Based on Israel's history, I expect that Israeli officials will claim that the International Court of Justice is biased, illogical, has a one-sided view, and is antisemitic (it should be extremely worrisome to people truly interested in human rights for all, how Israel is diluting the term and making a mockery of the it).
In any case, the ICJ can rule whatever it wants, but Israel will not comply, thanks to US protection. What if israel does not comply? It will be in breach of its obligations as a state party to the Genocide Convention. OK, so what? South Africa can go to the Security Council to ask for enforcement of compliance, and there, you have the US veto. ICJ ruling is important, but Palestinians who are experiencing a genocidal attack cannot wait, and given the US protection, what remains for them to do is to resist occupation. The world as it is run by the empire (the US) disregards people's rights unless it is beneficial for the empire's ruling class (not its people), or unless it is pressured to respect such rights. Thanks to the US, Israel continues to occupy Palestinian land despite existing UN Security Council resolutions; please remind me again: what exactly is the two-state solution when 700,000 Israeli settlers grabbed land in the West Bank and are being protected by an army? There is a simple solution that preserves everyone's right to freedom and safety: END THE OCCUPATION. People can always imagine permanent solutions to live together in JUSTICE so that PEACE can be. South Africa did it. If one cannot imagine it being possible, it does not mean it cannot be done. For legal reasons, the question of intentionality is important. Still, for people who have genuine respect for human life and life in general, for people who would like to live in a world of peace, not racism, destruction, and savagery, the question of intentionality is secondary in a non-legal context, a country (not a group) has put plans and orders in action (1) for its army to kill nearly 25,000 (nearly 250 a day) and wound 60,000, (2) to starve more than 2 million people, and to create conditions so that half of the living population might die from diseases and epidemics, is something to be rejected categorically without second thoughts.
And for those who still wonder how to end this "situation" peacefully and protect every life in historical Palestine, there is a simple solution: israel to end its occupation and apply UN resolutions that ordered the end of occupation decades ago. It is not only a blatant travesty to speak of "complex" and "conflict"; it is a way of thinking that leads nowhere but more killing and destruction. You might be one of those who rationalize an imaginary "complexity" so that they take no side, but the solution that respects human life is so obvious and simple: end the occupation. The simple fact is that wanting peace means wanting the end of the occupation; if you are not interested in ending the occupation, you are not interested in peace. On the 100 days of the israeli Genocidal Attack on Gaza, I post two links
1- the South Africa speech accusations of genocidal conduct against Israel at the UN Int'l Court of Justice (around 2.5 hours - if we leave out the opening remark and the break). 2- A link to the 84 pdf document that South Africa has submitted to the UN Int'l Court of Justice https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Q_zTb9dfGU&t=955s https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/192-20231228-app-01-00-en.pdf Listen to Israeli minister explaining that the current path (i.e. starvation, torture, humiliation and destruction) should continue in order to compel Palestinians to leave Gaza voluntarily(!); which makes everything aligned with human rights; it is not a joke; it is in line with the racist supremacist utterances and actions we’ve been reading and hearing since years.
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7150931823726915584/ The colonial mind (European and North American) legitimized the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians back in 1948, and they are legitimizing it now, both times with their explicit support of massacres and population expulsion.
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7149122761930526720/ Christo El Morr, December 23, 2023 In the total wilderness, without a home, without anything, came a child, laying his head on a woman's chest, entrusted in her tenderness. Later, in the total wilderness, he departed in front of the grief of the same woman beneath the cross. Through the two total wildernesses, Jesus shattered the image of the god of war forever. Thus, the killer idol died, but our ability to reinstall him as a lord of darkness that we falsely call light, so that we become a deception, remained. He came as a naked child, and cruelty responded with a bath of blood in Bethlehem. The story says that children were slaughtered by a Herod that multiplies through generations, under every sky, in every murderer who, by hatred and by the people’s silence, becomes the master of the military. Every killed child is one with the child in the manger, who later became an adult crowned with thorns and his blood. Whoever commemorates Him today holds in their heart the children pierced by the spear of brutality so that they do not forget the only Lord, and do not take any other lord than love. Christ proclaimed his love between the wilderness of the manger and the wilderness of the cross so that no heart remains without hope. Whenever a person stands against oppressors and pours out their heart or blood, they become a witness to Him, a martyr like Him outside the city's walls, the city that is ancient in its arrogance. Those who recognize the divine glory in the one wrapped in swaddling clothes in the manger can see that children wrapped in white in the streets of Gaza are dignified in the heart of the divinity that wraps their innocence at all times. They can see their shining whiteness in their mothers' tears as a divine call to stand against brutality. They can see the dragon of hate and supremacy falling like lightning into the abyss; they can foresee it because they believe that the fragility of childhood conquers brutality. The vision is complete when the heart changes to follow the beauty of love that turns the heart into a burning fire that illuminates the world without consuming it so that it becomes a family. And the changed heart, that is, the one that loves, wraps every success they have in the world with some asceticism, so they are able to resist and keep love in the midst of the world so that the world becomes a true church, a community of those who love. In the manger, Christ was the face of the wounded and vulnerable God. That’s why the ones who love see Christ in the faces of the victims on the roads of death in Gaza and in every Gaza under every sky. For whoever reads the divine love poured as a child in a manger is led by love to the abandoned, the vulnerable, the deprived of bread, water, shelter, and medicine, to those robbed of the essence of life, those thrown into death yet standing with dignity, raising a defiant finger in the face of brutality, free from its terror. This only son to his heavenly Father, wrapped in weakness in the manger and wrapped in weakness above the pains of the cross, resurrected to become the only son to humanity, a firstborn in the lineage of conquerors over death, those who become his sisters and brothers when they unite their fragility and pains to His, not bending a knee to brutality. By those conquerors of death, the moment of transfiguration on the mountain becomes a mysterious radiance, extending throughout the universe, dwelling in every face and every body that loves and thus conquers death. By those conquerors of death, the eternity of the everlasting kingdom is renewed in this life when the victory songs rise to knock on the doors of heaven with the hearts of those who loved, so that be joy both in heaven and on earth, fulfilling the will of the Father. Then, finally, a human can be born; like the child in the manger, a human can rest their head peacefully on God's chest, surrendering their heart to the Source, and saying: It is done. by Christo El Morr When one looks at the faces of politicians responsible for massacres that claimed the lives of millions of people, one sees them devoid of any feelings. They rule with coldness, deciding to kill humans without remorse and defending their positions without a hint of genuine concern for human lives. When people align themselves so closely with an institution that they treat themselves not as humans first but fundamentally as cogs in an institution’s machinery, they may find functional satisfaction in fulfilling their required tasks to the fullest. They may even feel a sense of respect or experience authority in their milieu. They may feel a sense of power that allows them to control those below them in a hierarchy, compensating for the existential emptiness felt when their lives lack compassion. Such a person is a zombie, externally alive but internally “dead” because the essence of life, which we can call human life, is not only about physical existence but about the ability to establish relationships of empathy with others; it is about one’s capacity for love. My observation is that the political system in Western democracies, as it is currently implemented, is a Zombie system that promotes the internally dead to be in the ruling class. These individuals perform their functions as cogs in the destructive machine of colonization. This Zombie system attracts power-hungry individuals, gradually sucking human life out of them as they climb the political career ladder until they are completely drained of "life"; they become zombies. At that point, the system deems them suitable for high-ranking positions to serve its interests. Whether the servant becomes the head of a state, a media leader, a lawyer, a doctor, a professor, or a university president makes no difference (the war in Gaza showed that all could be zombies in service to the system). The crucial point is that they serve not the human community but the continuity of the system. This is why, during the genocidal war of the israeli occupation in Gaza, we currently witness the automatic repetition in media of keywords like "Israel's right to self-defence," and "anti-Semitism," in contexts that have nothing to do with those words. These repetitions serve one purpose: to perpetuate the genocide (perpetuated by the veto) behind the smoke of justifications that do not hold logically; if logic is to consider all known reality, not just the part of it that betrays truth to serve the system. However, the zombies realize they are servants and serve a zombie system of unlimited profit accumulation. They know that the zombie system needs to extract and absorb human life before extracting nature’s life. Thus, any continuation of profit extraction, for example, from the Arab world, is linked fundamentally to extracting life from its people first, either by killing as many as possible (which is an expensive and impractical option) or by terrorizing them by committing genocide against them pushing them to subjugation or forced migration. This is the logic of this zombie system at work behind the current genocide in Gaza. However, while the zombie system succeeds in absorbing life from those humans who willingly transform themselves into cogs in its service, it fails to turn people living in poverty into zombies. It may succeed in killing them or subduing them for a while, but the oppressed do not transform into zombies, fortunately. This is because, by their nature, humans resist oppression, love life, and want freedom. That’s why the zombie system only seeks to transform a portion of those oppressed; it lures a few rulers, journalists, university professors, doctors, engineers, and others to accept the zombie system, to accept to serve as zombies its machine that extracts human and natural life (the zombie system looks at human life and nature only as resources for profit extraction). Thus, the zombies in the exploiting and exploited countries become smaller or bigger cogs in the Zombie system, but all serve it as if they were dead, with no compassion for its victims, including their compatriots. The fight against the genocide in Gaza is linked to fighting the Zombie system worldwide. That’s why the oppressed populations that most sympathized with the Palestinians in Gaza are those who suffer from the same Zombie system. Many have seen the Zombie system and given it different names. In his well-known play Faust, the German poet Goethe called it "Mephistopheles" (the devil), where Faust sells his “soul” to Mephistopheles in exchange for realizing some of his dreams. Today's Zombie system is called capitalism; you can call it colonialism or any other name; it is a system that accumulates wealth by destruction, by extraction of human life and nature. Beware the Zombie system that absorbs life out of those who trade with it profit for their “souls.” The success of the Zombie system in transforming people into zombies requires free consent. Those who freely reject the Zombie system protect their capacity to love and defend their freedom; they are the unknown saints in our era: they face isolation, ostracism, anxiety, and sorrow to testify for truth, for a humane life, for love and freedom. The martyrdom of the innocent Palestinians bombed in Gaza is a radical rejection of the Zombie system as their shattered bodies scream “freedom.” |
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In GAZA A Genocide is Underway. Silence is complicity Christo El MorrI believe in My latest theology book :
Palestinian Liberation A Theological Approach (Ar) Free E-BookArchives
May 2024
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