We Charge Nakba:  Genocide of the Palestinian People and Limits of International Law

Abstract:

For eleven months and counting, the only nuclear power in the Middle East has waged a genocidal campaign against a besieged population who are predominantly refugees exiled from their homes still within eye’s view. Had international law been adequate to redress the condition of dispossession, exile, and torture, there would be no genocide today and Nakba would be a historical lesson rather than a source of contentious debate. Therefore, it should not be surprising that international law, including decisions issued from the International Court of Justice as well as arrest warrants requested from the International Criminal Court, have been unable to stem gruesome, relentless slaughter. This keynote will attempt to address this conundrum as well as the following questions: What explains this historic and contemporary insufficiency? How does the genocide in Gaza test the legitimacy, or lack thereof, of international law and legal institutions? Finally, what is the potential of existing legal frameworks and laws to meet this challenge? 

Bio.

Noura Erakat is a public intellectual, a human rights attorney, and a Professor at Rutgers University, New Brunswick in the Department of Africana Studies and the Program in Criminal Justice. Her research interests include human rights law, humanitarian law, national security law, refugee law, social justice, and critical race theory. She is the author of Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine (Stanford University Press, 2019), an editorial committee member of the Journal for Palestine Studies and a co-Founding Editor of Jadaliyya, an electronic magazine on the Middle East that combines scholarly expertise and local knowledge. Noura has appeared on CBS News, CNN International with Becky Anderson, CNN with Don Lemon, MSNBC’s “Up With Chris Hayes,” "All In With Chris Hayes," "Ronan Farrow Daily," Fox’s “The O’Reilly Factor,” NBC’s “Politically Incorrect,” PBS News Hour, NPR, BBC World Service, Democracy Now, and Al-Jazeera America, Arabic, and English. Her publications have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The LA Review of Books, The LA Times, The Nation, USA Today, The Hill, Foreign Policy, Jezebel, Al Ahram English, Al Shabaka, MERIP, Fair Observer, Middle East Eye, The Interdependent, IntLawGrrls, The Huffington Post, Al Jazeera, and Jadaliyya.