James Veverka: Genocide harder to prove than crimes against humanity

To The Daily Sun,

Sheila Kufert wants people to believe, to silence them, that condemning Israel's apartheid state, ethnic cleansing policies, and other crimes against humanity is antisemitic. She wants readers to think that opposing Israel's war crimes is hatred toward Jews. Antisemitism is discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence against Jews "because they are Jews". It works the same way with any bigotry; the discrimination is due to who they are. She is also painfully uninformed concerning the legal definition of "genocide". Genocide has nothing to do with numbers as she has suggested. It's about intent which is why it's harder to prove than crimes against humanity. Most experts on war crimes and genocide conclude that Israel is committing genocide because Israeli leaders have voiced genocidal intent from the start. The International Criminal Court has indicted Israeli leaders only for war crimes so far because it's much easier to prove.

In the 1948 Geneva Genocide Convention and the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, "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."

In South Africa's case filed at to the UN's International Court of Justice accusing Israel of committing genocide, it's the dozens of Israeli leaders' quotes voicing genocidal intent that are central to the case. See apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-south-africa-genocide-hate-speech-97a9e4a84a3a6bebeddfb80f8a030724.

James Veverka

Laconia