THREE international rights groups — within a space of two weeks — have issued damning reports against Israel.
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF): Israel's war in Gaza meets the legal threshold of genocide against the Palestinians.
Of the three reports, Amnesty International's "You Feel Like You are Subhuman: Israel's Genocide against Palestinians" was the most extensive and scathing.
Published on Dec 5, it examines Israel's violations over nine months, between Oct 7, 2023 and early July this year.
By detail, the United States-based rights group means interviews of victims, witnesses, local officials and healthcare workers supported by fieldwork and analysis of an extensive range of visual, digital and satellite imagery over three quarters of a year.
Amnesty International secretary general Agnes Callamard, in a news release of the same date, had this to say of the report's findings: "Taking into account the pre-existing context of dispossession, apartheid and unlawful military occupation in which these acts have been committed, we could find only one reasonable conclusion: Israel's intent is the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza, whether in parallel with, or as a means to achieve, its military goal of destroying Hamas."
Others before the rights groups — United Nations experts, former Supreme Court judges of the United Kingdom, lawyers, law professors, mathematicians and many more — have all warned of plausible genocide being committed by Israel.
Citing the January ruling of the International Court of Justice, they said governments aiding Israel in any way would be held to be complicit in the Zionist regime's genocidal acts.
There are no grounds for Israel to deny the genocidal acts, nor its Western allies, who are complicit in its crimes, to not act against the Zionist regime.
From the highest world court to international rights groups and experts in international criminal law, they are either alleging or stating that genocide is being committed by Israel against the Palestinians.
And they are quite clear on one thing: international law must be allowed to take its natural course. After all, international law is the creation of the West.
More particularly, the Rome Statute, which created the International Criminal Court (ICC), is a handiwork of the US.
Washington's message then was that the US is a strong supporter of international justice.
But in 2000, this American support for international justice took a strange twist when then president Bill Clinton signed the treaty, but refused to send it to the US Senate for ratification.
Just in case that didn't bury the Rome Statute, in 2002, then president George W. Bush "unsigned" it to make sure that there was no life before ratification.
We now know why. On Oct 7, 2001, months before Bush "unsigned" the treaty, he ordered the invasion of Afghanistan in response to the 9/11 attack. On March 20, 2003, Bush would invade Iraq without any legal justification.
Washington's message is this: the long arm of the ICC must not reach the US or its allies, especially Israel.
But here is the thing: the longer Israel is shielded from the legal consequences of the Genocide Convention or the Rome Statute, the more likely it is that Gaza won't just be the graveyard of Palestinians but also of international law.