Zionist Fascism 130

From: Omar Barghouti <omar.barghouti@gmail.com>
Date: Thursday, 31 July 2014 07:37
To: Legal Talk List <legaltalk-l@maillists.eur.nl>
Subject: Genocide

Dear all,

In light of the increasing number of legal experts, including Michael Ratner (Chair of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights in Berlin) that are referring to Israel's crimes in Gaza as constituting genocide, and given that the independent fact-finding mission led by Prof. John Dugard into Israel's assault on Gaza in 2008-09 reported: 

29. The Committee found Israel's actions met the requirements for the actus reus of the crime of genocide contained in the Genocide Convention, in that the IDF was responsible for killing, exterminating and causing serious bodily harm to members of a group - the Palestinians of Gaza. However, the Committee had difficulty in determining whether the acts in question had been committed with a special intent to destroy in whole or in part a national, ethnical or religious group, as required by the Genocide Convention. It rejected the argument that Israel had carried out operation Cast Lead in self-defence. However, it found the main reason for the operation was not to destroy a group, as required for the crime of genocide, but to engage in a vicious exercise of collective punishment designed either to compel the population to reject Hamas as the governing authority of Gaza or to subdue the population into. a state of submission. 

And given the fact that prior to and during this ongoing assault on Gaza many statements calling for or justifying genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza were issued by Israeli officials, leading rabbis, members of parliament, among other opinion makers, and the fact that the Dahiya Doctrine, which openly calls for targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure to pressure the resistance to stop, is official policy of the Israeli army, can the legal argument be made that Israel is engaged in genocide in Gaza now?

Political leaders in Israel are calling for killing Palestinian mothers so they won't give birth to "snakes" ... and UNRWA schools designated as humanitarian shelters are being bombed by Israel in a deliberate policy of "punishing" the civilian population, while UNRWA is officially denying that any weapons or armed men were in any of the UNRWA-controlled schools that were shelled.

Best,

Omar