Israel carrying out ‘genocide’ in Gaza with Western support, approval: Ex-UN rapporteur

By Melike Pala

Israel has been carrying out a “genocide” in Gaza with the support and approval of the West, according to a former UN special rapporteur on Palestine.

“This is a very unusual situation, which is accentuated by the fact that this is the first genocide that the liberal democracies of the West, have endorsed, and supported,” Richard Falk, a professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, told Anadolu, accusing them of “double standards.”

He said that Benjamin Netanyahu’s administration will face a” dilemma” in the near future about how to balance its relations with the UN and the US.

“Netanyahu is very unpopular in Israel itself. And so, there is a strong likelihood that his tactics will be to create a wider war in the region in order to take attention away from this failure of the policies toward the Palestinians,” Falk added.

He reminded that US President Joe Biden did not support the attack carried out by the Israeli army in the Deir al-Belah region in Gaza on April 1, which killed seven employees of the World Central Kitchen.

According to him, Biden, however, supported Israel’s military response to Iran. “And that is almost a signal to Israel, to widen the conflict, to take the pressure off this relationship between Israel and occupied Palestine. There is one other important element here.”

Falk added that Biden’s support for Israel causes discomfort, especially among Muslims in the US.

“Biden is walking a kind of tightrope now, between his election campaign in the US to have a second term as president in November, which has encountered a lot of resistance from people who are normally Democrats, including the Muslim American communities that are in crucial state and have indicated a dissatisfaction with the way in which the US has responded to this period of abuse of the Palestinians in Gaza,” he added.

Tensions between Iran and Israel escalated last weekend after Tehran launched a drone and missile attack in response to the April 1 strike on its consulate in Syria, which killed seven Iranian military officers, including two top-ranking commanders.

As a retaliation, Israel reportedly carried out a “limited strike” inside Iran early Friday morning, which according to Israeli media reports “was meant to send a signal rather than cause damage.”

Israel has not claimed responsibility for the attack, and there has been no official comment from the authorities.

*Writing by Gozde Bayar