A new report by Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, titled Gaza Genocide: A Collective Crime, details exactly how the Israeli regime has carried out a genocide. Importantly, it also argues that the atrocity has been made possible, and is sustained, by the world’s most powerful […]
By Charlie Jaay
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Albanese explains that “Israel’s decades-long occupation and its culmination in genocide could not have been carried out without the active participation of other States.” She identifies “four pillars of complicity”- diplomatic protection, military support, economic integration, and humanitarian control- that together form what she calls “the infrastructure of genocide.”
She argues that these are systemic patterns that normalise the Israeli occupation’s actions, silence accountability, and keep colonial narratives going that strip Palestinians of their humanity.
Making reference to the UN Charter, the Genocide Convention, and customary international law, Albanese reminds states that they have both “positive obligations to act against mass atrocity” and “negative obligations not to aid or recognise” it. When governments continue to arm, fund, and shield ‘Israel’, this is when they become participants in its crimes.
According to Albanese, when the actions of Third States are essential and directly contribute to a crime- so that without their involvement it would not have happened- it must be examined whether those states have moved from merely assisting to actively participating in an internationally wrongful act.
