The international human rights organization Amnesty International on December 5 issued a report concluding that the government of Israel has been violating the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

The report is titled "You Feel Like You Are Subhuman’: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza". Here is a short video Amnesty produced summarizing why the report's conclusion is inescapable:

I was not yet aware of Amnesty's report when the Libertarian Institute the same day published my article "The World Order Is On Trial at the International Criminal Court", in which I summarized the significance of the International Criminal Court (ICC) issuing arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

I also discussed the government of South Africa's case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) accusing Israel of violating the Genocide Convention.

The emphasis of my analysis was the role of the US government in facilitating Israel's genocide. As I wrote,

The question faced by both the ICJ and ICC is whether they will choose to fulfill their ostensible mandates or to demonstrate their own irrelevancy by failing to hold accountable the leaders of a country perpetrating genocide openly with the whole world looking on—a situation exists because of the complicity of the world’s superpower, the United States government.

That point is bolstered by Amnesty International's observation that,

States that continue to transfer arms to Israel at this time must know they are violating their obligation to prevent genocide and are at risk of becoming complicit in genocide. All states with influence over Israel, particularly key arms suppliers like the USA and Germany, but also other EU member states, the UK and others, must act now to bring Israel’s atrocities against Palestinians in Gaza to an immediate end.

The report details the indiscriminate nature of Israel's bombing, the systematic destruction of Gaza's civilian infrastructure including its health care system, the siege imposed on Gaza with the explicitly stated aim of denying the civilian population access to goods and services necessary for their survival, and other aspects of Israel's assault that demonstrate an intent to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza as a people.

As Amnesty states,

Viewed in isolation, some of the acts investigated by Amnesty International constitute serious violations of international humanitarian law or international human rights law. But in looking at the broader picture of Israel’s military campaign and the cumulative impact of its policies and acts, genocidal intent is the only reasonable conclusion.

This is a very positive development, my only criticism being that it took far too long for a major human rights organization to stop describing the genocide as "alleged" or "potential" or "plausible". No more caveats, just telling it like it is based on plain observation of the facts on the ground.

I first publicly stated my own conclusion that Israel's actions amounted to the crime of genocide on November 16, 2023 -- more than a year ago.

As I concluded in my recent article for The Libertarian Institute:

The ICC essentially had no choice but to issue the arrest warrants, the only alternative being to expose incontrovertibly to the whole world what a sham it is—nothing more than a weapon hypocritically used by Western powers against two-bit thugs while the US government goes on violating international law with impunity.

The ICJ will similarly have no choice but to rule, probably some years from now, that Israel has been guilty of perpetrating the crime of genocide in Gaza.

The credibility of the existing world order is at stake. We are supposed to believe that institutions like the United Nations, its legal organ the ICJ, and the separately established ICC exist to uphold international law, to maintain world peace, and to hold aggressors accountable for their crimes.

The whole world is watching now as that ostensible raison d’être of the existing world order is being put to the test. Will these governmental institutions live up to their promise or prove their own obsolescence? That is the dilemma that the ICC was faced with in making its decision to issue the arrest warrants.

The significance of both the ICJ’s deliberations in the genocide case and the ICC’s warrants for Israeli leaders is that the existing world order characterized by US predominance is itself now on trial.

Amnesty's report explicitly concluding that Israel is committing genocide further illustrates my point about how it is the US-dominated world order itself that is now on trial.

That article for The Libertarian Institute is a condensed summary version of a much more detailed essay published yesterday, "The Significance of the ICC’s Arrest Warrant for Netanyahu", which also has an audio version. Read this version for the fuller story.