A group of prominent public figures of Israel has accused the country’s judicial authorities of ignoring the repeated calls for genocide in Gaza carried out by a long list of ministers, deputies, soldiers and opinion leaders. In a letter sent to state attorney general, to which EL PERIÓDICO has had access, the signatories assure that since the past October 7when Hamas massacred 1,200 people in the Jewish State, “Israeli discourse has been marked by open incitementflagrant and unrestrained to commit the most serious crimes imaginable against civil population of the Gaza Strip”. The letter is not a formal complaint, but rather a call to the Ministry of Justice to take action against these types of statements and bring those responsible to justice.
The 11-page letter bears the signature of former diplomats such as Alon Liel and Ilan Baruchformer deputies like Mossi Razscientists like David Hareljournalists like Akiva Eldar and Bradley Burston or academics like Izhak Schnell. In total, fifteen public figures, represented by the lawyer Michael Sfard, specialized in human rights. “In Israel there has been absolutely no response from the authorities,” Sfard tells this newspaper. “We believe that this policy must change because such incitement and genocidal rhetoric will eventually translate into action.” So far, more than 22,500 Palestiniansthe vast majority civilians, while two million people have been displaced from their homes and the bulk of the enclave’s infrastructure has been destroyed.
The letter compiles some of these statements, although it recognizes that they are nothing more than a sample of the “hundreds of similar statements made by public figures.” They openly invoke the “extermination of millions of people“, the “ethnic cleansing“ of Gaza, the “mass expulsion“ of its population or the “destruction of entire cities to their foundations,” according to the letter. Words that have not come from marginal figures in political discourse, but from senior government officials, Knesset deputies, prominent rabbis or television presenters and commentators.
Calls for the eradication of Gaza
“Gaza should be flattened and for all of them there should be only one sentence: death,” said the Jewish Power party deputy, Yitzhak Kroizerto Israeli radio, days after one of his co-religionists, Minister Amichay Eliyahu, invoked a nuclear bombardment on the Strip. The letter also includes statements from members of the Likudthe match of Binyamin Netanyahucalling for the mass expulsion of the Palestinians with “a Nakba immediate for the enemy” or destruction of the enclave “with indiscriminate bombings“.
Various ministers such as Avigdor Liberman have insisted that “there are no innocents in Gaza“, a thesis championed by the media by a cohort of journalists and commentators who have dedicated themselves to promoting revenge and the murder of civilians without any consideration for the laws of war. “Every woman is a monster. All young people aspire to be martyrs. Every baby will grow up to be a terrorist. They must be eliminated, killed, destroyed, annihilated,” he wrote Yehuda Schlezingerpolitical correspondent for the newspaper ‘Israel Hayom’, in one of the examples included in the letter.
“The normalization of a discourse that calls for annihilation, erasure, devastation and the like can influence the way soldiers behave,” the letter warns. The signatories of it remember that both the Convention against Genocide of 1948, ratified by Israel, as its own national laws criminalize incitement to genocide like a crime. And at the same time they emphasize that “inflicting harm on innocent people as revenge” falls within the Israeli definition of “terrorism“, while granting “negative traits to the entire population of Gaza” constitutes “incitement to racism.”
Indictment before the International Court of Justice
“Not only has the justice system not acted on the matter, but it has opted for silence,” the letter says as a complaint. Quite the opposite of the expeditious attitude adopted by the Prosecutor’s Office and the Israeli police to arrest and persecute anonymous citizens for expressing on the networks any comment that could be interpreted as a gesture of solidarity with Gaza or support for the Hamas terrorist attack.
Related news
The letter was sent to the Ministry of Justice days before South Africa formally accuse Israel of genocide before the International Court of Justice, a United Nations body based in The Hague in charge of settling disputes between states. “The South African procedure makes it clear to Israeli officials that their inaction has important legal consequences because those same statements are being invoked to demonstrate the genocidal intent” says lawyer Sfard. “So the issue we have raised is not only a moral imperative, but it has legal implications for Israel.”
The United States also criticized calls this week to expel Palestinians from Gaza, but singled out only two of the most extreme ministers in the Israeli concentration government (Itamar Ben-Gvir and Betzalel Smotrich), when that option is one of the official plans that the Executive is considering. This same Wednesday, the newspaper ‘Israel Hayom’ published that Netanyahu is negotiating with several countries, including the Congo, to take care of the Palestinians in the enclave. A policy of “voluntary relocation“ which, according to the newspaper, is “gradually becoming one of the key policies” of the Government.