Andy McDonald MP on Labour’s equivocation on Israeli genocide
A new report from Amnesty International reflects how yet another respected organisation found that what is happening in Gaza is genocide. Their report, entitled, ‘You Feel Like You Are Subhuman’: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza, concludes:
“Amnesty International has found sufficient basis to conclude that Israel committed, between 7 October 2023 and July 2024, prohibited acts under the Genocide Convention, namely killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm and deliberately inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction in whole or in part.”
The failure to describe these abominable acts for what they are – genocide, the crime of displacement, of extermination and apartheid – is, whether deliberately or otherwise, frustrating the demands being made of signatory nation states from taking the actions that they are obliged to take under international law. It is not a matter of opinion. It is a matter of law.
Of course, once a nation state accepts that those crimes have been committed then it would be obliged to act. But simply being in denial is no defence or excuse. In a recent exchange in the House of Commons Nick Timothy MP railed against my use of the term “genocide” to describe what’s happening in Gaza and invited David Lammy “to say that there is not a genocide occurring in the Middle East”. The response from the Foreign Secretary was: “These are legal terms, and they must be determined by international courts”. So far so good.
The International Court of Justice ordered provisional measures of protection to prevent acts under Article II of the Genocide Convention, against Israel. That being so, signatories to the Convention, the UK being one such, are obliged to take action to prevent genocide. The position is clear. It is not then necessary to wait for the full determination of the case. The obligation to act to stop and prevent genocide is engaged now.
As was said recently in a most powerful intervention by Amos Goldberg, an Israeli Professor of Holocaust Studies of some 30 years, in which he referred to Rafael Lemkin, the Jewish-Polish legal scholar who coined the phrase Genocide and whose work contributed to the creation of the 1948 Genocide Convention – or more accurately the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide – Goldberg asserts that what is happening in Gaza is genocide and exactly the circumstances that Lemkin had in mind.
Sadly, the Foreign Secretary carried on with his answer to say: “I agree with the Hon. Gentleman (Nick Timothy) that those terms were largely used when millions of people lost their lives in crises such as Rwanda and the Holocaust of the Second World War. The way people are now using those terms undermines their seriousness”.
I regret to say that this is where I must respectfully disagree. That is not what the Convention says.
What it does say is this:
“Article I The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish.
Article II 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; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
On any reasonable consideration of the criteria laid out in the convention, it is abundantly clear that genocide has occurred and continues to be prosecuted against the Palestinian people.
I cannot for the life of me understand why the Foreign Secretary is so reluctant to describe these despicable events for what they are. Unless and until he does I fear that our country will continue to fail to adhere to its own legal obligations.
The consequences of powerful countries failing to take the appropriate actions in light of Israel’s complete contempt for the pleas for a ceasefire and an end to the genocide means that the living and dying hell for the Palestinian people continues.
As Goldberg said: “We don’t teach about it (genocide) in order to realise it retrospectively. We teach about it to prevent it and stop it. But like every other case of genocide in history we have mass denial both here in Israel and across the world but reality cannot be denied. So yes, it is a genocide and once you come to this conclusion you cannot remain silent.”
The obligation upon the world is to act to stop this genocide and punish the perpetrators. The British Government must use every lever it can to end the genocide. History will judge inaction harshly.