Powerful states killing international law

We are witnessing horrific violence being perpetrated against civilians, including war refugees, women, children, and elderly people, in Myanmar, Ukraine, Israel, and Israel-occupied Gaza, primarily by state actors. The founding members of the United Nations (UN) either look on or worse, serve as enablers behind the perpetrator states.

What we don’t see on social media platforms and TV broadcasts is the silent demolition of international law: not least the Genocide Convention, the UN Security Council, and the UN Charter.

As if to spit on the post-Holocaust moral clarion call of “never again,” Israel, a signatory to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, has in effect declared its intention to commit an act of genocide by cutting off all “water, electricity, and food supplies” to the 2.2 million people in Gaza.

The Genocide Convention, as the binding interstate treaty is generally referred to in activist and scholarly quarters, was adopted on Dec. 9, 1948, less than two years after the Soviet Red Army closed the Auschwitz concentration camp on Jan. 27, 1945.

From pro-Israeli American protestors on the streets of New York to state officials and politicians in high places, demands are being made that the Jewish state take “revenge” and “retaliate,” wittingly or not, in language that is easily recognizable as genocidal

Were Raphael Lemkin alive today, he would be so pained to witness what is being done to a marked population of Palestinians in the name of “defending” Israel. Lemkin gifted the post-Holocaust world with the word “genocide,” which has since captured the popular imagination. In his original conception, which more or less became the intellectual foundation of the Genocide Convention, genocide refers to any intentional destruction of populations or identity-based groups marked for elimination, in whole or in part.

Israel’s declaration of a total siege on the entire Gaza population, with the clearly stated intent to deprive the latter of access to life’s essentials—food, water, and electricity (for hospitals, clinics, water pumps, cooking, and heating)—its use of white phosphorus, and the indiscriminate bombing of civilian areas are definitely tantamount to an act of genocide.

What is even more shocking is that the entire cluster of the Washington-led Western world, along with India, has officially backed Israel, despite its declared genocidal intent in Gaza.

As deplorable as Hamas’ horrific attacks on Israeli civilians on Oct. 7 were, Israel’s intention to mete out genocidal “collective punishment” against the Palestinians in Gaza is not simply in breach of this international law, but also unconscionable at the most elemental human level.

Communities of conscience worldwide must call out the unbearable hypocrisy of the governments of Europe, the United States, Canada, and Australia for their collective disregard for international law.

Lemkin would tell us that genocide is a process, not an event or a single incident of violence or mass killing. It starts with stripping populations marked for exclusion and persecution, followed by the eventual destruction of legal protections and basic rights, including due process, to create a hierarchy of citizenships.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is said to have elements of genocide. In his address to the UN General Assembly last month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy used the word “genocide” to refer to the abduction by Russian occupation authorities of tens of thousands of Ukrainian children, who he said were being brainwashed into hating their homeland.

In Myanmar, the military junta continues with its genocidal wars against national minorities amid legal proceedings at the International Court of Justice, such as the Gambia v. Myanmar, better known as the Rohingya genocide case.

In all the aforementioned cases, state actors—Russia with its veto power, Israel with total impunity and protection from the US, India, and Myanmar—are wittingly disregarding international law and breaching the Genocide Convention.

It is no coincidence that these violators of international criminal law and interstate treaties flock together. Israel, India, and Russia are known to be among Myanmar’s key arms suppliers, while Myanmar has shipped artillery and munitions to Russia for use in Moscow’s war on Kyiv.

Enabled by their protectors and supporters, Russia, Israel, India, and Myanmar are driving the final nail in the coffin of international law. Ironically, “never again” has been rendered hollow by the Jewish state itself, while Russia, the liberator of Auschwitz, is playing its part in destroying the Genocide Convention. The Jakarta Post/Asia News Network

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Maung Zarni is a research fellow with the Documentation Center of Cambodia specializing in genocide and a cofounder of Forces of Renewal in Southeast Asia.

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The Philippine Daily Inquirer is a member of the Asia News Network, an alliance of 22 media titles in the region.