The UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, gave a simultaneous virtual conference this Wednesday for 54 campuses of 43 Spanish universities in which she denounced that Israel’s “genocidal intention” against the Palestinian people “is so ostentatious that you cannot look away.” “He must be punished” and must be the subject of investigation by the International Court of Justice, according to the expert.
“The international community cannot continue to ignore Israel’s genocidal project or the world’s failure to hold it accountable; the denial of reality is no longer viable,” he stressed at the event organized by the University Network for Palestine.
Albanese has denounced that powerful member states of the United Nations “have supported Israel while it committed atrocities”, instead of stopping its momentum, he has also called for compliance with the arms embargo and for sanctions to be carried out.
The rapporteur, who published the report ‘Anatomy of a genocide’ on March 29, in which she presented evidence that crimes constituting genocide are being committed against the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip, has denounced that Israel has destroyed Gaza in less than six months, forcing its population to live in “overwhelmingly unhealthy conditions.” Especially in the north, where the lack of food has meant that civilians have been forced to “eat feed and grass” because Israel limits the entry of humanitarian aid. “More and more people are dying of hunger,” she warned.
“It is an act of widespread genocide” in which soldiers have been systematically encouraged by “senior political officials” to annihilate the Palestinian people, which represents “convincing evidence of explicit and public incitement to commit genocide,” he considered. .
The rapporteur has denounced that Israeli soldiers publish “self-incriminating” images in which they “boast of having killed entire families,” added Albanese, who has also denounced that the Israeli army is using an “apocalyptic arsenal of weapons in one of the most densely populated places on earth.”
“In the first weeks of the assault alone, Israeli forces killed about 250 Palestinians every day,” he reported. According to the rapporteur, “25,000 tons of explosives were used, which are equivalent to two nuclear weapons, only in the first weeks of the attack.”
The UN rapporteur has denounced that Israel tries to legitimize violence by distorting international humanitarian law by speaking of “collateral damage, human shields or accomplices to terrorism” with the intention of hiding “patterns of conduct from which it can only be concluded that “There is genocidal violence.” “If you tell a lie long enough, people will believe it,” she said, referring to Israeli accusations that Hamas uses Gazan hospitals as operations centers.
Albanese has defined the current Israeli attack on Gaza as the “most extreme stage” of a colonial process that has been decades in the making. “Genocide is never an act, it is a process” that began with “the dehumanization of the Palestinian people” and ends “with the destruction of the group.” Palestinian history is “a history of ethnic cleansing, dispossession and apartheid”, he has stressed.
“The world now sees the bitter fruit of the impunity granted to Israel,” said Albanese, emphasizing that what is happening now in Gaza is “a tragedy foretold.”
The UN rapporteur has urged the international community to comply with its legal obligations and recalled that three months ago the International Criminal Court recognized as “plausible” the possibility that Israel was committing genocide, which would force countries signatories to the Treaty of Rome – among them, Spain – to impose “an arms embargo as well as sanctions on Israel”.
“The time for action is now,” Albanese urged. “The world’s failure to hold Israel to account has led to the genocide that has been exposed in Gaza,” she argued. “It is time to give up a little bit of comfort so that other people do not have to give up everything,” the UN rapporteur concluded.
