Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: Genocides are never declared in advance," warned Adila Hassim of the South African legal team in her opening statements before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), convened in January 2024 to hear the charge against Israel for the Crime of Genocide; defined by the United Nations Convention as a crime committed with the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group, in whole or in part (United Nations 2024).But this is not necessarily true in the case of Palestine.The destruction of the Palestinian people is perhaps as close as the world can get to a genocide foretold.The signs that the Jewish state was moving towards genocide have been multiplying for years.The possibility has been inherent to the Zionist project, which from its inception in the late nineteenth century set as its goal the establishment of a Jewish-only state in the land of Palestine.But genocide could never be carried out without the backing, implicit or explicit, of the ruling groups from the Western heartland of transnational capitalism that under U.S. leadership have served as Israel's principal sponsors.Diplomatic protestations notwithstanding, what may have now made genocide acceptable to these ruling groups is the escalating crisis of global capitalism.The system faces a structural crisis of overaccumulation and chronic stagnation.But the ruling
Author: William I. Robinson
Institution: University of California, Santa Barbara
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4394876137