Netanyahu will go down in history as a genocidaire, says Colombia’s president
Gustavo Petro and the Israeli prime minister are continuing to trade insults over the war in Gaza.
The Colombian president, posting on X, said: “Mr Netanyahu, you will go down in history as a genocidaire. Dropping bombs on thousands of innocent children, women and elderly people does not make you a hero.”
He compared Netanyahu with the Nazis who killed millions of Jews in Europe and said that “a genocide is a genocide”, regardless of the religion of those killed.
Earlier, Netanyahu had called Petro “an anti-Semitic supporter of Hamas” after the Colombian leader called for the Israeli prime minister’s arrest over the killing of Palestinians in Gaza.
Biden administration’s changing rhetoric on Israel
Mohamad Elmasry, a political analyst and professor of media studies at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, spoke to Al Jazeera on subtle changes in the Biden administration’s language on Israel’s war on Gaza and the response of the Netanyahu government.
“It appears to me Israel is pretty much doing what it wants to do. It’s exerting pressure on the United States, not the other way around. We expect that it’s the US that’s going to exert pressure but it seems to be working backwards.”
“In terms of rhetoric, it had been interesting to follow [the] Biden administration’s rhetoric. [Earlier] the US said it did not want any kind of military operations in Rafah. You heard [Vice President] Kamala Harris say, to give one example, it was Israel that forced all those Gazans into Rafah in the first place. Therefore, the US opposes a military operation. But I think what happened [was] that in meetings and phone calls, Israel made it clear to the US that they were going to invade Rafah regardless of whether the US gave its blessings or not. So the US is now shifting its rhetoric. Instead of saying they oppose [the] Rafah operation they are saying they are opposed to a ‘major’ Rafah operation. We see that Israel that’s forcing the US hand.”
“The [US] rhetoric might become even more harsh towards Israel but the question that I have is: Is it too little too late? The opinion polling data we have, the encampments [at US universities] and man-on-the-street interviews suggest that people are really angry, especially young people. So, I am not sure ramping up the rhetoric against Israel is going to make a real difference. Donald Trump is ahead, according to FiveThirtyEight, a data collection and opinion polling site. He is ahead in all swing states. So, it’s looking disastrous for Biden, as one analyst said, Biden may have committed political suicide long ago.”
A man, woman, and children ride in the back of a tricycle loaded with belongings and other items as they flee Rafah bound for Khan Younis, as the Israeli ground and air offensive on the southern city continues
Rafah offensive cannot be ‘reconciled’ with international law: UN rights chief
Volker Turk says a full-scale Israeli assault on the city of Rafah “cannot take place”.
“I can see no way that the latest evacuation orders, much less a full assault, in an area with an extremely dense presence of civilians, can be reconciled with the binding requirements of international humanitarian law and with the two sets of binding provisional measures ordered by the International Court of Justice,” the UN high commissioner for human rights said in a statement.
It is taking place... Israel and the US have declared international humanitarian law dead and buried.
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