Far-left outlet Mother Jones is asking if Israel should be held accountable for “ecocide” in remarks similar to those advanced by the government of Ukraine regarding Russia at the tail end of 2023.
“When reports emerged in late December that the Israeli military planned to pump seawater into the underground tunnel networks used by Hamas fighters in Gaza, scientists and advocates around the world raised alarm over the prospect of an environmental disaster,” writes author Lylla Younes.
She continued: “Flooding the tunnels threatened to permanently salinate the land, making it impossible to cultivate crops. Seawater could also seep underground and into an aquifer that the majority of Gazans rely on for water. Palestinian rights groups and protesters around the world were already accusing the Israeli government of committing genocide against the Palestinians, with more than 20,000 killed by Israeli bombings on Gaza since Hamas’ attack on southern Israel last October. Now, another term has entered the conversation: “ecocide.””
The article notes:
The term “ecocide” was coined during the Vietnam War after the US military sprayed more than 90 million liters of Agent Orange and other herbicides across South Vietnam’s countryside. The chemical’s 20-year half-life can increase to more than 100 years if it’s buried beneath the soil, and people in southern Vietnam are still living with its effects more than half a century later. After visiting the region in the early 1970s and observing the chemicals’ devastating effects, a group of American scientists and legal experts began a campaign against using herbicide as a weapon of war. Their efforts led to an executive order by President Gerald Ford in 1975 renouncing the use of defoliants in future wars and to a UN convention in 1978 prohibiting the “hostile use of environmental modification techniques.”
There is currently no formal ability to hold a nation accountable for “ecocide” though far-left campaigners have been embarking on a campaign to do so since 2020.
