Israel committing genocide in Gaza, says scholars’ group, as legal criteria for the crime met
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A boy mourning on Sept 1 during funerals of Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes in Gaza. Since October 2023, Israel’s military action there has killed 63,000 people.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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THE HAGUE – The world’s leading genocide scholars’ association has passed a resolution saying that the legal criteria have been met to establish Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, its president said on Sept 1.
Eighty-six per cent of those who voted among the 500-member International Association of Genocide Scholars backed the resolution, which declares “Israel’s policies and actions in Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide in Article II of the United Nations Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948)”.
There was no immediate response from the Israeli foreign ministry.
The 1948 UN Genocide Convention, adopted in the wake of the mass murder of Jews by Nazi Germany, defines genocide as crimes committed “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such”.
It requires all countries to act to prevent and stop genocide.
Criminal acts comprising genocide include killing members of the group, causing them serious bodily or mental harm, creating conditions calculated to destroy them, preventing births, or forcibly transferring children to other groups.
Israel has in the past strongly denied that its actions in Gaza amount to genocide, and is fighting a case at the International Court of Justice in the Hague that accuses it of genocide.
Israel launched its assault on the Gaza Strip in October 2023, after fighters from Hamas, the Palestinian militant group in control of the territory, attacked Israeli communities, killing 1,200 people and capturing more than 250 hostages.
Since then, Israel's military action has killed 63,000 people, damaged or destroyed most buildings in the territory and forced nearly all its residents to flee their homes at least once.
A global hunger monitor relied on by the United Nations says parts of the territory are now suffering a man-made famine
In Gaza, Hamas welcomed the resolution. Mr Ismail Al-Thawabta, director of the Hamas-run Gaza government media office, said: “This prestigious scholarly stance reinforces the documented evidence and facts presented before international courts.”
The resolution “places a legal and moral obligation on the international community to take urgent action to stop the crime, protect civilians, and hold the leaders of the occupation accountable”, he said.
Since its founding in 1994, the genocide scholars’ association has passed nine resolutions recognising historic or ongoing episodes as genocides.
The three-page resolution adopted by the scholars calls on Israel to “immediately cease all acts that constitute genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity against Palestinians in Gaza, including deliberate attacks against and killing of civilians including children; starvation; deprivation of humanitarian aid, water, fuel, and other items essential to the survival of the population; sexual and reproductive violence; and forced displacement of the population”.
The resolution also states that the Hamas attack on Israel which precipitated the war constituted international crimes.
The association’s president, Dr Melanie O’Brien, a professor of international law at the University of Western Australia who specialises in genocide, told Reuters: “This is a definitive statement from experts in the field of genocide studies that what is going on on the ground in Gaza is genocide.”
Dr Sergey Vasiliev, a professor of international law at the Open University in the Netherlands who is not a member of the association, told Reuters the resolution showed that “this legal assessment has become mainstream within academia, particularly in the field of genocide studies”.
Several international rights groups and some Israeli non-governmental organisations have already accused Israel of committing genocide.
Last week, hundreds of UN staff at the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights wrote to ask Mr Volker Turk, who is the high commissioner, to explicitly describe the Gaza war as an unfolding genocide, according to a letter reviewed by Reuters. REUTERS
