on a deal
  • US has stopped short of calling for an immediate ceasefire in Lebanon

WASHINGTON DC: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Thursday that negotiators have made “good progress” toward a deal that would bring a ceasefire in Israel’s offensive in Lebanon.
The top US diplomat said that Washington was “working very hard” on concluding arrangements on a deal that would include the withdrawal of Hezbollah from the border region with Israel.
“Based on my recent trip to the region, and the work that’s ongoing right now, we have made good progress on those understandings,” Blinken told reporters.
“We still have more work to do,” he said, calling for a “diplomatic resolution, including through a ceasefire.”
Two senior US officials, Amos Hochstein and Brett McGurk, met Thursday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said that any deal on Lebanon must guarantee Israel’s security.
Unlike in the year-old war in Gaza, the US has stopped short of calling for an immediate ceasefire in Lebanon and has largely backed Israeli strikes against Hezbollah, while voicing concern for the fate of civilians.
Blinken called again for implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, dating from 2006, which calls for the disarmament of non-state groups in Lebanon and a full Israeli withdrawal from the country.
“It’s important to make sure that we have clarity, both from Lebanon and from Israel, about what would be required under 1701 to get its effective implementation — the withdrawal of Hezbollah forces from the border, the deployment of the Lebanese Armed Forces, the authorities under which they’d be acting, an appropriate enforcement mechanism,” Blinken said.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, speaking alongside Blinken and their South Korean counterparts, said there was an “opportunity” in Lebanon.
“We’re hopeful that we will see things transition in Lebanon in a not too distant future,” Austin said.


Israel says another rocket barrage from Lebanon kills 2 in Israel, hours after 5 were killed

Updated 31 October 2024
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Israel says another rocket barrage from Lebanon kills 2 in Israel, hours after 5 were killed

  • The attack came as senior US diplomats were in the region to push for ceasefires in Lebanon and Gaza

TEL AVIV: Israel’s rescue service said projectiles fired from Lebanon on Thursday killed two more people in northern Israel, raising death toll there to seven in what’s been the deadliest rocket barrage since the Israeli military’s invasion of southern Lebanon.
Magen David Adom, Israel’s main emergency medical organization, said its medics confirmed the deaths of a 30-year-old man and 60-year-old woman in a suburb of the northern city of Haifa. They also treated two other people who suffered mild injuries and were hospitalized.
The Israeli military said that roughly 25 rockets crossed into Israel from Lebanon as part of the volley that struck an olive grove where people had gathered for the harvest.
The deadly attack came just hours after officials in Metula, in northern Israel, said that five people were killed, including four foreign workers, in a rocket barrage Thursday that struck an Israeli agricultural area.
The back-to-back attacks made Thursday one of the deadliest days for civilians in Israel since the Israeli military invaded southern Lebanon on Oct. 1 as part of a widening campaign against the Lebanon-based Hezbollah militant group.
The attack came as senior US diplomats were in the region to push for ceasefires in Lebanon and Gaza, hoping to wind down the wars in the Middle East in the Biden administration’s final months.
The Hezbollah militant group has been firing rockets, drones and missiles into Israel, and drawing retaliatory strikes, since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack out of the Gaza Strip triggered the war there. Hezbollah and Hamas are allies backed by Iran.
The conflict along the border escalated into a full-blown war last month, when Israel launched a wave of heavy airstrikes across Lebanon and killed Hezbollah’s top leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and most of his deputies. Israeli ground forces pushed into Lebanon at the start of October.
The Metula regional council reported Thursday’s attack, without detailing the number or type of projectiles used. The nationalities of the workers were also not immediately known.
Metula, Israel’s northernmost town which is surrounded by Lebanon on three sides, has suffered heavy damage from rockets. The town’s residents evacuated in October 2023, and only security officials and agricultural workers remain.
The Hotline for Refugees and Migrants, an organization that advocates for foreign workers, said authorities had put them in danger by allowing them to work along the border without proper protection.
Agricultural areas along Israel’s border, where much of the country’s orchards are located, are closed military areas that can only be entered with official permission.
Hezbollah’s newly named top leader, Sheikh Naim Kassem, said in a video statement Wednesday that the militant group will keep fighting Israel until it is offered ceasefire terms it deems acceptable. He said it has recovered from a series of setbacks in recent months, including attacks using explosive pagers and walkie-talkies that was widely blamed on Israel.
“Hezbollah’s capabilities are still available and compatible with a long war,” he said.
Earlier on Thursday, the Israeli military warned people to evacuate from more areas of southern Lebanon, as airstrikes in different parts of the country killed eight people, according to Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency.
Israel has warned people to evacuate from large areas of the country, including major cities in the south and east. Some 1.2 million people have been displaced since the escalation in September.
Thousands of people have fled from Baalbek, the main city in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley, and surrounding areas after Israeli evacuation warnings and aerial bombardment on Wednesday.
Jean Fakhry, a local official in the Deir Al-Ahmar region, some 17 kilometers (10 miles) to the southeast, said the main highway “turned into a parking lot.” He said around 12,000 displaced people are staying in the area, with most being hosted in private homes.
At one of the shelters, families with luggage were still arriving on Thursday.
“Our homes were destroyed,” said Zahraa Younis, from the village near Baalbek. “We came with nothing — no clothes or anything else — and took shelter here.”
More than 2,800 people have been killed and nearly 13,000 wounded in Lebanon since the conflict began last year, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.
In Israel, rockets, missiles, and drones launched by Hezbollah have killed at least 68 people, about half of them soldiers. More than 60,000 Israelis from towns and cities along the border have been evacuated from their homes for more than a year.