The world is marking 2 years of Israel’s deliberate and brutal genocide against the people of Palestine. In this context, we interview Dan Kovalik, Expert in International Human Rights at the University of Pittsburgh Law School. teleSUR
00:00In the context of the two years of genocide against the Palestinian people, we invite to, from the south, Dan Kowalek, expert in international human rights at the University of Pittsburgh Law School.
00:10Hello, Dan, and thank you very much for joining us today.
00:15Two years, as we were mentioning, into this genocidal war in Gaza, the numbers hurt, with 67,000 Palestinians killed, most of them being women and children.
00:26But I wanted to ask you, beyond numbers, how would you describe the conditions in Gaza, and how are they meeting the international legal definition of genocide?
00:37Well, I think they meet it in a number of ways.
00:40First, the numbers probably are worse than we believe.
00:45According to Francisca Albanese, the special rapporteur of the United Nations, she estimates about 680,000 Palestinians have been killed.
00:56Which would be astronomical.
00:59We're talking about nearly a third of the entire population of Gaza.
01:04So there, right there, you have a destruction of a huge proportion of the population, and all by design.
01:18I mean, it's done by intention.
01:19When you listen to the words of the ministers and various leaders of Israel, they make it clear they want to destroy the Palestinian people.
01:29They see them as less than human, as less than animals, even.
01:34And that sort of discourse is evidence of the intent to destroy a people like the Palestinian people in violation of the Genocide Convention.
01:46And when you combine that with the mass murder, the intentional starvation, the destruction of the environment, the water supplies, the air even, quality has been destroyed.
02:07All of the infrastructure has been destroyed, so they've destroyed the conditions necessary for life in Gaza.
02:14All that is evidence of genocide.
02:18Second question.
02:20The United States, along with several European powers, has continued to provide Israel with diplomatic cover and also with a steady flow of weapons.
02:30What is the legal and also the moral responsibility of these nations in this genocide?
02:35Yeah, well, under the Genocide Convention in 1948, all nations have a duty to prevent and stop genocide.
02:46So, first of all, the fact that countries are not doing that itself is unlawful.
02:53But, of course, those countries that are actually like the United States and Britain and Germany, for example, that are actually militarily supplying Israel, they're actually aiding and abetting genocide, which itself is, you know, makes them criminally liable under the Genocide Convention, which makes being complicit in genocide a crime.
03:18So, there are many, many people, particularly in the West, who could be, you know, tried and convicted for crimes of genocide, along with Israeli officials.
03:33We've seen rulings from the ICJ, we've seen as well investigations, and countless of United Nations resolutions, again, opposing to this genocide.
03:47Why have these international legal mechanisms so far have failed to halt the violence or enforce accountability?
03:53Well, because, really, the way the UN is structured, the only power, for the most part, resides in the Security Council, and the U.S. has a veto power there and has exercised it.
04:07They've blocked any attempt to pass resolutions that could end the genocide.
04:15There is another means to do that.
04:19That would be a uniting for peace resolution in the General Assembly of the UN.
04:25Gustavo Petro of Colombia, who you mentioned, is in favor of passing that sort of resolution, but that has not been passed.
04:33So, all we have is the Security Council, which is at a stalemate because of the U.S. veto, and that has prevented any meaningful...
04:45attempts to end the genocide in Gaza.
04:50Thank you very much, Dan, for your time here from the South.
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