By Sulaiman Lebbe Rifai

Nothing puts the human conscience on trial as does the Genocide in Gaza. Nothing illustrates the political hypocrisy of some Western leaders as does the war in Gaza. Nothing exemplifies the double standard of Western political leaders as their complicity in the Gazan war. Moreover, this war has put the International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court in a somewhat difficult and precarious position. It has also put the UNHR in a difficult situation and it is alarmed with the seriousness of atrocities in Gaza. These courts and international organizations are instituted to establish justice and fairness in all international conflicts. They cannot discriminate between countries in their application of justice. They cannot apply one set of laws to the State of Zionist Israel and another set of laws to the people of Palestine. They must do unconditional justice to all parties equally without any prejudice, racial religious, or political discrimination. They must do this to protect the integrity and reputation of these international institutions and yet, the Zionist State of Israel and its supporters are standing between these institutions and their official responsibilities to apply laws equally to all. Take, for instance, the South African lawsuit against the state of Israel for its genocide in the Gaza Strip. Many countries in the Global South welcomed and supported South Africa’s initiative to file a case against Israel and yet, many Western countries blindly dismissed the legal complaint of South Africa in support of Israel as if there was no genocide committed in the Gaza by the State of Israel. To understand the gravity of the political discrimination of some Western leaders on the problem of the Gaza Genocide, we should revisit the contents of the UN’s convention on the prevention of the Crime of Genocide.

Unpublished paper, 2024.

By Solomon, Daniel; Donine, Tallan

From the document: "In 2018, anti-Muslim extremists in Sri Lanka organized a series of attacks against Muslim civilians throughout the country [...]. Extremist leaders used a misleading viral video to stoke fears that the country's Muslim minority was organizing a campaign to sterilize the majority Sinhalese population en masse. The video circulated widely on Facebook, and participants in the violence also set up private WhatsApp groups to coordinate the violence. This is just one example of a disturbing pattern that is increasingly under the spotlight: social media seeming to fuel violence, including large-scale and deliberate attacks on civilians based on their identity. [...] The goal of this paper is to stimulate and frame discussion during the Sudikoff Interdisciplinary Seminar on Genocide Prevention about the relationship between social media technologies and the risk and prevention of mass atrocities. Based on a review of relevant research, policy documents, and public statements by social media companies, the paper surveys current knowledge and identifies important gaps in understanding about (1) how social media platforms have contributed to the risk and occurrence of mass atrocities in the past and how they might do so in the future;1 and (2) strategies to help prevent social media from fueling mass atrocities."

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 2023. 26p.

By Russell D. Howard, Marc D. Elliott, and Jonathan R. Prohov

In this monograph, the authors offer compelling research that reminds government and military officials of the moral, legal, and ethical dimensions of protecting cultural antiquities from looting and illegal trafficking. Internationally, states generally agree on the importance of protecting antiquities, art, and cultural property not only for their historical and artistic importance, but also because such property holds economic, political, and social value for nations and their peoples. Protection is in the common interest because items or sites are linked to the common heritage of mankind. The authors make the point that a principle of international law asserts that cultural or natural elements of humanity’s common heritage should be protected from exploitation and held in trust for future generations. The conflicts in Afghanistan, and especially in Iraq and Syria, coupled with the rise of the Islamic State (IS), have brought renewed attention to the plight of cultural heritage in the Middle East and throughout the world.

MacDill Air Force Base, Florida: Joint Special Operations University Press, 2016. 112p.