Academic: Israel’s genocidal violence in Gaza created new threshold of criminality

An American professor of international law and former UN special rapporteur says Israel’s ongoing brutal aggression against the besieged Gaza Strip amounts to “genocidal violence” that ushered in a “new threshold of criminality” by the occupying regime.

Richard Falk made the remarks in an exclusive interview with Press TV on Sunday, the 16th day of Israel’s barbaric onslaught on the Palestinians, which has so far killed more than 4,650 Gazans and left a lot more injured.

“The genocidal violence created a new threshold of criminality in the treatment by Israel of the Palestinian people,” Falk said, stressing that the Western countries were complicit in the genocide against the Palestinian population in Gaza.

The political analyst pointed to the “hypocrisy” of Western governments in terming themselves the frontrunners and flag bearers of human rights when it comes to the issue of Palestine, saying they use the designation as an “instrument” for violating human rights.

“Israel is seeking not only land but dispossession and marginalization of the Palestinian people,” Falk told Press TV, underlining that the Israeli measure was part of a colonialization process.

“To establish a colonial reality in the 21st century goes against the flow of history and everywhere else,” he said.

“To this end, force has to be used to suppress the national aspirations of the indigenous and that’s what we are witnessing in the present time.”

Touching upon the prospect of the ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, Falk said, “It would be a kind of massacre and great deal of bloodshed presumably on both sides… and would be viewed as a further escalation.”

Asked about the fate of the residents of Gaza in case of a ground offensive and the continuation of its siege, the American professor said, “They (Gazans) are confronting a catastrophic experience if the siege is allowed to continue and they cannot survive without electricity, food and fuel indefinitely.”

Falk described the current situation in Gaza as “the worst spectacle of international criminality since the end of World War II.”

Falk also said a ground invasion would result in a “serious global recession” that would be highlighted by the disruption of oil supplies and the increase in the prices of oil. A ground offensive, the former UN special rapporteur said, would “generate economic crisis of great proportions,” which would affect more vulnerable and poor societies that are already stressed by the spillover from the Ukraine war.

Israel’s incessant bombardment of Gaza was touched off on October 7 after the surprise Operation al-Aqsa Storm by the resistance movement Hamas that came in response to intensified Israeli violations against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

According to the Health Ministry in Gaza, more than 14,000 have also been wounded so far.

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