Israeli Human Rights Group Says Israel Is Committing Genocide. Why Did It Take 22 Months?
There’s a lot B'Tselem gets right in its report, but some other parts deserve closer scrutiny, Diana Buttu writes.
Genocide. This is what the Israeli human rights group, B’Tselem, has finally determined that Israel is carrying out against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
This determination comes after nearly 22 months in which we have witnessed Israel incessantly bomb the entirety of the Gaza Strip; kill at least 60,000 Palestinians, systematically decimate Palestinian housing and infrastructure, including the Palestinian healthcare, education, water, sewage and electricity systems; launch unprecedented attacks on journalists and first aid responders; and, of course, deliberately and repeatedly forcibly displace and starve the vast majority of Gaza Strip Palestinians, the latter while engaging in deadly target practice against desperate people seeking food. We have seen Palestinian children decapitated; Gaza becoming home to the largest number of child amputees in the world; kindergartens bombed; bodies incinerated. We have heard children’s pleas for help, for their dead parents, and for food. We have heard the statements by Israeli leaders of nearly all political stripes and in virtually all positions of power calling for mass killing and ethnic cleansing.
Yes, this is genocide – one does not need to be a legal scholar to know this. But, to be clear, Palestinian legal scholars and NGOs (like PCHR) have labeled it genocide from the start.