4d ago

No evidence of genocide in Gaza, UK lawyers say in arms export case

www.theguardian.com

No evidence has been seen that a genocide is occurring in Gaza or that women and children were targeted by the IDF, UK government lawyers have claimed, as a high court case opened into the handling of arms exports controls to Israel.

They also suggested there was no obligation placed on the UK to make other states comply with international humanitarian law but only to ensure that no breach occured within its jurisdiction.

The government is seeking to defend itself in a judicial review brought over allegations that it acted unlawfully in continuing to sell F-35 parts and components to a global pool, even though some of those components might be used by Israel in Gaza in a way that the government regards as a breach of international law.

Much of the case will turn on the extent to which international law places obligations in domestic law.

84 comments

Of course there’s genocide. Palestine has been fighting for their homes since I was born. It’s so tragic

Amazing how easy it is for some people to turn a blind eye when money's to be made.

so what you're saying is they're fucking liars? Got it.

When I read through the American report, it detailed genocide by Israel. It painted a horrific picture with Israel holding up or "losing" food and medicine in order to starve civilians.
The report concluded with "There is no genocide."
It's what happens when there's a genocide but you decide there isn't one, but you still need to describe the genocide.

There's no evidence there are trees in the forest.
There's no evidence the earth is round.

I'd like to hear from a nation that isn't unfairly biased in favor of Israel.
- You have. They’ve all said Israel is at least committing widespread war crimes, while plenty have said it’s a straight up genocide or apartheid.

One cannot see what one does not want to see.
- Yes. These guys have a vested interest in their client selling F-35 parts, so they will try to paint white as black.
  The interesting part will be whether the court accepts their reasoning.
  
  “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” - Upton Sinclair

New Labour has fully transitioned the Labour Party to a Ethno-Fascist Genocide supporting Far Right party.
Almost every other week I get reminded of just how good my decision to leave Britain with Brexit was.

I can show them ttlhe videos I've seen of fathers dragging the broken bodies of their children from burning rubble if they need evidence. Fucking ghouls.

Defense lawyers are ethically obligated to plead for their clients; just as Otto Stahmer denied overwhelming evidence to argue for Hermann Göring's acquittal, despite his documented role as a chief architect of the Holocaust. Meanwhile, England acts as a co-belligerent in Palestine, supplying arms to Israel, vetoing ceasefire efforts, and challenging the ICC's jurisdiction over crimes against humanity. Its refusal to recognize genocide follows a familiar pattern: admission would compel accountability for its own complicity.
- Don't forget active reconnaissance flights from Cyprus.
  
  Let’s hold the UK government to its own words.
  Official UK statement (13 Oct 2023):
  Prime Minister deploys UK military to Eastern Mediterranean to support Israel (gov.uk, archiveve.today, archive.org)
  The UK government claims its military deployment, including surveillance flights from Cyprus, is for "supporting civilians to leave Gaza." However, this aligns with Israel’s efforts to forcibly relocate Palestinians from Gaza, which many legal experts argue could constitute a war crime or even ethnic cleansing under international law.

That lawyer should be force to move there.

Israel is trying to limit incidental harm to women and children? THEY ARE STARVING THE FUCKING REGION!
- No no, you see, it's a targeted starvation, they are only cutting power, medicine, water and food to the men... /s

As they walk over the dead bodies. Nothing to see here. Business as usual.
- Business as usual.
  Well, by the standards of the British Empire that could very well be considered true.

The UK is participating in genocide.
- The current leadership of the British party which is now in Government has a MASSIVE personal debt to Israel and Israeli-linked Jewish Organisations in Britain for their campaign to oust the previous leader of the party - the first actual leftwinger elected to it since the 80s - using accusations of anti-semitism which were so wild that at one point a Jewish Holocaust Survivor was repeatedly said to be an anti-semite for what he said in a conference for Palestine, as a means to claim that Labour leader was an anti-semite by association (they sat in the same panel in that conference).
  Israel delivered Sir Keir Starmer the top position at the party which was the next in line to get into Government and hence his premiership and Sir Keir Starmer is paying them back by having Britain help Israel mass murder Palestinian children.
  The very Prime Minister of the British Government (as well as pretty much the whole of the Labour leadership) has been bought by Israel, not with money but with the greatest favour in their lives.

Hmmm I wonder if they have any financial incentive to lie…

Israel is a valuable strategic staging point for The West in the The Middle East. No Western Power will jeopardize access to it.
That's why Israel's behavior is tolerated, and Israel knows it.
And no, I'm not an Anti-Semite. Not all Jews are Israelis.
- And not all israelis are jews. I know one guy in the tsahal, he's a christian russian.
- Yup Israel has always had a free pass cause they're basically the only ally of west in broken and dangerous middle east.
  Thats why Saudi Arabia is so fascinating - if they drag middle east out of swamp of incompetence they could make Israel redundant and take away its free pass.
  
  It's not unusual to see bootlickers on Lemmy, but sandal-lickers are relatively rare. How do you enjoy the taste of shib-shib?
  
  if they drag middle east out of swamp of incompetence they could make Israel redundant and take away its free pass.
  Is that supposed to be some kind of joke?
  Saudi Arabia is the MOST incompetent of the whole bunch!
  It just doesn't matter because they literally have more money than God.
  They're so ultra-inbred incompetent that they literally founded, funded and armed a terrorist group that made their first and foremost goal the fall of Saudi Arabia under an Islamic caliphate.
  They learned to stay out of wars decades ago, because they're too mentally damaged to fight them.
  I mean, until they tried to genocide Yemen, and of course got their asses handed to them by unarmed goat-herders who are still infinitely less trash.
  
  Yup Israel has always had a free pass cause they're basically the only ally of west in broken and dangerous middle east.
  I fucking wonder who made it so "broken and dangerous". That aside the Middle East being "broken and dangerous" is a relatively recent phenomenon; the Israeli-Western relationship came to be because the Arab world mostly fell on the side of the USSR during the cold war.
  
  They also funded the 9/11 terrorists. Fuck that apologetic bullshit.
  
  They already have that free pass, they just choose to use it to murder journalists, gays, aposthates and opress women, immigrants, non-muslims and political adversaries.

WTF? Even our government (Denmark) foreign minister is alarmed by what Israel is doing in Gaza, and he is traditionally very pro Israel!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_genocide
According to a United Nations Special Committee,[37] Amnesty International, and other experts and human rights organisations, Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people
This is so widely reported and acknowledged the only way to ignore it is extreme bias or more likely corruption.
It is also absolutely clear that Israel is committing war crimes regularly, there is zero doubt t about it, and the political leadership in Israel is wanted criminals because of it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court_arrest_warrants_for_Israeli_leaders
On 21 November 2024, following an investigation of war crimes and crimes against humanity, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for two senior Israeli officials, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, and Yoav Gallant, the former Minister of Defense of Israel,
Please UK, don't go as corrupt malignant and stupid on us as USA. 🙏
- As I explained above, the leadership of the party currently in Government in Britain - the Labour Party - and hence the entire cabinet, literally owe their posts to a campaign of accusations of anti-semitism against the previous leader of their party (who was from the leftwing faction of the party rather than the neoliberal faction - aka New Labour - as the current one) with massive help from Israeli-linked Jewish Organisations in the UK.
  That campaign was so extreme that at one point a Jewish Holocaust Survivor was accused of being an anti-semite as means to taint said previous leader by association and was kept going at full throttle through an election causing the Labour Party to lose it which ultimatelly brought down that leader. Over time it was shown that the party under that leader was actually less anti-semite than the general British society, but by then the damage was done and he had been ousted, with the neoliberal faction taking control of the party again (they have an anti-democratic system for controlling who gets to run for party leader, so they'll make sure no leftwinger ever gets the chance again - the other guy only got to run as candidate to party leader to be the token opposition since nobody expected him to win it, but he did).
  The current PM is the guy who got elected to lead the party following all that.
  Effectivelly the British Government was bought by Israel, not with money but with Propaganda that leveraged the large Jewish community in Britain, specifically the most rightwing amongst them who are rabidly pro Israel. This is why the current British Government unwaveringly supports Israel and their mass murdering or amongst others tens of thousands of children.
  I've lived for over a decade in Britain (and left with Brexit) and was even involved in politics there before I left (fair disclosure: I was a Green Party member) as well as having lived in other countries in Europe and in my opinion Britain has already gone "as corrupt malignant and stupid on us as USA" years ago, they're just far posher about it (than both the US and pretty much all far-right politicians in the rest of Europe) plus they have far slicker propaganda, so people outside the country can't really spot it easilly and those inside the country - most of whom are stuck in an English-language bubble as most Brits speak no second language - generally can't tell how far to the Right not just their Politics but their Press is compared to most of Europe.
  And don't get me started on how the civil society surveillance aparatus in Britain revealed by Snowden was worse than in the US and in Britain, unlike in the US, they didn't walk back on it at all but instead just passed a law to retroactivelly make the whole thing legal, the Editor of the main British newspaper in reporting those relevelations - The Guardian (which, by the way, is Liberal not Leftwing) - was kicked out and the Press suddenly went quiet on all of it and haven't mentioned it since.
  By the time I left Britain, I tought it was the country closest to Fascism in all of Europe (except perhaps Hungary) and the transition from a Government of the Tories (who were worse than Trump during their first presidency IMHO, only far posher) to a New Labour government (i.e. Labour under the Israel-installed leadership) barelly walked it back.
  If you think about it, in some ways British politics is somewhat a mirror of the politics in America (and remember that Britain too has a First Past The Post electoral system) only less brash and loud, partly because the culture of the elites in Britain (especially England) is very heavy on inculcating in their children a certain way of being which is heavy on presenting a false image of oneself and saying the "right" things (just look up what the Brits mean with "Public school educated", which by the way doesn't mean educated in state schools but actually in private and very expensive schools).
  
  Wow, you really paint a bleak picture, and I can't even point to something and say you are wrong! 🙁
  Actually I recognize all your points, except I was not aware the antisemitism thing was so bad? Remember it's not all smear campaigns that actually work.
  The first past the post system is really damaging to democracy, and you are right we are seeing that in UK just as much as in USA.
  Still UK has a tradition of a more humane society and not as cutthroat brutal as USA, so I think the level of sociopathy in society is lower in UK than in USA.
  But unfortunately this has clearly gotten worse in every way over the past decade or two. With increased surveillance, cutting social programs and NHS hard, and increased xenophobia.
  The part about antisemitism, was that Jeremy Corbyn? IMO he was very much to blame for Brexit too, and he was himself a brexiteer AFAIK. He was a very poor candidate for Labour IMO.
  Anyways I think there is hope for UK, they are traditionally a more social society, but Russian propaganda has really done a lot of harm, and COVID amplified it.
  Hopefully the Russian interference will end, and that will make it easier.
- Ever since Brexit I think it'd a little late for that.
  
  Brexit was bad, but hopefully we can still work closely together. UK is still finding their footing after Brexit.
  USA is a different more fundamental break of trust, which I would hate to see repeated with UK.
  In most EU countries USA is now more unpopular than China!
  UK is on a route where they are balancing EU and USA against each other, while completely forgetting that it was not EU that wanted the break, and EU is still their friend, and USA is not. just look how USA is treating Canada! It's insane that UK is looking towards USA considering how unfriendly USA has become even to their closest ally!

We did however find many recently dug mini basements! There were lots of stinky people in them. We didn't stop to ask because of the stink and I think you need to dig to go into the basements and many only fit one person. We did see a bunch of community basements and oh man those stunk! You know like road kill? Like that but worse! ......hmmm.....WAIT a god dammed minute! Those were bunkers! Wow! Incredible! And here we were thinking they were basements! But only some had a little house on them with a cross to fool us into thinking they were Christian! No! Those were bunkers!