When the luminary Raphael Lemkin, a Jew and the Father of International Criminal Genocide Law, was coining the word 'genocide' and compiling his excellent studies on the various genocides/holocaust that had taken place on planet Earth, following all the misery his people - the Jews - had endured at the hands of the Nazi regime, little did he know or envisage that one day Israel would itself end up to be a genocidaire state. Indeed, this state has an undeclared - though quite manifest policy - propounding the extermination of the Palestinians for the purpose of land grab through population transfer, indiscriminate killing, carpet bombing, hospital destruction, a policy of starvation, annihilation of all forms of human livelihood and decent wellbeing, amongst others.
Suddenly, with the creation of the state of Israel, and thanks to the very generous help of the United States of America, the victim became the oppressor. Notwithstanding all those millions of Jews who died during the Second World War in Hitler's gas chambers, the Israelis are implementing themselves the final solution to the Palestinian question in the most horrible way Lemkin's constitutive ingredients of the crime of genocide allow for, when Israel should have known better, having themselves experienced the worst form of genocide - the holocaust.
Raphael Lemkin, when he was drafting the United Nations Convention on the Prohibition and Punishment of Genocide, and unstintingly saw it through all its stages until it was eventually approved on 9 December 1948, one day before the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, had to content with quite a watered down version of what he had originally drafted. Various elements of his draft convention were chopped down by the powerful states of the time at the altar of what unprincipled politicians call 'the art of compromise', a compromise that suited the UN permanent members of the Security Council (themselves and their allies past and present genocidaire states) but not to all the citizens of the world.
The inherent defects in this Convention (that I have studied in academic publications elsewhere) surely not because of Lemkin's fault, have made the Convention unenforceable in those cases where UN Security Council permanent members or any of their allies are concerned. The end result is that although Raphael Lemkin had only one enlightening scope in life following the conclusion of the Second World War - to strive hard to witness the outlaw of all forms of genocide from the planet Earth - thanks to the politicians' politics of compromise and the selfish interests of the permanent members of the UN Security Council, they have all contributed to reduce into tatters Lemkin's forward-looking and progressive dream for humanity - a world free of genocide. Further, the same Convention that he advocated, drafted, authored, and went completely out of his way to see it eventually proclaimed by the United Nations, an organisation made up of states and completely controlled by the five UN Security Council permanent member states who nip in the bud all those resolutions intended to stop all forms of genocide taking place in the world that are against their own interests or those of their allies, has - unfortunately - failed miserably to prohibit the perpetration of genocide in the 20th and 21st century. Not because of Lemkin's fault but because of world leaders' power mongering.
With the benefit of hindsight, now that nearly 77 years have elapsed from that memorable day when the crime of genocide was proclaimed as the worst possible form of mass atrocity that humans can commit, the end result is that, nevertheless, last century and this century are the genocide centuries, where more genocides continue to be perpetrated indiscriminately and in breach of international criminal law and international humanitarian law, notwithstanding the Genocide Convention and, more recently, the establishment of the International Criminal Court. All this when the world is supposed to have attained a higher degree of civilisation! Today, the international community of states sits on the fence doing absolutely nothing whilst witnessing mass atrocities. The world is in a perpetual mode of genocide. Yet no perpetrator is apprehended, tried, and punished and, when they are, only a handful are convicted and serve the entire term in prison.
Take the case of genocides in the Former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Sudan, Myanmar, China, Ethiopia, Iraq, Syria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zaire, Somalia, Zimbabwe, Cambodia, Indonesia, Uganda, Burundi, Bangladesh, Zanzibar (today's Tanzania), Guatemala, Sri Lanka, the Soviet Union, etc. and this apart from settler genocides committed in North America and other places in past centuries. Take also the case of the holocaust - the worst possible form of genocide. And what about the current genocide perpetration denial/minimisation/trivialisation of guilt by genocidaire states, their allies, and others of all these genocides by those genocidaire states who committed them, authors (including academics) and Nobel Prize laureates who justified them, civil society organisations who supported them, broadcasters who instigated them, private military armies (violent non-state actors) who made them possible, arms dealers who supplied the necessary weapons to inflict all such pain, misery, and suffering to the victims and survivors of genocide, and the permanent members of the UN Security Council who ensured that no timely action is taken to stop all forms of genocide being completed.
Today we are witnessing genocide in Gaza and our Prime Minister continues to drag his feet to recognise the state of Palestine. Quite an irresponsible act! People die every day in Gaza but our Prime Minister has no mercy for them. They mean nothing to him and to his government. He keeps on dragging his feet to appease the genocidaires and those states that support their genocidal acts. Quite a shocking, unprincipled, immoral, and shameful conduct! Has he summoned the Israeli Ambassador to Malta to protest against the genocidal acts that Israel is perpetrating? Has he protested via a note-verbal to the government of Israel as to its genocidal acts? No.
Where is Malta's policy of active neutrality - a promoter and mediator of peace? What pressure is our government putting on the comatose EU institutions, especially on the EU Commission President and EU Parliament President to take robust, concrete, and immediate action against Israel who, through their inaction condone the genocide in Gaza and are morally complicit therewith and fully blameworthy?
This is the absurd predicament that this world faces. World leaders are themselves the promoters of genocide, either directly or - through their inaction - indirectly, and put their own national interests, their own economic interests, their own political self-survival before the wellbeing of humankind and all the atrocities that humanity must endure because of the utter irresponsibility of world leaders who do not give a dam to what is happening today in Gaza, Myanmar, etc.
The culture of death - be it through genocide, abortion, and voluntary assisted euthanasia, prevails over the joy of life within political circles, both in Malta and in the EU. One therefore understands why human life is devalued and has no currency with Maltese and EU leaders.
The Gazans and the Rohingya are totally forgotten by the United Nations Security Council permanent members. In the meantime, the Burmese military and the Israeli army continue to kill, maim, traumatise, etc. innocent civilians, children, women, starve to death all that is Gazan or Rohingya, and all this to appropriate the little territory that these poor miserable peoples possess. They are now even deprived of the little they have - their poverty and misery!
Kevin Aquilina is Professor of Law at the Faculty of Laws, University of Malta