Our Wednesday News Analysis | War on Gaza: The West will stand in the dock alongside Israel at the genocide court

A girl mourns the death of her relatives, killed by Israeli bombardment, at the European Hospital in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, 31 December 2023 (AFP)

"An interim order halting Israel’s attack will serve as a line in the sand.
Once made, any state that fails to act on the injunction risks becoming complicit in genocide.

That will put the West in a serious legal bind.
After all, it has not just been turning a blind eye to the genocide in Gaza;
it has been actively cheering it on and colluding in it."

Israel is urging western states to rally to its side as the International Court of Justice prepares to hear this week South Africa’s case that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

The court is being asked by Pretoria to issue an immediate injunction ordering Israel to halt its military assault on the tiny enclave, to avoid further casualties.

Some 23,000 Palestinians are known to have been killed by Israel so far, a majority of them women and children, and many thousands more are believed to be lying under the rubble. Tens of thousands are seriously wounded. A majority of the population have lost their homes to the three-month bombing campaign.

Israel has intensively and repeatedly targeted the supposedly “safe zones” to which it has ordered Palestinian civilians to flee.

It has destroyed almost all of Gaza’s infrastructure and is blocking most aid from reaching the enclave. Famine and disease are likely to rapidly increase the death toll...

Read more: War on Gaza: The West will stand in the dock alongside Israel at the genocide court

___________________

HOW ISRAEL’S WAR ON GAZA EXPOSED ZIONISM AS A GENOCIDAL CULT

Source: Jews for Justice for Palestinians
https://jfjfp.com/how-israels-war-on-gaza-exposed-zionism-as-a-genocidal-cult/

Joseph Massad writes in Middle East Eye, 11 January 2024

Protesters wave Israeli flags during a demonstration against the hearing at the International Court of Justice on a genocide complaint by South Africa against Israel, in The Hague, Netherlands, on 11 January 2024 (Robin Utrecht/AFP)

“57.5 percent of Israeli Jews said that they believed the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) were using too little firepower in Gaza,
36.6 percent said the IDF was using an appropriate amount of firepower,
while just 1.8 percent said they believed the IDF was using too much firepower.”

The Israel Democracy Institute and Tel Aviv University’s Peace Index

The Israeli press has published seemingly “reasonable” articles,
which frames Israel’s planned ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians of Gaza and their potential expulsion to the Egyptian Sinai as something wonderful, describing it as “one of the most suitable places on Earth to provide the people of Gaza with hope and a peaceful future.”

Ever since the current Israeli cabinet, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, came to power in December 2022, there has been a consensus, even in the western mainstream and among the Israeli political opposition, that it is a Jewish supremacist, racist government.

Characterisations of the government, which clearly expressed the preferences of a majority of the Israeli Jewish electorate, as “the most extreme”, “the most fundamentalist”, and “the most racist” in Israel’s history, became common. Other descriptions deemed it Israel’s “first fascist” government.

This is aside from the fact that two years before the rise of the current government, historically pro-Israel mainstream western human rights organisations had adjudged Israel a racist “apartheid” state since its founding. Palestinians and their supporters have also used this label to describe Israel since at least the 1960s...

Read more: How Israel’s war on Gaza exposed Zionism as a genocidal cult

___________________

OPINION | ISRAELI TRAUMA AWAKENED THE IMPULSE TO 'KILL OR BE KILLED.' IT'S TIME TO LOOK IN THE MIRROR

Source: Haaretz
https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2024-01-08/ty-article-opinion/.premium/the-genocidaires-voice-within-israeli-society/0000018c-e569-db55-a39e-f7fd1a6a0000

By Noa Landau
Published January 8, 2024

A woman mourns over the shrouded bodies of loved ones killed in December.Credit: AFP

“… it's now clear to everyone that all Gazans should be exterminated.”

Likud Member of the Knesset (MK) Moshe Saada

"The great fear awakened tribalism, the impulse to "kill or be killed,”
as well as a passion for vengeance and for achieving "deterrence.

Such emotions and expressions gained legitimacy in the public discourse,
and it is now almost impossible to return them to Pandora's box.”

With the cloud of The Hague hanging over Israel, more and more people are blaming statements by "extremists" for this predicament. This applies to Prime Minister Benjamin ("Remember what Amalek did to you") Netanyahu, through lawmakers such as transfer advocate Bezalel Smotrich, to singers Eyal Golan and Kobi Peretz, who all made it onto the indictment filed at the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

The latest figure guilty of providing anti-Israel ammunition to international courts is Likud MK Moshe Saada, who said last week that "it's now clear to everyone that all Gazans should be exterminated." The choice of the verb "exterminate" is horrific, but when you listen to the full quote, it turns out that he's right. "Everywhere you go, people are saying, 'Exterminate them,'" said Saada, who emphasized that he's heard this in circles that used to be considered leftist...

Read more: Opinion | Israeli Trauma Awakened the Impulse to 'Kill or Be Killed.' It's Time to Look in the Mirror