Zum Inhalt der Seite gehen


The National
https://www.thenational.scot/news/24727615.labour-attempt-revise-genocide-definition-incredibly-dangerous/
(Needs subscription, 2/3 of the text in the image alts.)

Archive version https://archive.ph/uoxu0

#Gaza #Israel #Labour #GenocideDenial #Politics
THE Labour UK Government is going beyond genocide denial and attempting to revise its definition in its refusal to accept Israel is committing such an act in Gaza, a Middle East expert has said.
Earlier this week, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he does not believe a genocide is being committed in the region despite being “well aware” of its definition.
In response to a question from MP Ayoub Khan in the Commons about atrocities being committed in Gaza, Starmer said: “I'm well aware of the definition of genocide, and that is why I've never described this as and referred to it as genocide.”
Richard McNeil-Willson, who lectures in the Islamic and Middle Eastern studies department at Edinburgh University, said Starmer’s position on Gaza is becoming “politically untenable” after a UN special committee report said the policies and practices carried out by Israel are “consistent with the characteristics of genocide”. 
Foreign Secretary David Lammy last month claimed that the term genocide referred to “when millions of people lost their lives in crises like Rwanda, the Second World War in the Holocaust” and that using it to describe Gaza “now undermines [its] seriousness”.
McNeill-Wilson (below) said Labour are engaging in an “incredibly dangerous” approach in not only denying genocide but attempting to “redefine the nature of what genocide is”.
“This is incredibly dangerous in that not only is it a denial of genocide but it’s an attempt to rewrite what genocide is, where the British government is now potentially making the case that instances that have been clearly documented as genocide now no longer count as genocide under this, simply as a means of protecting Israel and their position on Israel.”
READ MORE: UN committee likens Israeli practices and policies in Gaza to genocide
Under Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, genocide means committing acts with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.
These acts include killing members of a group, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction, imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group or forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
McNeil-Willson said many of these acts have been conducted by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and, while Labour’s stance on Gaza has always been morally untenable in his view, it was now becoming politically untenable too.