South Africa is Right to Invoke the Genocide Convention Against Israel's War on Gaza

 

Earlier this month, the Biden administration joined governments around the world in marking the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 9, 1948. At the very same time, US government officials were trying to fend off a legal action accusing them of complicity with Israel’s “unfolding genocide” of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.[1] Now the South African government has filed a case with the International Court of Justice, invoking the Genocide Convention and accusing Israel of “genocidal acts”.[2]

Some commentators have contemptuously dismissed the idea that Israel’s war on Gaza should be considered genocidal as an absurdity.[3] But academic experts have presented the question in a very different light and insisted on the need for urgent, morally serious debate.[4]

The Political and Legal Underpinnings of the Palestine-Israel Conflict

On 7 October 2023, Palestinian militant group Hamas launched a massive attack on Israeli territory, killing 1405 people including over 300 soldiers according to the Israeli state, although a month later the death toll miraculously came down to 1200. The Israeli state has responded by bombing the Gaza Strip, in which Hamas has its headquarters and over 2.3 million civilians have their homes, starving inhabitants of food, water, medicines and fuel. But why did this happen? And what can be done about it? On these questions, there is no agreement whatsoever.

Who is to blame?

In its editorial of 8 October 2023, the Israeli paper Haaretz was unequivocal in assigning responsibility for the death and destruction resulting from the Hamas ‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’:

The disaster that befell Israel on the holiday of Simchat Torah is the clear responsibility of one person: Benjamin Netanyahu. The prime minister… completely failed to identify the dangers he was consciously leading Israel into when establishing a government of annexation and dispossession, when appointing Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir to key positions, while embracing a foreign policy that openly ignored the existence and rights of Palestinians…

Antisemitism: How It Should And Should Not Be Defined

 The origins of antisemitism

‘Antisemitism’ is the term commonly used for racism against Jews, if we define ‘racism’ very broadly as oppression of any group of people on the grounds of physical characteristics (like skin colour), language, religion, sect, caste, tribe or ancestry. It ranges from hate-speech and discrimination to persecution, exclusion, expulsion and mass murder. The term ‘antisemitism’ may not be entirely accurate, but we will use it here because it has become widely accepted, just as ‘Islamophobia’ is an inaccurate but widely accepted term for racism against Muslims.

Palestine and Israel: Historical, Legal and Moral Issues

On 7 October 2023, Palestinian militant group Hamas launched a massive attack on Israeli territory, killing over 1300 people, many of whom were civilians; the Israeli state has responded by bombing the Gaza Strip, in which Hamas has its headquarters and over 2.3 million civilians have their homes, starving inhabitants of food, water, medicines and fuel. But why did this happen? And what can be done about it? On these questions, there is no agreement whatsoever.

A Hundred Years of Pauline and C.R. (Dick) Hensman

The birth anniversaries of Pauline Hensman (née Swan) and Dick Hensman occurred over the course of the past year. This attempt to provide an overview of their life and times will inevitably suffer from gaps, since neither they nor most of their contemporaries are alive. It will therefore have to draw on the imperfect memories of their children and younger friends, who would have to rely on hearsay for the parts of their lives from which they were absent. Nevertheless, the main events and themes of their lives emerge quite clearly.

Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev, The Pioneering Bolshevik Theorist of Imperialism, National Liberation and Socialism

The first show trial of a Bolshevik

Given his prominence as a high-ranking Bolshevik, Mirsad Sultan-Galiev is very little known. This is partly because he was cut off early in his career by persecution and ultimate execution in Stalin’s purges and his writings suppressed for decades, but also due to distortion and lack of comprehension of his arguments even by many anti-Stalinists. This is a pity, because there is much we can learn from his writings as well as his practice even today.

Ukraine and the Indian Left: An interview with Kavita Krishnan by Rohini Hensman

 

Kavita Krishnan, a Marxist feminist who had been for three decades a member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation, a member of the Politbureau, leader of its women’s wing (the All-India Progressive Women’s Association) and a prominent spokesperson of the party, suddenly quit these posts and the party itself in early September 2022. Many admirers were unclear about what had happened and why, although from her subsequent statements and articles it became clear that the reason was a disagreement with the party’s position on the war in Ukraine. 

On April 10, 2023, she was interviewed by Rohini Hensman on her departure from the party and her differences with it.

Ukraine and the Contested Meaning of Non-Alignment

The war in Ukraine has pulled into focus the notion of non-alignment among states of the ‘Global South’. Some observers have drawn parallels with the emergence of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) that formed in the wake of the 1955 Bandung Conference, seeking to organise postcolonial states into a movement for decolonisation, nonaggression, and noninterference in the internal affairs of another country (Final Communiqué of the Asian-African Conference 1955). The first summit of the NAM was convened in Belgrade by Jawaharlal Nehru of India, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Sukarno of Indonesia and Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia in 1961. One of its core principles in the context of the Cold War was that members should refrain from allying with either of the super-powers, the United States and the USSR (Munro n.d.).

With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the NAM seemed to have lost its raison d’etre. Yet today, around the world and across the political spectrum, there is a sense that the NAM’s values are being resurrected, or must be, although the definition of these values is disputed.

Presentation at Round Table on Ukraine

From the previous presentations, it should be obvious that the USSR was not a union of equal republics. It was an empire in which Russia dominated the former Tsarist colonies, sometimes in extremely cruel ways.

Lenin envisaged a different set-up from the centralised and Russified Tsarist empire, and he did try to bring about equality as the civil war was winding down. A series of treaties in 1920–1921 recognised Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Finland and Poland as independent states. Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan became independent Soviet Socialist Republics. In smaller minority ethnic enclaves, local and regional self-government and linguistic and cultural development were encouraged. On December 30, 1922, the First Congress of Soviets of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics approved the Treaty on the formation of the USSR. Lenin insisted on a clause proclaiming the right to self-determination, including secession from the USSR. Lenin made some serious mistakes; for example, he prevented the Constituent Assembly from taking place and stifled opposition, laying the basis for Stalin to come to power. But his insistence on the right to secede was absolutely correct. If the USSR was to be a voluntary union of equal republics, every republic had to be free to secede from it.