“My colleagues can no longer deny that this is genocide,” said Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan). “We must follow our own U.S. laws. We need an Arms Embargo now.”
On Thursday, Amnesty released a sprawling report determining that Israel’s assault of Gaza amounts to genocide, citing Israel’s relentless attacks, blocking of humanitarian aid, targeting of health and other basic infrastructure, forced displacement of 90 percent of Gaza’s population, and more.
Amnesty is the first major international humanitarian organization to outright label Israel’s actions as a genocide. The group was also one of the first major human rights organizations to label Israel’s violent occupation and oppression of Palestine as apartheid, back in 2022.
The human rights group, one of the largest in the world, specifically called out the U.S. as a major collaborator in the genocide due to the Biden administration’s policy of sending Israel weapons with zero red lines. Just last week, despite Israel’s clear, ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing in northern Gaza, reports emerged of the Biden administration advancing yet another sale of weapons to Israel worth $680 million.
No sir. It’s a law, I’m not an ICC judge. I don’t get to decide.
Whereas I decide for myself what I think is genocide based on whether I’ve seen convincing evidence of it being genocide. Like, for example, this Amnesty International report. I don’t outsource my sense of morality to judges and let them overrule my own sense of justice.
If an ICC judge one day decided “no, it’s okay for Russia to deport the population of Ukraine, the country was always theirs to begin with” would that make it okay somehow? Or would that simply be the time you decided to withdraw your grant of “officialness” to the ICC?
Which law? Laws have names and titles. They are published publicly and they can be linked to. Please provide a link to the law you are referring to.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/genocide#:~:text=Under Article 25(3)(,a%20crime%20against%20international%20law.
You’re linking to a statute of the ICC, The Rome Statute, which provides that inciting or committing genocide is against the ICC’s definition of International Law and the ICC will attempt to prosecute accordingly. That statute was not ratified by the United States, so the United States is not bound to uphold that statute. Israel also did not ratify, so is also not bound. That doesn’t mean that the ICC can’t prosecute Israel or the US under the statute, but it does mean that they are explicitly not responsible for upholding it. Your argument is that the United States is bound by whether the ICC determines genocide has occurred, and that is explicitly not the case according to the statute you linked.
Edit to add: The Rome Statute is the document which established the ICC. As a nation that did not ratify the document, not only is the United States not limited by the ICC determining if genocide occurred or not, the US explicitly rejects the ICC’s authority to do so. It means the exact opposite of what you’re saying.