Today is the anniversary of the adoption of the UN Genocide Convention. Seventy-six years later, we are witnessing a genocide in our times.
In the 1940s, Polish Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin coined the word “genocide” to serve as an emergency alarm to mobilize the world to prevent an irrevocable loss to humanity. Lemkin, a Holocaust survivor, advocated for the Genocide Convention.
Last week, Amnesty International released a report concluding that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians. It examined more than 200 interviews with people on the ground, photographic and satellite imagery, 100 statements by Israeli authorities, and verified reports. It reviewed jurisprudence from international courts and consulted international law experts.
Intent to destroy a distinct group of people is the hardest requirement in the Genocide Convention to prove. Amnesty determined Israel met this criteria in statements by state officials and its conduct over decades.
Direct statements by Israeli officials have called for indiscriminate attacks, the annihilation of the Gaza Strip, denial of humanitarian aid, forcible transfers of civilians and Israeli settlement expansion into Gaza.
Patterns of conduct show an unprecedented scale and speed in the killing of civilians and the destruction of civilian infrastructure. Explosives that impact wide areas have been dropped on densely populated neighborhoods, hardly a precise targeting of Hamas militants. Amnesty examined 15 airstrikes, a fraction of the attacks, and found no legitimate military targets. Cultural property and agricultural land have been destroyed. Evidence of an unlivable, razed urban landscape is plain to see in aerial and satellite imagery. These actions against non-military targets show acts of genocide.
Amnesty’s report is not slander against Israel. It is a measured analysis and critique of a state’s policies and actions. It is a call for Israel to be treated as the recognized state that it is in the international community. Even a state built on past traumas, which has also experienced recent trauma, has no excuse to inflict further crimes against humanity.
Israel wants people to focus on its right to self-defense. Amnesty has condemned the killing of civilians in southern Israel on Oct. 7 last year and the taking of hostages as war crimes and violations of international law. What is missing, though, is context. Israel has unlawfully occupied the Palestinian Territories for 57 years, illegally blockaded Gaza for 17 years and has maintained an apartheid system. Israel’s impunity and dehumanization of the Palestinians have paved the path to genocide.
Nations are obligated to respond to the alarm of genocide. No country has failed more grandly than my own, the US. Rather than stopping the inhumanity, it has provided a stream of weapons and diplomatic cover. Americans must push Washington to change course.
Taiwan must also play a part, even as a non-member of the UN. Taiwan is engaged with many global issues. However, rather than express concern for the decimation of Gaza to its Israeli counterparts, Taiwanese officials have kept quiet and have deepened ties. This year, Taiwan signed technology, trade and cultural agreements with Israel while echoing Israel’s messages that it is the leader of freedom and democracy in its region. Would Taiwan look back with regret that it failed to join the global outcry to stop a genocide? It is not too late to live up to its image as a country that speaks up for human rights.
Read Amnesty’s report on amnesty.org, sign the petition and ask your government representatives to speak up. Lemkin’s alarm has been sounded. It is our duty to heed this historic call.
Laura Moye is a volunteer Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories coordinator of Amnesty International Taiwan based in Taichung.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) has caused havoc with his attempts to overturn the democratic and constitutional order in the legislature. If we look at this devolution from the context of a transition to democracy from authoritarianism in a culturally Chinese sense — that of zhonghua (中華) — then we are playing witness to a servile spirit from a millennia-old form of totalitarianism that is intent on damaging the nation’s hard-won democracy. This servile spirit is ingrained in Chinese culture. About a century ago, Chinese satirist and author Lu Xun (魯迅) saw through the servile nature of
Monday was the 37th anniversary of former president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) death. Chiang — a son of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who had implemented party-state rule and martial law in Taiwan — has a complicated legacy. Whether one looks at his time in power in a positive or negative light depends very much on who they are, and what their relationship with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is. Although toward the end of his life Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law and steered Taiwan onto the path of democratization, these changes were forced upon him by internal and external pressures,
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus in the Legislative Yuan has made an internal decision to freeze NT$1.8 billion (US$54.7 million) of the indigenous submarine project’s NT$2 billion budget. This means that up to 90 percent of the budget cannot be utilized. It would only be accessible if the legislature agrees to lift the freeze sometime in the future. However, for Taiwan to construct its own submarines, it must rely on foreign support for several key pieces of equipment and technology. These foreign supporters would also be forced to endure significant pressure, infiltration and influence from Beijing. In other words,
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