By way of taking to task Tim Wessel for criticizing those of us who are righteously standing up against Israel's genocidal assault upon the people of Gaza, I offer the following.
People need to remember that our opposition is part of a growing worldwide condemnation of Israel's behavior as an outlaw state, including the United Nation's International Court of Justice finding this past January that Israel was "plausibly" perpetuating genocide in Gaza, and thus ordering its government to "take measures within its power" to prevent genocidal acts. Not surprisingly, Israel has ignored this.
This was stated more decisively recently by the U.N.'s Human Rights Council, which on March 25 published "Anatomy of a Genocide." This draft report found that "the overwhelming nature and scale of Israel's assault on Gaza and the destructive conditions of life it has inflicted reveal an intent to physically destroy Palestinians as a group."
Israel, the report says, "has de facto treated an entire protected group and its life-sustaining infrastructure as 'terrorist' or 'terrorist-supporting,' thus transforming everything and everyone into either a target or collateral damage, hence killable or destroyable. In this way, no Palestinian in Gaza is safe by definition."
Thus, the U.N.'s HRC concluded that it found "reasonable grounds to believe" that Israel is committing genocide.
Interestingly, on the very same day this draft report was published, Israel's faithful enabler, the Biden administration, reversed its previous practice of vetoing similar resolutions by abstaining from and thus allowing to otherwise unanimously pass the U.N. Security Council resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire for the month of Ramadan, leading to a lasting sustainable ceasefire, to the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages taken captive during the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel, and to ensuring access to humanitarian relief.
In addition to some undiplomatic language, Israel's response to the Security Council resolution was to inform the U.N. it would no longer allow its United Nations Relief and Works Agency convoys to carry food into northern Gaza, where Palestinians are starving to death.
Finally - and despite his misguided criticism of people opposing Israel's genocide, especially as a "right to self-defense" - Mr. Wessel is well-advised to express concern on how such censure can be used to or interpreted as an attack on Jews.
As I have recently written elsewhere, those of us who challenge Israel's immoral and illegal conduct have an equal responsibility to be sensitive to this concern, and to publicly stand up with and for our Jewish neighbors against all expressions of anti-Semitism.
Tim Stevenson
Athens
This letter to the editor was submitted to The Commons.