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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">New UN report outlines the ‘Anatomy of a Genocide’ in Gaza</h1>
<span class="gmail-post-author"><span class="gmail-by">By</span> <a href="https://mondoweiss.net/author/jonathan-ofir/" title="Posts by Jonathan Ofir" class="gmail-author gmail-url gmail-fn" rel="author">Jonathan Ofir</a></span>
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<a href="https://mondoweiss.net/2024/04/new-un-report-outlines-the-anatomy-of-a-genocide-in-gaza/" class="gmail-date-link">April 2, 2024</a>
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<p>Last week, the UN Special Rapporteur on Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese issued a <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/03/1147976">report</a>
titled “Anatomy of a Genocide,” concluding that there are “reasonable
grounds to believe” that the threshold indicating the commission of the
crime of genocide has been met. </p>
<p>Such reports are not usually titled, but the title itself depicts the
nature of what Albanese describes in her immaculate 25-page report. It
not only outlines a textbook case of genocide, with clearly and widely
expressed intent by leaders backed up by clear genocidal actions — it
also describes how Israel has used the language and principles of
International Humanitarian Law (IHL, the laws governing warfare) to
conceal the act.</p>
<p>Albanese begins with the historical context of the genocide, even
rooted in Israeli pre-state colonialist intents, and then charts out how
Israel has committed three central facets under the crime of genocide —
the killing of members of a particular group of people, causing bodily
or mental harm, and creating destructive conditions of life. There is
also a section concerning intent that chronicles some of the countless,
unambiguous, genocidal expressions of Israeli leaders. </p>
<p>Then, midway into the report, and constituting almost half of it
(points 55-92, out of 97 points), is a section dedicated to the idea of
“Humanitarian camouflage: distorting the laws of war to conceal
genocidal intent.” </p>
<p>This section is subdivided into five central themes:</p>
<ol><li>Human Shields and the logic of genocide</li><li>Turning Gaza as a whole into a ‘military objective’</li><li>Indiscriminate killing as “collateral damage”</li><li>Evacuations and safe zones</li><li>Medical Shielding</li></ol>
<p>Albanese demonstrates how the three central principles of IHL —
distinction, proportionality, and precaution — have been subverted by
Israel in an attempt to obfuscate its genocidal acts and to provide a
legal veil for illegal, indiscriminate acts. </p>
<p>“This has obscured one cardinal tenet of IHL,” Albanese writes.
“Indiscriminate attacks, which do not distinguish military targets from
protected persons and objects, cannot be proportionate and are always
unlawful.”</p>
<p>Palestinians have become “decivilianized” in this way: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“A core feature of Israel’s conduct since 7 October has been the
intensification of its de-civilianization of Palestinians, a protected
group under the [Genocide] Convention. Israel has used IHL terminology
to justify its systematic use of lethal violence against Palestinian
civilians as a group and the extensive destruction of life-sustaining
infrastructures. Israel has done this by deploying IHL concepts such as
human shields, collateral damage, safe zones, evacuations and medical
protection in such a permissive manner so as to gut these concepts of
their normative content, subverting their protective purpose and
ultimately eroding the distinction between civilians and combatants in
Israeli actions in Gaza.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is chilling to think that Israel’s Defense Minister’s claim that
“we are dealing with human animals and we will act accordingly” (October
9), has translated into reality in such a way that humans are reduced
to conceptual rubble — dehumanized and decivilainized. </p>
<p>The analysis continues to outline Israel’s subversion of IHL norms,
including concepts like human shields, military objectives, and
collateral damage.</p>
<h2><strong>Human shields</strong></h2>
<p>The history of the general usage of this term as a pretext for
indiscriminate attacks is mentioned, particularly in the 2008-2022
aggressions. But on October 7 this rose to a new level: </p>
<p>“After 7 October, this <em>macro-characterization</em> of Gaza’s
civilians as a population of human shields has reached unprecedented
levels, with Israel’s top-ranking political and military leaders
consistently framing civilians as either Hamas operatives,
‘accomplices’, or human shields among whom Hamas is ‘embedded’…
International law does not permit the blanket claim that an opposing
force is using the entire population as human shields <em>en bloc</em>…
The accusation of using human shields has thus become a pretext,
justifying the killing of civilians under a cloak of purported legality,
whose all-enveloping pervasiveness admits only of genocidal intent.”</p>
<h2><strong>Gaza as a ‘military objective’</strong></h2>
<p>International law stipulates that attacks must be “strictly limited”
to objects that “must offer a definite military advantage.” But,
Albanese notes, “Israel has misused this rule to ‘militarize’ civilian
objects and whatever surrounds them, justifying their indiscriminate
destruction.” Thus, “Gaza’s civilian population and infrastructure are
presented as obstructions positioned amongst, in front of and above
targets… Israel has characterized the whole territory as a military
objective… Israel considers any object that has allegedly been or might
be used militarily as a legitimate target, so that entire neighbourhoods
can be razed or demolished under fictions of legality.”</p>
<h2><strong>Indiscriminate killing as ‘collateral damage</strong>‘</h2>
<p>Israel seeks to conceal the widescale targeting of civilians as
“collateral damage.” Invoking the concept of “proportionate collateral
damage” to knowingly shell large numbers of members of the protected
group, Israel asserts that when attacks result in more collateral damage
than expected, this does not necessarily indicate a violation, since
“compliance is conduct-oriented, not result-oriented.”In other words,
Israel says that it doesn’t mean to kill many civilians — it just occurs
despite precautions. “However,” Albanese writes, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“in all attacks launched against residential towers without warnings,
extensive civilian harm has been anticipated as the main outcome. The
Al-Taj building was full of families at the time of the 31 October
strike, which must have been anticipated as certainly killing or
injuring all the civilians living there. The fact that so many people
were killed was entirely predictable — hence at least indirectly
intended — as is evident from the images that the Israeli military
itself published. The attack on the Jabalia refugee camp on 25 October
killed at least 126 civilians, including 69 children, and injured a
further 280. Israeli military personnel affirmed that the target was one
Hamas commander in an underground base.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Israel seems to assess “proportionality” not only as a question of military advantage but as a question of destroying Hamas <em>politically</em>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Israel’s proportionality assessments have flouted legal requirements
by defining military advantage, in each attack, in relation to the
destruction of the whole Hamas organization <em>both politically and militarily</em>.
It is manifestly illegal to declare as a war aim the destruction of the
other side’s political capacity (particularly in the context of a
56-year military occupation which deprives the occupied population of
its right to self-determination)… In other words, Israel appears to
represent itself as conducting a ‘proportionate genocide.’”</p>
</blockquote>
<h2><strong>Evacuations and safe zones</strong></h2>
<p>Albanese writes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“The mass evacuation order of 13 October – when 1.1 million
Palestinians were ordered to evacuate northern Gaza in 24 hours to
Israeli-designated ‘safe zones’ in the south… Instead of increasing
safety for civilians, the sheer scale of evacuations amidst an intense
bombing campaign, and the haphazardly communicated safe zones system,
along with extended communications blackouts, increased levels of panic,
forced displacement and mass killing.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>When the northern residents were evacuated to the south, “Israel
illegally categorized the inhabitants of northern Gaza who had remained
(including the sick and wounded) as ‘human shields’ and ‘accomplices’ of
terrorism,” thereby “turning hundreds of thousands of civilians into
‘legitimate’ military targets or collateral casualties through
impossible-to-follow evacuation orders.”</p>
<p>And the safe zones weren’t safe either: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“The erasure of civilian protections in the evacuated area was
combined with indiscriminate targeting of evacuees and inhabitants of
the areas designated as safe zones… Of the roughly 500 2,000-pound bombs
dropped by Israel in the first six weeks of hostilities, 42 percent
were deployed in the designated safe zones in southern areas.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>“Simply put,” Albanese summarizes, “safe areas” were “deliberately turned into areas of mass killing.” </p>
<p>This has been a tool of ethnic cleansing: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“The pattern of killings of civilians who evacuated to the south, in
combination with statements of some senior Israelis declaring an intent
to forcibly displace Palestinians outside Gaza and replace them with
Israeli settlers, lead to reasonably infer that evacuation orders and
safe zones have been used as genocidal tools to achieve ethnic
cleansing.”</p>
</blockquote>
<h2><strong>Medical shielding</strong></h2>
<p>This point sends a chill down the spine, as Gaza’s largest hospital, al-Shifa has now been <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2024/4/1/the-destruction-of-gazas-al-shifa-hospital">reduced to burned rubble</a>, with bodies strewn across the area, following Israel’s recent two-week-long siege. </p>
<p>“A final layer of Israel’s ‘humanitarian camouflage’ concerns its
efforts to provide legal cover for systematic attacks against medical
facilities and personnel, causing the progressive collapse of Gaza’s
healthcare sector,” writes Albanese. </p>
<p>This is not the first time Israel accused Hamas of using hospitals as
“Hamas headquarters,” but “in the current assault, Israel has invoked
this legal strategy to justify genocide through the complete destruction
of life-sustaining infrastructure.” </p>
<p>Israel was widely challenged on its former assault on the al-Shifa hospital in November. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Media reports challenged Israel’s allegations that Hamas were using
hospitals as shields, asserting that there was no evidence to suggest
that the rooms connected to the hospital had been used by Hamas; the
hospital buildings (contrary to Israeli military 3D images) were found
not to be connected to the tunnel network; and there was no evidence
that the tunnels were accessible from the hospital wards. In addition,
the Israeli army reportedly rearranged weaponry at al-Shifa before news
crews visits, raising further suspicions of fabrication after the
Israeli army had claimed that a “list of terrorists” it had found in
another Gaza hospital–the Al Rantisi–turned out to be a calendar of the
days of the week in Arabic.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The level of the Israeli propaganda would be something to laugh about
(and was widely mocked) if it weren’t so deadly serious. Even if one
were to take these repeated allegations at face value, Israel behaved
illegally: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Whether or not Israel’s accusations of hospital shielding at
al-Shifa were true – but still remain to be proven –, the civilians in
the hospitals should have been protected and not subjected to siege and
military attack.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This lack of protection for civilians was itself genocidal: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“That the intent behind Israel’s ‘humanitarian camouflage’ in this
instance can only be characterized as genocidal is clear for two
reasons. First, Israel was aware of the large-scale destruction of the
healthcare system since the World Health Organization had reported in
mid-November that a ‘public health catastrophe’ was developing in Gaza,
with 26 of 35 hospitals no longer operational due to Israel’s bombing
and siege. Second, Israel knew that its military operation was resulting
in a significant number of wounded. Physical trauma constitutes the
most predominant cause of excess mortality in Gaza. It was predictable
that forcibly suspending services at the largest hospital in Gaza would
seriously harm the prospects for survival of the injured, the
chronically ill and newborn babies in incubators. Therefore, by
targeting al-Shifa Hospital, Israel knowingly condemned thousands of
sick and displaced people to preventable suffering and death.”</p>
</blockquote>
<h2><strong>Conclusions</strong> and recommendations</h2>
<p>“The overwhelming nature and scale of Israel’s assault on Gaza and
the destructive conditions of life it has inflicted reveal an intent to
physically destroy Palestinians as a group,” Albanese concludes. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Israel has sought to conceal its eliminationist conduct of
hostilities sanctioning the commission of international crimes as
IHL-abiding. Distorting IHL customary rules, including distinction,
proportionality and precautions, Israel has de facto treated an entire
protected group and its life-sustaining infrastructure as ‘terrorist’ or
‘terrorist-supporting’, thus transforming everything and everyone into
either a target or collateral damage, hence killable or destroyable”.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This goes back to the first Nakba of 1948: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Israel’s genocide on the Palestinians in Gaza is an escalatory stage
of a long-standing settler colonial process of erasure. For over seven
decades this process has suffocated the Palestinian people as a group –
demographically, culturally, economically and politically –, seeking to
displace it and expropriate and control its land and resources. The
ongoing Nakba must be stopped and remedied once and for all. This is an
imperative owed to the victims of this highly preventable tragedy, and
to future generations in that land.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The last two points (96-97) of the report are about what we — the international community — can, and indeed <em>must</em> do, to avert this genocide.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“The Special Rapporteur urges member states to enforce the
prohibition of genocide in accordance with their non-derogable
obligations. Israel and those states that have been complicit in what
can be reasonably concluded to constitute genocide must be held
accountable and deliver reparations commensurate with the destruction,
death and harm inflicted on the Palestinian people.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The means at our disposal: </p>
<ul><li>To “immediately implement an arms embargo on Israel… as well as
other economic and political measures necessary to ensure an immediate
and lasting ceasefire… including sanctions.”</li><li>Support South Africa’s case at the ICJ charging Israel with Genocide. </li><li>Ensuring a “thorough, independent and transparent investigation” of
war crimes and crimes against humanity, including international
fact-finding missions, referring to the International Criminal Court,
applying universal jurisdiction. </li><li>That Israel and other states that are complicit in the genocide
commit to non-repetition and pay the full cost of reconstruction in
Gaza.</li><li>To address the root causes through the UN, also through reconstitution of the UN Special Committee against Apartheid. </li><li>In the short term, to deploy “an international protective presence
to constrain the violence routinely used against Palestinians in the
occupied Palestinian territory”.</li><li>To secure UNRWA, the UN Palestinian refugee agency (which has been
under a defunding assault in recent months due to an Israeli propaganda
campaign). </li></ul>
<p>Finally, Albanese calls on the Office of the High Commissioner for
Human Rights to “enhance its efforts to end the current atrocities in
Gaza, including by promoting and accurately applying International Law,
notably the Genocide Convention, in the context of the oPt as a whole.”
That is, to see the genocide of Gaza not merely as a local matter, but
as a genocidal assault on all Palestinians, also beyond Gaza’s
geographical confines. </p>
<h2>International r<strong>esponses</strong></h2>
<p>Israel’s initial, knee-jerk <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/26/un-expert-accuses-israel-of-several-acts-of-genocide-in-gaza">response</a>
was to describe the report as an “obscene inversion of reality.” The
problem is, that Albanese has used about half of her meticulous report
to document how it is precisely Israel that is inverting reality —
through the mentioned twisting of IHL terms — to justify and continue
its genocide. </p>
<p>The U.S., for its part, chose to avoid the subject by shooting the messenger — hiding behind <a href="https://mondoweiss.net/2022/12/un-special-rapporteur-facing-smear-campaign-for-calling-out-israeli-settler-colonialism-and-apartheid/">regurgitated, false allegations</a> of Albanese as an antisemite — as State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller <a href="https://twitter.com/tparsi/status/1773067834081390666?t=Y8PjIsn-3krpNg0rJdBJnQ">did</a> in response to a question on the matter: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“We have for a longstanding period of time opposed the mandate of
this Special Rapporteur, which we believe is not productive. And when it
comes to the individual that holds that position, I can’t help but note
a history of antisemitic comments that she has made, that were
reported.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>But many other countries, particularly Arab ones as well as other global south countries, <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20240326-countries-at-un-rally-behind-expert-who-accused-israel-of-genocide">rallied behind</a>
Albanese and affirmed the seriousness of her report. At the UN
presentation of the report last week, Israel and the U.S. boycotted the
event. The EU, for its part, called for “proper and independent
investigations on all allegations,” alas recognizing “Israel’s right to
self-defense.” </p>
<p>“Self-defense,” it bears mention, is no excuse for genocide, and the
reason why one purportedly goes to war has no bearing on how one
conducts it. So the EU is avoiding the issue, in a perhaps less visible
manner than Israel and the U.S.</p>
<p>“Israel has destroyed Gaza,” said the Special Rapporteur. It’s not
incidental, it’s not a natural disaster — it’s genocide. Now it’s only
down to those who accept this awful truth and those who hide from it. </p>
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