Watching the watchdogs: Media, law and Gaza genocide

The United States media, bar just a few exceptions, are refusing to engage seriously with one of the most important questions about Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza: Is Israel committing genocide against the Palestinians in the besieged enclave, and is the US complicit in this worst of all human crimes?

The American media’s avoidance of the growing allegations of genocide directed at Israel is  not surprising. After all, since the beginning of this latest war, mainstream US media have eagerly justified and excused Israel’s atrocities against Palestinians. For example, they usually refer to blatant acts of ethnic cleansing and forced displacement in Gaza as “evacuations”, and claim Israel is “defending itself” against “terror” even as it continues to terrorise millions of civilians living under its occupation with bombs and bullets along with apartheid laws and settler-colonial policies of oppression.

Like its refusal to acknowledge Israel’s other atrocities against Palestinians and violations of international law, the US media’s reluctance to report on and discuss the accusations of genocide has real consequences.

As Prism, a progressive news outlet based in the US, recently noted, “through journalistic sleight of hand – including the use of passive language, ever-shifting headlines, bothsidesism, and the myth of objectivity – reporters across the US are fuelling the genocide their newsrooms are refusing to acknowledge is taking place”.

Indeed, what constitutes genocide is clearly defined in the 1948 Genocide Convention, and this is exactly what we witness in Palestine today. As leading genocide scholar Raz Segal recently stated, it is clear Israel is carrying out in Gaza “a textbook case of genocide”.

The American media’s hesitance to utter the word genocide in relation to Israel’s assault in Gaza, coupled with their tendency to downplay or outright deny Israeli crimes against Palestinians, signals to Israel that it can continue its killing spree with impunity, and reassures the US administration that it won’t be held to account for its complicity.

Thankfully, mainstream print and audio-visual media are not the only venues for concerned parties to draw attention to the ongoing genocide in Gaza, hold accountable and pressure its perpetrators to stop, and encourage political negotiations. Activists are turning to courts and peaceful public protests to try and hold accountable Israel and complicit foreign governments.

While the top international courts tasked with considering such issues – the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice – move at a snail’s pace, human and constitutional rights organisations have taken their case on the Gaza genocide to courts in the US.

Like its refusal to acknowledge Israel’s other atrocities against Palestinians and violations of international law, the US media’s reluctance to report on and discuss the accusations of genocide has real consequences.

As Prism, a progressive news outlet based in the US, recently noted, “through journalistic sleight of hand – including the use of passive language, ever-shifting headlines, bothsidesism, and the myth of objectivity – reporters across the US are fuelling the genocide their newsrooms are refusing to acknowledge is taking place”.

Indeed, what constitutes genocide is clearly defined in the 1948 Genocide Convention, and this is exactly what we witness in Palestine today. As leading genocide scholar Raz Segal recently stated, it is clear Israel is carrying out in Gaza “a textbook case of genocide”.

The American media’s hesitance to utter the word genocide in relation to Israel’s assault in Gaza, coupled with their tendency to downplay or outright deny Israeli crimes against Palestinians, signals to Israel that it can continue its killing spree with impunity, and reassures the US administration that it won’t be held to account for its complicity.

Thankfully, mainstream print and audio-visual media are not the only venues for concerned parties to draw attention to the ongoing genocide in Gaza, hold accountable and pressure its perpetrators to stop, and encourage political negotiations. Activists are turning to courts and peaceful public protests to try and hold accountable Israel and complicit foreign governments.

While the top international courts tasked with considering such issues – the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice – move at a snail’s pace, human and constitutional rights organisations have taken their case on the Gaza genocide to courts in the US.

This battle to recognise Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza started in mid-October, when the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR),  a progressive non-profit legal advocacy organisation, published its legal analysis of US complicity in “Israel’s unfolding genocide” against Palestinians in Gaza. Then on November 3, alongside fellow legal non-profits, Palestine Legal and the National Lawyers Guild, the CCR took its case directly to Congress; it notified representatives that if they vote for an aid package to Israel they “could face criminal and civil liability for aiding and abetting genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity”.

The organisation then followed up on November 13 with a lawsuit involving half a dozen American and Palestinian plaintiffs, accusing President Joe Biden and his secretaries of state and defence of enabling Israel’s genocide. In the brief it submitted to the US District Court for the Northern District of California, the organisation argued that the Biden administration’s unconditional support for Israel constitutes “a breach of US responsibilities under customary international law, as codified in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide”.