Genocide against Palestinians

In 2010, historians Martin Shaw and Omer Bartov carried out a debate regarding whether the 1948 Nakba should be regarded as a genocide, with Shaw arguing that it could and with Bartov disagreeing.[5][6][7] The former Deputy Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain, Daud Abdullah, has stated that "Given the declared intent of the Zionist leaders, this wholesale destruction and depopulation of Palestinian villages fit[s] easily with the definition of genocide as cited in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide."[8]

In 2007, Israel imposed a blockade – supported by Egypt – on the movement of goods and people in and out of the Gaza Strip. Israeli New Historian Ilan Pappé has argued that genocide "is the only appropriate way to describe what the Israeli army is doing in the Gaza Strip".[9][3] In an article written in 2023 in the International Journal of Human Rights, Mohammed Nijim voiced his belief “that Israeli policies that were enacted after the introduction of the Blockade of the Gaza Strip amount[ed] to slow-motion genocide".[10]

The 2014 Gaza War, also referred to as Operation Protective Edge, was a military operation launched by Israel on 8 July 2014 in the Gaza Strip. Al-Haq, a Palestinian Human Rights organization, concluded in a report that serious violations of international law were committed in the course of the 2014 Israeli offensive against Gaza. The organization, along with other Palestinian human rights organizations the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights and Addameer, submitted a legal file to the International Criminal Court encouraging it to begin an investigation and prosecution into the crimes against humanity and war crimes committed during the course of Israel’s 2014 Gaza offensive. The crime of genocide was referenced as an Israeli crime by these groups.[11] Additionally, dozens of Holocaust survivors, along with hundreds of descendants of Holocaust survivors and victims, accused Israel of “genocide” for the deaths of more than 2,000 Palestinians in Gaza during the 2014 Gaza War.[11]

The 2023 Israel–Hamas war began when militants invaded Israel from the Gaza Strip on 7 October 2023,[12] and continued with an Israeli counteroffensive.[13] Israel formally declared war on Hamas a day later. Many Palestinians have expressed sadness for the kidnapped and killed Israelis; however, they have also expressed deep concern that this violence would be used to justify genocide by Israel against Palestinians.[14][15] This view has been expressed by Marwan Bishara writing for Al Jazeera.[16]

Israel's evacuation order was characterized as a forcible population transfer by Jan Egeland, the Norwegian former diplomat involved with the Oslo Accord.[17] A "forcible transfer" is the forced relocation of a civilian population as part of an organized offense against it and is considered a crime against humanity by the International Criminal Court.[18] In an interview with the BBC, Egeland stated, "There are hundreds of thousands of people fleeing for their life — [that is] not something that should be called an evacuation. It is a forcible transfer of people from all of northern Gaza, which according to the Geneva convention is a war crime."[17] UN Special rapporteur Francesca Albanese warned of a mass ethnic cleansing in Gaza.[19] Raz Segal, an Israeli historian and director of the Holocaust and Genocide Studies program at Stockton University, termed it a "textbook case of genocide."[20]

The term genocide was coined in 1944 by a Jewish Polish legal scholar, Raphael Lemkin, who explained that for him “the term does not necessarily signify mass killings”.[11]

More often [genocide] refers to a coordinated plan aimed at destruction of the essential foundations of the life of national groups so that these groups wither and die like plants that have suffered a blight. The end may be accomplished by the forced disintegration of political and social institutions, of the culture of the people, of their language, their national feelings and their religion. It may be accomplished by wiping out all basis of personal security, liberty, health and dignity. When these means fail the machine gun can always be utilized as a last resort. Genocide is directed against a national group as an entity and the attack on individuals is only secondary to the annihilation of the national group to which they belong.[11]

It has been claimed by many analysts that Israel has violated various acts of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, including: killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group and deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.[11] Haifa Rashed and Damien Short have voiced their belief that Lemkin's original concept of genocide can be used to analyze "the historical and continuing, cultural and physical, destructive social and political relations involved in the Israel/Palestine conflict".[23] In a separate publication, Rashed, Short, and John Docker argued that the conflict did not receive enough attention in the field of genocide studies.[24] Historian Lawrence Davidson, in his book about cultural genocide, included a chapter about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.[25]

In the context of the 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, the Israeli counterattacks, and the imposed complete blockade, which included the denial of water and food to the civilian population, Israeli historian Raz Segal described it as a "textbook case of genocide" and connected it to the Nakba, the expulsion of Palestinians during the establishment of Israel in 1948.[26]

On 17 October, 10 days after the start of the 2023 Israel–Hamas war, 880 scholars of international law and genocide signed a public statement saying: "As scholars and practitioners of international law, conflict studies, and genocide studies, we are compelled to sound the alarm about the possibility of the crime of genocide being perpetrated by Israeli forces against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip."[27]

The statement called on UN bodies, including the UN Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect, as well as the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to "immediately intervene, to carry out the necessary investigations, and invoke the necessary warning procedures to protect the Palestinian population from genocide."[27]

On 19 October 2023, amid the 2023 Hamas–Israel war, 100 civil society organizations and six genocide scholars sent a letter to Karim Khan, Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, calling on him to issue arrest warrants to Israeli officials for cases already before the prosecutor; to investigate the new crimes committed in the Palestinian territories, including incitement to genocide, since 7 October; to issue a preventative statement against war crimes; and to remind all states of their obligations under international law.[28]

The letter noted that Israeli officials, in their statements, had indicated "clear intent to commit war crimes, crimes against humanity and incitement to commit genocide, using dehumanizing language to describe Palestinians." The six specialist genocide scholars that signed the document were Raz Segal, Barry Trachtenberg, Robert McNeil, Damien Short, Taner Akçam and Victoria Sanford.[28]

The same day, lawyers at the Center for Constitutional Rights stated that Israel's tactics were "calculated to destroy the Palestinian population in Gaza", and warned the Biden administration that “U.S. officials can be held responsible for their failure to prevent Israel’s unfolding genocide, as well as for their complicity, by encouraging it and materially supporting it."[29]

Both Israel and Palestine frequently accuse the other of planning a scheme of genocide.[30] Some Israelis reject the characterization of genocide, saying such accusations are antisemitic.[31]

In an opinion survey of American Jews, commissioned by the Jewish Electorate Institute following the 2021 Israel–Palestine crisis, 34% agreed that "Israel's treatment of Palestinians is similar to racism in the United States," 25% agreed that "Israel is an apartheid state" and 22% agreed that "Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians."[32]

Eric Levitz, in a 13 October piece in the The Intelligencer, argued that administrations of the United States, such as the Biden administration, have given tacit approval to Israeli war crimes and genocide in the 2023 Israel–Hamas war.[33]

Ramzy Baroud, in a 23 October piece in Arab News, paralleled the dehumanization and genocidal intent in Israeli-US-Western media with the language used in Rwanda ahead of the Rwandan genocide. He referenced the similarity between the refrain by the Radio Television Libre des Mille Collines in Rwanda that Tutsis “are cockroaches. We will kill you” and a 1983 quote from former Israeli army chief of staff Rafael Eitan that Arabs are like “drugged cockroaches in a bottle.”[34] In the 2023 conflict, he noted the similar sentiment expressed in comments such as that of by Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant: “We are fighting human animals and we will act accordingly,” and Ariel Kallner, a Knesset member for Likud, who said of the 2023 war: “Right now, one goal: Nakba. A Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of 1948.”[34]

Iranian foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian on 13 October labelled the siege and the cutting off of essentials as "seeking a genocide of all people in Gaza".[35] On 15 October, Pakistani foreign minister Jalil Abbas Jilani directly called Israel's airstrikes and blockade on Gaza an genocide.[36]

• BADIL (2015). "Survey of Palestinian Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons 2013-2015".
• Short, Damien (2016). Redefining Genocide: Settler Colonialism, Social Death and Ecocide. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-1-84813-546-8.
• "Palestine refugees". UNRWA. Retrieved November 11, 2020.
• "Frequently asked questions". UNRWA. Retrieved August 9, 2020.