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Every news agency operates within the frame of an (editorial) policy or policies. These policies are often a reflection of their readers' opinions and are mostly political.
There is no news agency or news outlet that is really objective or neutral. Even we cannot say that we're neutral but objective, meaning that we appear to be the only ones who follow developments based on historical chronology.
When something happens, we do not only look at what has happened or why it has happened. We look at whether the happening is an effect as a result of. Because nothing in the world comes out of the blue or happens all of a sudden. That is also the issue about the attack by Hamas on October 7, 2023.
When we became aware of the attack, the question arose as to what is the reason or motive was for carrying out the attack. But that is not what those who support the Israelis are asking, nor do most of the Western news outlets or news agencies.
Based on what we have collected on news reports about this year's Gaza war, we found the following ways of reporting: political, politicized, religionized, and from a human perspective. The latter is found in the Qatari broadcast Al Jazeera English and in the British Channel 4. A more moderate reporting was found in the British The Guardian.
But the situation as of November 8, 2023, later reveals that it is no longer about a war but worse. Only one news source is reporting in the context of the worsening that we found having the following ingredients:
- Telling civilians that they have to "evacuate" themselves while bombing the vicinity where the civilians are holding up, which makes "evacuation" life risking.
- Telling doctors that they have to "evacuate" the hospital while bombing the vicinity of the hospital, preventing everyone from leaving.
- Cutting off the electricity of the hospitals and exposing ICU patients and babies in incubators to the risk of dying.
- Attacking ambulances transporting wounded from the north to the south.
- Shooting at civilians who try to leave the area, the war belligerent want to have been cleared.
- Attacking civilians, even in their cars who just do what they are told: go south.
- Forcing civilians to go south while waging war in the south.
- Cutting the electricity and bombing water resources located in the vicinity where civilians are.
- Bombing houses when the belligerent know the target person is with his family, like in Rafah and in Khan Younis.
- Attacking locations of the UNWRA and other UN facilities in Gaza, including the killing of officials.
- Attacking Red Crescent and/or Red Cross humanitarian aid convoys.
- Assassinating Palestinian journalists in Gaza by bombing the location or position where they are.
summary based on collected video evidence.
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Now, what does the summary tell us?
There is involuntary or coerced movement of Gaza Palestinians away from their homes in the north as a result of the retaliatory war of revenge by the war belligerent. This is forced eviction in times of war
There is a systematic forced removal of all Gaza Palestinians from the north, with the intent of making the north empty from inhabitation. This is ethnic cleansing in time of war.
There is simply the intentional destruction of a people in whole or in part, in other words: genocide.
Now, what is genocide in customary international law?
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Definition
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
Article II
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such:
- Killing members of the group;
- Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
- Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
- Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
- Forcibly transferring children of one group to another group.
Elements of the crime
The Genocide Convention establishes in Article I that the crime of genocide may take place in the context of an armed conflict, international or non-international, but also in the context of a peaceful situation. The latter is less common but still possible. The same article establishes the obligation of the contracting parties to prevent and punish the crime of genocide.
The popular understanding of what constitutes genocide tends to be broader than the content of the norm under international law. Article II of the Genocide Convention contains a narrow definition of the crime of genocide, which includes two main elements:
- A mental element: the "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such"; and
- A physical element, which includes the following five acts, enumerated exhaustively:
- Killing members of the group
- Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
- Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
- Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
- Forcibly transferring children of one group to another group
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