There is an excellent article on Al Jazeera today by Richard Falk, who is an Emeritus Professor of International Law at Princeton University. He was also a former UN Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights. The title is: "Massacre in Gaza
Can international law provide justice for Palestinians?"
http://www.aljazeera.com/...
Here is the lede:
What has been happening in Gaza cannot usefully be described as "warfare". The daily reports of atrocities situate this latest Israeli assault on common humanity within the domain of what the great Catholic thinker and poet, Thomas Merton, caIled "the unspeakable". Its horror exceeds our capacity to render the events through language.
The events in Gaza are essentially a repetition of prior Israeli incursions with heavy sophisticated weaponry in which the people of Gaza are the helpless victims of Israeli firepower, with no place to hide, and increasingly without even such necessities of life as water and electricity, whose facilities have been targeted by Israel's precision weaponry.
By now we should all understand that one-sided violence whether in the form of torture or state terror is criminal behaviour. When it leads to many civilian deaths on one side and few civilian casualties on the other side, then such state terror is best characterised as a massacre,
In the near term, Professor Falk is not optimistic about obtaining justice for the Palestinians through international law:
It is this geopolitical logic that is shaping the application of international criminal law: accountability for enemies of the West, impunity for the West and its friends. Such double standards highlight the tensions between law and justice. There is currently no greater beneficiary of this deformed political culture of impunity than the political leadership and military command structure of Israel.
In the long run, however, he believes the Palestinians will triumph:
We need to keep in mind that it is the outcome of this legitimacy struggle that will, in the end, likely decide this long conflict in favour of the Palestinians, as it has determined the outcome of every prior anti-colonial struggle of the last 70 years.
The end of the article is an interesting discussion of the BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) movement, which he thinks eventually will swing the currents of legitimacy in favor of the Palestinians.
I'm writing about this, because the situation in Gaza seems so hopeless, so unspeakable, that it's easy to fall into despair, and it's good to see a learned expert express some genuine optimism for the future.
I suggest this diary should be read in conjunction with HoundDog's good diary today concerning the condemnation of Israel by Navi Pillay, the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights, for violations of international humanitarian law and apparent war crimes. http://www.dailykos.com/...
***** Please keep any comments civil, and please let's not have any HRs in this diary.******