Israeli tanks advance in Gaza City as scholars' association says Israel is committing genocide
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/gaza-city-invasion-1.7622475
Israel pushed tanks deeper into Gaza City and detonated explosives-laden vehicles in one suburb as airstrikes killed at least 19 people across the city on Monday, Palestinian officials and witnesses said.
Israel is pushing ahead with a plan to take full control of the whole Gaza Strip, starting with Gaza City. Its stated goals are destroying Hamas and rescuing the remaining 48 hostages after nearly two years of war, even though the majority of hostages recovered have been through ceasefire exchanges and not military means.
Residents said Israeli forces sent old armoured vehicles into the eastern parts of the overcrowded Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood, then blew them up remotely, destroying several houses and forcing more families to flee.
Legal criteria met for genocide
The reports came as the president of the world's leading genocide scholars' association said it had passed a resolution saying the legal criteria have been met to establish that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
Eighty-six per cent of those who voted among the 500-member International Association of Genocide Scholars backed the resolution declaring Israel's "policies and actions in Gaza" had met the legal definition set out in Article II of the 1948 UN convention on genocide. The organization joins other major human rights groups, including two in Israel, in calling the country's actions in Gaza a genocide.
The three-page resolution from the International Association of Genocide Scholars, which includes Holocaust experts among its membership, calls on Israel to "immediately cease all acts that constitute genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity against Palestinians in Gaza." That includes starvation, deliberate attacks against and killing of civilians and depriving the population of humanitarian aid.
"This is a definitive statement from experts in the field of genocide studies that what is going on on the ground in Gaza is genocide," the association's president, Melanie O'Brien, told Reuters. O'Brien is also a professor of international law at the University of Western Australia and specializes in genocide.
"There is no justification for the commission of war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide, not even self-defence."
The organization joins a growing chorus calling for Israel's campaign in Gaza to be described as a genocide as violations of international law pile up. Amnesty International, as well as Israeli human rights group B'Tselem, have already described Israel's actions in Gaza as such.
Deaths, starvation reported across Gaza
The Israeli military issued a statement saying its forces were fighting Hamas across the enclave and over the past day had struck several military outposts that had been used to stage attacks on its troops.
The Gaza Health Ministry said at least 98 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire across the enclave in the past 24 hours. It added that nine more people, including three children, have died of malnutrition and starvation over the past day, raising deaths from such causes to at least 348, including 127 children.
