There is no moral argument that justifies the sale of weapons to Israel - Israel has shown it will use these arms indiscriminately against Palestinians. Why does the west continue to supply them?

 by Mary Lawlor, the UN special rapporteur on human rights defenders

Israeli soldiers stand on a truck with Palestinian detainees in Gaza, in December 2023. Photograph: Moti Milrod/Reuters

Earlier this month, a doctor who had recently returned from Gaza provided shocking testimony about the scale of human suffering that Palestinians are enduring under an Israeli military onslaught that has entered its sixth month. There exist no moral arguments that can justify the continued sale of weapons to Israel by states that respect the principle of the universality of human rights.

During my work as the United Nations’ special rapporteur on human rights defenders, Palestinian human rights defenders have emphasized to me the importance of a ban being placed on such sales, given that Israel has demonstrated time and again that it will use such weapons indiscriminately against Palestinians.

Any claims of Israeli self-defense in reaction to Hamas’s illegal, immoral and appalling attacks on 7 October – which, according to the UN special representative of the secretary-general on sexual violence in conflict, likely included horrific acts of sexual violence – have long since been invalidated by the disproportionality of the response.

The concept of proportionality in conflict is included in article 51 of the first additional protocol to the Geneva conventions. What we now have, instead, are ideological arguments for continued weapons sales, which I can only conclude place the value of Israeli lives over and above the value of Palestinian ones. This is unconscionable... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/21/sale-weapons-israel-palestinian-human-rights

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