SAN FRANCISCO, USA, Mar 20 (IPS) – Israel’s renewed assault on Gaza comes a number of months after each Amnesty Worldwide and Human Rights Watch issued stories concluding with out equivocation that Israel was engaged in genocide. However only a few members of Congress dare to acknowledge that actuality, whereas their silence and denials scream out complicity.
In a New York Occasionsinterview final weekend, the Senate’s Democratic chief Chuck Schumer put deep ethical evasion on show. Among the many “slogans” which are used when criticizing Israel, he stated, “The one which bothers me essentially the most is genocide. Genocide is described as a rustic or some group tries to wipe out an entire race of individuals, an entire nationality of individuals. So, if Israel was not provoked and simply invaded Gaza and shot at random Palestinians, Gazans, that may be genocide. That’s not what occurred.”
Schumer is incorrect.
The worldwide Genocide Conference defines genocide as “acts dedicated with intent to destroy, in complete or partially, a nationwide, ethnical, racial or non secular group” — with such actions as killing, “intentionally inflicting on the group situations of life calculated to result in its bodily destruction in complete or partially,” and “imposing measures supposed to forestall births inside the group.”
Such actions by Israel have been accompanied by clear proof of genocidal intent — underscored by tons of of statements by Israeli leaders and coverage shapers. Scarcely three months into the Israeli warfare on Gaza, students Raz Segal and Penny Inexperienced identified, a database compiled by the Regulation for Palestine human rights group “meticulously paperwork and collates 500 statements that embody the Israeli state’s intention to commit genocide and incitement to genocide since October 7, 2023.”
These statements “by folks with command authority — state leaders, warfare cupboard ministers and senior military officers — and by different politicians, military officers, journalists and public figures reveal the widespread dedication in Israel to the genocidal destruction of Gaza.”
Since March 2, the United Nations stories, “Israeli authorities have halted the entry of all lifesaving provides, together with meals, drugs, gasoline and cooking gasoline, for two.1 million folks.” Now, Israel’s horrendous campaign to destroy Palestinian folks in Gaza — utilizing hunger as a weapon of warfare and inflicting huge bombardment on civilians — has resumed after a two-month ceasefire.
On Tuesday, youngsters had been among the many greater than 400 folks killed by Israeli airstrikes, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu proclaimed that “that is solely the start.”
It’s nearly unattainable to discover a Republican in Congress prepared to criticize the pivotal U.S. backing for Israel’s methodical killing of civilians. It’s a lot simpler to seek out GOP lawmakers who sound bloodthirsty.
A rising variety of congressional Democrats — nonetheless approach too few — have expressed opposition. In mid-November, 17 Senate Democrats and two independents voted in opposition to offensive arms gross sales to Israel. However in actuality, treasured few Democratic legislators actually pushed to impede such weapons shipments till after final November’s election. Deference to President Biden was the norm as he actively enabled the genocide to proceed.
This week, renewal of Israel’s systematic massacres of Palestinian civilians has hardly sparked a congressional outcry. Silence or platitudes have been the same old.
For “pro-Israel, pro-peace” J Road, the biggest and most influential liberal Zionist group in the US, evasions have remained together with expressions of anguish. On Tuesday the group’s founder and president, Jeremy Ben-Ami, issued an announcement decrying “the choice by Netanyahu to reignite this horrific warfare” and calling to be used of “all potential leverage to strain both sides to revive the ceasefire.”
However, as at all times, J Road didn’t name for the U.S. authorities to cease offering the weapons that make the horrific warfare potential.
That’s the place genocide denial is available in.
For J Road, as for members of Congress who’ve stored voting to allow the carnage with the large U.S.-to-Israel weapons pipeline, help for that pipeline requires pretending that genocide isn’t actually occurring.
Whereas writing an article for The Nation (“Has J Road Gone Alongside With Genocide?”), I combed by 132 information releases from J Road between early October 2023 and the beginning of the now-broken ceasefire in late January of this yr. I discovered that with reference to whether or not Israel was committing genocide, J Road “aligned itself fully with the place of the U.S. and Israeli governments.”
J Road nonetheless maintains the place that it took final Could, when the Worldwide Courtroom of Justice ordered Israel to halt its army offensive in Rafah. “J Road continues to reject the allegation of genocide on this case,” a information launch stated.
It could be untenable to publicly acknowledge the truth of Israeli genocide whereas persevering with to help transport extra weaponry for the genocide. That’s why those that declare to be “pro-peace” whereas supporting extra weapons for warfare should deny the truth of genocide in Gaza.
Norman Solomon is the nationwide director of RootsAction.org and govt director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. The paperback version of his newest e-book, Struggle Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Navy Machine, consists of an afterword concerning the Gaza warfare.
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