Thread by @PeruginiNic

In Journal of @PalStudies, @nevegordon and I analyse the emergence and circulation of "medical lawfare" —Israel's discourse of legitimization of its attacks on lifesaving and sustaining infrastructures, from 2007 until the ongoing genocide in Gaza tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

We argue that the multiple rounds of military attacks carried out by Israel since the implementation of the siege on Gaza in 2007 should be conceived of as an intensification of the existing pattern of settler-colonial dispossession and elimination.

We show how Israel mobilizes the laws of armed conflict dealing with human shields and “hospital shields” to legitimize the destruction of Gaza’s lifesaving and sustaining infrastructures. We also analyse Israel's social media propaganda to justify the destruction of healthcare

We show how the Israeli discourse of medical lawfare in Gaza and the civilisational divide it creates to justify settler colonial violence, has migrated from the military's social media to international mainstream media. The popularization of medical lawfare.

We show how medical lawfare has dovetailed with fabrication in Israel's aggression on Gaza, in particular in the attacks against Shifa Hospital. We argue that this has served the function of producing the total collapse of healthcare infrastructures in besieged Gaza.

We conclude that Israel deploys medical lawfare to justify its claim to a right to kill and maim Palestinians, and to destroy the very lifesaving and sustaining infrastructures that enable them to exist as a collective. ML is a tool of settler-colonial dispossession and erasure.