Putting its foot down: Israel is committing genocide

The war between Israel and Hamas

Human rights profile: Israel conducts genocide in Gaza

Nivette Dawod

Published 14.30

Aryeh Neier. Photo: Andreas Rentz / Getty Images Europe

Israel's war in Gaza has been called both a massacre and a war crime.

Now a heavy human rights profile puts its foot down - and believes that Israel is carrying out a genocide in Gaza.

- What changed my opinion was that Israel prevented the delivery of emergency aid to Gaza, says Aryeh Neier to CNN.

87-year-old Aryeh Neier was born in Nazi Germany as a Jew, survived the Holocaust, founded the human rights organization Human Rights Watch and was one of the champions of what is today the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Tribunal (ICC).

Now he has written  a longer text in the journal The New York Review of Books where he puts forward the argument that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

In an interview with CNN,  he explains how the thinking has gone.

For a long time, Aryeh Neier did not consider Israel's warfare in Gaza, as a result of the Hamas terrorist attacks on October 7, to constitute war crimes, although he was appalled by some of the actions, he says.

 

Palestinians mourn relatives killed in Israeli airstrikes. Photo: Abdel Kareem Hana / AP

What made Neier change his mind is that Israel has deliberately prevented the delivery of emergency aid to Gaza. In his text, he takes up Defense Minister Yoav Gallant's statement on October 9 that a total blockade would be imposed and neither electricity, food nor fuel would be delivered to Gaza, because they are "fighting human beasts".

Although some emergency aid has been delivered, it has been cut off recently, and border crossings have been repeatedly closed by the Israeli military (IDF).

- Israel has, for a period of time, obstructed the humanitarian delivery systems in Gaza. The hardest hit are not Hamas members, men with guns usually find a way to get food, it is young children who suffer the worst from malnutrition. They either starve to death or survive with difficulty for the rest of their lives.

"Such a serious obstruction of emergency aid amounts to genocide, in my opinion," Neier told CNN.

 

Devastation after attack in Rafah. Photo: Jehad Alshrafi / AP

In the interview, he also addresses the alarms from both the US aid agency and the UN food program that famine is now prevailing in parts of Gaza and the fact that Israeli settlers vandalized aid convoys that were on their way to Gaza.

Last week, ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan requested that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, previously mentioned Gallant, as well as three top Hamas leaders, be arrested for war crimes.

Netanyahu responded that it was all anti-Semitism, something Neier calls "absurd."

- Anti-Semitism is a big problem, but it does not insulate the Israeli government from being held accountable to the same principles as other states.

The interview ends with the presenter asking how it feels for Neier, as a Jew and a Holocaust survivor, to accuse Israel of genocide.

- It is a terrible thing to accuse someone of genocide, but it is even more terrible that genocide takes place.