Evidence of Israel's genocidal intentions toward Gaza?

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JERUSALEM (AP) — The Israeli military campaign in Gaza, experts say, now sits among the deadliest and most destructive in recent history.

In just over two months, the offensive has wreaked more destruction than the razing of Syria’s Aleppo between 2012 and 2016, Ukraine’s Mariupol or, proportionally, the Allied bombing of Germany in World War II. It has killed more civilians than the U.S.-led coalition did in its three-year campaign against the Islamic State group.

The Israeli military has said little about what kinds of bombs and artillery it is using in Gaza. But from blast fragments found on-site and analyses of strike footage, experts are confident that the vast majority of bombs dropped on the besieged enclave are U.S.-made. They say the weapons include 2,000-pound (900-kilogram) “bunker-busters” that have killed hundreds in densely populated areas.

With the Palestinian death toll in Gaza surpassing 20,000, the international community is calling for a cease-fire. Israel vows to press ahead, saying it wants to destroy Hamas’ military capabilities following the militant group’s Oct. 7 cross-border rampage that triggered the war, in which it killed 1,200 people and took 240 others hostage.

The Biden administration has quietly continued to supply arms to Israel. Last week, however, President Joe Biden publicly acknowledged that Israel was losing international legitimacy for what he called its “indiscriminate bombing.”

Here’s a look at what is known so far about Israel’s campaign on Gaza.

HOW MUCH DESTRUCTION IS THERE IN GAZA?

Israel’s offensive has destroyed over two-thirds of all structures in northern Gaza and a quarter of buildings in the southern area of Khan Younis, according to an analysis of Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellite data by Corey Scher of the CUNY Graduate Center and Jamon Van Den Hoek of Oregon State University, experts in mapping damage during wartime.

The percentage of damaged buildings in the Khan Younis area nearly doubled in just the first two weeks of Israel’s southern offensive, they said.

That includes tens of thousands of homes as well as schools, hospitals, mosques and stores. U.N. monitors have said that about 70% of school buildings across Gaza have been damaged. At least 56 damaged schools served as shelters for displaced civilians. Israeli strikes damaged 110 mosques and three churches, the monitors said.

Israel holds Hamas responsible for civilian deaths by embedding militants in civilian infrastructure. Those sites also shelter multitudes of Palestinians who have fled under Israeli evacuation orders.

“Gaza is now a different color from space. It’s a different texture,” said Scher, who has worked with Van Den Hoek to map destruction across several war zones, from Aleppo to Mariupol.

HOW DOES THE DESTRUCTION STACK UP HISTORICALLY?

By some measures, destruction in Gaza has outpaced Allied bombings of Germany during World War II.

Between 1942 and 1945, the allies attacked 51 major German cities and towns, destroying about 40-50% of their urban areas, said Robert Pape, a U.S. military historian. Pape said this amounted to 10% of buildings across Germany, compared to over 33% across Gaza, a densely populated territory of just 140 square miles (360 square kilometers).

“Gaza is one of the most intense civilian punishment campaigns in history,” said Pape. “It now sits comfortably in the top quartile of the most devastating bombing campaigns ever.”

The U.S.-led coalition’s 2017 assault to expel the Islamic State group from the Iraqi city of Mosul was considered one of the most intense attacks on a city in generations. That nine-month battle killed around 10,000 civilians, a third of them from coalition bombardment, according an Associated Press investigation at the time.

During the 2014-2017 campaign to defeat IS in Iraq, the coalition carried out nearly 15,000 strikes across the country, according to Airwars, a London-based independent group that tracks recent conflicts. By comparison, the Israeli military said last week it has conducted 22,000 strikes in Gaza.

WHAT TYPES OF BOMBS ARE BEING USED?

The Israeli military has not specified what it is using. It says every strike is cleared by legal advisers to make sure it complies with international law.

“We choose the right munition for each target — so it doesn’t cause unnecessary damage,” said the army’s chief spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari.

Weapons experts have been able to draw conclusions by analyzing blast fragments found on-site, satellite images and videos circulated on social media. They say the findings offer only a peek into the full scope of the air war.

So far, fragments of American-made Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM) bombs and smaller diameter bombs have been found in Gaza, according to Brian Castner, a weapons investigator with Amnesty International.

The JDAM bombs include precision-guided 1,000- and 2,000-pound (450-kilogram and 900-kilogram) “bunker-busters.”

“It turns earth to liquid,” said Marc Garlasco, a former Pentagon defense official and a war crimes investigator for the U.N. “It pancakes entire buildings.”

He said the explosion of a 2,000-pound bomb in the open means “instant death” for anyone within about 30 meters (100 feet). Lethal fragmentation can extend for up to 365 meters (1,200 feet).

In an Oct. 31 strike on the urban refugee camp of Jabaliya, experts say a 2,000-pound bomb killed over 100 civilians.

Experts have also identified fragments of SPICE (Smart, Precise Impact, Cost-Effective) 2000-pound bombs, which are fitted with a GPS guidance system to make targeting more precise. Castner said the bombs are produced by the Israeli defense giant Rafael, but a recent State Department release first obtained by The New York Times showed some of the technology had been produced in the United States.

The Israeli military is also dropping unguided “dumb” bombs. Several experts pointed to two photos posted to social media by the Israeli Air Force at the start of the war showing fighter jets stocked with unguided bombs.

As Israel continues its assault on Gaza, there is growing concern over humanitarian conditions in the besieged enclave.

Before the Israel-Hamas war, more than 500 aid trucks entered Gaza every day through the Karem Abu Salem crossing with Israel and the Rafah crossing with Egypt.

Those deliveries halted when Israel imposed a complete blockade on October 7 after Hamas carried out attacks on southern Israel.

Israel has temporarily reopened the route through Karem Abu Salem, called Kerem Shalom by Israel, to allow in more humanitarian aid.

At least 24 trucks have been allowed through – but the deliveries are far short of fulfilling the needs of 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza.

Should the United States, a staunch ally of Israel, be doing more to help the Palestinians? And how complicit is Washington in the humanitarian catastrophe that has unfolded?

Presenter: Cyril Vanier

Guests:

Robert Hunter – senior fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations at Johns Hopkins University

Khaled Elgindy – senior fellow at the Middle East Institute and its director of Palestine and Israel-Palestinian affairs

Zeina Ashrawi Hutchison – director of development and expansion at the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee

The victims of Hamas’ vile October 7 attack come from what is referred to as the “Gaza envelope.” Heavy with kibbutzim (intentional collectives, traditionally based around agriculture), its residents are known for being secular and left-leaning.

Asked if losing his parents in Hamas’s terror attack had affected his political views, Maoz Inon, pleaded not for revenge but a reassessment of basing security “on military might.”

Likewise, Yotam Kipnis, in eulogizing for his father, said “We will not stay silent while the cannons roar, and we won’t forget that Dad loved peace. He wasn’t willing to serve in the territories. Do not write my father’s name on a missile, he wouldn’t have wanted that.”

Tom Godo, whose son lived and died in Kibbutz Kissufim, blamed the Netanyahu administration: “The fingers that pulled the trigger and murdered, the hands that held the knives that stabbed and beheaded and slashed were the loyal and determined emissaries of the accursed, messianic and corrupt government [of Israel].”

Even after spending 16 days as a hostage in Gaza, eighty-five-year-old peace activist Yocheved Lifshitz retained her belief in reconciliation. Upon being transferred to the Red Cross, she took the hand of her Hamas handler and bade him “Shalom,” (peace).

It’s not the families of those murdered on October 7, nor the families of the hostages who have been sleeping in tents outside the military headquarters in Tel Aviv demanding all Palestinian political prisoners be released in exchange for their loved ones Netanyahu is invoking Amalek to, but the ideological descendants of Kach.

The religious-nationalist Kach party was founded in 1971 by Brooklyn-born Rabbi Meir Kahane who argued for “the immediate transfer of the Arabs,” whom he referred to as “dogs.” In 1984, the one time his party secured a single seat in the Knesset, Kahane introduced legislation to ban all Jewish-Gentile marriages and sexual relations and revoke the Israeli citizenship of non-Jews.

The Kach party was so violently racist that it was prohibited from running in Israel’s next election, banned entirely in 1994, and defined as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department.

In what could be perceived as another iteration of Amalek, in 2019, Kahane follower Itamar Ben Gvir formed the Jewish Power party, an ideological offshoot of Kach. Merging with other far-right fundamentalist parties to form Religious Zionism in 2022, they won the third-largest share of Israel’s parliament seats. This is the audience Netanyahu is addressing, but not only them.

On October 8, the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ), which claims to represent millions, sent out an email stating that Hamas’ attack, “was not launched due to grievances over the Israeli ‘occupation’ or any real dangers to the al-Aqsa mosque.” Rather, it was driven by the ancient “Spirit of Amalek.”

Many polls indicate the vast majority of Israeli citizens want peace with the Palestinians. I think that should be starting point for reconciliation rather than focusing on one two bad apples in the Knesset.

https://time.com/6333781/israel-hamas-poll-palestine/

New opinion polls just released from Israel Democracy Institute and Tel Aviv University's Peace Index indicate that Israeli attitudes towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are more hawkish than at any point in recent memory …
Poll results were also hawkish when it came to the use of force in Gaza: 57.5% of Israeli Jews said that they believed the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) were using too little firepower in Gaza, 36.6% said the IDF was using an appropriate amount of firepower, while just 1.8% said they believed the IDF was using too much fire power, while 4.2% said they weren’t sure whether it was using too much or too little firepower.

The International Court of Justice is set to hold two days of preliminary hearings beginning Thursday on South Africa's case accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza.

The big picture: Israel has rejected the allegations as "atrocious and preposterous." But the case could have serious implications for its global reputation and set a legal precedent.

What is the ICJ?

The ICJ, also known as the World Court, was established by the UN Charter in 1945 to settle disputes between countries. It's one of the UN's six primary organs and is located in The Hague.

- The court consists of 15 judges elected to nine-year terms. Israel and South Africa are each allowed to add one ad hoc judge of their choosing to the panel.

How genocide is defined in international law

The term "genocide" was legally defined and criminalized by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention of the Crime of Genocide, which took effect in 1951.

- Under the Convention, genocide is defined as "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group."
- Acts of genocide against those groups include killings, serious bodily or mental harm, measures to prevent births, and forcible transfer of children from one group to another.

Genocide has been historically difficult to prove at international courts. That is largely because of the vagueness of the legal definition, experts previously told Axios.

- First, it only applies to the four groups — national, ethnical, racial or religious — included in the Genocide Convention.
- Second, it doesn't give a clear threshold for determining when the listed acts constitute genocide.
- And the third and main challenge is often proving intent, the experts said.

Between the lines: The ICJ shouldn't be confused with the International Criminal Court, which was established via a treaty and tries individuals for war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity, and the crime of aggression.

What South Africa alleges

In its 84-page brief, South Africa argues Israel's military operation in Gaza violates its obligations under the 1948 Genocide Convention.

- Pretoria alleges Israel's actions "are genocidal in character because they are intended to bring about the destruction of a substantial part" of the Palestinian population in Gaza.
- It argues the killing of Palestinians, causing them serious physical and mental harm, and "inflicting on them conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction" constitutes genocide. It also accuses Israeli officials of making statements that express "genocidal intent."
- South Africa's case has been backed by several Arab or Muslim-majority countries, including Turkey and Jordan.

How Israel responded

Israel immediately rejected the accusations, calling them "blood libel" — a reference to the false accusations that originated during the Middle Ages that Jewish people used the blood of Christians for religious rituals.

- Israeli President Isaac Herzog told U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken this week that "there is nothing more atrocious and preposterous" than the case.
- Israel says it has a right to defend itself following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack.

Ahead of the hearing, Israel instructed its embassies to press their host countries to issue statements against the case, according to a copy of a memo obtained by Axios' Barak Ravid.

- The cable noted that a "ruling by the court could have significant potential implications that are not only in the legal world but have practical bilateral, multilateral, economic, security ramifications."

The U.S. has remained steadfast in its support for Israel, calling the case "meritless, counterproductive, and completely without any basis."

What to expect

The case will likely take years, but Pretoria has asked the ICJ to issue urgent provisional measures, including ordering Israel to suspend its military operation in Gaza, while the lawsuit proceeds.

- A decision on any provisional measures could come in a matter of weeks.
- To issue provisional measures, the ICJ only has to decide that at first glance — or prima facie — it has jurisdiction, and at least some of the acts South Africa has complained of fall under the Genocide Convention.

Yes, but: The ICJ has no real enforcement powers.

Even if the court doesn't issue provisional measures, it could still decide it has jurisdiction and proceed with the case.

Go deeper: Gaza's entire population facing crisis levels of hunger, risk of famine, report finds.

Here's South Africa's oral arguments at the International Court of Justice: