Meeting disclosed after questions by Dutch MPs concerned about Guardian revelations of anti-ICC campaign
Israelβs ambassador to the Netherlands was asked to βreportβ to the Dutch foreign affairs ministry to explain allegations of a secret surveillance and espionage campaign by Israeli spy services against the international criminal court, it has emerged.
Hungerβs role in Jewish philosophy and history makes it all the more horrifying that civilians in Gaza are eating garbage
For many months now, it has been no secret that one of Americaβs closest allies has been using hunger as a weapon against a civilian population. That hunger is being used by Israel is supremely ironic, given the particular role that privation from food plays both in Jewish philosophy and in the grim history of the Jewish people. It is a charge that the Jewish state has repeatedly denied in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Beginning this past winter, Human Rights Watch and Oxfam both condemned Israelβs use of starvation as a weapon of war. Governmental organizations have also begun to echo those accusations. βIn Gaza, we are no longer on the brink of a famine, we are in a state of famine,β the European Unionβs foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said several weeks ago. The Gaza population was facing a βman-made disasterβ, Borrell reported. The United Nations World Food Program concurs: a βfull-blown famineβ is taking place in northern Gaza, according to the head of the program. This was followed by the international criminal court considering issuing warrants against leaders of both Hamas and Israel, and, in the case of the Israelis, for the war crime of starvation of civilians.
John Oakes is the author of The Fast: The History, Science, Philosophy and Promise of Doing Without. He is publisher of the Evergreen Review
This is the fresh thread for the coverage of the violence in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The previous thread (worth a check of the last 50 comments or so for there continues to be fresh news).
Israelβs Ministry of Diaspora Affairs ordered the operation, which used fake social media accounts urging U.S. lawmakers to fund Israelβs military, according to officials and documents about the effort.
South Africa's case against Israel over allegations of genocide before the international court of justice has raised a central question of international law: what is genocide and how do you prove it? It is one of three genocide cases being considered by the UN's world court, but since the genocide convention was approved in 1948, only three instances have been legally recognised as genocide. Josh Toussaint-Strauss looks back on these historical cases to find out why the crime is so much harder to prove than other atrocities, and what bearing this has on South Africa's case against Israel and future cases