Today the United States vetoed a Security Council resolution recommending Palestine for membership in the United Nations. 12 Council members voted in favour, with 2 abstaining (UK & Switzerland). Some 140 states already recognize the State of Palestine. A few notes 🧵 The UN law around admitting new members is rooted in Art 4 of the UN Charter. Once an application for membership is made, the Council must refer it to the Committee on the Admission of New Members. That Committee then assesses whether the conditions of Art 4 are met.

Today, the @CIJ_ICJ heard Germany's defence against Nicaragua's case alleging it has failed to prevent - and is complicit in - genocide in Gaza and serious violations of peremptory norms of international law.🧵

(My account of Nicaragua's case yesterday )

https://x.com/Heidi__Matthews/status/1777290384525111405

Germany says Nicaragua "has rushed to bring its case on the flimsiest of evidence". It says the ICJ doesn't have jurisdiction because of the absence of a dispute and the fact of Israel's non-consent to judicial resolution.

Today, the @CIJ_ICJ heard oral arguments from Nicaragua, which has brought a case against Germany alleging that in providing political, financial & military support to Israel, Germany is facilitating the commission of genocide & has failed in its obligation to prevent genocide.🧵 Nicaragua also alleges Germany is facilitating Israel's serious breaches of IHL & other peremptory norms of general international law in Gaza, including Palestinians' right to self-determination and right to not be subjected to a regime of apartheid.

Today the ICJ decided that the deterioration of the "catastrophic living conditions" in Gaza since January 26, esp starvation, created a further real & imminent risk of genocide justifying the indication of additional provisional measures against Israel.🧵 icj-cij.org/sites/default/… The Court found that Palestinians in Gaza had "been subjected" to "prolonged and widespread deprivation of food and other basic necessities" and that "famine is setting in." It characterized these developments as "exceptionally grave."

The U.S. is unilaterally claiming that Security Council resolution 2728 is non-binding and therefore has no impact on its policy or the legality of Israel’s continued war. This is not so obvious… 🧵 First, interpreting UN Security Council resolutions is not straightforward. But basically, resolutions are meant to be expressions of the collective will of the council (n.b. since the U.S. abstained, it may not be best placed to unilaterally comment on it).

Finally, the Maldives 🇲🇻

The Maldives is contextualizing its submissions in the context of water resources. It notes that water is the most vital resource in the occupied Palestinian territory. "A tidal wave of suffering has been unleashed by Israeli policies and practices with respect to water resources, which are characterized by deprivation, denial, discrimination and destruction."

Here we go! Hearings in the @CIJ_ICJ advisory opinion on Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem have started. Palestine made its statement today. This will be my 🧵over the next 6 days.

https://twitter.com/CIJ_ICJ/status/1759504071575089409

States (52!) and intergovernmental organizations submitted their written statements *before* the war on Gaza began. Something to look for: will states modify their positions based on the @CIJ_ICJ's subsequent finding of plausible genocide in Gaza?

Those seeking to minimize, misconstrue or misinform regarding the ICJ's order of provisional measures against Israel both denigrate the Court and its authority while also emphasizing the (wrong) idea that the Court 'ordered' the hostages to be released. Let's unpack this move. 🧵 The Court did not order Hamas or any other armed group to release the hostages. It doesn't have the authority to make such an order. Only states can be parties before the Court. The primary job of the Court is to resolve legal disputes *between states*. icj-cij.org/statute#CHAPTE…

The dehumanising statements by @selinarobinson of the British Columbia NDP (Canada’s “left” political party) demonstrate the continuity of the logic used to justify colonial genocide in Canada and in Gaza. 🧵 Denigrating the land -- "it was a crappy piece of land" -- both erases the Indigenous Palestinians living there before 1948 and imposes western capitalist 'civilization' as the normative benchmark against which the value of human activity is to be measured for colonial purposes.

Yesterday Israeli forces disguised as medical staff and civilians reportedly entered a hospital in the West Bank and extra-judicially killed 3 wounded combatants. If true, this is a war crime, and possibly a crime against humanity. 🧵 aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/30… First, the law of occupation and international humanitarian law/law of war apply *simultaneously* in Palestine. This means the occupier uses force in accordance with both police powers and military powers. It also means that international human rights law applies alongside IHL.

So far the U.S. reaction to today’s historic ICJ order of provisional measures against Israel misconstrues the impact of the decision on states’ international obligations. It doesn’t matter whether the U.S. itself believes specific intent has been established. 🧵 That was not the question before the Court either. The question the Court had to answer was whether there was sufficient evidence to establish the plausibility of genocidal acts + special intent. It found there was.

The ICJ's written order and separate opinions will be released shortly. But my first reaction is that this is a big win for Palestinian advocates. Some will be disappointed that the Court stopped short of ordering a ceasefire. But... 🧵 ... the fact that the Court ordered the measures it DID, including directing Israel not to commit or incite genocide, indicates it has concluded that it is (a) plausible for Palestinians in Gaza to claim protection from genocide, and (b) that the need for protection is urgent.

It shocking - and frankly irresponsible - for pieces on Oct 7 sexual violence allegations to omit the crucial fact that Israel is refusing to cooperate with international investigations (International Criminal Court & International Commission of Inquiry).
theguardian.com/world/2024/jan… "Israel's Health Ministry told all those in touch with the UN committee not to meet with those involved or cooperate with them in any way." jpost.com/israel-news/ar…

Great to hear. It's important to unpack what 'abide by' means in the context of the Genocide Convention, where all states parties have a positive obligation to act to *prevent* genocide. Here's what this should mean for Canada 🧵

https://twitter.com/EvanDyerCBC/status/1746942199038648707

To order provisional measures the ICJ must be satisfied that South Africa's assertion of the right of Palestinians in Gaza to be protected from acts of genocide & related prohibited acts (conspiracy, incitement, attempt & complicity) are plausible & in urgent need of protection.

Being in North America with two littles, I'm a little late to this party, but here we go!

South Africa v Israel (ICJ) 🧵

Vaughan Lowe: "The rights claimed are the very core of the convention -- the right of the group not to be physically destroyed". From the moment a state learns of the risk of genocide and has means available to it to prevent it, it has a duty to act. This is what South Africa is doing with this application.

I spent the day at the hospital w/my 3-yr-old who was feverish & barely eating x5 days (she has a bacterial infection & will be OK). I kept thinking: Would she have survived in Gaza? Would she have had clean water? Would she have starved? Would she have had access to medicine? 🧵 Water & sanitation services are collapsing in Gaza. Hundreds of thousands of children have access to <3 litres of water/day, the basic minimum for physical survival. Children are at heightened risk of disease & dehydration, and using dirty water intensifies these vulnerabilities.

I’ve spent much of the last weeks thinking about how we relate to one another as students, educators & professionals. Like many, I am disturbed by systematic efforts to silence pro-Palestinian politics in the name of safety. Some tentative thoughts about how such claims work.🧵 Actions aimed to silence contribute to the breakdown of collegiality & robust debate on campus. By collegiality, I don’t mean civility; politeness and ‘tact’ too often masquerade as modalities for discounting and discouraging forceful disagreement.

On October 17, @JillDunlop1, Ontario's Minister of Colleges and Universities in @fordnation's government, launched a targeted attack against me, other professors, and students who have engaged in public speech supportive of Palestinians and critical of Israel's war on Gaza. 🧵 In a speech in the provincial legislature, Dunlop made the absurd and unsubstantiated claim that I "attempted to justify and diminish the murder of Israeli children by Hamas". She called me an anti-Semite. She said that students were justified in feeling unsafe in my classroom.

So this whole #DonCherry poppy debacle puts my Saturday in perspective. Our decision to get out of the city yesterday for a little drive and some leaf peeping went sideways when we encountered White Canada in Schomberg, Ontario. *thread*

https://twitter.com/_eddierazo/status/1193335939700887552

Now, Schomberg is a quaint little place about an hour outside Toronto. There’s a cute pub (@TheSchombergPub) with great pretzels. But just before we’d finished lunch, the conversation next to us between some older white men turned pretty randomly ugly.

*thread* While helpful in some ways, this piece by @IvyLeagueLady is discomfiting in others, particularly with regard to public-facing writing. In my experience this kind of work has myriad knock-on effects for an academic career:
— it builds your reputation;

#AcademicTwitter

https://twitter.com/chronicle/status/1178263171850805250

— it gets you speaking to an audience larger than, quite frankly, 99% of “academic” publications ever will;
— it can help you synthesize complex ideas that can then be worked up into larger peer-reviewed pieces;
— it builds community, especially when you co-write;

*thread*

Congratulations to my old @LawMcGill dean, Nicholas Kasirer, on his nomination to the #SupremeCourt. I am confident he will be a compassionate, discerning & rigorous justice.

That being said...

#SCC #cdnpoli

https://twitter.com/JustinTrudeau/status/1149050267134046208

@LawMcGill Let's meditate for a moment on the colonial structure of the Court, which is concerned with representation insofar as it aims at equity between Canada's two founding colonial powers, languages and legal traditions: