Michael Sfard Israeli Human Rights Lawyer calls out 'collective punishment' war crimes on Peston

This Israeli lawyer could teach tin-eared Labour leader and alleged career human rights lawyer Sir Kier Starmer to recognise a war crime. Human Rights Lawyer Michael Sfard: “Israelis Must Maintain Their Humanity Even When Their Blood Boils”

Michael Sfard
Israeli human rights lawyer and an expert on international human rights and international laws of war.

"The Wall and the Gate: Israel, Palestine, and the Legal Battle for Human Rights"
"Israelis Must Maintain Their Humanity Even When Their Blood Boils"

Michael Sfard, an Israeli human rights lawyer and expert on international human rights, calls for Israel to act within international law in response to Hamas’s attack on civilians Saturday. “My government is waging an attack that seems to be using war crimes to retaliate on war crimes,” says Sfard. “They want revenge, as if a revenge would bring back the dear ones that are gone.” Sfard says Israel should end its bombing and lift the blockade on Gaza because civilians do not deserve punishment for militant attacks. “Modern international law prohibits, with no exception, collective punishment.”
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: To talk more about the Israeli assault on Gaza, the siege and Hamas’s shocking attack on Israel, we’re joined by longtime Israeli human rights lawyer Michael Sfard. He’s an expert on international human rights and international laws of war. He represents Palestinian and Israeli activists and human rights organizations. He’s also the author of the book The Wall and the Gate: Israel, Palestine, and the Legal Battle for Human Rights. His new op-ed on Haaretz is titled “Israelis Must Maintain Their Humanity Even When Their Blood Boils.” Michael Sfard joins us in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Thank you so much for joining us, Michael, and welcome to Democracy Now! If you could talk about your piece that you wrote for Haaretz, “Israelis Must Maintain Their Humanity Even When Their Blood Boils”?

MICHAEL SFARD: Well, good morning to you, and thank you very much for having me.

These are terrible, terrible days, actually quite a nightmare that we’re living through, and my heart goes out to the previous interviewees from Gaza.

We have experienced a shock. I have to mediate to you the sentiment in the Israeli public, in the Israeli society. The attack on Saturday was a savage attack, targeting civilians, going from one house to another in civilian neighborhoods and killing, murdering women, children and elderly and innocent people, and also, in the scene of the party, killing hundreds of people. And the blood boils. And the blood boils. It’s not just that the blood boils, but also one feels a puncture in the heart, a hole in the stomach.

And now the question is: What do you do with that, with this, confronting this inhuman attack? Do you fill the punctured heart and the hole in your belly with cement, with concrete, or do you fill it with the warmth of compassion? And I’m afraid to say that many Israelis are extremely filled with rage and desire for revenge. And I, as a human rights lawyer — and in the last three decades I have been working tirelessly, dedicating my professional career to protect the rights of everyone, and especially Palestinian communities who are under occupation, under a regime of apartheid and under the very cruel blockade in Gaza — the only way that I know is to put a cry to adhere to the norms of international law. And I have to say I want to shout, but I understand that at this time there is very little space for a voice like that.

And when I hear the leaders of the state of Israel and the generals, and their rhetoric suggests that things that in the past they denied that the Israeli army is doing in the cycle of attacks on Gaza is now almost probably an official policy — targeting en masse inhabited areas, starving people as a method of warfare. I mean, this is — if what Hamas has done was a blatant war crime — and, I mean, the legal term is “war crime,” but, in fact, it’s a crime against humanity, not in the legal sense, but in the moral sense. It was an attack on everything that is human. To take hostage women with their children, elderly men and women on wheelchairs, this is just incomprehensible. But now my government is waging an attack that seems to be using war crimes to retaliate on war crimes. And this is definitely not what should be done now.

https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/12/israel_international_law