End the Israeli Blockade and Stop the Genocide

On November 24, UN General Assembly president Miguel D'Escoto Brockmann said Israel's treatment of the Palestinians was like "the apartheid of an earlier era." His remarks were at an annual debate marking the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. He added: "We must not be afraid to call something what it is" since the UN passed the International Convention against the crime of apartheid.

Israel's response was familiar. Its UN ambassador, Gabriela Shalev, called Brockmann an "Israel hater." He's a 75-year old Catholic priest. If he were Jewish, she'd have accused him of being "self-hating."

On November 20, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navanethem Pillay, called for an immediate end to Israel's blockade. In response, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) audaciously expressed shock at what it called a one-sided statement.

The High Commissioner's call came after mounting reports of human rights and humanitarian concerns. For its part, Israel claims its siege is a necessary response to mortar and rocket attacks on Israeli towns and military posts. They're little more than pin pricks and only occur in response to sustained and brutal Israeli attacks against Gazan civilians, including men, women and children - a long-standing practice for decades with overwhelming force against light arms and homemade weapons as well as children throwing rocks. It hardly justifies a medieval siege against 1.5 million people and the horrific fallout it causes. And for what?

Read further Israel's Slow-Motion Genocide in Occupied Palestine by Stephen Lendman.

International law expert Francis Boyle does and in March 1998 proposed that "the Provisional Government of (Palestine) and its President institute legal proceedings against Israel before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague for violating the" Genocide Convention. He stated that "Israel has indeed perpetrated the international crime of genocide against the Palestinian people (and the) lawsuit would....demonstrate that undeniable fact to the entire world."

Israel is a serial human rights international law abuser. The UN Human Rights Commission affirms that it violates nearly all 149 articles of the Fourth Geneva Convention that governs the treatment of civilians in war and under occupation and is guilty of grievous war crimes. The Commission also determined that as an occupying power Israel has committed crimes against humanity as defined under the 1945 Nuremberg Charter.

Palestinian children take part in a human chain protest, near the Erez crossing, against the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip.

Geneva, Nuremberg and other international human rights laws guarantee what Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: that everyone "has the right to life, liberty and security of person." Article 6 (1) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights also affirms it in saying that every "human being has the inherent right to life." Official Israeli policy is to deny it to Palestinians under occupation, especially Gazans under siege.