All Episodes
Previous Next
April 1, 2024 - Jim Fetzer
25:05
Is Israel Above International Law? - Documentary of Jewish Power to Commit Genocide
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
It's an extremely cynical moment for international law.
It's an extremely devastating moment for the Palestinian people.
There are rules under international law, and no matter which way you look at this, Israel is in violation of those rules.
As of the 7th of October, there is not one norm of international humanitarian law that has not been violated.
I never imagined that in my lifetime I would see a genocide taking place in real time before my eyes.
The fact that it is being protected by most Western governments takes it to a level that I just never imagined would be possible.
As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi.
I come to Israel with a single message.
You're not alone.
You are not alone.
Canada will always be a friend of Israel and defend its rights, including its right to exist.
And Israel has a right to defend itself.
In fact, it has the duty to defend its people.
has the right to defend themselves against barbaric attacks, to protect their state citizens and to defend their attacks.
France recognizes the right of Israel to defend themselves and to protect their populations.
As your friend, we will stand with you in solidarity, we will stand with your people, and we also want you to win.
If one looks at our political leaders today and all of our mainstream politicians, they are the most mendacious, the most mediocre, the least talented group of politicians that I can remember during my almost 60 years on the least talented group of politicians that I can remember during my death.
It is astonishing just how deeply corrupt materially and morally they are.
Because many of them, be it through donations to their political parties, donations to them personally, donations to their organizations like the Labor Friends of Israel, the Conservative Friends of Israel, the Democratic Friends of Israel, the Republican Friends of Israel, and the multiple and myriad other organizations like that.
They provide an extremely good living for that person.
Thank you for having me and I'm looking forward to having a thorough discussion about where everybody goes from here.
Every day.
The West is intimately involved in Israel's genocidal campaign in Gaza.
For months we have seen U.S.
officials affirm time and again that there are no red lines for Israel, using exactly that language, when of course we know that international law draws many red lines.
And yet the U.S.
The US has come out in stark opposition, granting Israel full authority to proceed and to create as much death and destruction as it sees fit.
I'm shocked by the lack of action of the international community.
I'm shocked by the hands raised by the US ambassador in the Security Council voting against a ceasefire, vetoing a ceasefire.
I'm shocked by the lack of action of principled states who need to take, again, a principled concrete stand against this aberration and start thinking of sanctions.
What we've seen is that the laws of war are used against weaker parties, But if your ally is the United States, and if your ally can veto any Security Council resolution,
And if your allies are the European states, then the chances that the ICC will bring you to justice are very, very slim.
The International Court of Justice is a court that renders guilty The Losers in a Conflict.
It is a court of the victors and a court that has double standards for the allies of the powerful and for those that it thinks of as its enemies.
The view that South Africa's submission to the International Court of Justice is some sort of anti-Semitic screed and blood libel?
This is nonsense that you couldn't make up.
And the nonsense that is being enunciated constantly, not just by the Israelis, but that is then parroted By the US government, the UK government, the German government, the French government, etc.
And this is being done to defend the indefensible.
To defend the slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent civilians.
To defend attacks on health facilities, on residential homes, on places of worship, on places of work.
We are seeing a genocide taking place in Gaza.
Well, the truth of the matter is, if there weren't an Israel, there would actually have been one.
The truth of the matter is that I believe that he, as I went home and seen, got in trouble at the time, but it's true.
You don't have to be a Jew to be a Zionist.
You don't have to be a Jew to be a Zionist.
It's the international community and its powerful member states, like particularly the US, but in general, Western countries, which is still a pilot.
And it's evident in the veto power that some member states can exercise within the UN.
Three of those member states are from the West.
It tells us something.
No African country has a veto power in the United Nations system.
It's the entire system which is not fully representative of where the world is today.
But I would like to see this changing.
We need to think of better mechanisms, not only inside the law, but how the law is applied to ensure that there is no double standards.
So it's both a changing of the laws, So that they address the current circumstances, but also the institutions, the judicial institutions that apply the law so that they don't apply it with double standards.
And we will continue to actively engage in the hard work of direct diplomacy on the ground until we reach a final solution.
The destruction of over 70 percent of Gaza, the killing of over 30,000 Palestinians, including 13,000 Palestinian babies and children, the injuring of around now 70,000 Palestinians and the destruction of almost all of the civilian infrastructure in Gaza. Palestinians and the destruction of almost all of the civilian International law prohibits this completely.
We have to remind the world that there are, at least in theory, rules which Israel must abide by and which it is violating.
The IDF is doing anything they can in order to minimize the casualties when it targets the military targets.
But again, we are in a war.
in a war, civilians got hurt.
You will never see the IDF target shoot down a civilian.
You will never see a group of children walking on the beach of Gaza and Israel target them specifically or an old lady crossing the street and Israel shoots the old lady.
Israel does not target civilians.
Israel targets military targets.
Israel targets terrorists.
We have 70 in the house.
We will see them and we will see them.
We will see them.
We will see them.
Israel targets military targets.
Israel targets terrorists.
And when these terrorists surround themselves with civilians, with these little children, with this old lady, with these old people, these civilians might get hurt.
But it's not on the fault of Israel.
It's on the fault of the one who surrounded himself with his civilians, the one that used them as human shields.
The argument of the human shields, of Palestinians in general, being eager to sacrifice of Palestinians in general, being eager to sacrifice their own children as human shields, has been used and dismissed over and over.
The first one to dismiss this argument was Richard Goldstone, the head of the first commission of inquiry over the first war in Gaza, and it has been disproven over and over.
What is the evidence?
Israel's instruction to the Palestinians first to move south and then to move west and then to move north.
But basically that instruction which has displaced 1.8 million people tells the Israelis that any civilians that remains in that area or
Israel assumes that any civilian that remains in that area is either a participant in hostilities and therefore can be killed or a human shield, namely someone that is being used to shield the legitimate military target.
And that allows Israel to relax the repertoires of lethal violence that it uses against these people.
And in a court of law, that can be used to justify the wholesale killing of civilians.
Israel does more than even it's required.
It drops flyers over Gaza to tell the people to vacate the area.
It makes phone calls to residential civilians to vacate the area.
Israel calls to vacate the area.
Once Israel took these precautions, it's allowed to take down the building.
If civilians prefer to stay, they take their own responsibility.
Thank you.
This is a complete distortion of international law.
If you consider also the fact that Israel is an occupier, which I think is the relevant legal framing here, Israel has obligations under occupation law, not only to end the occupation, which has now been ongoing for 56 years, but also to protect the occupied people.
And we also know that Israel has no right to claim self-defense in accordance with Article 51 of the UN Charter with respect to attacks emanating from a territory that it occupies.
And this notion was upheld by the International Court of Justice in its 2004 ruling on the legality of the wall.
And so regardless of which way you look at this, there is absolutely no legal defense to committing a genocide.
We are killing and killing the people of the war.
There is no electricity.
There is no food.
There is no water.
There is no electricity.
Everything is closed.
We have the President of the state saying there's no innocent civilian or there's no uninvolved civilian in the Gaza Strip.
So these kind of remarks do point at intent.
And if it gets to a court of law, then these kinds of remarks become very important in terms of the genocidal aspect of this war.
A lot of people in Israel will not feel bad for the Palestinians.
But yet, the leadership in Israel feels for the Palestinian people.
and they allow whatever the minimal humanitarian aid to be provided to the population in Gaza.
Thank you.
The law does create a vision of a certain kind of justice that we want to aspire for.
We want to aspire towards a world where human rights for all are protected.
The immense scale of suffering in Gaza, there must be an immediate ceasefire.
For at least the next six weeks, which is what is currently on the table.
Does human rights law give us the tools to achieve human rights?
I'm not sure, because of the interests of powerful states, because of the double standards that are applied in the international arena.
And therefore, if it gets to court, often the human rights do not win the day.
And so we need to think of other mechanisms to achieve these human rights.
The problem is not the law, The problem is with the enforcement of the law.
And in the Middle East and in the Global South, I would say, the problem is that law is closer to political convenience than to justice.
As a European, I'm very sorry to say 500 years of colonization has left a huge imprint in our DNA.
In general, Western people are not able to assess objectively what is being done through the non-application of international law or through the discretionary application of international law.
It's terrible to see the dismantlement of international order premise upon international law piece by piece.
"Emma, I'm talking again with President Biden.
I appreciate the strong position of the United States in the Security Council, a position that supports our war effort.
Yesterday I told President Biden that we will fight until absolute victory.
We will fight until the final victory.
How much time will it take?
It's unclear what absolute victory will look like when you've destroyed already 70% of Gaza, when the overwhelming majority, close to 2 million Palestinians, are displaced.
It seems to me that absolute victory means the total decimation of Gaza to the point that it's completely uninhabitable, and the depopulation of Gaza, which Israel has told us time and again in this current moment, that that is their goal, that their goal is the depopulation of Gaza,
and the settlement of Gaza by Israeli settlers, of course, in total violation of international law. - Israel does not breach international law.
Israel keeps strictly, very, very strictly, all the rules of law according to the international law.
Why a country should be above scrutiny?
I mean, no one should be.
The international law is there to be applied universally and not just for cherry picking.
Because this transforms, as I often say, human rights protection into protectionism.
and this is unacceptable.
For me, the idea that the law will lead to liberation or emancipation or Palestinian self-determination is a fiction.
Human rights is not necessarily the tool.
I think the tool needs to be more political in the sense of divestments, in the sense of sanctions, in the sense of boycotts, to use this kind of arsenal of non-violent weapons to pressure Israel to bring about change.
Free, free Palestine!
Free, free Palestine!
Israel, about 12 or so years ago, realised, having been so close to apartheid South Africa, the very real threat that the very real threat that BDS posed to the existence of the Israeli state as a racist occupying state.
And they created a ministerial department called the Department for Strategic Affairs.
Specifically, to counter the BDS movement.
And what was the strategy that they hit upon?
It was to ensure that any criticism of Israel, any criticism of its occupation, any criticism of its behavior in the occupied territories, was made equivalent to anti-Semitism.
And they have been remarkably successful at doing that.
There is no other argument than accusing us of antisemitism so as to deflect the attention from what matters the most, from what our analysis insists upon.
For decades now, I'm not surprised that Israel recurs to any strategies it can to uphold its goals, to reach its objectives.
But I'm surprised that the international community joins this action, because today you are not just attacked by Israel for being anti-Semitic if you just ask for the application of international law to Israeli actions.
It's many, many Western countries who do so, and they betray Also, what anti-Semitism has really been.
The surge of anti-Semitism in the United States of America and around the world is sickening.
You know, we see it across our communities and schools and colleges and social media.
They surface painful scars from millennia of hate to genocide of the Jewish people.
Every time I get accused, falsely accused of antisemitism, I respond.
I don't stay quiet.
I don't get intimidated.
I become louder and louder.
And by doing so, I think I also inspire other people to do the same.
I'm Jewish.
My mother was one of 20-odd survivors of the Holocaust.
So to describe me as antisemitic Given my history of anti-racism and my work on genocide prevention, my invoking of the Holocaust of which my mother's family were victims, it's simply an absurdity.
The so-called Western world is prepared to sacrifice The entire architecture of international law that has been put in place post-World War II specifically to prevent there being another genocide like the Holocaust.
We are prepared to rent all of that asunder so that Israel can continue to murder 247 Palestinians on an average day, 48 of whom will be women and 117 of whom will be children.
We are prepared to throw it all out.
That's the point of crisis that our politics are at now.
And it is up to all of us who recognise that to actually create a counter-narrative to the nonsense that is spewed by our politicians to maintain their own place in this appallingly corrupt and malfunctioning political system we have.
We continue every single day to wake up and insist on freedom and life in the face of genocide.
And there's simply nothing more dignified that anybody can do in such a hopeless and desperate moment.
I don't believe it's going to be sustainable to continue to prevent Palestinians from their right to freedom.
▲
Export Selection