Beware Conditional Humanity, Daily Brief, 16 October, 2023
Daily Brief, 16 October, 2023
Unlike just about everyone else on social media over the past week or so, I don’t pretend to be an expert on Israel and Palestine.
I’ve worked on this conflict and the abuses that stem from it for a couple of decades, but I’ve not been deep in the thick of it, day after day like a true expert. As with so many other ongoing conflicts around the world, I tend to come in to support my expert colleagues only when things heat up.
Part of this involves me spending a lot of time on social media, where disinformation is rife around conflicts, particularly in such difficult moments. As if atrocities in response to atrocities is not bad enough, some partisans feel the need to invent atrocities for propaganda, too.
For me, however, perhaps the worst part of being on social media at these times – and this past week has been no exception – is how some people react to a new horror.
When, for example, I post something about children having been killed, I see some readers first wanting to know which children, before moving into outrage mode or justification mode. That mentality, that conditional humanity, is a significant part of the problem in many conflicts, I think.
I expect people to be concerned first and foremost that kids have been killed. I expect them to demand the killers be brought to justice. The victims were children, and these men with guns or bombs have killed them. Who gives a damn about anything else?
And I’m always surprised (I refuse to live otherwise) that some people’s empathy ends once they learn the child victims do not fit their preferred narrative.
As if to say: Oh, children of those people, that religion, that skin color – well, I’m sure the men with the guns or the bombs knew what they were doing. And it’s not their fault in any case. They had their reasons. What else can you expect them to do in this situation? Don’t forget what our side has suffered!
On social media, it’s most common with the international cheerleaders of conflicts, I think – those fans for their teams who sit on the sidelines and never have to worry about spending a minute in the field. It’s hard to tell sometimes, though, because so many of the loudest loudmouths online are anonymous.
People on the ground, people living in harm’s way, people who have experienced horrific loss or are desperately waiting for loved ones to return, will have strong emotions, naturally. Maybe some would wish for others to feel the same pain.
But many (I’d say most) people I’ve met who have been through something horrific, with time, come to the conclusion they’d never want another person to go through that experience. Some of the strongest activists for peace and justice I’ve met in various parts of the world have been through exactly this process.
The online proliferation of partisans on the sidelines of every conflict is maybe not new exactly, but it seriously doesn’t help. It can give the sense that the global public is more bloodthirsty than it really is, that the world will accept what decision-makers say “needs to be done.”
And chief among their appalling arguments is that not all children are equal, and atrocities against them can be justified when “our side” commits them. Humanity becomes conditional, depending on who’s doing the killing and which side’s innocents are dying.
And so, more children get killed.
It’s not just children, of course. We see all sorts of vulnerable and blameless people paying the price for the actions of armies and warlords everywhere: older people, for example, and other civilians.
Children have merely been top of mind lately, because children make up about half of Gaza’s population.
The Israeli government has laid siege to Gaza with disastrous humanitarian consequences. They’ve told people (half of them children) in northern Gaza to flee when they have nowhere to go. They are using white phosphorus in their military operations, putting civilians (half of them children) at further risk of serious and long-term injuries.
We’re now looking at the possibility of a full-scale invasion of Gaza with horrific consequences. The incendiary language of Israeli officials is chilling, given the Israeli’s military’s past record of indiscriminate attacks that have already killed thousands of civilians in Gaza.
None of these horrors are justified by the abominable Hamas-led attack on October 7 (whose victims include scores, if not hundreds, of children), nor by the appalling holding of hostages (which might include children), who of course should be released immediately and unconditionally.But no one gets a license to commit atrocities because the enemy has.
The “laws of war” – also known as international humanitarian law – enshrine basic principles of humanity that apply to all sides in a conflict. Unlike the loudmouths and propagandists on social media, they do not preference some children over others.
I’m not an expert on Israel-Palestine. You probably aren’t either. But we both know it’s wrong to kill kids, regardless of what “side” they’re from. And we both know most people agree with us. And international law agrees with us.
Humanity is not conditional.
The scenes in Gaza are appalling.
The Israeli government has described it as a “total siege,” cutting off delivery to Gaza of electricity, fuel, water, and food. The sole power plant has shut down for lack of fuel. And all this is on top of conditions that were already dire after 16 years of Israel’s crushing restrictions in the open-air prison for 2.2 million people known as Gaza.
Then, there’s the bombing.
Israeli authorities may claim their aerial attacks are precisely targeted, as if using high explosives in densely populated areas could ever be.
The reality is, due to Israel’s indiscriminate aerial bombardment, hospitals are running out of space and are no longer safe havens. The World Health Organization has documented 22 attacks that have affected health care facilities and ambulances in Gaza since October 7. Israeli air strikes have also damaged refugee camps, schools, and UN compounds in recent days.
Of course, there’s a wider context – not just the long-term one of more than 16 years of extreme restrictions on Gaza and Israel’s crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution in the occupied territories – but also the immediate one: Hamas’s vile attacks.
Hamas-led attackers killed people in their homes, massacred party-goers at a music festival, and kidnapped children, older people, and others. Deliberately shooting civilians and taking civilians hostage are war crimes.
What the Israeli government is now doing, however, is replying to war crimes with war crimes.
Israel’s minister of Energy and Infrastructure has made it clear the recent Hamas attacks are “why we decided to stop the flow of water, electricity and fuel.” It’s collective punishment, and these tactics are war crimes, as is using starvation as a weapon of war.
To put it a different way: Hamas targeted innocent people, and Israel is targeting innocent people in response.
To make matters worse, in response to Hamas’ rampage, some European governments have suspended (or put under a new review) development aid programs in Palestine. This includes things like funding for the UN, the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, and civil society organizations. Israel has also reportedly threatened to block humanitarian aid entering via Egypt.
Do they all seriously think that suspending aid will punish the October 7 attackers? Hamas has long been designated as a terrorist organization by many countries and has long been ineligible for their aid anyway. Aid freezes risk further punishing Palestinian civilians who are already facing unprecedented repression an violence.
No water. No fuel. No electricity. No assistance. No escape from the bombing.
That leaves millions of blameless people with no hope.
Daily Brief, 11 October, 2023
I want to start off with good news today, because I think we all need it right now.
Russia’s government has failed in its effort to join the UN Human Rights Council.
Yes, I know, I know… It may not seem overly comforting that the best I can come up with is meeting the barest minimum of standards. But bear with me here. I know it may not seem like much, but it is good news all the same.
At the 193-nation UN General Assembly yesterday, Russia asked to return to the human rights council after the General Assembly voted to suspend its membership last year following its full-scale, atrocity-ridden invasion of Ukraine.
The governments of the world said no.
No to the Kremlin’s systematic atrocities against Ukrainian civilians. No to Russia’s endless war crimes and crimes against humanity. No to Russian torture. No to Russia’s summary executions and enforced disappearances of civilians. And no to Russia’s mass abduction of Ukrainian children.
The international community has sent a crystal-clear signal, in an overwhelming vote, that you can’t just invade a country and slaughter its people and pretend everything is normal.
Yes. That is good news.
The fact that it’s exceptional – particularly as China, responsible for crimes against humanity, was voted on to the Human Rights Council – does not extinguish this lone flame of goodness.
The Kremlin has not convinced the world to back mass murder as a tool of geopolitics.
It’s an important signal. Cherish it.
Daily Brief, 10 October, 2023
It may or may not surprise you that the Rwandan government goes to extraordinary lengths to silence its critics. They use things like wide-spread surveillance and outright violence, including kidnapping and disappearing people.
What almost surely will surprise you, however – if you’re not Rwandan, of course – is that Rwandan authorities may be doing it in your country, in your town, perhaps even in your neighborhood.
Rwandan authorities and their proxies have a worldwide network to monitor Rwandans living abroad and scope out criticism of the government. A new report details how this global ecosystem of repression extends into Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Kenya, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, the United Kingdom, the United States, and more.
The Rwandan government uses a wide variety of measures to go after critics abroad. In the east and southern African countries, Rwandans have been killed, forcibly disappeared, kidnapped, physically attacked, or threatened to be sent back to Rwanda.
They sometimes work through local authorities and get people wrongfully arrested. They also manipulate Interpol (the International Criminal Police Organization) and their system of Red Notices, alerts seeking the arrest and extradition of a wanted person.
Perhaps most insidiously, the Rwandan authorities intimidate Rwandans abroad by targeting their relatives in Rwanda. Even when a person lives in a freer country – even when that person perhaps sought to live in that country precisely because of its greater freedom – they keep their mouths shut, for fear of seeing their family members tortured, killed, or disappeared.
Incredibly, authorities of the countries where Rwandans are living abroad are aware of this repression in their midst but aren’t doing much about it. Sometimes, they even seem to be assisting the repression.
The US government, for example, deported a former trade union official despite a leaked FBI report stating that a Rwandan intelligence agent had “almost certainly” planted false information against the accused.
In the UK, authorities told Rwandans for years to be wary of being tracked, until the British government struck an appalling deal with Rwanda to send asylum seekers there.
In South Africa, investigations into suspected killings have stalled and one person’s relative was warned to stop pressing for answers. In Uganda, in Mozambique, the story is much the same.
In almost all cases of kidnappings, forced disappearances, or suspicious killings abroad, investigations have stalled or failed to result in any arrests or prosecutions.
When will Rwanda’s international partners finally do something about this? When will they act against Rwanda’s extensive human rights abuses, which reach right into their own backyards?
Daily Brief, October 9, 2023.
Their atrocities do not justify your atrocities. The brutality of their war crimes does not lessen the brutality of your war crimes. Their inhumanity drives your inhumanity which drives their inhumanity further, on and on until the world around you burns to the ground and beyond.
The civilian toll from fighting in Israel-Palestine at the weekend has been devastating, even by the appalling standards of the decades-long conflict.
This latest round of extreme violence began on Saturday, when Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups breached the fences separating Gaza and Israel. They attacked nearby Israeli communities, infiltrated homes, apparently shot civilians en masse, and took scores of Israeli civilians as hostages into Gaza. They also reportedly launched more than 3,000 indiscriminate rockets towards Israeli population centers.
By Sunday, attacks by Palestinian armed groups had killed more than 677 Israelis and foreign nationals, including civilians, according to Israeli sources cited by the United Nations. Subsequent Israeli airstrikes on Gaza left at least 413 Palestinians dead, the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza reported. Mass violence is continuing as I write, and the civilian death toll keeps rising.
Of course, everyone realizes this conflict did not start at the weekend, however unprecedented the current levels of violence.
Israeli authorities have systematically repressed Palestinians for decades and since 2007 have imposed a crushing closure on Gaza’s population. Gaza – a 40-by-11 kilometer (25-by-7 mile) strip of land – has essentially been an open-air prison for more than 16 years.
What’s more, Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territory have recently faced perhaps unprecedented repression. During the first nine months of 2023, Israeli authorities killed more Palestinians in the West Bank in 2023 than in any year since such UN records began in 2005.
As of October, the number of Palestinians being held in Israeli administrative detention without charges or trial based on secret information reached a 30-year-high.
The Israeli government’s systematic oppression in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, coupled with inhumane acts committed against Palestinians as part of a policy to maintain the domination by Jewish Israelis over Palestinians, amount to the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.
However, does this years-long, inhuman repression justify brutal attacks by Palestinian armed groups? No. Never. It may be part of the background, but it is not an excuse.
The deliberate targeting of civilians by Palestinian armed groups, their indiscriminate attacks, and their taking of civilians as hostages amount to war crimes under international humanitarian law. On Saturday, Israel’s energy minister announced Israeli authorities would no longer provide electricity to Gaza’s 2.2 million residents. This and other punitive measures against Gaza’s civilian population would amount to unlawful collective punishment, which is also a war crime.
I know partisans in this conflict will accuse me of “bothsidesism” here, but this is the way international law is supposed to work. The laws of war apply to all sides in a conflict.
The real problem – the reason this conflict goes on an on – is that those laws are not applied in reality. It’s the same with standards of international law in general, including respect for fundamental human rights. People keep committing serious crimes on all sides, and perpetrators keep getting away with it.
During prior rounds of hostilities, Human Rights Watch documented serious violations of the laws of war by Israeli forces and by Palestinian armed groups.
Israel has repeatedly carried out indiscriminate airstrikes in past conflicts in Gaza that killed scores of civilians – wiping out entire families – and strikes that targeted civilians or civilian infrastructure, including destroying high-rise Gaza towers full of homes and businesses, with no evident military targets in the vicinity. Palestinian armed groups have launched thousands of indiscriminate rockets that violate the laws of war and amount to war crimes. Human Rights Watch has for years called for Palestinian armed groups to cease these unlawful attacks, including in a recent exchange of letters with Hamas authorities.
It’s hard to see how the cycles of violence in Israel-Palestine – brutality repaid with brutality, again and again – will ever end without justice for crimes like these.
In 2021, the prosecutor of International Criminal Court (ICC) opened a formal investigation into serious crimes committed in Palestine, which is a member of the ICC. The current fighting highlights the urgent need for the prosecutor to accelerate their investigation into serious crimes by all sides.
The sooner governments around the world understand that justice is essential to peace and the sooner they make justice their top priority for the region, the sooner there might be some hope these horrors will end.