Tag Archives: genocide

Hamas Is The Very Definition Of A Genocidal Group

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Genocide is defined in the dictionary as “the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group.” Nazi Germany had that aim in the 1930s and 1940s and succeeded in killing one-third of the Jewish population. Jews have still not replaced the loss 75 years later.

Today, the group that best captures the heinous intent of deliberately killing Jews is the popular political-terrorist group Hamas.

Hamas’s 1988 foundational charter is a fountain of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and calls to kill Jews and destroy the Jewish State. Some lowlights include:

  • “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it.” (Opening)
  • “Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious.” (Preamble)
  • “raise the banner of Jihad in the face of the oppressors, so that they would rid the land and the people of their uncleanliness, vileness and evils.” (Article 3)
  • “raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine” (Article 6)
  • “Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews)… there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him” (Article 7)
  • “Nothing in nationalism is more significant or deeper than in the case when an enemy should tread Moslem land” (Article 12)
  • “There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time” (Article 13)
  • “In face of the Jews’ usurpation of Palestine, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised…. the Palestinian problem is a religious problem, and should be dealt with on this basis.” (Article 15)
  • Zionist “organizations, hostile to humanity and Islam, will be obliterated.” (Article 17)

The toxicity rambles on from there.

Palestinian Arabs voted Hamas to 58% of parliament with this charter, in its first democratic election for parliament in 2006. It has thus far been the only parliamentary election.

Hamas took control of Gaza in 2007, and Egypt and Israel subsequently put a blockade around the terrorist enclave lest it gain deadly weapons to pursue its genocidal goals. Despite the blockade, the group managed to launch numerous attacks and wars against Israel with low-level weaponry.

Palestinian Arabs continue to support this genocidal group, with a majority supporting their leader to be the next president according to Palestinian polls. That should not be surprising as most Gazans support terrorism, specifically killing Jewish civilians inside of Israel.

June 2023 PCPSR poll Question 70 “Concerning armed attacks against Israeli civilians inside Israel, I….”, with 70% of Gazans supporting terrorism

The United Nations has a definition for genocide which states:

“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:

  1. Killing members of the group;
  2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
  3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
  4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
  5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

Elements of the crime

The 1988 Hamas Charter showed clear intent to cause a genocide of Jews, and the group’s broad-based support amongst Palestinian Arabs demonstrate a “deformity” in Palestinian culture, as leading Arab American James Zogby said at the United Nations in June 2023.

The actions of October 7, 2023, certify the intent with barbarism.

Not only did Hamas kill over 1,400 people in an unprovoked attack, it butchered people causing severe mental harm and long-term trauma to the entire Jewish State. It made the idea of living anywhere near Gaza virtually impossible. In taking over 240 hostages into Gaza – including young children who may never see their families again – the evil intent is beyond manifest.

Israel is engaged in a just war against this genocidal group. While limiting civilian casualties, it MUST defeat Hamas and ensure it cannot attack Israel again. An aggressive self defense must be broadly supported.

Defense against genocidal maniacs must extend to Jews in the diaspora as well. Countries with large Jewish populations including the United States, France, Canada, United Kingdom and Argentina have over 7 million Jews amongst them. Those countries have seen a large spike in antisemitic incidents on college campuses, in the streets and in governments. Security must be enhanced as Hamas’s Willing Executioners invert perpetrator and victim and spew antisemitic inanity to incite the mob.

The most terrifying evidence of the global depravity was watching America’s Ivy League professors cheering the October 7 pogrom calling it “exhilarating” and “awesome” because they believed that the genocide of Jews had finally moved passed a Palestinian promise to an actual reality.

First in the Middle East, and then the diaspora.

The world witnessed an antisemitic genocidal group butchering Jews in Israel, and now watches Hamas supporters come for global Jewry as part of the “global intifada”, bizarrely protected under the banner of free speech.

How will diaspora Jewry’s self-defense manifest?

Related articles:

The Scale And Barbarity Of The Hamas Massacre

The Collective Punishment Of Terrorism

The They Keeps Growing

The Joy of Lecturing Jews

The Global Intifada

The Antisemitic Campus: Decolonize Palestine

‘The Maiming of the Jew’

Eyal Gilad Naftali Klinghoffer. The new Blood Libel.

Names and Narrative: Genocide / Intifada

Rashida Tlaib’s Modern ‘Mein Kampf’

The Death of Civilians; the Three Shades of Sorrow

Regime Reactions to Israel’s “Apartheid” and “Genocide”

Gazans Have Always Wanted To Kill Jews Inside Of Israel

Jamaal Bowman Disgustingly Compares Israeli Actions in Jerusalem To A ‘Military Coup’, ‘Ethnic Cleansing’ And A “Genocide”

Jamaal Bowman Disgustingly Compares Israeli Actions in Jerusalem To A ‘Military Coup’, ‘Ethnic Cleansing’ And A “Genocide”

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There are no people as persecuted as the Jews. Subject to pogroms, ethnic cleansing, blood libels and genocides throughout history and around the world, they have been the victims of the powerful and of the weak.

Rep. Jamaal Bowman represents New York State’s 16th Congressional District which covers lower Westchester County, just north of New York City. It is estimated to be over 20% Jewish and has one of the largest Jewish populations in the United States.

From his powerful podium, Bowman deliberately insults Jewish history and incites hatred for the Jewish State.

On May 11, 2021, while Israeli courts were attempting to handle a property dispute of an Arab family squatting (not paying rent to the Jewish landlords) in a Jerusalem apartment, and suppressing a violent Arab mob who objected to Jews being allowed onto their holiest site of the Temple Mount, Bowman published a particularly noxious anti-Semitic and anti-Israel statement. It opened:

“There’s so much we’re dealing with within our own borders that it’s often difficult for Americans to turn our attention to the problems of people overseas, but it’s hard at this moment not to be struck by the extent of suffering around the world. Whether it’s the infringement of human and civil rights of Palestinians living in Sheikh Jarrah, the violence against those praying in the Al-Aqsa mosque during the holy month of Ramadan in East Jerusalem, police violence against Colombians, a military coup in Myanmar, an ignored genocide in Ethiopia, or the ethnic cleansing of the Uyghurs in China, my heart is breaking for people around the world experiencing oppression and hurt.”

Bowman started with events in Israel – twice. He only referenced the perceived wrongs against Arabs, not the violent Arab attacks against Jews exercising their basic human rights to pray with dignity at their holiest location.

He then compared those relatively minor events to vicious global activities.

  • In Colombia, police attacked and killed peaceful demonstrators protesting income inequality
  • In Myanmar, the military essentially took over the entire government and arrested public officials
  • In Ethiopia, an estimated 500,000 people were killed
  • In China, hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs were imprisoned and shipped to “re-education camps”

How are any of these horrible actions against hundreds of thousands of peaceful civilians remotely close to Israel protecting Jews who want to visit the Temple Mount? Bowman deliberately abused language to stir up anger and violence against the Jewish State. Which is exactly what happened over the next days, with Jews around the world being attacked.

Further, to use words like “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” against the Jewish State, when Jews just suffered a true genocide in Europe, and ethnic cleansing in Israel at the hands of the Jordanian and Egyptian army who expelled all of the Jews from Judea and Samaria and the eastern part of Jerusalem, is to spit in the faces of actual victims.

Jamaal Bowman standing in the center of the alt-left “Squad”, with Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar on the left, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Cori Bush and Ayanna Pressley to the right

Jamaal Bowman helped inflame violence against Jews around the world with malicious smears against Israel. He is unfit to serve in congress.

Related articles:

The Insidious Jihad in America

Vedat Gashi, Running To Unseat Jamaal Bowman in Congress, Talks to The Jewish Community

Why Does Rep. Jamaal Bowman Lie to Constituents?

Westchester’s Pro-Israel Community Is Livid With J Street

Does The United States Think That The Holocaust Relates To Israel?

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On March 21, 2022, United States Secretary of State Anthony Blinken spoke at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. Blinken’s remarks focused on the decision by the US government to declare that the Burmese military committed a genocide against the Rohningya. The location of the talk was consistent with the museum‘s mission to be a resource to teach “about the Holocaust and other genocides and mass atrocities.“

Blinken never mentioned Israel in his speech, yet it was featured prominently on the US embassy in Israel’s website, including a link to the video and the full text. One could not find a link to the speech on the websites of embassies to other countries (also not mentioned in the speech), except for Italy.

One must assume that the US government opted to post a speech about the genocide of the Rohingya on Israel’s website because the Holocaust was about the annihilation of Jews, and Israel is the only Jewish State. It is unclear why Italy was also selected.

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken at US Holocaust Memorial Museum, March 21, 2022

In his remarks, Blinken mentioned the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya from regions of Burma but has never discussed the Jordanians ethnically cleansing the Jews from Judea and Samaria and eastern Jerusalem in 1948-9.

Blinken talked about the Burmese military’s so-called “Clean and Beautiful Nation” activities which led to atrocities, but neglected to mention the popular Palestinian political-terrorist group Hamas’s 1988 charter (article 3) which urges everyone to “raise the banner of Jihad in the face of the oppressors, so that they would rid the land and the people of their [Jews] uncleanliness, vileness and evil.“

Blinken also discussed “Burma’s 1982 citizenship law, which effectively excluded Rohingya from citizenship and denied them full political rights, echoing the 1935 Nuremberg Laws that stripped Jews of their German citizenship,” but has thus far refused to similarly call out the 1954 Jordanian citizenship law which specifically excluded Jews.

Blinken noted the Burmese “dehumanizing hate speech,” in which “Rohingya were compared to fleas, to thorns, to an invasive species,” but hasn’t called out Palestinian Authority officials who call Israel “the greatest cancer,” and the leader of Iran who similarly called Israel “a cancerous tumor.“

Blinken knows the warning signs and said “Understanding the contours of this [genocidal] path is a core part of the Holocaust Museum’s mission.  It’s crucial to all of us who are committed to living up to the maxim of “Never again.”  By learning to spot the signs of the worst atrocities, we’re empowered to prevent them.“

The current United States government clearly understands that the Holocaust relates to Jews and the importance of the subject to the Jewish State. So one must wonder why it deliberately ignores the genocidal behavior of Israel’s Arab and Muslim neighbors.

Regrettably, it may be because the current administration is adopting the Palestinian Arabs’ false narrative that Israel was created because of the Holocaust, blinding US officials to the deeply-instilled anti-Semitism in many parts of Arab society.

Related articles:

Seeing the Holocaust Through Nakba Eyes

The Arabists of the US Embassy in Israel

NY Times Holocaust Revisionism For Poles, Not Palestinians

The Lies Conflating the Holocaust and The Promised Land

Regime Reactions to Israel’s “Apartheid” and “Genocide”

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Summary: The new leaderships at the UN and US have joined to take a forceful approach to anti-Israel rhetoric, in a sharp break from the prior regimes. Alas, the New York Times still does little to report on it and educate its remaining readership.

“Apartheid”

On March 14, 2017, a United Nations commission issued a report that called Israel’s treatment of Palestinian Arabs equivalent to “apartheid.” It’s findings came as a result of a study

“whether Israel has established an apartheid regime that oppresses and dominates the Palestinian people as a whole.”

The new Trump administration’s ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, pounced on the report and pressured the new UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres to have it withdrawn. Not only did he have the report removed from the UN website, one of the authors of the report resigned.

US Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley

This is in sharp contrast to the reactions of the prior regimes of US President Barack Obama and UNSG Ban Ki Moon who applied no such pressure to even worse false accusations.

“Genocide”

One of the authors of the March 2017 UN report, Richard Falk, is a notorious anti-Semite. In December 2013, he said that Israel’s “criminal intention [toward Palestinians] is genocidal.” Canada quickly called on the UN to fire Falk. The US and UN distanced themselves from Falk’s comments but would take no aggressive action for his removal.

The tolerance for anti-Semitism from the Obama and Ban regimes was neither new nor surprising. It was pervasive.

Obama was reluctant to use US pressure on the world body. He believed that everybody was entitled to a point of view and that he would rather sit at a table and listen to the anti-Semitism than take aggressive action to stop it.

Consequently, people like Mahmoud Abbas felt no compunction in taking the podium at the UN General Assembly to make absurd comments that Israel was carrying out a “genocide.”

Under-Reporting Anti-Semitism

The New York Times wrote about the latest brouhaha at the UN in an article “Tempest at U.N. Over Report Saying Israel Practices Apartheid.” In a story without any depth, the article noted that one of the authors of the UN report had been accused of being anti-Israel.

“One of the authors of the report was Richard Falk, an American law professor and former United Nations human rights investigator whom critics regard as an anti-Israel extremist. He has been refused entry to Israel for what Israeli leaders have described as his hostile point of view.”

This was the first mention of Falk in the NYT for almost a decade. As detailed in FirstOneThrough’s article “The New York Times and Richard Falk,” the paper never discussed this “human rights investigator” who touted conspiracy theories about the attacks on 9/11, and that the US deserved the Boston Marathon bombing because of its foreign policy. It also never mentioned Falk’s outrageous claim that Israel carries out a genocide against Arabs.

Further, the paper has never opted to give a basic education to its readers:

The paper’s choice of giving color and context to certain items is conspicuously selective. It would rather constantly pepper its articles that “most of the world considers the West Bank to be occupied territory,” but will never add the clause “most Palestinian Arabs harbor anti-Semitic attitudes,” when it writes about the absurd accusations of “genocide” and “apartheid” coming from Palestinian Arabs.

In 1991, New York City Mayor David Dinkins let anti-Semitic riots run rampant in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. His successor, Rudy Giuliani, opted to take a tough stand on crime and was able to transform New York City into the safe city that people recognize today.

The civilized world can only hope to see a similar outcome in the transition from Obama/Power to Trump/Haley and from Ban to Guterres: that the mayhem and hatred that has been tolerated for way too long will be aggressively combatted.

Related First.One.Through articles:

Nikki Haley Will Not Equivocate on the Ecosystem of Violence

The UN is Watering the Seeds of Anti-Jewish Hate Speech for Future Massacres

Arabs in Jerusalem

Palestinian Jews and a Judenrein Palestine

What do you Recognize in the Palestinians?

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The International Criminal Court for Palestinians and Israelis

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The International Criminal Court defines itself as “an independent, permanent court that tries persons accused of the most serious crimes of international concern, namely genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. The ICC is based on a treaty, joined by 122 countries.”

The ICC uses the following definition for genocide: “According to the Rome Statute, “genocide” means any of the following acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group:

  • killing members of the group;
  • causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
  • deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
  • imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
  • forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

Regarding “Crimes Against Humanity” the ICC uses the following categories:

  • murder;
  • extermination;
  • enslavement;
  • deportation or forcible transfer of population;
  • imprisonment;
  • torture;
  • rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity;
  • persecution against an identifiable group on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious or gender grounds;
  • enforced disappearance of persons;
  • the crime of apartheid;
  • other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering or serious bodily or mental injury.

Lastly, for “war crimes”, the ICC states that it “include grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions and other serious violations of the laws and customs applicable in international armed conflict and in conflicts “not of an international character” listed in the Rome Statute, when they are committed as part of a plan or policy or on a large scale. These prohibited acts include:

  • murder;
  • mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;
  • taking of hostages;
  • intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population;
  • intentionally directing attacks against buildings dedicated to religion, education, art, science or charitable purposes, historical monuments or hospitals;
  • pillaging;
  • rape, sexual slavery, forced pregnancy or any other form of sexual violence;
  • conscripting or enlisting children under the age of 15 years into armed forces or groups or using them to participate actively in hostilities.”

Many of these definitions cover the actions of many countries in modern times. The ICC has taken on a handful of cases thus far including in: Uganda; Congo; Sudan; Central African Republic and Kenya. Crimes committed by Syria, Boko Haram, the Taliban, Iran and Islamic State have not been prosecuted at this time.

Palestinians at the ICC

Genocide: As the Palestinian Authority takes moves to join the ICC, it will place itself in the crosshairs of many of the actions of the court. Within the definition of genocide, the Hamas charter and its leadership call for the killing of Jews and the destruction of Israel clearly put in in violation.

Crimes Against Humanity: Within the definition of crimes against humanity, Hamas murders and kidnaps Israelis. The kidnapped people do not get proper treatment (such as visitation) according to the Geneva Convention. Hamas tortures people suspected of collaborating with Israel and cause mental injury to Palestinians by public executions and torture and dragging bodies through the streets. Acting Palestinian Authority president Abbas actively practices apartheid: he has called for a Jew-free state; Palestinian law bans the sale of any land to Jews (punishable by death); the universities prohibit Jews from stepping foot on campuses. Abbas and Hamas both cause mental injury towards Jews continuously: naming squares and tournaments after murderers of Jewish civilians; airing television programs which call for the murder of all Jews.

War Crimes: Regarding war crimes, Hamas openly attacks civilians and civilian targets. It enlists children to fight Israel and takes hostages.

Israel at the ICC

Genocide: Regarding genocide, the population growth of the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank exceed almost every country in the world. The regions have the highest birth rates and lowest death rates. The blockade around Gaza has been deemed legal by the United Nations. No case could be advanced against Israel for such charges.

Crimes Against Humanity: Israel does imprison Arabs in its territories and its practice could come under scrutiny. However, the arrests are likely not viewed as widespread and are often done while investigating crimes. Trying to apply the charge of apartheid would be a stretch as Israel’s practice of using military law for the West Bank which has different criteria for those residents with Israeli citizenship and those that do not. Israel’s treatment of non-Jewish citizens would likely further counter any argument that Israel’s actions in the territories are based on ethnicity.

War Crimes: The Palestinians will likely try to get the most leverage out of the charge of war crimes. It will use the latest Operation Protective Edge over the summer of 2014 to try to blame Israel for intentionally attacking the civilian population and mosques and schools. While Israel may concede that some of their firepower was intentional, it will argue that the targets were legitimate as they were sources of fire. The debate about proportionality of the use of Israel’s firepower and resulting collateral damage versus the firepower aimed at Israeli civilians may be too nuanced for the court to take on.

Palestinian attempts to use the ICC to pursue actions against Israel related to settlement activity in the West Bank would be a stretch. Firstly, it does not fit neatly into the categories which are the focus areas for the ICC. Secondly, international laws like the Geneva Convention and Hague Regulation do not actually consider Jews living in the West Bank to be illegal (see the First One Through article below). Further, “grave violations of the Geneva Conventions” would be a stretch as only one clause (Article 49) deals with treatment of occupied territory, and 95% of that article deals with the treatment of the local population, while only 5% addresses new residents moving into the land.

The international calls that the settlements are illegal are posted by various United Nations and governmental bodies and do not constitute international law from which the ICC would rule. If it were, the ICC could consider the “Zionism is racism” edict by the UN and convict Israel for crimes on that basis. (Note that Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan called Zionism a “crime against humanity” in September 2013.  World opinion on the topic is angry and absurd, but it should not have any bearing on legality).

 

The Palestinians clearly are much more vulnerable to charges of the ICC. Does Palestinian Authority acting –President Mahmoud Abbas feel that Hamas would bear the brunt of any fallout which would just strengthen his personal position and that of Fatah? Does he think that because his term for president expired six years ago, he can claim no responsibility for Palestinian war crimes?

Sources:

http://www.icc-cpi.int/en_menus/icc/about%20the%20court/frequently%20asked%20questions/Pages/12.aspx

Related FirstOneThrough articles:

The Palestinian call for genocide of the Jews: https://firstonethrough.wordpress.com/2014/11/19/the-palestinians-arent-resorting-to-violence-they-are-murdering-and-waging-war/

Abbas Actively Practices Racism: https://firstonethrough.wordpress.com/2014/10/27/abbas-knows-racism/

The Legal Israeli Settlements: https://firstonethrough.wordpress.com/2014/12/11/the-legal-israeli-settlements/

Quality of life of Arabs in West Bank and Gaza: https://firstonethrough.wordpress.com/2015/01/04/mad-world-of-palestinian-quality-of-life-statistics/

Abbas’s presidential term expired long ago: https://firstonethrough.wordpress.com/2014/09/30/the-disappointing-46-anniversary/

 

abbas UN