As 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza endure and resist forced starvation in the midst of Israel’s ongoing genocide, a ship carrying humanitarian aid was reportedly bombed by military drones while in international waters off Malta. Thankfully everyone on board has been confirmed safe. Logically, all fingers point to Israel, which is today among the world’s most dangerous rogue states. The Palestinian-led BDS movement:
- Calls for escalating BDS pressure to isolate apartheid Israel, imposing targeted sanctions on it, starting with a comprehensive military embargo, as legally required under the Genocide Convention, the Apartheid Convention, the Arms Trade Treaty, among other pillars of international law.
- Denounces complicit governments in the Mediterranean region, including Cyprus, Italy, France, Morocco, Portugal, Spain, among others, that have enabled Israel’s genocide by, among others, allowing ships, particularly Maersk’s #GenocideFleet, carrying military materiel to use their ports, services and flags on their way to Israeli destinations. These governments have also used Israeli drones to militarize the Mediterranean, while refusing and delaying rescue operations for migrants, tens of thousands of whom have already been killed at sea.
Israel’s regime of settler-colonialism, military occupation, apartheid and genocide is not just massacring, starving, maiming and forcibly displacing millions of Palestinians in the illegally occupied Gaza Strip; destroying refugee camps in the West Bank; and sowing a trail of mass destruction in Lebanon and Syria. Its ongoing drone strikes across the Arab world are now reaching European shores. Armed, funded, and shielded from accountability mainly by the US and Europe, Israel is simultaneously destroying international law’s foundations, bringing about a might-makes-right era unseen in decades. This poses a serious threat to humanity at large.
Israel’s criminal attack off the European Union’s coast highlights two key points:
- Unless stopped, Israel will go further than ever to starve Palestinians in Gaza: killing UN and other humanitarian workers, burning food stocks, cutting off all food and water, blocking aid, food, medical supplies, and violently attacking small boats carrying symbolic humanitarian aid. Israel’s “total impunity” is truly unprecedented.
- The colonial West that has armed, funded, and otherwise enabled Israel's genocide, the first livestreamed genocide in history, is fully responsible for emboldening Israel’s criminal behavior in international waters. Because it got away with murder, literally, after massacring humanitarian aid activists aboard the Mavi Marmara in 2010 to prevent their delivery of food and medicine to besieged Gaza, Israel can now bomb a similar humanitarian mission off the European coast, with impunity.
As called for by dozens of UN human rights experts, in order to comply with their legal obligations triggered by the International Court of Justice’s ruling on Israel’s illegal occupation and apartheid, all States must “impose a full arms embargo on Israel, halting all arms agreements, imports, exports and transfers, including of dual-use items,” as well as “cancel or suspend economic relationships, trade agreements and academic relations with Israel that may contribute to its unlawful presence and apartheid regime in the occupied Palestinian territory.”