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January 30, 2024

What Happens Now That the ICJ Has Ordered Israel Not to Engage in Genocide?

The ICJ ruling was a victory for Palestinians and for international law. Here are possible avenues for enforcement.

What comes next, now that the International Court of Justice (ICJ), also known as the World Court, has handed down its near unanimous ruling that South Africa presented a “plausible” case that Israel was violating the Genocide Convention?

The January 26 provisional ruling – which was a landmark victory for the Palestinian people, and indeed, for international law itself — now goes to the United Nations Security Council for enforcement. It would be within the Security Council’s purview to order economic or trade sanctions, arms embargoes, travel bans or even military force.

But in the likely event that the United States vetoes enforcement measures from the Security Council, the UN General Assembly can still act independently in materially significant ways.

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January 24, 2024

Biden’s Illegal Bombing of Yemen Intensifies the Risk of Regional War

The Houthis say their attacks in the Red Sea will continue until there is a ceasefire in Gaza.

In response to Israel’s assault on the people of Gaza in early October, Yemen’s Houthi movement, Ansar Allah, began mounting attacks on commercial ships in and around the Red Sea. The Houthis said the attacks were aimed at Israeli-connected or Israel-bound ships and they would continue until there is a ceasefire in Gaza. Meanwhile, the pressure on this vital trade route is impacting the global economy as ships are being redirected to more expensive routes.

On January 11, South Africa presented its case documenting Israel’s genocide in Gaza to the International Court of Justice. The following day, the U.S. and U.K. attacked 28 sites in Yemen. Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from a ballistic missile submarine killed five Yemenis and injured six. Four days later, the U.S. fired another cruise missile into Yemen.

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January 18, 2024

Israel Tells ICJ It Has the “Most Moral Army in the World” at Genocide Hearing

South Africa presented a powerful and compelling case that Israel is violating the Genocide Convention.

Pro-Palestinian protesters watch the court proceedings on a large TV screen in front of the International Court of Justice on January 12, 2024, in The Hague, Netherlands.
Pro-Palestinian protesters watch the court proceedings on a large TV screen in front of the International Court of Justice on January 12, 2024, in The Hague, Netherlands.
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January 8, 2024

Israel Is Terrified the World Court Will Decide It’s Committing Genocide

South Africa, a party to the Genocide Convention, charged Israel with genocide in the International Court of Justice.

For nearly three months, Israel has enjoyed virtual impunity for its atrocious crimes against the Palestinian people. That changed on December 29 when South Africa, a state party to the Genocide Convention, filed an 84-page application in the International Court of Justice (ICJ, or World Court) alleging that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

South Africa’s well-documented application alleges that “acts and omissions by Israel … are genocidal in character, as they are committed with the requisite specific intent … to destroy Palestinians in Gaza as a part of the broader Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group” and that “the conduct of Israel — through its State organs, State agents, and other persons and entities acting on its instructions or under its direction, control or influence — in relation to Palestinians in Gaza, is in violation of its obligations under the Genocide Convention.”

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December 28, 2023

As US Veto Power Enables Genocide, There Are Still UN Options to Protect Gaza

Any party to the Genocide Convention can submit the matter to the World Court, which could make a finding of genocide.

As Israel continues its genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza — with the death toll now exceeding 20,000 (about 70 percent women and children) — the world seems powerless to stop the slaughter.

The Biden administration, Israel’s chief enabler, defanged the resolution that was ultimately passed by the UN Security Council on December 22, rendering it merely symbolic. The final resolution calls for humanitarian assistance but not for a ceasefire which would allow aid to reach the people of Gaza. The U.S. saved diplomatic face by not employing its customary veto, but it did not vote for the resolution, electing instead to abstain.

On the same day, Special Rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons Paula Gaviria Betancur warned that Israel seeks to permanently change the composition of Gaza’s population with additional evacuation orders, and systematic and widespread attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure in areas of southern Gaza.

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December 12, 2023

The Forcible Transfer of 85% of Palestinians in Gaza Is a Crime Against Humanity

The biased chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court condemns Hamas but ignores Israel’s atrocious crimes.

Since the October 7 attacks by Hamas that killed 1,200 people in Israel, the Israeli occupying forces have killed more than 17,000 Palestinians, over 7,000 of them children, and wounded more than 46,000. Close to 1.9 million people — about 85 percent of Gaza’s population — have been forced to flee their homes and squeeze into roughly one-third of the Gaza Strip.

The vast majority of people in Gaza have been displaced and are on the verge of starvation.

On October 13, in anticipation of its ground invasion into Gaza, Israel ordered 1.1 million Palestinians in northern Gaza to evacuate to the south within 24 hours. Although that was an impossible deadline to meet, half the population of Gaza was forcibly transferred in response to the evacuation order. Then, Israeli forces carpet-bombed the north, striking homes and hospitals. Much of the area was reduced to rubble.

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December 2, 2023

The Supreme Court May Be Poised to Kill the Voting Rights Act Once and for All

A federal court said only the government, not civil rights groups or individuals, can enforce the Voting Rights Act.

The Voting Rights Act, which Congress passed to enforce the 15th Amendment, has been targeted by the right wing since it was enacted in 1965. In the last few years, the Supreme Court has weakened the Voting Rights Act but has never ruled that civil rights organizations and aggrieved individuals could not sue to enforce its provisions.

On November 20, 2023, a panel of the Eighth United States Circuit Court of Appeals ruled two-to-one in a racial gerrymandering case that only the Department of Justice (DOJ) can file lawsuits to vindicate voting rights under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. In Arkansas NAACP v. Arkansas Board of Apportionment, the appellate panel dismissed a lawsuit filed by Black Arkansas voters who claimed that the state’s congressional map would illegally “undermine the voting strength of Black Arkansans.”

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November 19, 2023

Palestinians File Emergency Motion to Block US Aid for Israel’s Genocide in Gaza

A federal lawsuit accuses Biden, Blinken and Austin of failure to prevent genocide and complicity in genocide.

On November 16, two Palestinian human rights organizations, three Palestinians and five Palestinian Americans brought an emergency motion in United States federal court to immediately force President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to stop providing additional weapons, money, and military and diplomatic support to Israel, which is committing genocide in Gaza.

“Our Palestinian clients are asking the court to urgently order Biden, Blinken and Austin to stop supporting Israel’s genocide,” said Maria LaHood, Deputy Legal Director of Center for Constitutional Rights which filed the lawsuit on behalf of the Palestinians, in an interview with Truthout. “Israeli officials stated their intent to eliminate everything in Gaza, and then proceeded to carpet-bomb it, killing more than 11,000 people, including nearly 5,000 children thus far — many more are missing, buried under rubble, crushed and suffocating before they die.”

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November 11, 2023

Self-Defence and the Right to Resist in Palestine

Ian Sinclair speaks to legal expert MARJORIE COHN about what international law says in regard to Israel’s right to self-defence, and Israeli actions against Palestinians more generally.

“ISRAEL has a right to defend herself.” This supposed moral truism has been repeated incessantly, by public figures on the right and left, since the Hamas terror attacks on October 7.

Marjorie Cohn, professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego and a former president of the US National Lawyers Guild, has a different view.

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November 10, 2023

UN Report Details Rampant US Human Rights Violations at Home and Abroad

Two-thirds of U.S. breaches of the civil and political rights covenant involve racial discrimination.

AUnited Nations body has issued a damning report blasting the United States for its rampant violations of a major human rights treaty that it ratified in 1992.

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) enshrines the rights to life, to vote, and to freedom of expression and assembly; and the prohibition of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. It forbids discrimination in the enjoyment of civil and political rights based on race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status (which includes sexual orientation).

In its blistering November 3 report, the UN Human Rights Committee — a group of 18 independent experts that monitors the implementation of the ICCPR — documented how little the U.S. has done to challenge the systemic, wide-ranging racism that continues to infuse every aspect of our society. Racial discrimination permeated two-thirds of the documented U.S. violations of the human rights treaty.

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