Israel's cheerleaders are flooding the zone with shit. This is why

As Israel plots a concentration camp in full view of the world, Israel's cheerleaders are playing a transparent game of deflection

Just why are Israel’s cheerleaders escalating their campaign to “flood the zone with shit”? This quote was first uttered by Steve Bannon, formerly Donald Trump’s chief aid, as a suggested strategy for Republicans deal with a media considered to be hostile.

Israel’s cheerleaders don’t even have to face a hostile media. The Western media has, overwhelmingly justified, supported, whitewashed and ignored Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people. But Israel’s crimes are so grotesque and shameless - with millions able to witness them, just by having an internet connection.

The polling across the West has shown rising hostility to Israel, and a broad understanding that the state is committing grave war crimes, and mass opposition to continued arms sales.

That’s why we have incessant national uproars about chants at music festivals, or hate campaigns against public figures opposed to the genocide. All of this is to deflect from the crimes being perpetrated by Israel - facilitated by the West: and from scrutiny, accountability and indeed justice for these crimes.

Israel, right now, is openly planning to build a concentration camp in front of the whole world.

As Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported:

Defense Minister Israel Katz said Monday that he has instructed the IDF to prepare a plan to establish a "humanitarian city" on the ruins of Rafah, which would eventually house the entire population of the Gaza Strip.

According to Katz, the plan involves moving 600,000 Palestinians, primarily from the al-Muwasi area, into the new zone after security screening. Once inside, residents would not be allowed to leave, the defense minister said.

Katz added that, if conditions permit, construction of the "city" would begin during the 60-day Israel-Hamas cease-fire currently under negotiation.

Forcibly concentrating a civilian population into a tiny confined camp where they are forbidden from leaving. That is literally a concentration camp. There is no other term available to describe this.

Indeed, as a subsequent Haaretz article put it:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu supports the plan presented Monday by Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, to concentrate the entire population of the Gaza Strip in a "humanitarian city" to be established on the ruins of Rafah, a source familiar with the matter told Haaretz.

As the article added:

The Israeli official who spoke with Haaretz said that if the elimination of Hamas in the north succeeds, "the plan is for residents to be concentrated in the south of Gaza, and if they wish, they will be able to emigrate."

This answers the “this would all be over if Hamas surrenders!” crowd. Israel plans to drive the entire surviving population of Gaza - which was already one of the most crowded territories on earth - into a concentration camp, and then deport them, when Hamas is judged to be defeated.

As Michael Sfard, an Israeli human rights lawyer told the Guardian:

“(Katz) laid out an operational plan for a crime against humanity. It is nothing less than that It is all about population transfer to the southern tip of the Gaza Strip in preparation for deportation outside the strip.

“While the government still calls the deportation ‘voluntary’, people in Gaza are under so many coercive measures that no departure from the strip can be seen in legal terms as consensual.

“When you drive someone out of their homeland that would be a war crime, in the context of a war. If it’s done on a massive scale like he plans, it becomes a crime against humanity.'“

Indeed, the lawyer appointed by Israel to represent it against accusations of genocide at the International Court of Justice has declared this plan is a “war crime” and a “crime against humanity.” That’s Eyal Benvenisti, who also submitted a document in 2020 to argue against the International Criminal Courts jurisdiction over Israel. In a rational world, this should be splashed all over the news, rather than chants about Israel’s genocidal army at music festivals.

If Israel’s own lawyer, chosen by Israel to defend it from criminal charges as to its military conduct, is condemning his country for war crimes and crimes against humanity, there really is nowhere left to hide either for the Israeli state, but also for Western governments who are facilitating the great crime of our age.

Eyal Benvenisti has penned his article alongside the Israeli philosopher Chaim Gans, entitled: ‘Our Duty to Explain Israel’s Operation to “Concentrate and Move Population” in Gaza is a Manifest War Crime’.

As they note:

This objective is not about temporary concentration and evacuation to minimize harm to non-combatants during the execution of the purported goal of “defeating Hamas,” but rather concentration and evacuation as an objective in and of itself. It is a measure of control that may even create conditions for “voluntary” migration.

Note here how ‘voluntary’ is correctly in square quotes. If you wipe a land from the face of the earth, destroy its homes, schools, hospitals, and all the other basic pillars of modern civilisation, if you slaughter a significant proportion of its population, as well as repeatedly displacing, dispossessing, maiming, torturing, traumatising, kidnapping, bereaving the survivors, if you deprive them of the essentials of life - like food, water, energy, shelter, medicines: if in short you impose an apocalyptic nightmare on them in their homeland, discussing ‘voluntary migration’ in these circumstances is clearly a barefaced lie.

The authors quote Moshe “Bogy” Ya’alon, former chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), stating: “Evacuating the entire population? Call it ethnic cleansing, call it transfer, call it deportation, it’s a war crime.” adding, “They’re sending the soldiers to commit war crimes.”

They note that this isn’t an evacuation of citizens from a war zone, which international law recognises the need or indeed or obligation for in certain circumstances, as long as requirements are met, such as “the evacuation must be carried out in order to protect the evacuated population, while fulfilling a pressing military necessity”, ensuring the evacuation is temporary so they can return to their homes, that the areas they’re evacuated to are protected and they can receive basic humanitarian assistance, and the areas they’re evacuated to are through defined humanitarian corridors, whilst civilians are allowed “sufficient time” to reach those areas.

They note that what Israel is planning contradicts all of this, and thus “constitutes deportation and/or forcible transfer”, making the operation, they say, “a war crime”.

They say if this wasn’t clear from the order, it was clearly explained by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who told the Knesset - that is Israel’s parliament - in May:

We are demolishing more and more [of their] homes, they have nowhere to return to. The only obvious result will be the desire of the Gazans to emigrate outside the Strip. Our main problem is in the receiving countries.

This quote alone should have been splashed all over the front pages of newspapers, as well as leading news bulletins. Here is an unambiguous confession of war crimes from Israel’s prime minister - one of countless such criminal statements by Israeli leaders and officials - which receives infinitely less coverage than a chant at a music festival.

They add, based on the legal rulings following the wars in Yugoslavia that since the “order constitutes ‘part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population’, it fits the definition of a ‘crime against humanity’ as stipulated by the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court.”

They add another important detail:

Those who carry out this order will be forced to bear criminal liability for its execution. Indeed, while our focus here is on Israel’s domestic criminal law, it bears noting that the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court as well as the criminal codes of many countries specifically note that the defense of superior orders is not available for orders to commit crimes against humanity because such orders are manifestly unlawful.

This of course refers to what was established at Nuremberg - that “I was just following orders” is no legal defence, and that Israeli soldiers who act on this order are themselves criminally liable. This is of course applies to the full range of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Israel.

They conclude:

there is no moral or legal obligation to obey the order, but more importantly: there is a moral – and legal – obligation to disobey it. It is not the violation of the order, but rather compliance with it that will express a refusal to obey the law on the part of the IDF, starting with the chief of staff who endorses the order, all the way down to the soldiers who carry it out in Gaza.

Now obviously I’m not here to praise Eyal Benvenisti, who fought against attempts to hold Israel to account for its grievous crimes, both before and after 7th October. He is an esteemed legal academic, the Whewell Professor of International Law at the University of Cambridge, and thus he has no excuses.

The point is this intervention leaves Israel’s cheerleaders once again with nowhere to hide, and it also bolsters the case for the criminal complicity of Israel’s allies, such as the British government which for example continues to supply crucial components for the F-35 jets raining death and destruction on the people of Gaza.

Israel is committing the worst possible crimes in broad daylight. Its cheerleaders are flooding the zone with shit to deflect from these crimes - and to shut down scrutiny and justice. Don’t let them.