• kreskin@lemmy.world
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    15 hours ago

    the United States signed the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) on September 25, 2013, which establishes common standards for the international trade of conventional weapons and aims to prevent transfers that could fuel genocide, war crimes, and other human rights abuses.

    Article 6 addresses explicitly prohibitions against arms transfers that would be contrary to international legal obligations, or where the State knows the arms would be used in the commission of genocide, crimes against humanity and certain war crimes. This provision sets a clear benchmark to allow States parties to effectively and consistently implement these prohibitions.

    https://legal.un.org/avl/ha/att/att.html

    In the 1949 geneva conventions, referred to as the IHL, signed by the US: War crimes – serious violations of international humanitarian law that include wilful killings, direct attacks on civilians, torture, use of prohibited weapons, the murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or others who have been captured, surrendered or injured and crimes of sexual violence.

    Crimes against humanity – crimes committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack by or on behalf of a state or an organization against a civilian population during peace or wartime. There are 11 crimes against humanity including murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation or forcible transfer of a population, torture, rape and other serious forms of sexual violence, enforced disappearance and apartheid. Crimes against humanity may be committed in armed conflict or in peacetime.

    Genocide – certain acts committed with the intent to destroy, completely or partially, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. Genocide may be committed in armed conflict or in peacetime.

    In Us law Biden violated the Leahy act and the arms export control act.

    Glad I could help you out and make you better informed. Also check these.

    https://www.amnestyusa.org/press-releases/amnesty-international-warns-of-u-s-complicity-in-war-crimes-in-gaza/

    https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/us-weapons-to-israel

    • futatorius@lemm.ee
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      5 hours ago

      You’re listing laws, many of which could apply to Israel’s conduct in Gaza. But when it comes to direct actions that the US took under Biden, you only cite the Leahy Act and the Arms Export Control Act, neither of which is international law, and the breach of neither of which constitutes genocide (though it’s undeniable that the US’s actions contribute to genocide). And the enforcement of both the Leahy Act and the ACDA is a joke. The Leahy Act forbids the US government from supplying arms to nations that the US Department of State finds to be abusing human rights. In other words, it’s the US policing itself. Simlarly, the AECA gives the President the power to require that recipients of US armaments are allowed to use them only for “legitimate self-defense.” And the President gets to decide who that is and what constitutes a breach.

      Unless you are arguing that, according to international law, anyone involved in the arms trade is guilty of genocide if someone it sells to commits genocide? OK, then how many prosecutions have occurred for cases like that that the Hague? I’d like to see the international system work like that, but it doesn’t. As best I can tell, that number is zero.

      Glad I could help you out and make you better informed.

      It’s not a good look to be patronizing when you don’t know what you’re talking about. Your whole line of argument is nothing but begging the question.