The United States Promotes Israeli Genocide Against the Palestinians
(from "Tackling America's Toughest Questions," now at Amazon.com)
As long ago as October 19, 2000, the then United Nations Human Rights Commission (now Council) condemned Israel for
inflicting "war crimes" and "crimes against humanity" upon the Palestinian people, most of whom are Muslims. The reader
has a general idea of what a war crime is, so I am not going to elaborate upon that term here. But there are different
degrees of heinousness for war crimes. In particular are the more serious war crimes denominated "grave breaches" of the
Fourth Geneva Convention. Since the outbreak of the first Intifada in 1987, the world has seen those heinous war crimes
inflicted every day by Israel against the Palestinian people living in occupied Palestine: e.g., willful killing of
Palestinian civilians by the Israeli army and by Israel's illegal paramilitary settlers. These Israeli "grave breaches"
of the Fourth Geneva Convention mandate universal prosecution for the perpetrators and their commanders, whether
military or civilian, including and especially Israel's political leaders.
But I want to focus for a moment on Israel's "crimes against humanity" against the Palestinian people-as determined by
the U.N. Human Rights Commission itself, set up pursuant to the requirements of the United Nations Charter. What are
"crimes against humanity"? This concept goes all the way back to the Nuremberg Charter of 1945 for the trial of the
major Nazi war criminals in Europe. In the Nuremberg Charter of 1945, drafted by the United States Government, there was
created and inserted a new type of international crime specifically intended to deal with the Nazi persecution of the
Jewish people:
Crimes against humanity: namely, murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed
against any civilian population, before or during the war, or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds in
execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or not in violation of the
domestic law of the country where perpetrated.
The paradigmatic example of "crimes against humanity" is what Hitler and the Nazis did to the Jewish people. This is
where the concept of "crimes against humanity" came from. And this is what the U.N. Human Rights Commission determined
that Israel is currently doing to the Palestinian people: crimes against humanity. Expressed in legal terms, this is
just like what Hitler and the Nazis did to the Jews. That is the significance of the formal determination by the U.N.
Human Rights Commission that Israel has inflicted "crimes against humanity" upon the Palestinian people. The Commission
chose this well-known and long-standing legal term of art quite carefully and deliberately based upon the evidence it
had compiled.
Furthermore, the Nuremberg "crimes against humanity" are the historical and legal precursor to the international crime
of genocide as defined by the 1948 Genocide Convention. The theory here was that what Hitler and the Nazis did to the
Jewish people was so horrific that it required a special international treaty that would codify and universalize the
Nuremberg concept of "crimes against humanity." And that treaty ultimately became the 1948 Genocide Convention.
Article II of the Genocide Convention defines the international crime of genocide in relevant part as follows:
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in
part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole
or in part;
As documented by Israeli historian Ilan Pappe in his seminal book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006), Israel's
genocidal policy against the Palestinians has been unremitting, extending from before the very foundation of the State
of Israel in 1948, and is ongoing and even intensifying against the 1.5 million Palestinians living in Gaza. Zionism's
"final solution" to Israel's much touted "demographic threat" allegedly posed by the very existence of the Palestinians
has always been genocide.
Certainly, Israel and its predecessors-in-law-the Zionist agencies, forces, and terrorist gangs-have committed genocide
against the Palestinian people that actually started on or about 1948 and has continued apace until today in violation
of Genocide Convention Articles II(a), (b), and (c). For at least the past six decades, the Israeli government and its
predecessors-in-law-the Zionist agencies, forces, and terrorist gangs-have ruthlessly implemented a systematic and
comprehensive military, political, and economic campaign with the intent to destroy in substantial part the national,
ethnical, racial, and different religious (Jews versus Muslims and Christians) group constituting the Palestinian
people. This Zionist/Israeli campaign has consisted of killing members of the Palestinian people in violation of
Genocide Convention Article II(a). This Zionist/Israeli campaign has also caused serious bodily and mental harm to the
Palestinian people in violation of Genocide Convention Article II(b). This Zionist/Israeli campaign has also
deliberately inflicted on the Palestinian people conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction
in substantial part in violation of Article II(c) of the Genocide Convention.
Article I of the Genocide Convention requires all contracting parties such as the United States "to prevent and to
punish" genocide. Yet to the contrary, historically the "Jewish" state's criminal conduct against the Palestinians has
been financed, armed, equipped, supplied and politically supported by the "Christian" United States. Although the United
States is a founding sponsor of, and a contracting party to, both the Nuremberg Charter and the Genocide Convention, as
well as the United Nations Charter, these legal facts have never made any difference to the United States when it comes
to its blank-check support for Israel and their joint and severable criminal mistreatment of the Palestinians-truly the
wretched of the earth!
The world has not yet heard even one word uttered by the United States and its NATO allies in favor of "humanitarian
intervention" against Israel in order to protect the Palestinian people, let alone a "responsibility to protect" the
Palestinians from Zionist/Israeli genocide. The United States, its NATO allies, and the Great Powers on the U.N.
Security Council would not even dispatch a U.N. Charter Chapter 6 monitoring force to help protect the Palestinians, let
alone even contemplate any type of U.N. Charter Chapter 7 enforcement actions against Israel - shudder the thought!. The
doctrine of "humanitarian intervention" so readily espoused elsewhere when U.S. foreign policy goals are allegedly at
stake has been clearly proved to be a joke and a fraud when it comes to stopping the ongoing and accelerating Israeli
campaign of genocide against the Palestinian people.
Rather than rein in the Israelis-which would be possible just by turning off the funding pipeline-the United States
government, the U.S. Congress, and U.S. taxpayers instead support the "Jewish" state to the tune of about 4 billion
dollars per year, without whose munificence this instance of genocide - and indeed conceivably the State of Israel
itself - would not be possible. What the world witnesses here is (yet another) case of "dishumanitarian intervention" or
"humanitarian extermination" by the United States and Israel against the Palestinians and Palestine. In today's world
genocide pays so long as it is done at the behest of the United States and its de jure or de facto allies such as
Israel.
Of course miracles can always happen. But I anticipate no fundamental change in America's support for the Israeli
campaign of genocide against the Palestinians during the tenure of the Obama/Clinton administration.
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Francis A. Boyle, Professor of Law, University of Illinois, is author of Foundations of World Order, Duke University Press, The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence, and Palestine, Palestinians and International Law, by Clarity Press. He can be reached at: FBOYLE @
ENDS