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STUDY GUIDE : International Law & Israel
Israeli Violations of International Law - (12) GENOCIDE: Although numbers of massacres have been historically documented, evidence suggests that the overall intention of the State of Israel and the Zionist organizations which created Israel was to drive the non-Jewish people out of the area rather than to destroy them as is required by the definition of Genocide.
ISRAELI VIOLATION: HISTORY & THEORY *** STILL UNDER CONSTRUCTION *** Making Genocide a crime was first suggested by the international legal scholar and diplomat, Raphael Lemkin, in 1933. Its first legal usage was against the Nazis in the Nuremburg trials in 1945 following World War II. The decision to develop an international convention to help codify and direct prevention and punishment of the crime of Genocide was made by the UN General Assembly in 1946 in Resolution 260A(III). The result was the International Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, implemented in 1948. Political wrangling and resistance narrowed the definition of Genocide during the development of this Convention so that it excluded both destruction of political groups for political gain, and destruction of a group culturally (through absorption into the oppressing group for example). Thus some sought to escape prosecution or being labeled as perpetrators of Genocide by saying that the slaughter happened purely for political reasons, but experts and officials have ruled that this reasoning is not an escape from responsibility because just because there is an intense political struggle going on at the time (such as a civil war), this does not make the acts of Genocide unavoidable, or excuseable. The crime of Genocide has also been determined to be a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions IV of 1949 (art. 147), and in Article 85 of the Geneva Conventions (Protocol I) of 1977. And most important, the International Court of Justice in a 1951 ruling, declared that the International Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was customary international law, and thus did not apply only to its signatories, but to all countries and legal entities of the world - period. One of the most important features of the definition of Genocide is there must be deliberate INTENTION to destroy the victim group of people - not just chase them away as in ethnic cleansing, or to oppress and exploit them as in Apartheid, but to actually physically destroy them as a distinct ethnic group. Thus in the history of Zionism and Israeli politics, ethnic cleansing has been well documented in planning, policy and action. One of the most important factors in determining that the crime of ethnic cleansing has been committed is the documentation that the Zionists and the the Israelis had the clear INTENTION to drive out at least a majority of the Palestinian Arab population in order to create and maintain a majority Jewish population. In fact, it has been determined that the Zionist/Israeli enterprise would not survive without the practice of ethnic cleansing. Thus intention is one of the most important factors in determining what crime has been committed, especially when there is an overlap of tactics that could be associated with different crimes, or with the practice of self-defense, which is a legal military activity according to international law. This principle is very important in the situation with Israel because a significant number of lethal activities have been documented amongst the tactics used by the Israeli military against the Palestinians, and thus the Israelis have been accused of committing Genocide. But the crucial point to be determined is whether those tactics were part of the plan to drive the Palestinians from the area (ethnic cleansing), or were they part of a plan to destroy the Palestinian people physically altogether, which would thus qualify as Genocide. Historic analysis finds almost no high level Israeli or Zionist planning to commit Genocide of the Palestinian people - no intention by the government to destroy the Palestinian people, therefore it could be thus concluded that these lethal activities were part of the ethnic cleansing plans. BUT, if the lethal practices were part of a plan to destroy those Palestinians who refused to leave, as a group, then this would most likely qualify as Genocide. The most extensively documented lethal practices of the Israeli military are:
Even though there has been no documentation of specific military planning and intention to destroy those Palestinian who refuse to leave, the fact that the Israeli military is allowing these lethal tactics to happen in areas it clearly completely controls, suggests that there must be some kind of Genocidal intention present in order for it to happen, and thus this might qualify as Genocide. But, whether it does or not is irrelevant - the main point is that many innocent civilians are suffering tremendously at the hands of the Israeli military, and this must be stopped by the international community. |
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ISRAELI VIOLATIONS OF INTERNATIONAL LAW
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RELEVANT QUOTES FROM TEXT
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REFERENCES
Aeschlimann, Alain. "Genocide, a 'serious crime': the 1948 Convention". International Committee of the Red Cross (www.icrc.org) (2004). Cassesse, Antonio. “International Law”. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK (2001). Orentlicher, Diane F. "Genocide". In Crimes of War: What the Public Should Know. Editor: Roy Gutman. Crimes of War Project (www.crimesofwar.org/). Random House Espanol, Westminster, MD (1999). |
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(C) Israel Law Resource Center, February, 2007.