Mariella Pittari – University of Turin Ph.D. candidate
President Lula’s speech on the occupation of Gaza is one of the strongest statements the head of a state has made so far. He compared the killing of civilians in Gaza to the Holocaust and the actions perpetrated by the Israeli government to Hitler’s actions. Instead of anathematizing Lula’s speech, one must honor the power of a cry for peace that touches the spiritual Geist of the global community.
Society has become so insensitive to wars and the suffering of innocents that it tends to ignore the massacre as soon as it leaves the spotlight. In a circular demoniac geopolitical agenda, the press switches from Ukraine and Gaza as if the bloody entrainment can proceed forever to capture people’s engagement in the headlines. Civilians, among them children, are killed daily in this conflict unfolding for already five months, leaving the perception that one more or one less will not change the horizon of this macabre decade. Part of an individual’s static behavior before the utmost reproachable events is the pervasive apathy for taking action, underlying the ambiguous sensation of correctness. What is the prevailing narrative when the war is fought in the terrain of narratives? To detach ourselves from narratives, the Law is of help. It crafts a juridical discourse that persuades without bursting society into unchecked violence, and it constitutes an opportunity to test the force of an argument envisioned in the wake of an event that stained generations to come.
The juridical language of genocide stated in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, as expressed by the South African government before the International Court of Justice, constitutes a relevant point of departure for naming the outrageousness of the events taking place in Gaza. Naming heinous acts as legal issues is critical to leave the murky nature of political speech and enter the regulated area of juridical discourse. The South African state initiated the dispute for the State of Israel’s breach of the Genocide Convention by gathering abundant evidence on the killing of Palestinians following the Israeli military operation in retorsion of the Hamas attack. The events deemed to violate the convention were reported by media outlets, human rights activists, and victims directly involved. If those acts are justified under the convention, it will be an issue for the Court to decide. However, civilians, women, and children cannot be deemed of a terrorist status by their simple presence in the Palestinian territory.
History reminds us that one of the culminating reasons for the Endlösung was the lack of treatises and legal concepts that could prevent Hitler from lifting the legal order without reprimand. Party officials perpetrated the most horrendous acts protected by the existing legal order, facilitating the process of killing millions of Jews systematically. The Nazi laws devised the apparatus to segregate Jews and lift their protections by banning their governmental positions, taking their property, and prohibiting them from exercising their rights in such an organized manner that the final steps were executed as part of the state functioning. The international community could call the crime by its name just in the closing scenes of the war when Raphael Lemkin’s Axis Rule in Occupied Europe brought the term and the importance of its uses to the ongoing conferences for drafting a treaty that properly reprimanded the act.
By paying close attention to the language of genocide as defined by the Genocide Convention, the violations targeting the Palestinian community fulfill what constitutes genocide, mainly the definitions of “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” Pursuant to Article 2 of the convention, such acts involve: “killing members of the 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 in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
The International Court of Justice, provoked by South Africa, granted provisional measures under Article 41 of its statute to protect the Palestinian population while the case proceeded and ordered the state of Israel to refrain, among other measures ordered by the Court, from killing, causing bodily and mental harm, against the targeted group, and taking action to prevent officials from engaging in those acts. As demonstrated in its reasoning, the order was timid and insufficient to preclude Israel from perpetrating the acts described in the convention. However, the decision represents many things beyond what was stated there. Firstly, it documented events that can lead to future condemnation for violating the convention. Secondly, it can promote peace talks and a solution that satisfies Palestinian claims on its territory. In case the Israeli aggression proceeds, as it appears, the dramatic turn can engulf many more states than the ones originally involved.
In the spiral of conflict and violence in which the global community finds itself, the eschatological times can arise in a much more dragging manner, forcing states that initially denied support to side with one or the other. This picture is not unlikely if the Russia-Ukraine conflict is already part of a political divide in which multiple states are engaged in a proxy war. The proxy wars fought with the support of the hegemonic powers can ultimately lead to a global proxy war converted into a total war without disguise. If one pays attention to President Lula’s words, as an eminent leader in the BRICS and a political figure for decades, one will realize the message he wanted to convey. More than an inciting message, it was a warning of the underlying risks of ignoring the gravity of this conflict.
The global community is on the brink of World War III, and ignoring the violation of conventions signed in the aftermath of WWII indicates that normative instruments serve little purpose when the sovereign does not feel bound by their obligations. A severe threat pervades society when legal obligations can be breached at will, and no consequences arise for disobedience. An indication of a rooting legal order emerges, and the means to conciliate the imbalance is again resorting to pure violence as a means to prevail by force. We hope to postpone the eschatological coming by promoting the aspirations of those international documents that are constantly undermined but of unparalleled importance.
