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Alonso Gurmendi Profile picture
Alonso Gurmendi
@Alonso_GD
Fellow in Human Rights @LSESociology | writes @opiniojuris | Editor @j_ufil | Streams @Twitch | Esp/Eng/Port | Views personal
14 subscribers
Jul 28 • 22 tweets • 4 min read
The problem with Elliot’s analysis is that frankly it is trapped by two methodological choices: narrow interpretation and excessive formalism. Why he makes these choices is for him to reveal, but I do think it is important for people to know they are choices 🧵 It is a fundamental principle of law that laws that protect rights should be read expansively and laws that restrict rights should be read narrowly. Rules regarding the protection of people from genocide therefore should be read expansively.
Jul 26 • 17 tweets • 3 min read
I’m pretty sure I’m one of the people who knows most in the world about a relatively obscure Brazilian diplomat and nobleman called Felippe Lopes Netto. I came across him researching for my PhD and I’ve been obsessed with his life ever since. 🇧🇷 😍 I was looking for non-Euro-American actors implementing the laws of war in the 19th Century. One of the key arguments I make in my dissertation is that 19th Century laws of war were really, literally, *laws* in plural, with different parts of the world adopting different readings
Jul 26 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
I’ll play
Here’s what Elliot is neglecting: we are not establishing the genocidal intent *of the war cabinet* but *of the Israeli state*. This is part of an ecosystem of genocidal beliefs in Israeli society, from Netanyahu to the IDF grunt singing may your village burn in Gaza 🧵 If this was “just” Israeli leadership making genocidal statements, what we’d have is a “risk” of genocide, demonstrated by the leadership’s “incitement”. But the idea that this neat division can exist in practice is absurd given what we know irl.
Jul 25 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
All this tells me frankly is that the hubris and sense of absolute impunity of the past 21 months is gone. In meme form:
Jul 23 • 20 tweets • 4 min read
This article makes two main claims

“If it doesn’t look like The Holocaust it can’t be genocide”

“If it were genocide, Israel would kill more people”

Both make little sense 🧵 First: No genocide looks like the Holocaust. Just like no genocide looks like the Rwandan genocide or the Herero genocide. There are common aspects and patterns. But genocide does not come with a franchising manual.
Jul 21 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
We’ve gone from “Hamas hides under hospitals” to “Hamas made us to build insufficient food hubs in the south far from people in the north and put kill zones in between then Hamas made us to shoot at those who survived the trip and torture those our AI said had a cousin in Hamas.. “Then Hamas forced us to displace those who remained so that we can put everyone in a ghetto while we try to deport them away from Gaza so that we can take control of and colonise this land. Don’t you see? It’s all Hamas’ fault!”
Jul 18 • 13 tweets • 4 min read
Some are pointing to Salo’s list in response to this post (cant RT cuz Im blocked). There is of course disagreement in both genocide studies and int’l law about this but there’s 3 things you should know about his list… Image 1) Many of the Genocide Scholars he cites like Yehuda Bauer and Benny Morris have ideological limitations that prevent them from concluding that Israel can commit genocide at all.
Jul 11 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
See, if you treat suicide bombing as “barbarism” - “what kind of culture does this?”, you’ll respond with an “exterminate all the brutes” kind of mindset. If you instead see it as a type of modern political violence, you can understand the politics and address root causes People like Eyal want to simply state “they are savages that only understand violence”. Mamdani is saying “wait a minute, these people aren’t just insane, there’s modern political concerns that we need to understand to explain why someone would transform themselves into a weapon”
Jul 9 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Guys it’s very important for you to understand: I’ve never in my life claimed to be normal. I’m weird af. I care about things you’ve never even heard of in your life. Don’t even get me started on Star Wars continuity errors or the llama on Troy “You will go to the Dagobah system, there you will find Yoda, the Jedi Master who instructed me”

NO NOT REALLY OBI WAN NOT F*CKING REALLY.
Jul 8 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
This article concludes that Israel’s plans to “concentrate” Palestinians in Gaza is a war crime & a crime against humanity. It also very relevant and arguably marks a turning point in how Israel’s actions in Gaza can be discussed.

Why is it important?

justsecurity.org/116459/israel-… Because it is authored by Prof. Eyal Benvenisti, who literally represented Israel before the ICJ Image
Jul 8 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
First, Israel ordered the starvation and displacement of 1000s of Palestinians. Then, it used this displacement as an excuse for disproportionately bombing whoever remained in whatever areas they deemed bombable. Eventually, this turned into official “death zones” 🧵 Invisible lines in the sand where anyone trapped in them (even people waving white flags and Israeli hostages) were seem as targets. These zones emptied large portions of Gaza, that were then systematically demolished to create “buffer zones” and prevent people from returning
Jun 24 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I think Ahmed misunderstands my point. Nothing in my tweet defends Iran’s atrocious human rights record or justifies/minimises 7/10. What it does is break the actual simplistic narrative of the Middle East, that he supports, that ontologically Israel is good and Iran is evil The more complex reality is that the brutalities Israel has subjected Palestinians to are always held at a different standard than the atrocities committed by Iran against its own population. Something @afalkhatib himself does, as shown by his recent @jubileemedia
Jun 23 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Lol not me learning through Canary Mission that Zohran Mamdani is the son of Mahmood freaking Mamdani

Mamdani’s work is just excellent. Highly recommend. Here’s some recommendations 🧵 See for instance his postcolonial analysis of the Rwandan Genocide, where he dissassembles the argument that Hutus simply hated Tutsis and reframes it as a result of Belgium’s colonial policies Image
Jun 20 • 16 tweets • 3 min read
When the story of the Israeli genocide of Palestinians is told, it will tell the story of how it cut electricity, food and water from the “human animals” and how Israelis mocked the starving thirsty children with videos of running water taps and lit lightbulbs 🧵 It will tell the story of how Israel used unreliable technology and massive collateral damage - bombs “focused on destruction, not accuracy” - to bomb sleeping children next to their sleeping parents, accused by some algorithm of being Hamas
Jun 19 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I really like it when Zionists try to turn the tables of coloniality on me so to speak because I’m a white Peruvian, because it gives me the opportunity to explain how coloniality works in Latin America - you know, the thing I used to tweet most about before the genocide started I’ve said this many times before: this isn’t about Israel per se. Israel is not important or relevant as a place or location. The reason why it matters is Zionism is a 19th C remnant of extreme coloniality in the 21st C and I oppose coloniality on principle -and genocide ofc
Jun 19 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Shooting a missile…

- at a hospital...

- that you can’t aim properly, at a military target, but hitting a hospital instead...

- at a military target and causing disproportionate harm on a hospital…

…is a war crime

It doesn’t matter who does it The problem is this has been normalised for 20 months by Israel and now the cat is out of the box. International Hasbara Law has severely harmed International Humanitarian Law
Jun 18 • 18 tweets • 4 min read
Israel’s Letter to the UNSC is interesting in that it accuses Iran of being “substantially involved” in the funding, arming, training and guidance of a “network of terrorist proxies”. To the trained eye, use of this terminology is interesting because of what it *doesn’t say* 🧵 Image Under int’l law, there are essentially two standards to determine when the actions of an armed group are “attributable” to a state - meaning that the group acts on behalf of the state or as part of its forces: the ICJ’s Effective Control and the ICTY’s Overall Control Test
Jun 16 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Israel’s objective is to turn its regional rivals into what I call in my research a “bombable geography” - spaces where cross-border military action requires no justification and is subject to no limitation. They see the writing in the wall: Whatever strategic objective Israel can’t achieve in the next 4 years will never be achieved. It knows they will become un-supportable pariahs as soon as Gen Z is done turning 18.
Jun 15 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
“Conventional wisdom” wants us to see Iran as the irrational authoritarian regime that can’t be trusted with nukes, and Israel as the moral Western liberal democracy that can.

But Israel has unlawfully attacked Iranian territory / diplomatic premises 4 times in 5 years. Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza and supporting murderous terrorists in the West Bank leading an ethnic cleansing campaign while it imposes an apartheid regime on the Palestinian population. It is also collaborating with ISIS gangs in Gaza
Jun 15 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
Some thoughts on the law applicable to the Iran-Israel War and the dangers of what I call International Hasbara Law (IHL).

First let’s establish some groundwork 🧵 1) Israel’s attack is an act of aggression against Iran. This is not a fringe position among scholars. It’s the normie one

2) Israel is not just targeting military objectives it is also targeting civilian scientists, which only some scholars agree with, very controversially
Jun 14 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
On 19 Oct ‘23, 450 civilians were sheltering in St Porphyrius Church, Gaza. @amnesty could not find any evidence of a military target in the church. The strike killed 18 civilians, including a 2-month old baby, and injured at least 12 others Image
Image On 14 December 2023, at 11:45am, Israel destroyed a 3-storey house in Rafah belonging to the Shehada family. 45 civilians were sheltering there. Israel killed 31, including 11 children, and wounding 10. Image
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