@Andre__Damon, WSWS. Org, Jan. 9, 2024

On Sunday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) murdered two Al Jazeera reporters, Hamza al-Dahdouh and Mustafa Thuraya, in a targeted airstrike on their vehicle while they were returning from a reporting assignment.

Hamza was the eldest son of Al Jazeera Gaza bureau chief Wael al-Dahdouh, whose wife, two other children and infant grandson were murdered in an October IDF airstrike on their home. In December, another targeted drone strike injured Wael and killed his camera operator near the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis.

The systematic and deliberate massacre of al-Dahdouh’s family and the repeated efforts to kill him are part of a deliberate Israeli policy of murdering journalists. As of Sunday, the number of journalists killed by Israel over the past three months stood at 109, a figure that grew to 111 by Monday with the murder of two more journalists: Abdullah Breis and Mohammad Abu Dayer.

Israel’s aim is to prevent the world from learning of the crimes it is inflicting every single day upon the Palestinian people by systematically murdering and intimidating the press. Journalists operating in Gaza have extensively documented Israel’s campaign of genocide, which has killed over 30,000 people in just three months, has displaced 90 percent of Gaza’s population, and has destroyed 70 percent of its civilian infrastructure.

Israel operates as a criminal regime, functioning outside of international law as a sort of Murder Incorporated. Its bloody crimes are made possible by the arms, funding and political backing provided by the United States and other imperialist powers.

The killing of journalists is accompanied by the deliberate murder of critics of the genocide, including prominently Refaat Alareer, a Palestinian writer, poet, professor and activist, who was killed in a targeted bombing by the Israeli military on December 7, following weeks of death threats.

Such is the brazenness of Israel’s policy of murdering journalists that, after the killing of al-Dahdouh and Thuraya, the IDF released a statement referring to them as “suspects” and saying that their car was targeted because photojournalist Hazem Rajab was a “terrorist operative.”

On the day of Hamza’s murder, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was asked whether the Biden administration condemns Israel’s policy of deliberately targeting journalists.

Blinken refused to condemn the policy, and instead asserted he was “sorry” for the killing. Blinken declared, “I am deeply, deeply sorry for the almost unimaginable loss suffered by your colleague Wael al-Dahdouh. I am a parent myself. I can’t begin to imagine the horror that he’s experienced, not once, but twice. This is an unimaginable tragedy.”

No, the murder of Hamza and the other members of Wael al-Dahdouh’s family is not only an immense personal “tragedy,” it is the outcome of a cold-blooded criminal slaughter for which Blinken and the Biden administration bear full responsibility. The Biden administration has publicly asserted that there are no “red lines” for the crimes that Israel will be allowed to commit. In fact, the United States, which has extensively coordinated airstrike targets with Israel, is likely to have directly collaborated with Israel in selecting which journalists would be murdered.

On October 25, Axios reported that Blinken asked the prime minister of Qatar to “turn down the volume on Al Jazeera’s coverage because it is full of anti-Israel incitement.”

Israel responded to these comments by systematically murdering Al Jazeera correspondents and their families in Gaza. Just three days after Axios reported Blinken’s statement, on October 28, Israel carried out the strike on al-Dahdouh’s home that killed his wife, two children and infant grandson.

The question immediately arises: Where does Washington’s collaboration in Israel’s murder of journalists lead? If the United States declares that there are “no red lines” for Israel’s crimes, will the US allow the Israeli regime to kill its political opponents and critical journalists on its own territory? And if the US endorses these actions by Israel, what is to prevent the US government and military from targeting their own political opponents?

Throughout the past 50 years, actions by the state of Israel have set a precedent for US policy. The most significant example is the doctrine of “targeted killings,” or state-organized assassinations.

In November 2000, Israel became the first state in the world to openly acknowledge a policy of targeted killing. Within two years, the policy was adopted by the United States, which conducted its first known drone strike outside a war zone in Yemen in 2002. Within 10 years, the United States had used the doctrine of “targeted killing” to kill one of its own citizens.

In other words, what Israel is doing today, its imperialist backers will do in the near future.

The governments of the United States and Western Europe have already carried out sweeping attacks on democratic rights, banning anti-genocide protests and launching campaigns to purge opponents of the genocide from college campuses. In October, the US Senate passed a resolution accusing participants in mass demonstrations against the Gaza genocide of “expressing solidarity with terrorists.”

By this logic, could not participants in the anti-genocide protests be subjected to the same treatment as journalists in Gaza?

The Gaza genocide marks a new stage in the criminality of the United States and other world imperialist governments, which are embracing genocide and mass murder as state policy. These crimes will then set a further precedent for even more sweeping attacks on the social and democratic rights of the working class.

A particularly despicable role is being played in this process by the corporate media, which has, with few exceptions, blacked out both the genocidal crimes being committed in the US-Israeli war on the people of Gaza and the unprecedented protests around the globe against them. In their bid to normalize these crimes, the major news corporations have likewise covered up the slaughter of journalists, including in a number of cases correspondents who have provided them with reporting, photographs and video.

The endorsement of Israel’s genocide and mass murder by the world’s imperialist governments must serve as a warning. The line between “democratic” and “fascist” capitalist governments is being obliterated. Every crime, from genocide to mass murder and political repression, is being materially supported and legitimized by the criminal oligarchies that hold power.

For this reason, the struggle against Israel’s genocide in Gaza must take the form of a political struggle by the working class against the governments that are enabling it, and which will seek to use the genocide to set a precedent for even greater crimes against working people all over the world.

A Palestinian woman reacts following Israeli bombardment in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip on December 14, 2023, amid ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas.

(Photo by Said Khatib/AFP via Getty Images)

Members of Congress, now providing such easy rhetoric in public statements to justify huge and ongoing military support to Israel, would not be so complacent if they had to dig their own dead children out of the rubble.

Norman Solomon, Common Dreams, Jan. 8, 2024

The vast majority of Congress members have refused to call for a ceasefire in Gaza during three months of slaughter by Israel’s military. Capitol Hill remains a friendly place for the Israeli government, as it keeps receiving massive arms shipments courtesy of U.S. taxpayers.

“Israel would not be able to conduct this war without the U.S., which over time has provided Israel with about 80 percent of the country’s weapons imports,” Voxreports. The distance between the Capitol and Gaza can be measured by the vast disconnect between the standard discourse of U.S. politics and the terroristic carnage destroying the Palestinian people.

The human toll includes upward of 22,000 dead, more than 85 percent of Gaza’s 2.2 million population displaced, and the emerging lethal combination of hunger and disease that could kill several hundred thousand more.

The impunity enjoyed by Israeli leaders is enabled by President Biden, who clearly does not want a ceasefire. The same can be said of the vast majority of Congress, with silences and equivocations if not outright zeal to voice support for the wholesale killing of civilians in the name of Israel’s “right to defend itself.”

Members of Congress, now providing such easy rhetoric in public statements to justify huge and ongoing military support to Israel, would not be so complacent if they had to dig their own dead children out of the rubble.

Seventeen members of the House stepped forward in mid-October to sign on as cosponsors of the ceasefire resolution introduced by Congresswoman Cori Bush, “calling for an immediate de-escalation and ceasefire in Israel and occupied Palestine.” The number of those forthright representatives has not risen during the 11 weeks since then.

What we’ve gotten instead has been the molasses-pace drip of some other members of Congress calling for—or kind of calling for —a ceasefire.

Now in circulation from some antiwar organizations is what’s described as “a growing list of members of Congress who have publicly called for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.” But the basis for listing those names—56 House members and four senators—ranges from solid to flimsy.

A case in point is my congressperson, Rep. Jared Huffman of California, whose name is on the list but doesn’t belong there. As ostensible documentation, the list provides a link to a Nov. 19 social-media post by Huffman stating that a ceasefire would require “Hamas releases all hostages, disarms & relinquishes control of Gaza”—in other words, full surrender by Hamas as a prerequisite for an end to Israel’s mass killing of civilians there.

Several other listed House members, such as Reps. Judy Chu (Calif.), Diana DeGette (Colo.), Teresa Leger Fernandez (N.M.) and Jamie Raskin (Md.), have “publicly called for a ceasefire” only with caveats and preconditions—without calling for the U.S.-backed Israeli government to immediately stop killing Palestinian civilians no matter what.

A lot of members of Congress have taken far worse positions. But we should not be grading on a curve. Constituents need accurate information—so they won’t be under the false impression that they’re being represented by an actual firm supporter of a ceasefire.

Even including the most dubious names that have been put in the category of ceasefire supporters, the current list comprises just 13 percent of the House and 4 percent of the Senate. That’s a measure of just how far we have to go in order to end what amounts to congressional support for Israel’s genocidal war on Palestinians in Gaza.

Outpourings of protests against U.S. support for that war have included large nonviolent actions at bridges, highways, train stations, airports, college campuses, legislatures, and more. Some activists have also confronted members of Congress.

But mostly, congressional supporters of Israeli impunity have been spared the nonviolent confrontations that they deserve. Such confrontations can occur at their office on Capitol Hill, but traveling to Washington is not necessary.

Senators and House members have numerous offices back home that are conveniently located for most of their constituents to visit, picket, and nonviolently disrupt—insisting that support for the mass murder in Gaza is morally unacceptable.

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by M. Reza Behnam, CounterPunch, January 4, 2024

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

Long before South Africa filed a case against Israel at the International Court of Justice on 29 December 2023 over its genocidal war on Gaza, its iconic anti-apartheid leader, Nelson Mandela, who came to embody the struggle for justice worldwide; stated, “Palestine was the greatest moral issue of our time.”  

Three decades have passed since Mandela expressed those sentiments.  They remain as relevant today as they were then.  Perhaps more so.  

Mandela and fellow Black South Africans finally won their fight against apartheid beginning in the 1990s. Palestinians, however, have yet to be free from the shackles and evils of settler-colonial apartheid. 

Palestinians have not lived free in their own country for over 75 years.  On 7 October 2023, they refused to live imprisoned for one more day.  And for three months now, in the rubble of bombed-out buildings in Gaza, they have challenged the powerful U.S.-Israeli war machines.

American politicians and U.S. media—themselves under a form of occupation through intimidation and groupthink—have reluctantly begun to break their silence on Palestine.  They have yet to clearly state that:  Israel is not a democracy, it is an apartheid entity; it is not a promised land, it is a settler-colonial project; it is not a nation under siege, it is an aggressor; it is not defending itself, it is conducting a genocidal war in Gaza.

The American enablers of Israel continue to call the slaughter of civilians and destruction of their homes in densely-populated Gaza a “war.”  Dropping over 40,000 tons of high explosives, some weighing 2,000 pounds, capable of killing and wounding people more than 1,198 feet away, must be described for what it truly is—Israel’s quest to systematically annihilate an entire population. 

Seizing a people’s homeland is comparable to robbing them of their identity, history, culture and future. All of which Israel has tried to do since it declared statehood on Palestinian land in 1948.  

Through their ongoing resistance, Palestinians have denied the Zionists their dream of an “Eretz” Greater Israel.  Not on our land, they say.  

Palestinian identity remained steadfast under Ottoman rule, during the British Mandate from 1922 to 1948 and has grown stronger under Israeli apartheid.  They have a deep relationship with the land of Filastin (Arabic for Palestine), in existence for over 3,000 years.  With the introduction of Islam (in 7th century AD), it has been the nucleus of the Islamic world, a sacred land with Al-Quds (Jerusalem) its spiritual, geographical and political center. 

Creating an ethno-nationalist state on the ruins of Palestine, as we see in Gaza today, is not new to the Zionist project.  Statehood at any cost was the primary objective of Israel’s founders, regardless of the casualties. 

The genocide we are witnessing in Gaza is the culmination of over a century of European imperialism, European Zionism and American collusion and deception.  Expulsion and erasure are entrenched in Zionist history and is a pervasive sentiment in Israeli society today. 

Zionist colonization and the roots of erasure began with the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire following the First World War.  After the war, the newly-created League of Nations granted Britain and France colonial authority (called mandates) over former Ottoman territories.  

Under Article 22 of the 1920 Covenant of the League, the Fertile Crescent—present-day Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan (then Transjordan) and Palestine—were to be governed until such time as they could become independent.  All of the mandate countries achieved varying degrees of independence, except for Palestine.  

A small cadre of influential European Zionists labored to make sure that Palestine remained under British control, knowing that the British Mandate for Palestine (officially adopted in 1922) incorporated the principles of the Balfour Declaration—a 109-word letter, authored by British foreign minister, Arthur James Balfour, declaring his government’s support for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine.  From the start, and throughout, the people of Palestine were never consulted.  

The mandate system specifically stated that the territory entrusted to the mandated power be developed for the benefit of the native people.  In Palestine, however, instead of working in support of the Palestinians, the British, in collusion with European Zionists, established the framework and institutions for the creation of an eventual Jewish state on Palestinian land.  For example,  Article 2 of the Mandate reads: “The Mandatory shall be responsible for placing the country under such political, administrative and economic conditions as will secure the establishment of the Jewish national home….”  Promotion of Jewish immigration into Palestine was also a mandate provision.  

Additionally, Article 4  recognized the Zionist Jewish Agency as the public body to advise and cooperate with them (the British) in the administration of Palestine to affect the Jewish state.  

No where in the mandate’s 28 articles was there any reference to the Palestinians as a people or to their national or political rights.  The British mandate essentially legalized their erasure.  

After years of conflict, Britain terminated its mandate on 14 May 1948.   On that same day, Israel proclaimed its “independence,” and set in motion its “Plan Dalet” expulsion policy—euphemism for ethnic cleansing—to destroy Palestinian towns and villages and to repopulate them with Jews.

Russian-born Ze’ev Jabotinsky, influential Revisionist Zionist who provided the ideological map for Israel’s future Likud Party, expressed those same sentiments. Aware of the financial limitations of European Jewry, Jabotinsky wrote in November 1939  to a fellow party member: “We should instruct American Jewry to mobilize half a billion dollars in order that Iraq and Saudi Arabia will absorb the Palestinian Arabs….The Arabs must make room for the Jews in Eretz Israel.  If it was possible to transfer the Baltic peoples, it is also possible to move the Palestinian Arabs.”

Plan Dalet and what Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, referred to in 1938 as “compulsory transfer,” is clearly Israel’s scheme to depopulate Gaza.   

Unlike the Nakba of 1948 when 780,000 Palestinians were violently forced from their ancestral land, the Israeli regime cannot furtively carry out mass expulsions of Gaza’s population as it did then.  It has, therefore, resorted to making Gaza uninhabitable and unable to support life.  To destroy the collective memory of the Palestinians, the Israeli military has obliterated entire neighborhoods, so there will be nothing recognizable; nothing to return to.   

By denying the people of Gaza food, water, medicine, electricity and fuel, some Israeli officials, like retired Major General Giora Eiland–who continues to advise Israel’s defense minister—sees the spread of disease as a tool of war.  Eiland callously remarked, “Severe epidemics in the South of the Gaza Strip will bring victory closer.”  

Israel’s plan is to make life so unbearable, that the people of Gaza will have no choice but to leave or die.  To effect its scheme, the Israeli regime has been laying the groundwork and attempting to build international support for permanent mass expulsions of Gaza’s civilians to neighboring Egypt and Jordan; thus far rejected by both countries. 

Although he later changed course on Israel’s displacement plan, Biden had initially given Tel Aviv the green light to conduct ethnic cleansing in Gaza.  On 11 October, Secretary of State Antony Blinken confirmed that the administration was working with Egypt and Israel to create what he called a “humanitarian corridor” in the Sinai for Palestinians fleeing Gaza.  And on 20 October, an official funding request was sent to Congress to “address potential needs of Gazans fleeing to neighboring countries.”  

President Biden is one among many U.S. presidents who have shamelessly and brazenly embraced Israel.  The United States has been deeply implicated in Israel’s crimes against humanity from the beginning.  On 14 May 1948, President Harry S. Truman hastily issued a statement officially recognizing the new state of Israel—the first world leader to do so.  He released it to the press without first notifying his top ranking State Department officials and U.S. delegates to the United Nations.

In the foreword to Israel Shahak’s 1994 book, Jewish History, Jewish Religion, Gore Vidal writes that “John F. Kennedy told me how in 1948 Harry S. Truman had been pretty much abandoned by everyone when he came to run for president. Then an American Zionist brought him two million dollars in cash, in a suitcase, aboard his whistle-stop campaign train.  That’s why our recognition of Israel was rushed through so fast.”  

Since 1948, influential pro-Israel lobby groups have spent millions of dollars to insure that U.S. politicians never stray from supporting Israel. Their lobbying has also come to define the American political landscape.  Biden, for example, who prides himself on being an honorary Zionist, has been the number one recipient of Israel lobby money.  For his implacable support, he has, since 1990, received $4,346,264 from pro-Israel groups.  

While publicly stating that it has stressed to the Zionist regime the importance of minimizing civilian casualties, the White House continues to provide the Israeli military with the bombs it has been using to exterminate an imprisoned population.  For the second time in December 2023, Blinken has approved the “emergency” sale of weapons to Israel; once again bypassing Congress.  Despite civilian deaths nearing 23,000, with over 57,000 wounded and 24,000-25,000 children made orphans by Israeli bombs, Blinken approved another “emergency” sale of weapons amounting to $147.5 million.

Contradicting his promise to “restore the soul of America,” Biden has thrown the country’s power and reputation behind the supremacist Israeli regime; a regime determined to erase the Palestinian people.  His decisions to shield, finance and militarily involve the United States in Israel’s war crimes is incomprehensible. It is unclear how America’s short-term, long-term or moral interests are served by Biden’s policies.   

Israel’s barbarity has exposed its “might makes right” ethos, defined in the core writings of Jabotinsky, who set in motion Israel’s ideology of force.  Israel’s war on Gaza has also revealed the callousness of the U.S. government, well disposed to finance Israel’s genocide.   

In his 1923 essay, “The Iron Wall,” Jabotinsky argued that morality and conscience could not dictate Zionist policy and that extremism and force were integral to accomplishing Jewish statehood.  His directive read: “Zionism is a colonizing adventure and therefore it stands or falls by the question of armed force,” and that,  “It is important to build, it is important to speak Hebrew, but unfortunately, it is even more important to be able to shoot….”    

Israel’s birth certificate has been stained with the blood of Palestinians.  It has no place in the Middle East until it puts down the gun and rejects the ideology of force and exclusion. 

For over a century, Palestinians have endured untold injustices orchestrated by Britain, Israel and the United States.  The horrific crimes done to them can only be undone when the ongoing Nakba is ended and their fight against apartheid leads to a free Palestine.

 Omar Karmi, The Electronic Intifada, 2 January 2024

As Israel’s genocidal violence in Gaza slouches towards the three-month mark, an end seems nowhere in sight.

To the outside world, Israel’s leadership has repeatedly warned of a many months-long assault.

On Christmas Day, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stipulated three war aims for a US audience, aims that are entirely lacking any diplomatic horizon.

Domestically, however, the more honest talk is of ethnic cleansing, “voluntary” or otherwise.

It is the latter discourse to which attention should be paid. Unlike the three aims Netanyahu posited in the Wall Street Journal on Christmas Day – the destruction of Hamas, the demilitarization of Gaza and the “deradicalization” of Palestinian society – ethnic cleansing has a definable end game.

It is also a logical outcome of Israeli policies over many decades, not just in occupied territory but domestically. Having “settled” the land-for-peace formula by building colonies across occupied territory to prevent any independent Palestinian entity from emerging, Israel has left itself with the option of either indefinite military occupation or formal annexation.

7 October put paid to the idea of indefinite occupation.

Formal annexation under current demographic realities, however, leaves population parity, and either an apartheid state or a state with equal rights for Jews and non-Jews.

If Israel had ever been interested in the latter formula, the Palestine issue would have been long resolved.

A second Nakba

Ideologically, Zionism is not about equality, but about exclusive Jewish statehood in Palestine. That demands an unassailable Jewish majority and a sufficiently diluted, disempowered and thus manageable minority.

So, like in 1948, when Zionist militias expelled two thirds of Palestine’s native population, Israel is now sensing a chance for a repeat.

Israel’s military strategy on the ground certainly points to a deliberate effort at ejecting Gaza’s population south to Egypt, while rendering Gaza unlivable and return impossible.

Israel’s bombardment of Gaza has been among the most destructive and deadly in history, leaving some 70 percent of homes in the besieged territory damaged or destroyed.

The bombardment has destroyed mosques, churches, offices, bakeries, farmland, government buildings, cultural centers, UN facilities, universities and schools.

Some 22,000 people have been killed, according to the official death toll, the vast majority women and children, and just 13 hospitals out of 36 are left “partially functioning” to attend to more than 55,000 injured people.

The military has been pushing 1.9 million people – 85 percent of Gaza’s population – progressively south, first below Wadi Gaza and now, as it targets Khan Younis, to Rafah.

Having cut food, water, electricity and fuel supplies to Gaza, allowing in only a trickle of aid, 93 percent of Palestinians in Gaza now face starvation and malnutrition, while “soaring rates” of infectious diseases are flourishing in the unsanitary conditions of overcrowded, repurposed shelters.

Rafah, on the border with Egypt, had a population of 280,000 in October. Now, that number has swelled to 850,000.

There is nowhere left to go in Gaza. And while Egypt has been clear it will not allow Palestinians to be removed to its side of the border, it will be impossible for Cairo to resist the pressure if, and when, people start to die of hunger or disease.

Surrender or die?

Of course, Israel still needs to get to that point. The result in war is “never absolute,” war theorist Carl von Clausewitz long ago argued, and there is no other endeavor “so constantly and so generally in close connection with chance.”

Well-prepared and well-drilled Hamas fighters are uncowed and unrelenting, slowing the Israeli military’s advance and inflicting more casualties than the army is willing to admit.

Having told Hamas to surrender or die, Israel has only motivated Gaza’s resistance to fight to the finish.

As Mike Tyson – a less conventional philosopher of war – put it: It’s hard to beat somebody that doesn’t want to quit.

Moreover, Israel’s unhinged aggression is reverberating through the region.

Hizballah has kept Israel under military pressure from South Lebanon where fighting is sharpening, Yemen’s Houthis have disrupted global shipping, and in both Syria – which Israel has been freely bombing for years – and Iraq there have been several attacks against US forces.

US allies, such as Jordan and Egypt are under intense domestic pressure, and both have been vocal in condemning Israeli excesses and adamant in rejecting any suggestion that Palestinians be removed from their homeland.

Saudi Arabia has dropped any hint of normalization with Israel and even the countries of the Abraham Accords, notably the United Arab Emirates, have learnt that for all their attempts at currying favor in Washington, they do not and will not have the same purchase in America’s corridors of power as supporters of Israel.

American delusion

Growing regional instability will necessarily factor into Israel’s calculations.

It will factor even more into US calculations, where its attempt at a “coalition of the willing” to counter Yemen’s shipping blockade is foundering.

So far, and despite the many and grotesque Israeli war crimes, Washington has stood solidly by Israel, repeatedly vetoing resolutions calling for a ceasefire at the UN.

It early deployed war ships to the Mediterranean to deter actors like Hizballah from getting involved.

It has kept Israel’s munitions stores stocked. As late as 29 December, the Biden administration even circumvented Congress to send munitions to Israel, the second time it did so last month.

There is no suggestion Washington – despite calling for a lower intensity “stabilization phase” – is intending to seriously intervene any time soon, even though it is inconceivable that the US does not understand what Israel is doing.

In a country where the phrase “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is so controversial that Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib got censured by Congress for using it, while actual calls for genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from other members of Congress and presidential candidates go unremarked, that may not be surprising.

Indeed, Joe Biden seems to think of the whole thing as some sort of game, while his chief diplomat, Antony Blinken appears deluded about America’s role in the world.

Israel and the US are increasingly isolated globally, as countries around the world recoil not only from an unfolding genocide, but from Washington’s willing complicity and America’s complete disregard for the UN, its institutions and its rules.

This matters, even to Washington.

The impotence of the world body in the face of US intransigence is undermining any semblance of international order with potentially long-lasting consequences that reach far beyond Palestine.

A ticking clock

That South Africa should be the first country to invoke the Genocide Convention is hardly surprising.

After all, Israel, the US and the UK (which is also offering material support for Israel’s onslaught in Gaza) were among the last countries to stand by South Africa’s apartheid regime.

And while the deliberations of the International Court of Justice will take time, they have Israeli officials concerned already. Israel reached immediately for the anti-Semitism defense, as it does so often.

Unlike the International Criminal Court, which is tasked with investigating claims of war crimes but whose jurisdiction is not recognized by Israel, Israel is a signatory to the Genocide Convention.

Israel could of course ignore any injunction from the ICJ for Israel to cease fire. And the US could continue to protect it against any potential sanctions that might follow.

But international pressure is growing along with regional tensions, suggesting Israel is running out of time.

The resistance in Gaza, battered as it may be, is still standing.

And Washington is going to have to decide soon where it stands on ethnic cleansing.

Israel has been clear about its intentions. The clock is ticking.

Omar Karmi is associate editor of The Electronic Intifada and a former Jerusalem and Washington, DC, correspondent for The National newspaper.