Israel’s extortion leaflets and Namecheap: How to do corporate accountability during a genocide

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.”

Letter text:

Hello NameCheap team,

I write to you on behalf of several concerned citizens, who for their personal safety wish to remain nameless. We are deeply concerned that your services are being used to facilitate grave breaches of international law, war crimes, and violations of human rights.

Yesterday it was reported (https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1791451753910526420) that the Israeli military dropped leaflets in the Gaza Strip for the purposes of blackmailing Gaza residents that the military will reveal personal information (criminal records, extramarital affairs, LGBTQ identities) unless they collaborate with them, complete with a QR code leading to a website with a countdown timer. The website, registered with namecheap, claims to have information on more than 9000 individuals, and includes names, ID numbers, and pictures of young children, labeled as “Hamas informants”.

We inform you that Israel now stands trial in the International Court of Justice for the crime of genocide, on which the court ruled- at this early stage- that genocide is “plausible” and “a real imminent risk” (https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/192-20240126-sum-01-00-en.pdf).

Yet another decision was issued in the United States by the Court of Northern District of California, on the case of ‘Defense for Children International-Palestine et al v. Biden et al’, stating that “the current treatment of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip by the Israeli military may plausibly constitute a genocide in violation of international law” (https://ccrjustice.org/sites/default/files/attach/2024/01/91_1-31-24_Order-granting-MTD_w.pdf)

I submit to you that the website in question constitutes several violations of international law, such as that of collective punishment, and could also fall under the Genocide Convention clause of ‘mental harm’, and possibly torture.

We are aware and inspired by your termination of services to Russian accounts due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, citing “war crimes and human rights violations”. We hope and expect to see similar action in this case, in particular, because it appears your client is Israel’s military and secret service and that the use of your register services directly involves your company in war crimes and plausibly the crime of genocide.

We hope to hear from you and that the matter will be resolved swiftly,
[redacted] on behalf of others