How the West deliberately aids starvation in Gaza
As the bombs kept falling on Gaza this week, I thought of Essen. An industrial city situated in the industrial heart of Germany’s Ruhr area, Essen is less than picturesque.
I was thinking specifically of a neighbourhood I visited on a bleak winter’s day in 1998 called Margarethenhöhe, after the widow of industrialist Gustav Krupp and ironically called the “Krupp ghetto’. This neighbourhood houses the employees of the Krupp company, the company that became notorious for producing weapons for the Nazi regime.
The International Court of Justice’s (ICJ’s) provisional measures decision has already been violated in multiple ways. Within hours of the decision, Israel continued to kill hundreds of civilians in Gaza. The ruling was violated further when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated on the day after the hearings: “No-one will stop us, not The Hague, not the axis of evil and not anyone else.”
And Israel has done all it can to prevent humanitarian aid from reaching destitute civilians in Gaza. Most starkly, it called on countries to stop funding the UNRWA, the UN agency providing food to Gazans, after accusing 12 UNRWA workers of having ties to Hamas. As a result, 14 countries have defunded UNRWA over the past 10 days.
Given the looming starvation of civilians in Gaza, this collective defunding alone could lead to the death of thousands. It can be argued that by defunding UNRWA, countries are aiding and abetting the genocide of civilians.
According to the Geneva Conventions, genocide is not solely killing members of a group but also causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, as well as deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part. Worsening hunger and starvation can constitute a form of genocide.
The ICJ’s ruling that there was plausibility that Israel was committing acts that constitute genocide and other prohibited acts under the Geneva Conventions binds not only Israel but has important consequences for third states.
The prohibition against genocide is a norm of jus cogens, which means all states have a responsibility to bring an end to the breach of such a norm. States further have an obligation not to render aid or assistance to maintain a situation that breaches international law.
Israel has long been militarily supported by Western countries, primarily the US and UK. Since World War 2, the US has given Israel military aid worth more than $124bn. But the fact that third parties are now withholding aid can also be considered a form of aiding and abetting the killing of civilians.
It is increasingly recognised that man-made famine can constitute a war crime. The great Ukrainian famine, also known as the Holodomor, is one of the best examples of a man-made famine that caused the deaths of millions of Ukranians in 1932 and 1933. During the height of the Holodomor, in June 1933, 28,000 Ukrainians were starving each day.
The history of Essen and the history of the Krupp dynasty are intertwined. Friedrich Krupp founded the first cast steel factory in 1811. The Krupps became the chief weapon producers during the world wars. After World War 2, the then head of the Krupp company, Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, was investigated for the use of slave labour in his factories.
The case against the Krupp corporation formed part of the so-called “industrialist cases” heard by the Nuremberg Tribunal, which found that actors must have known that their actions contributed to the commission of war crimes or crimes against humanity. Alfried Krupp and 11 of his accomplices were eventually convicted, and Krupp was sentenced to 12 years in prison.
There can be little doubt that the leaders of the 14 countries that have stopped funding UNRWA know their actions are leading directly to the intensification of starvation in Gaza. Genocide is aided not only by the active provision of weapons but also by what is being withheld.