British charity War on Want says Israel is committing genocide in Gaza
British charity War on Want says it has concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and called on the UK government to end its complicity "in the mass ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people".
The charity's statement comes as UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy faces mounting criticism for comments last week in which he said the use of the word genocide to describe the Gaza war undermined the seriousness of the terminology.
War on Want said on Tuesday that the UK has a legal duty to prevent and punish genocide, but has instead continued to supply arms and military technology to Israel.
"We must stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people to amplify and expose the crimes that are being committed against them by Israel," the organisation said.
"All people of conscience must hold governments to account for their duties to protect civilians and to prevent acts that amount to war crimes - including the crime of genocide."
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War on Want said its findings fall in line with Palestinian human rights organisations, hundreds of genocide and international law scholars, the South African legal team that has brought a legal challenge against Israel to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and more than 60 countries supporting the case.
In January, the ICJ found that there was sufficient evidence that Israel was plausibly committing genocide.
"The evidence that Israel is committing genocide has grown ever more compelling since then," the charity said.
It also noted that the UK has officially recognised that genocide was committed in Srebrenica during the Bosnian war in 1995, when more than 8,000 Bosniak Muslims were killed, and when the Islamic State group killed over 5,000 Yazidis in Iraq between 2014-2017.
Last week, Lammy suggested that terms such as genocide should only be used when "millions" of people are killed "and the way that they are used now undermines the seriousness of that term".
"Despite mounting evidence of Israel’s war crimes, the ICJ’s ruling of plausible genocide, and countless UN statements, the UK government continues to supply Israel with arms and military technology, which Israel uses to continue committing genocidal acts," War on Want said.
"The UK must stop aiding Israel and uphold its duty to prevent genocide and other violations of international law committed by Israel against the Palestinian people. In this ongoing genocide, there is no time to waste."
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