On 17 September, Jeremy Corbyn MP sent a letter to foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, calling out the government’s silence and inaction on Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people.
He focused on the fact that the United Nations (UN) published a report on 16 September recognising Israel’s actions as genocidal:
I am writing to you to demand an immediate statement on the recent UN report, which confirms that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza.
The Genocide Convention
Corbyn went on:
The new report, published by the UN commission of Inquiry, says there are reasonable grounds to conclude that four of five genocidal acts defined under international law have been carried out. “It is clear”, the report states, “that there is an intent to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza through acts that meet the criteria set forth in the Genocide Convention”.
The word ‘genocide’ was coined by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jewish law professor who lost 49 family members in the Holocaust. Lemkin himself fled the Nazis and settled in the US, where he took a position at Duke University. Later, he worked on the preparation of the Nuremberg Trials. There, he successfully saw the inclusion of the word genocide in the indictment of Nazi leaders.
However, genocide wasn’t yet a crime with an international legal definition. As such, Lemkin then campaigned for the recognition of genocide to be recognised as a crime internationally. The fruit of his labour was The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, aka the Genocide Convention. It came into force on 12 January 1951.
It’s under the Convention’s definition that the UN recognised Israel’s current genocide of the Palestinian people. Corbyn, in his letter, pressed the implications of the UN’s findings for the UK:
The UN report has significant implications for British ministers and officials. You will be aware of Britain’s legal obligations to prevent genocide. Article I of the Genocide Convention makes it very clear: “the Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and punish.”
Time and time again, we have reminded the government of its obligations to prevent genocide. Time and time again, our calls have mat with evasion, obfuscation and denial. Last week, your predecessor stated that the government “has not concluded that Israel is acting with [genocidal] intent”. This came after months of evasion and obfuscation regarding the government’s assessment of genocide. To this day, we still do not know what legal advice the government has received, or whether that advice has been made public.
‘Prevent and punish’
The Genocide Convention is not merely a definition of the term. Its signatories – of which the UK is one – also undertook a duty to “prevent and punish” genocide. Over 800 lawyers, academics and former judges have already warned the UK government that its “actions to date have failed to meet those standards”.
As such, Mr Corbyn asked three key questions of the foreign secretary:
Please can you come to the House so that we can receive answers to the following questions:
- Does the government accept the findings of the UN report?
- Why is the government continuing to provide military support to a country that is committing genocide?
- What is the government doing to fulfil its obligations to prevent genocide?
We have run out of words to articulate the scale of suffering that is being inflicted upon the people of Gaza – and we are running out of time to save the Palestinian people from total, collective erasure.
Complicity in Genocide is punishable under the Convention, just as is genocide itself. Not only is the UK currently failing in its duty to prevent genocide, it is actively aiding Israel. Britain has trained, and continues to train, Israeli Defence Force soldiers in its defence colleges. UK firms have exported munitions and thousands of other military items to Israel, despite a ban which began in September.
Corbyn is right to ask his questions of his former party. Not only that, it is his moral duty – just as it is our duty to press the cowards of Labour to end their complicity in Israel’s genocide. It is a mark of how truly morally bankrupt Starmer’s party has become that they have, as yet, completely failed to respond to the UN’s report – let alone the multitude of glaring signs of genocide that preceded it.
Featured image via YouTube screenshot/LBC
