gaza and israel part two

A group of 800 scholars and practitioners of law have warned of an imminent genocide in Gaza. The situation in Gaza has worsened, with a high death toll, destruction of homes, and lack of basic necessities. The legal frameworks defining genocide align with the devastating reality in Gaza. Israel's actions, targeting the entire population, resemble genocide. The Israeli government and military officials have expressed genocidal intent towards Palestinians. The ongoing occupation, siege, and dehumanization of Palestinians contribute to the unfolding genocide. International attention and action are needed. The Indian government's relationship with Israel is strengthening, with concerns about privacy and freedom of speech. The history of the relationship between Israel and India has not always been friendly. This video is a continuation of our first video about everything of Israel and Gaza war. So, a week into Israel and Gaza war, 800 eminent scholars and practitioners of law sounded the alarm about the imminent genocide in the territory. So, you heard it right. In this video, we are going to discuss two things. First, why should we declare a genocide is happening in Gaza? And second, what are the Indian relations with Israel? So, what made this warning both powerful and chilling was that so many legal experts came into this somber conclusion together. It is not a claim that can be made easily. Since that letter was released, the situation in Gaza has only gotten worse. The death toll has passed 11,000, while some 2,650 individuals, including approximately 1,400 children, are reported missing, potentially trapped and diseased beneath the rubble. Tens of thousands of wounded are overwhelming struggling medical facilities. The humanitarian situation has reached horrific limits, compounded by the lack of food, water, fuel, and even electricity. To understand what is transpiring in Gaza, we must turn to the key legal frameworks that define genocide. Article 6 of the Rome Institute of the International Criminal Court and Article 2 of the Genocide Convention. According to these documents, genocide involves acts committed with the specific intent to destroy, either in a whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. A genocidal act encompasses killing members of the group, causing them serious harm, and imposing conditions of life aimed at physical destruction of the group, in whole or in part, among other underlying acts. Notably, the people targeted can be a geographically limited part of the group. Gaza's devastating reality mirrors the components of genocide, we all know that. Just by claiming to target only Hamas, Israel is engaged in an all-out assault of the whole population of Gaza. In just the first week of its relentless assault, it dropped more than 6,000 bombs on the streets, nearly as many as the United States used in Afghanistan in a full year, using high-impact Fusions in just one of the most densely populated places in the world, inevitably leads to a high death toll among civilians, as we have witnessed already in Gaza, in a month, the Israeli bombardment has killed more than 4,400 children and 2,900 women, with many of the men in these horrific statistics also non-combatants. The Israeli army has also dropped any pretence to professional strife, as its spokesperson, Daniel Hageri, said its emphasis is on the damage and not accuracy, it has also massed targeted civilian buildings, including hospitals and schooling shelters, with disdain. It has bombed residence buildings, wiping out whole families from the population registrar. More than 45% of homes were destroyed or damaged, many of them in the supposed safe areas of the south, where the Israeli army had instructed Palestinians to evacuate to. This mass killing of civilians is accompanied by the imposition of life conditions aimed clearly at the physical destruction of the Palestinian people. Israel has put Gaza under complete siege, with no electricity, no food, no water and no gas, as declared by the Israeli defence minister. Israeli bombing of hospitals, the targeting of solar panels and the blocking of fuel deliveries indicate an attempt to prevent Palestinians from accessing life-saving health care. More than one-third of the hospitals and two-thirds of primary health care in Gaza have already shut down. The Israeli refusal to allow adequate amounts of much-needed humanitarian aid, including the food and water, indicates it is willing to allow the Palestinian population to succumb to starvation and disease. Israeli government and military officials have also verbalised their genocidal intent towards the Palestinian people. On October 9, when announcing the full blockage, Galen described the 2.3 million people in Gaza as human enemies. On October 29, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin used Judaic scripture to justify the killings of Palestinians. You must remember what Amalek did to you, says our holy bible. He said, quoting a verse that goes on to say, Now go and smite Amalek, kill both man-woman-infant. On November 5, Heritage Minister Amiai Elayou said one of Israel's options in Gaza is to drop a nuclear bomb. He also explained what no humanitarian aid should be provided to Palestinian civilians as there is no such thing as uninvolved civilians in Gaza. While his statement faced criticism from Israeli officials, the concerns were primarily centred around the potential impact on Israel's image rather than acknowledging the grave implications of such remarks as a potential tool of genocide. There has been litany of other official statements employing dehumanising language towards Palestinians, along with incitement by common Israelis for the annihilation of Gaza, which reveals the intent of commit war crimes, crime against humanity, any indeed is known as genocide. In the words of genocide expert and survivor of Bosnian genocide, that sort of rhetoric is not uncommon when it comes to the cases of genocide. It is obviously one of the most important stages where you really consider it. The openly dehumanising language spoken with so much favour in the media from government leaders and from regular people too, it is horrifying that it all leads us to where we are right now, which is the fact that what is happening in Gaza is a genocide. While what is happening in Gaza shares common features with other previous situations of genocide, there are also particular elements which are unique to it. Among these distinct features are the enduring occupation of Palestinian land, the reckless siege on the Gaza, and the staggering proportion of the Palestinian nation already displaced by the previous acts of ethnic cleansing. Additionally, at the heart of this tragedy lies a discourse of dehumanisation, serving both as a strategy and an outcome. The long-standing anti-Palestinian discourse, ongoing since the inception of Zionism, has systematically denied the existence and the rights of Palestinians. The narrative of Israel as a land without a people, for a people without a land, has effectively erased an entire indigenous population among its history, heritage, revanches. In parallel, Palestinians have been systematically demonised through narratives that portray them as terrorists, anti-Semitists, and even Nazis. Evoking absurd claims of the Nazification of Palestinians, Israel, a powerful settler colonial state that has presided over the longest occupation in modern history, is trying to depict itself as a victim, a tormentor, the people it has systematically oppressed and disposed for decades. It is imperative to grasp these distinct aspects of the unfolding genocide in Gaza as we confront and respond to it, we must not forget that what is happening now is a long history of Israel's actions against Palestinians, extending beyond the Gaza Strip, with genocidal intents and practices targeting other Palestinian communities. We must not forget, as Israel has its allies try to decontextualise what is going on in Gaza and portray it as a war provoked by Hamas on October 7 attacks. Talk about self-defence for Israel is dominating Western rhetoric, with minimal consideration for human life and adherence to the rules of the armed conflict, let alone the 56-year military occupation and 16-year siege of Gaza. This constitutes a fundamental flaw in the appraisal of these demons and consequently the ability to address their root causes, as subtly alluded by the UN Secretary-General Antonio in his October 24 address to the Security Council. We are witnessing a rapidly growing anti-Palestinian sentiment, not only in Israel but also in many European countries. Clearly visible is how the authorities are dealing with the demonstration and support for the Palestinian people. It is incumbent upon the international community to address this hatred with the same vigour as it addressed anti-Semitism. While the 1949 Geneva Conventions require all state parties to respect and ensure respect of these conventions in all circumstances, the Genocide Convention places a legal obligation on every member state to prevent and punish even the attempt to commit this heinous crime without waiting for it to fully manifest. Never again was meant to be mourning for future generations. Yet, we have seen genocides occur since the Holocaust, met with global silence. It's time to make never again a living principle and an urgent call to action. In Gaza, never again is now. Now, let's talk about what are the Indian relations with Israel. Under Modi's nationalist government, the strategic, military and ideological ties between India and Israel are growing stronger. The relevation that Pegasus, a spyware developed by the Israeli cyber arms company NSO, was used to surveil opposition politicians, activists, public officials and journalists in India, has once again confirmed that the right of privacy, freedom of speech and expression and freedom of the press are threatened under the rule of this nationalist government. Dismissing the controversy, a member of BJP, Basavaraja Somappa, whom I declared, it is a conspiracy involved foreign press where these kinds of misinformation campaigns have done against India using digital platforms. They try to destabilize different countries. Now, their eyes are set on India. Let's look at the history of the fraught relationship. The relationships between Israel and India have not always been friendly as they are today. In 1938, Mahatma Gandhi had famously said, Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. Jawaharlal Nehru, who eventually became the first prime minister of independent India, expressed his sympathies for the Jewish population facing persecution in Europe. However, Nehru also insisted that fundamentally the problem of Palestine is a nationalist one. The Arabs are struggling against imperialist control and domination. It is pity, therefore, that the Jews of Palestine, instead of aligning themselves with this struggle, have thought it fits to the side of British imperialism and to seek its protection against the inhabitants of the country. India remained invested in the idea of Arab freedom in Palestine in the lead-up to its independence in August 1947 and thereafter. It was an elected member of the UN Special Committee on Palestine and in September 1947, it was one of the only 13 countries that voted against the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine. In the statement against the partition plan, the Indian representative and the member of UNSCOP, Sir Abdul Rehman, said, the people of Palestine have now admittedly reached a stage of development where their recognition as an independent nation can no longer be delayed. There is no way less advanced than the people of the other free independent Asiatic countries. Rehman added that the failure to grant independence to Palestinians would lead to continued warliness in this region. As Israel secured UN membership, signed a must-see agreement in this neighborhood and was recognized as a sovereign state by the leading powers, India also eventually felt compelled to recognize Israel in 1950. However, India's leaning towards the Soviet Union during the Cold War and the status as a key architect of the non-aligned movement meant that this allegation or this alliance was with its Arab allies and it had very limited, if any, diplomatic relations with the Western bloc-allied Israel at that time. However, with the fall of the Soviet Union, India engaged in a process of economic liberalization and with it began to reposition itself in the world politics. This included in relationship with Israel. In 1992, under the leadership of PM PV Narasimha Rao, India established formal diplomatic ties with Israel but remained committed to the Palestinian cause and its economical crucial ties with other countries in the Middle East. We also have material and ideological partnership between India and Israel. Today, bilateral relations between India and Israel is a multi-faceted affair. Between April 2020 and February 2021, bilateral merchandise trade excluding defense stood at $4.14 billion. Indian software companies have growing presence in Israel. Both countries signed a comprehensive cooperation agreement for the agricultural sector in 2006. The fifth phase of this agreement is currently being implemented. In December 2020, the two countries signed an agreement to increase cooperation in the field of healthcare and medicine. At the height of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Indian and Israeli authorities have also worked together to develop a rapid COVID-19 testing kit. In March 2021, it was announced that India's Plenas Biotech and Israel's Aumaj had jointly developed a COVID-19 oral vaccine. In recent years, there has also been an uptick in cultural exchange, tourism and people-to-people contact. Israel has also emerged as India's most reliable weapons supplier that is willingly to maintain supply channels without any political precondition. This was evident during the Kargil War of 1999 at the time India was facing economic sanctions and an export ban on weapons and military technology imposed by the Clinton administration as a redistribution for its Okrin-2 nuclear test in 1998. Yet, Israel refrained from criticizing India's nuclear program and supplied weapons and surveillance systems and upgraded existing military hardware during the war. As a result, today, India is the largest buyer of Israeli weapons. Israel is India's second largest weapons supplier. Imports increased by 175% between 2015 and 2019 and current annual sales amount to more than 1 billion. India's Defence Research and Development Organisation DRDO and Israeli Aerospace Industries IAI are currently collaborating on developing surface-to-air missile systems for the Indian armed forces. This was a little bit of introduction about how India-Israeli relations are. If you want to know more, please let us know in the comment section. And if you like this video, then please like, share and subscribe to our YouTube channel. You can also find fresh and trending news on our social media pages and on our official website. This is Mubashera Sagi Zain from the team of LightCoop, your host, signing off for today. Thank you.