From Richard Brenner in London.
11-06-23
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
Article II
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed
with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or
religious group, as such:
Killing members of the group;
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Schools, hospitals, children's
hospitals, cancer hospitals, a children's cancer hospital, UN facilities: all
bombed overnight by the Israelis. And yet, the western media are terrified to
point this out. In that sense, last week's confected furore about the bombing
of Al Ahli hospital has had its effect. The Israelis dare to claim that was
carried out by Hamas and impudently denounced the western media including the
BBC for initially being so incautious as to report the obvious truth, which is
that it was bombed by Israel. Now, having received their apologies and pocketed
them without thanks, the Israelis perceived they have impunity to do what they
always intended to do and destroy not only the whole infrastructure of Gazan
society, but to eliminate as many as possible of the people there.
That is why they bomb hospitals
which they know are being used as havens by thousands upon thousands of
families. That is why they bomb cancer hospitals. That is why they have cut off
water.
If this is not genocide, then what
is genocide?
Does anyone really believe that to
qualify as a war for the elimination of a people the proponents must actually
set out as the Nazis did to exterminate each and every member of that group? Is
it not obvious that the Israelis' goal is, by degrees, to remove the
Palestinians from the territory of Palestine and two systematically undermine
any attempts for Palestinians to form a nation state?
Does anybody believe that the Israelis will allow the "temporarily
displaced" Gazans to return to their homes? Why are the Israeli settlers –
armed to the teeth and supported by the far right government – launching a
simultaneous offensive of ethnic cleansing against Palestinians in the West
Bank? Why are the Americans and the British only talking about pauses and not a
ceasefire? Why have files been created on every single Arab citizen of the West
Bank and why do Israeli soldiers and intelligence officers and settlers have an
app called Wolf Pack which they use individually to photograph and tag Palestinians
from their mobile phones which they then input into a gigantic database that
classifies Palestinians according to whether they are active, potentially
active or compliant?
The answer is obvious. Israel has seized the pretext of the 7 October action to
pursue a further stage in the genocidal Nakba and to ethnically cleanse the
Gaza Strip. But in pursuing their genocidal aim so openly they are reaping an
unintended consequence. The labor movement of the world is joining with
multifarious forces in their respective countries to mobilize against this
atrocity on a powerful and growing global scale.
This teaches the workers that imperialism abroad and capitalism at home are one
system. It shows how national bourgeois governments either openly or in a concealed
way support Israel's genocide, while in the Arab world governments make pious
speeches denouncing Israel whilst continuing negotiations with the US to
normalize relations. It shows the need for international solidarity and for
struggle against the ruling class at home. Which leads logically to the
conclusion that communists need to be pressing at every opportunity: that the
greatest possible solidarity we can give to the Palestinians is to overthrow
their enemies abroad.
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