The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide lays out the laws and the punishments for the crimes of genocide and the definitions and provides a term of reference with which to look at the actions of Israel acting on the orders of Netanyahu. Article 2 of the aforementioned convention
...any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:(a) Killing members of the group;(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
The Convention was brought in 1948 by the UN and became law in 1951, just six years after the end of World War 2
Each of the acts above can be seen and evident in Israeli policy in Gaza and the occupied territories.
(a)
Israel has flagrantly breached this rule when they deliberately targetted schools in heavily populated civilian areas of Gaza. Schools have been targetted (including UN schools) about five times at this stage resulting in a loss of life mostly that of children. Complete neighbourhoods in Gaza have been cleared because of Israeli airforce. One neighbourhood in Gaza was shelled out of it and destroyed in an hour, a ******* hour? (https://twitter.com/sheeraf/status/494064158791331840). UNICEF has condemned the atacks on children and has said that the attacks are deliberate on children, this straight from the horses mouth, a UN affilated agency (http://www.worldbulletin.net/world/1...inian-children)
In an interview with Al-Jazeera yesterday, Awad said Israeli forces had deliberately killed 264 children in Gaza, which is equal to 11 children per day, and injured more than 2,000."Where's the international community's reactions to the slaughtering of children in Gaza? Where are the international human rights covenants?" she asked.
(b) Is it worth going into the bodily harm being inflicted, its all apparent from the above post but the mental torture alone is being laid on with a trowel. Deliberate propogandising by shills like the Times Of Israel. Breaking up families and moving them from Gaza city into refugee camps all the whilst dividing them to try and break their spirit. Israeli soldiers have also violently broken into homes of families to terrorise the children, beat them into submission and mentally torture them to tell them they wont be set free unless they make a declaration to not join Hamas.
(c) Users on here should be deeply familiar with the conditions of the camps that Palestinians are still living to up to this point in time. Camps in Lebanon have been described as being over crowded and many of those in the camps depend on the good will of others and the UN and locals for food rations. These are people whom have been displaced because of the settler policy or fleeing genocide being committed by the Israeli army . Every few years there are floods which create hazardous conditions which lead to illness and disease like typhus etc. Refugee camps are the Israeli way of 'Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;'
(d) Records have shown that for a seven year period (2000 - 2007) there was about 35 deaths of women from Palestine who went into labour. THese women were denied access to medical treatment and then died of later complications, thus denying both the mother a life and the child being born. (http://newint.org/blog/2011/07/13/pa...at-checkpoint/). Conditions in Palestine have been described from the article that I just linked to as being fairly inadequate. A specialist mentioned in the article outlines the coditions that the women have to put up with
The Thaddeus and Maine “Three Delays Model” identifies the main causes of needless death of a mother and, often, her newborn. The first delay is getting out of the home when a woman needs emergency care; the second is in getting to the facility; and the third is when the facility can’t help her because it doesn’t have the right equipment or supplies. All three are at play in the occupied Palestinian territory.’
(e) This is defined as
may be imposed by direct force or by through fear of violence, duress, detention, psychological oppression or other methods of coercion. The Convention on the Rights of the Child defines children as persons under the age of 14 years.
Rocketing schools? Breaking into their homes? Detention?
War Crimes are not just a recent phenomena either. Read the following, a report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and the details that it goes into. Previous recommendations that had been recommended had not been adhered to and Israel continued to ignore the plight of the Palestinians through its direct action against them.
http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies...2%2037_AEV.pdf
As reported above, significant prima facie evidence indicates that serious violations
of international humanitarian law as well as gross human rights violations occurred
during the military operations of 27 December 2008 to 18 January 2009, which were
compounded by the blockade that the population of Gaza endured in the months prior to Operation Cast Lead and which continues.
Just in the last three hours as I was researching this, Salon.com published this cracking article which covered more ground than I ever could.Summing up some of the points it makes
-Denying Palestinians access to water-Deliberate settlement of the West Bank with shifted Jewish settlers.-Disproportionate targetting of children.-Deliberate targetting of churches and mosques
And one point of note that counters Israeli propoganda (Netanyahu had called this a double war crime by Hamas)
The claim that Hamas bares the responsibility for Palestinian civilian deaths is ludicrous. A recent NY Times Article published on July 23, 2014 stated that “there is no evidence that Hamas and other militants force civilians to stay in areas that are under attack – the legal definition of human shield.” Jeremy Bowen, a BBC Middle East reporter in Gaza, confirmed this as well. On July 25, Amnesty International reported that there is no evidence “at this point [behind the notion] that Palestinian civilians have been intentionally used by Hamas or Palestinian armed groups during the current hostilities to “shield” specific locations or military personnel or equipment from Israeli attacks.”
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