Israeli war crimes escalate following ICJ Genocide case ruling

Ordered by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to cease all actions and rhetoric amounting to violations of the Genocide Convention, the Zionist regime has decided instead to escalate its crimes against the Palestinian people.

In response to the ICJ provisional ruling to accept South Africa’s case, accusing “Israel” of committing genocide in Gaza, the Zionist regime decided to escalate its daily murder of the Palestinian people in the besieged coastal territory. The World Court’s ruling and provisional measures came on Friday, January 26, and since the overwhelming majority of judges on the court gave their votes, the Israelis decided to murder 1,001 more people in Gaza within six days; or, in other words, less than a week.

In fact, the highest daily death toll in weeks, as announced by the Gaza Health Ministry, came on Monday (January 29) when the Zionist entity’s military killed at least 215 Palestinians and injured 300. On Monday (January 22) prior to the ICJ ruling, the New York Times released an article that was entitled “The Decline of Death in Gaza”, which attempted to make the case that, due to the US pressuring “Tel Aviv” to change their battle strategy, there had been a quantitative drop in the daily death toll inside of Gaza. The NYT piece claimed that in the week prior to its report having been released, the daily average death toll in Gaza was 151, yet when you look at the death toll statistics in the seven days prior to their reports release, it is actually 158.

Leaving aside the inaccuracy of the NYT’s statistics, we can observe that during the week that they released their report, the daily Gaza death toll actually jumped to 188. Monday through to Sunday of that week, some 1,317 Palestinians were killed by Israeli attacks. The week prior, a total of 1,110 were killed. Now, observing these statistics, which not only disprove the claims of the NYT as the daily and weekly tolls appear to be rising, we also have to keep in mind that a large portion of those murdered each day are not being recorded by the Health Ministry in Gaza, due to it being impossible to reach and identify all of the bodies. The official death toll for the entire war in Gaza, which is set at roughly 27,000 by the Health Ministry, is in reality an unfortunate gross undercount, and is likely to be more than 10,000 deaths higher (the rough estimate of those trapped under the rubble and considered missing).

To make things worse, one of the provisional measures ordered by the ICJ was to allow the passage of sufficient humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip. In the days following the issuance of the orders, Israeli civilian protesters gathered daily in their hundreds to block UN humanitarian aid trucks from crossing the Karem Abu Salem crossing, which the Israeli military used as an excuse to stop the aid from entering. This is not a credible argument as to why the aid couldn’t enter, as the demonstrations could have been dealt with forcefully and the aid trucks would have been able to pass. Meanwhile, on the other side of the separation barrier between Gaza and the Israeli occupied Palestinian territory, Israeli militants opened fire on civilians attempting to approach aid trucks.

Zionist militia forces also continued to blow up civilian homes, film videos mocking illegally seized Palestinian civilian hostages, murder civilians at will in the streets and their slaughter was as usual targeted at women and children. In addition to this, calls for genocide against the population of Gaza, also ordered by the court to be prosecuted and prevented, continued. A special conference, attended by around a dozen Israeli elected officials, also took place in “Tel Aviv”, where discussions took place about the prospects for building new illegal settlements in Gaza following the ethnic cleansing of the population.

To make things even worse, dozens of Palestinian corpses were found in Northern Gaza on January 30, when civilians discovered bin bags buried in piles of trash and sand; which contained the bodies of civilians who had their hands tied and were executed. 

Meanwhile, in the occupied West Bank, Israeli special forces committed another attack on a hospital, to add to their most recent attacks on Khan Younis’s al-Amal and Nasser hospitals. Israeli special forces, roughly around a dozen of them, entered into Jenin’s Ibn Sina hospital in order to slaughter Palestinians during their sleep. The Israeli forces were dressed in Hijab, the equivalent of black face makeup, and also as nurses and doctors, all of them concealing weapons. Their targets were three Palestinians, one of whom was paralyzed in an Israeli airstrike and was unconscious, the other two were also asleep at the time of their deaths. Zionist soldiers used silencers in order to shoot the three in the head as they slept, before revealing their weapons and terrorizing other staff and patients at the hospital. 

At first, Zionists attempted to deny what is clearly a war crime and proved that their allegations against Hamas in Gaza, that they operate inside of hospitals in disguise, is actually true of their own forces. When the video later emerged, the Zionist rhetoric shifted to claim that they were going after Hamas fighters in order to pre-empt an attack and that they had evidence these three young men were plotting action from within the hospital. The alleged “evidence” was never presented, and even if the three young men, one of whom was paralyzed, were plotting an attack, they were asleep at the time of their murders, and the actions carried out are still considered to be war crimes. 

Finally, although it is far from a comprehensive summary of events that have transpired in occupied Palestine since the ICJ ruling, we have the Israeli campaign to dismantle the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). This campaign, which the Israeli Foreign Ministry had designed last year to purge the UN agency from Gaza after the war, came within 24 hours of the World Court’s decision. Instantly, the Western Corporate media decided to run with the story that unsubstantiated claims against 12 UNRWA employees – who mainly worked as teachers – represent the entire agency which employs some 13,000 staffers inside Gaza alone. In response, the US, UK, EU, and allied states withdrew their funding of the agency that plays the most important role in supporting international aid efforts and providing food for the Palestinian people who are now suffering a famine. 

With each day comes a new horror story, as the situation reaches the point where one asks whether the Israeli genocidal regime is even capable of outdoing its previous crimes. Somehow, the newest massacre always seems to outdo the last in terms of its sheer brutality. In history, there have been countless war crimes committed across the globe and on horrendous scales, yet this genocide may have topped the charts in that we are witnessing it all unfold with our very own eyes. We watch every aspect of Israeli society, from the media, political class, military and civilians, link arms in encouragement of the grotesque daily slaughter of innocent people, all as Western politicians dance for their donor dollars and pretend as if the entire thing isn’t all documented for the world to see.

Unfortunately, “Israel ”, the US, UK, and EU have achieved their goal: they have proven the UN, ICJ and International Criminal Court useless, they have undermined the entire international order and sent a strong message to the whole world, you are either powerful or powerless. As the Secretary-General of Hezbollah, Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah, recently remarked, if you do not have power through weapons, no one will even shed a tear for you when you are killed [a paraphrasing of his statement]. The League of Nations and the Permanent Court of International Judgement were considered failures because of their inability to prevent genocide and the litany of other heinous crimes committed during World War 2. Today, the US’s “rules-based order” has collapsed the idea of international law, of civilized behavior, and rational democratic action. 

The message is clear, the only way to overcome tyranny is through a popular struggle that comes through all means available to the persecuted masses. The olive branch fell because the other side shot the dove.