Acting to End Genocide in Gaza: Voices of Conscience and Concern

The December 2023 issuance of a Declaration of Conscience and Concern of Global Intellectuals to Stop Gaza Genocide to leading civil society activists and former governmental and UN officials throughout the world recorded 127 invited signatories and over 1500 endorsers. On this basis, the Declaration’s originators, Ahmet Davutoglu and Richard Falk, invited a select number of signatories to an emergency conference in London to lend their authority to a further expression of the international community’s deepest concerns in light of the continuation of the genocidal assault on the peoples of Gaza. This book brings together the most valuable of the presentations delivered by conference participants. It provides a coherent perspective on the extreme human catastrophe that was exposed as it unfolded in real time, arousing intense responses of outrage from the peoples of the world, which failed to alter the shameless and shocking levels of active complicity on the part of several leading Western liberal democracies. The latter constituted a cynical embrace of moral hypocrisy and double standards, paralyzing the UN and ignoring the most flagrant violations of international law on Israel’s part.

The book assesses the Israeli response to the Hamas attack of October 7 from the perspective of international law and morality, as well as providing informed accounts of the inability of the UN to implement the demands of a permanent and unconditional ceasefire in Gaza. It also provides accounts of the implementation of forced evacuation, induced starvation and disease, efforts calculated to destroy the civilian population in whole or in part, Israel’s defiance of the UN, the ICJ Interim Order, and international humanitarian law in the course of transparent violations of the Genocide Convention.

At a time when neither governments nor international institutions are demonstrating either the will or the capability to act in accord with the rule of law or the popular will of the majority of the peoples of the world who have demonstrated against the genocide in their millions, these substantial essays give an overview of the extraordinary damage wrought and what can and should be done to protect Palestinian rights and construct a future that empowers Palestinians to give content to their right of self-determination rather than victimized by yet another effort to impose a solution from without or enable Israel to control the day after developments when the violence stops.

Ahmet Davutoglu is former Foreign Minister and Prime Minister of Turkiye. He is the founder and leader of the Future Party that is represented in the Turkish Parliament, author of Systemic Earthquake: The Struggle for World Order (2019), and prominent
academic in International Relations.

Richard Falk is a leading international law professor, prominent activist, prolific author, and a pioneer thinker dedicated to peace and justice. During forty years at Princeton University Falk was active in seeking an end to the Vietnam War, a better understanding of Iran, a just solution for Israel/Palestine, and improved democracy in South Korea, South Africa, India, and the Philippines. He also served as UN Special Rapporteur for Occupied Palestine. His books include A Study of Future Worlds, Protecting Human Rights in Occupied Palestine, and Public Intellectual.

Mustafa Barghouti is General Secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative