A lot of back and forth have happened in the comments of various diaries here, alternately asserting or denying that Israel, as a state power, may be engaged in collective punishment, ethnic cleansing, or genocide. I had mentioned in a previous comment that such claims are falsifiable: either they are true and can be supported, or they are false and can be dismantled.
In this diary, I am going to list some of the information that, in my mind, provide firm support for the statement that Israel is—or is on its way to—committing genocide.
Raz Segal, described by Amy Goodman (host of Democracy Now!) as “an Israeli historian [and] associate professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Stockton University, where he’s also an endowed professor in the study of modern genocide,” stated unequivocally that what we’re seeing in Israel is a genocide.
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We have to understand that the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide from 1948 requires that we see special intent for genocide to happen, and to quote the Convention, ‘Intent to destroy a group, defined as racial, ethnic, religious, or national, as such‘ (that is, collectively, not just individuals).
And this intent, as we just heard, is on full display by Israeli politicians and army officers since 7th of October. We heard Israel’s president; it’s well known what Defense Minister Yoav Galant said on 9th of October, declaring a complete siege on Gaza, cutting off water, food, fuel, stating that ‘We’re fighting human animals and we will react accordingly.’ He also said that ‘We will eliminate everything.’ We know that Israeli Army spokesperson Daniel Hagari, for example, acknowledged wanton destruction and said explicitly, ‘The emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy.’ So we’re seeing the special intent on full display; and, really, I have to say, if this is not special intent to commit genocide, I really don’t know what is.
So when we look at the actions taken—the dropping of thousands and thousands of bombs in a matter of a couple of days, including phosphorus bombs, as we heard, on one of the most densely populated areas around the world—together with these proclamations of intent, this indeed constitutes genocidal killing, which is the first act, according to the Convention of Genocide.
Dovetailing with this description is a statement issued by the Center for Constitutional Rights, which detailed this short but devastating list:
[A]s of October 17, 2023, the Palestinian Ministry of Health had confirmed that 3,000 Palestinians had already been killed, including at least 1,030 children and hundreds of family units; in 11 days, more than 12,500 people had been injured, one million Palestinians displaced, and thousands of homes destroyed, with reports of 1,200 missing people believed to be trapped under the rubble. As set forth in the paper in both the detailed factual overview and the findings, there is clear evidence that Israel is attempting to commit, if not actively committing, genocide in the occupied Palestinian territory, and specifically against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip. The gravest of crimes under international law, genocide refers to specific actions — such as killing or deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of the group in whole or in part — taken with the intention of destroying, in whole or in part, the group targeted, including on ethnic or national grounds.
In the two weeks since that statement was released, the number of dead has more than doubled, while the number of children dead has trebled. This is an enormous death toll in an incredibly condensed amount of time.
(I would add that, despite what some Western leaders and their spokespersons may say about the trustworthiness of such tolls provided by the Palestinian Ministry of Health, we have records going back years that confirm that their numbers have borne out to be reliable. Indeed, the Ministry took the painstaking step to release the full list of confirmed dead to the media in the wake of President Biden’s widely publicized suggestion of doubt.)
Additionally, Segal said, Israel’s actions to restrict, limit or stop entirely fundamental items of basic survival also constituted further violations of the Convention of Genocide:
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And Israel, I must say, is perpetrating Act #2 and 3, that is, causing serious bodily or mental harm and creating conditions designed to bring about the destruction of the group by cutting off water, food, supply of energy, bombing hospitals, ordering the fast evictions of hospitals (which the World Health Organization has declared to be ‘a death sentence’).
So we’re seeing the combination of genocidal acts with special intent. This is indeed a textbook case of genocide.
Since that interview aired on October 16th, more declarations by Israeli officials indicate or, indeed, confirm their intent to inflict widespread damage and destruction upon Palestinians as such. For example, Dan Gillerman, Israel’s former ambassador to the United Nations, in an interview with Sky News called Palestinians—not Hamas, but Palestinians— “horrible inhuman animals who have done the worst atrocities that this century has seen, and the worst atrocities that Jews have suffered since the Holocaust.”
Of this use of language, Dina Khalidi of Palestinian Legal said,
[W]hat is happening now is a complete dehumanization of Palestinians that is coming from the mouths of Israeli officials, which by the way have been speaking in genocidal terms about Palestinians for 75+ years, and it’s being echoed by our own elected officials who are repeating to level Gaza and to wipe Palestinians off of the map. This is a genocide that is unfolding with US support, and more people are seeing that. And that’s what’s critical here.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself stated in a tweet just this week that the people of his nation should consider the Palestinians “the Amalek,” an ancient people who were enemies of the Biblical Israel.
Netanyahu’s exhortation referenced a passage from I Samuel 15:3, where the pertinent verse reads, as the divine word of God:
“Now go and smite Am'alek, and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.”
Truly, the verse instructs Israelites to annihilate everything. This must be kept in mind when examining Netanyahu’s speech. He said:
‘You must remember what Amalek has done to you,’ says our Holy Bible, and we do remember and we are fighting. Our brave troops and combatants who are now in Gaza or around Gaza and in all other regions in Israel are joining this chain of Jewish heroes, a chain that has started 3,000 years ago from Joshua Benon until the heroes of 1948, the Six Day War, the ‘73 October War and all other wars in this country. Our hero troops, they have one supreme main goal: to completely defeat the murderous enemy and to guarantee our existence in this country. We’ve always said, ‘Never again.’ ‘Never again’ is now.
My caveat here is that I am not Israeli and so am personally unfamiliar with the general cultural understanding there. However, Sam Seder’s read on the situation is that this is indeed a textual dog whistle, a reference that would be readily perceived in conversation, in my opinion is enough to move this into the column of statements that indicate intent to commit genocide. Netanyahu is not merely rallying the troops but mobilizing the entire nation at large to smite without mercy.
More concrete is a white paper (a “concept” paper) drawn up by Netanyahu’s government, a plan to forcibly remove all Palestinians and resettle them in Egyptian territory without a right to return. According to an article at ABC News,
The document proposes moving Gaza’s civilian population to tent cities in northern Sinai, then building permanent cities and an undefined humanitarian corridor. A security zone would be established inside Israel to block the displaced Palestinians from entering. The report did not say what would become of Gaza once its population is cleared out.
Jonathan Adler, writing for Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, elaborated,
[R]eports suggest that Palestinians would be permanently resettled outside of Gaza, in an act of ethnic cleansing. On October 17, the Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy—an Israeli think tank founded and led by former defense and security officials—published a paper urging the Israeli government to take advantage of the “unique and rare opportunity to evacuate the whole Gaza Strip,” and resettle Palestinians in Cairo with the assistance of the Egyptian government. Separately, a leaked document from the Israeli Intelligence Ministry recommended forcibly resettling 2.2 million Palestinians from Gaza in the Northern Sinai and constructing a buffer zone along the Israeli border to prevent their return.
This plan, if implemented, not only would be in contravention to international law but also would in itself constitute a form of destruction of a people as such, especially in combination with ground and air offensives unfolding simultaneously. The very existence of the document, which was put forth October 13th and not originally meant for public consumption, is hefty evidence in the column in favor of intent to commit genocide.
Why am I writing this diary? It’s because, even at this late date, there is time to stop this, to prevent the worst excesses. Dr. Ervin Staub, founding director of the Ph. D. concentration in Psychology of Peace and Violence at UMass Amherst, said of genocide:
Genocide, great violence against subgroups of society, doesn’t just suddenly burst out. There was a commission, a U.S. commission on the prevention of genocide, and they were talking about violence sometimes being volcanic. Like a volcano, it bursts out. But if you really study it, if you look at it, you see how it evolves, how certain things happen that changed people, that led to other things that changed people and finally ended in great violence.
So because this is the case, it is possible to take action to prevent it. It’s possible to predict with some likelihood, some significant likelihood, that this is evolving into great violence, and there’s a potential to take action.
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Judith Butler, renowned scholar of feminist studies at UC Berkeley and the Hannah Arendt Chair at the European Graduate School, recently gave a series of interviews with Democracy Now! Herself Jewish, she gave her view of the catastrophe unfolding in front of us:
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It seems to me that one can be opposed and should be opposed to the killing of civilians, and that’s a basic ethical precept of war. So it’s only logical to say that one objects to the killing of civilians on both sides. I think that what is problematic is how often many people who understand themselves as Zionists have said that the Hamas attacks justify the present response on the part of the Israeli military. But, as we see, the military powers are radically asymmetrical and this is not a conflict where, ‘Oh, both sides are at fault in some equal way.’
We have to understand the history of the violence that has been inflicted against Palestine, including Gaza, and I would include as part of that violence the deprivation of the people of drinking water, of health care, of basic foods and electricity. That, in other words, the very conditions of life itself have been attacked systematically.
... as I’ve said, I think what we’re seeing is the implementation of a genocidal plan, according to international legal definitions of genocide. As Jews, it is imperative, ethically, politically, to speak out against genocide, just as it is to speak out against the production of a new class of refugees or the intensification of refugee status for so many Palestinians who have in some cases been refugees since 1948 (their families have).
Butler summarizes, again bringing home the point of intent:
[W]e’ve seen this when Netanyahu calls them ‘animals,’ or others call them ‘barbaric’; or, let’s keep in mind, when they are understood to be just a strategic problem. ‘Oh, here’s this population that has to be managed. Maybe it can be deported.’
So, you know, when someone like—when someone from the Israeli government talks about relocating Palestinians to Sinai, making them into an Egyptian problem, investigating housing that’s available outside of Cairo, they are actually talking about deporting people as if they’re goods or chattel, as if they have the right to do so, as if they own these people or that these people are somehow movable goods.
This is already not just a radical dehumanization, but it makes possible the brutal treatment, the deportation and the killing, that is in play right now. And I think we’re not just seeing random acts of bombardment. We’re seeing a plan unfold and, unless it’s interrupted by the US and other major powers, it will be devastating.
Update: Several responses to this diary (I did not expect replies to be so voluminous) have questioned whether certain other incidents or battles in history would qualify as genocides, the implication being I suppose that if those didn’t, then how is it that Israel’s actions do. To that point, I would say that, aside from the fact that ‘genocide’ was not a recognized term until 1948, what is imperative at this point is to take the criteria we have and compare Israel’s actions to those criteria.
I don’t think we’re here to judge the relative destructiveness of various military campaigns of the past. Rather, I think this diary urges us to determine whether or not the conditions on the ground as they currently stand in Gaza as a result of Israel’s military campaign there meet the threshold of genocide as it is commonly and currently understood in international law.
Also, I saw some laments that I chose to state my position so absolutely by not, for example, putting the claim in the form of a question (“Is Israel, as a state power, committing genocide?”). To this I would respond that the mind at first interprets such interrogatives as positive statements anyway, only subsequently transforming them into question form. So the shape of the claim may have given more distance, but the thrust of it would have been exactly the same. (Indeed, some may have felt I would have been being “too cute by half,” a remark I’ve gotten recently, by posing the question.)
It may take me some time to respond to all of the replies here, but I am committed to doing so, at least to the best of my ability. I do ask for a bit of patience, however, as I want to respond in fullness and in depth. Ilan Pappé, Israeli historian, recently noted in an interview that “we cannot answer these challenges with sound bytes,” and questions posed here deserve due answers. Thanks for understanding.