Israel’s extortion leaflets and Namecheap: How to do corporate accountability during a genocideArizona-based Internet domain company NameCheap ended all service to Russia over the invasion of Ukraine but has now registered an Israeli website targeting Palestinian children. Activists are calling out the company’s complicity in war crimes.
On Friday Israel dropped another set of leaflets on Gaza. Israel’s use of leaflets for its psychological torture of the besieged Palestinian population is well known in these genocidal days.
Ominous, gloating, taunting, and sadistic messaging is the lingua franca of these leaflets, which Israel claims is a humanitarian effort to evacuate the civilian population. Some of the most common leaflet content are calls to contact Israel’s secret service with information on Hamas or the Israeli hostages. The purpose of these particular leaflets is twofold: the coercion of protected civilians to obtain information (which is a violation of the law of armed conflict); but most of all, to undermine the trust and cohesion of a community under siege and annihilation.
Friday’s leaflets took the intel-gathering genre to another level, when the army included messaging of extortion and a list of children, among them toddlers as targets, with the threat to reveal personal information such as criminal records, extramarital affairs, and queer identities.
The leaflets, like much of Israel’s abuse of technology during this genocide, included a QR code leading to a website with more ominous messaging, a snitch box, and a countdown until presumably the threat of outing will be acted upon.
An anonymous group has traced the website to the domain registration company NameCheap, and upon discovering that the company terminated their Russian accounts because of “war crimes and human rights violations,” wrote a letter (text below) demanding similar treatment in this case, stressing the possibility of complicity in war crimes, collective punishment, and genocide.
It’s notable that if NameCheap did take a similar step to cut off all service to Israel, they would likely be breaking the law in Arizona, where the company is based. However, as the ICC prosecutor breaks the news that he’s applying for arrest warrants against Israeli leaders, there is a serious argument to be made that both American and international law would be on NameCheap’s side, as the anonymous letter points out, if the company doesn’t remove the content it could very well be complicit in grave international crimes. Former UN Director of Advocacy & Communications, Chris Gunness, took to X (formerly Twitter) to point out the “mental harm” element in the genocide convention in these particular flyers.
During these past months, as Israel’s campaign of extermination unfolds, the obligation of states and corporate actors to act to prevent genocide has been pointed to by the International Court of Justice; the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Palestine, Francesca Albanese; human rights organizations; and in courts around the world. Companies like NameCheap, who find themselves directly embroiled in Israel’s military operations in Gaza, may do well to ensure that they can prove their immediate action to disassociate from any plausible criminal activity.
In the process of writing this article, the author has promptly been assured by NameCheap that they have received the original complaint and that others “understand the urgency of the matter and its importance” and that they “are investigating the issue.”
Source:mondoweiss.net
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