For more than two months, the world has been watching with horror and incredulity how civilians are being slaughtered in Gaza.
The graphic depicts the human suffering that had occurred after 56 days. In cold numbers. It has since become worse by the day. The civilian death toll now exceeds 20,000, not counting the thousands of children and mothers who are buried under the rubble of destroyed homes and buildings.
One UN Official said that Gaza is the worst and least safe place for children in the world. Others, UN Staff (over 100 UN employees, mainly UNWRA, have been killed) and journalists who are still alive (over 100 already dead, including senior Al Jazeera reporters and a cameraman who the broadcaster said were targeted), decry the horrors that occur after every indiscriminate bombing spree of the Israeli armed forces. I need not highlight the catastrophe in more detail. The facts are available to everybody who wants to see. Including all those who say “but, October 7” – as if that attack were to justify the daily bombings of civilians (and Israel’s own citizens, three hostages who were waving a white cloth) ever since.
Craig Murray, a Scottish author, human rights campaigner, journalist, and former UK diplomat, recently posted this:
“Yesterday I attended a session called by Palestine at the United Nations in Geneva. Over 120 states attended. While the formal session consisted of statements of national position with few surprises, I was able to discuss with a large number of delegates in the corridors why the Genocide Convention has not been activated, triggering a reference to the International Court of Justice.
“The answer is now clear to me. It is not that people are worried that a claim of genocide will not be successful at the International Court of Justice. It is that everybody is quite sure it will succeed. There is no respectable argument that this is not a genocide…
“The problem is that once the ICJ has determined that this is a genocide, it follows that not only are Netanyahu and hundreds of senior Israeli officials and military personally liable, but it is absolutely plain that ‘Genocide Joe’ Biden, Sunak and members of their administrations are also criminally liable for complicity, having provided military support for the genocide.
“The International Criminal Court cannot ignore a judgment of genocide from the International Court of Justice and will have no choice but to issue arrest warrants.”
I won’t comment on Murray’s statement, published on X and https://www.craigmurray.org.uk
His observations are as obvious as are the most recent timid noises creeping out of London and Washington, where even the US are slowly coming round to considering supporting a cease-fire vote in the UN Security Council (last time, they cut a lonely figure with the hand raised by their Deputy UN Ambassador, who was ordered to veto a cease fire. Not even the UK supported their position: it abstained. Make of that what you will).
The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, says this in Article II:
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group
The legalese, while informative, fails to describe the horrors suffered by one specific group of people every single day: the Palestinian population of Gaza. The children of Palestine, some 10,000, have already perished, their mothers and their families are dying before their and our eyes.
Disease has now set in, the first civilians have died from hunger; there is no water, and if there is any, it is polluted: Israel turned off the most essential basics for survival and blocks the supply of urgent food and medicines.
These are not my descriptions; this is not my narrative. These are facts, a horrible reality as reported by UN staffers, British, French, Dutch and Pakistani hospital doctors, ‘Doctors without Borders’ – and the Pope.
The Pontiff, in a rare public statement, spoke of “terrorism” committed by Israeli forces. This came after two women, civilians who had sought shelter from the incessant bombings in a Catholic Church, were targeted and killed by an Israeli sniper.
When the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide speaks of criminal acts and states that “(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group”, and “(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”, then that is exactly what is happening.
But what is also happening, to quote Murray again, is this: “There is no respectable argument that this is not a genocide… ‘The problem is that once the ICJ has determined that this is a genocide, it follows that not only are Netanyahu and hundreds of senior Israeli officials and military personally liable, but it is absolutely plain that “Genocide Joe” Biden, Sunak and members of their administrations are also criminally liable for complicity, having provided military support for the genocide.
And that’s the problem, isn’t it.
The Western powers and its leaders in the USA, UK and the EU would have to be declared criminally liable. And that is why the (pretty useless) British ICC prosecutor, Karim A. A. Khan KC, is doing nothing.
When the ICC issued a warrant against Vladimir Putin, prosecutor Karim A.A. Khan said this: “My Office alleges that these acts, amongst others, demonstrate an intention to permanently remove these children from their own country. At the time of these deportations, the Ukrainian children were protected persons under the Fourth Geneva Convention.”
What was allegedly done to “protect” Ukrainian children, must be similarly right to protect Palestinian children who are just as much “protected persons under the Fourth Geneva Convention”.
Or is there a difference between Ukrainian children and Palestinian children?
I mean, other than the sad fact that 10,000 Palestinian children have already been murdered – which is a multiple of children who have died in two years of the Ukraine war. In Gaza, we are talking about two months of genocidal attacks.
Since nobody is doing anything to protect the Gazans, Football must declare its own humanity.
If it was right for FIFA, the IOC and UEFA to suspend Russian football from all international competitions, based on Khan’s claims and observations, then it must be right to suspend Israel from all football as well.
Or is it that the ‘Global South’ is less worthy to protect its children than ‘the West’?
What do you say, Gianni Infantino? Do you want to wait until Lebanon is flattened? After all, your wife is Lebanese. Now that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has not joined the latest US initiative (the one to patrol the Red Sea), and you being the ultimate ally of the KSA, what are you and your Council waiting for?
Are Palestinian children unworthy of your support?
50,000+ civilians are injured, many children’s arms and legs have been amputated, “Gaza is the hell on earth for children”, as a UNICEF spokesman said the other day. What are you and your FIFA waiting for, Gianni Infantino?
Doing nothing makes you complicit.
It’s time to use the “power of football” for good, and not just stand by as the toothless ICC and ICJ are.
The case for suspending Israel from all football until the war crimes have stopped is clear for all to see.
Not for you, Infantino? Not for FIFA?
James Dostoyevsky was a Washington-based author until the end of 2018, where he reported on sports politics and socio-cultural topics. He returned to Europe in 2019 and continues to follow football politics – presently with an emphasis on the Middle East, Europe and Africa.