Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, president of the UN General Assembly, has made a name for himself speaking the truth in regard to Israel and in defence of the Palestinian people. Now calling Israel’s actions in Gaza genocide.
Brockmann told the UN in New York: “The number of victims in Gaza is increasing by the day… The situation is untenable. It’s genocide.”
Judging by the UN definition of genocide, provided by Juan Cole, it is hard to disagree.
Contemporary international legal thinking on genocide does consider destroying the lifeways of a people to be in this category. Here is the UN definition:
‘ In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part . . . ‘
That what the Israeli government is doing is intended to destroy in part the Palestinians as an independent people seems to me incontestable.
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