My Take | The Israeli colonial-settler state has been unmasked for what it is
- Israel’s democracy is no barrier to genocide, just like the historic Anglo-American colonialism in the US, Canada and Australia
The United Nations Human Rights Council last week published a report that found “reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating Israel’s commission of genocide is met” in Gaza. This came as the UN Security Council passed a resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire.
You know something truly evil is happening when even Israel’s no-limits partner in crime, the United States, abstained to enable the passage of the ceasefire vote tabled by 10 non-permanent member states. But in typical US fashion, it continues to enable the genocide as The Washington Post reported that “new arms packages” for Israel have been authorised and “include more than 1,800 MK84 2,000-pound bombs and 500 MK82 500-pound bombs.
Meanwhile, even the US State Department now has to acknowledge that Gaza is either suffering from famine or close to it.
“While we can say with confidence that famine is a significant risk in the south and centre but not present, in the north, it is both a risk and quite possibly is present in at least some areas,” an official told Reuters.
In presenting her report, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese accused Israel of violating three of the five acts listed under the UN Genocide Convention: killing members of a specific group; causing serious bodily or mental harm; and deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole and in part.
She also found that genocidal acts were approved by senior Israeli military and civilian officials. These acts, she argues, are part of a “settler-colonial process of erasure”, which has been “under way for more than 70 years.”