law essays on genocide

18 U.S. Code § 1091 - Genocide

2009—Subsec. (a). Pub. L. 111–122, § 3(a)(1) , struck out “, in a circumstance described in subsection (d)” before “and with the specific” in introductory provisions and “or attempts to do so,” before “shall be punished” in concluding provisions.

Subsec. (c). Pub. L. 111–122, § 3(a)(2) , struck out “in a circumstance described in subsection (d)” before “directly”.

Subsecs. (d) to (f). Pub. L. 111–122, § 3(a)(3) , (4), added subsecs. (d) to (f) and struck out former subsecs. (d) and (e) which related to the required circumstance for offenses referred to in subsecs. (a) and (c) and nonapplicability of certain limitations, respectively.

2007—Subsec. (d). Pub. L. 110–151 added subsec. (d) and struck out former subsec. (d). Text of former subsec. (d) read as follows: “The circumstance referred to in subsections (a) and (c) is that—

“(1) the offense is committed within the United States; or

“(2) the alleged offender is a national of the United States (as defined in section 101 of the Immigration and Nationality Act ( 8 U.S.C. 1101 )).”

2002—Subsec. (b)(1). Pub. L. 107–273, § 4002(b)(7) , substituted “subsection (a)(1),” for “subsection (a)(1),,”.

Pub. L. 107–273, § 4002(a)(4) , made technical correction to directory language of Pub. L. 103–322 . See 1994 Amendment note below.

1994—Subsec. (b)(1). Pub. L. 103–322 , as amended by Pub. L. 107–273, § 4002(a)(4) , substituted “, where death results, by death or imprisonment for life and a fine of not more than $1,000,000, or both;” for “a fine of not more than $1,000,000 and imprisonment for life,”.

Pub. L. 107–273, div. B, title IV, § 4002(a)(4) , Nov. 2, 2002 , 116 Stat. 1806 , provided that the amendment made by section 4002(a)(4) is effective Sept. 13, 1994 .

Pub. L. 100–606, § 1 , Nov. 4, 1988 , 102 Stat. 3045 , provided that:

Center for Constitutional Rights

Search form, donate button, the genocide of the palestinian people: an international law and human rights perspective.

While there has been recent criticism of those taking the position that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians, there is a long history of human rights scholarship and legal analysis that supports the assertion. Prominent scholars of the international law crime of genocide and human rights authorities take the position that Israel’s policies toward the Palestinian people could constitute a form of genocide. Those policies range from the 1948 mass killing and displacement of Palestinians to a half-century of military occupation and, correspondingly, the discriminatory legal regime governing Palestinians, repeated military assaults on Gaza, and official Israeli statements expressly favoring the elimination of Palestinians. 

Genocide is a term that has both sociological and legal meaning. The term genocide was coined in 1944 by a Jewish Polish legal scholar, Raphael Lemkin. For Lemkin, “the term does not necessarily signify mass killings.” He explained: 

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. [1]

Since Lemkin’s first invocation of the term, it has gained political, social, and legal meaning. For political scientists, historians, and sociologists, genocide is “understood as a major type of collective violence, with a distinctive place in the spectrum of political violence, armed conflict, and war, of which it is usually seen as a part.” [2]

From a legal perspective, genocide, like the crime against humanity of persecution, is an international crime distinguished by the specific intent to discriminate against a group on recognized grounds through a series of acts or omissions often reflected in and achieved through State policies. While different in degree, both genocide and persecution “[reduce] a person to their identification with or membership in a group,” but also “[attack] the group itself.” [3]  Persecution criminalizes the denial of fundamental rights for members of the group, and genocide criminalizes the most extreme stage of discrimination: efforts to actually destroy the group.

According to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, [4] genocide includes various acts “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” as such, including:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; and

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group. [5]

This definition is reflected in Article 6 of the Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has jurisdiction over crimes occurring on the territory of the State of Palestine since June 13, 2014. [6]

The Genocide Convention was written in the aftermath of World War II and the horrors of the Holocaust, especially to deter and prevent such horrors in the future and, failing that, to punish those responsible. The Convention thus provided a legal framework that clearly identifies the essence of the crime of genocide, regardless of the political, social, or cultural permutations in which the crime may be attempted or carried out and regardless of the specific qualities, stage, or scale of the genocidal process. The Holocaust set the terms by which a form of general or pervasive violence against a group might be legitimately termed “genocide” as a general sociological concept as it need not “imply a comparison to any other specific case.” [7]

Scholars of genocide have distinguished it as a crime different from other forms of war, killing, violence, discrimination, and repression. “Genocidal action aims not just to contain, control, or subordinate a population, but to shatter and break up its social existence. Thus genocide is defined, not by a particular form of violence, but by general and pervasive violence.” [8] They note that settler colonial regimes are structurally prone to genocide, and may indulge in “genocidal moments” when they become frustrated by the resistance of a colonized or occupied people. [9]           

The term “genocide” has been used to describe the mass murder of Armenians by the Ottomans, Stalin’s expulsion of Chechens, Ingush Tartars, and Jews from the U.S.S.R., the removal of Jews and Hungarians from Romania, and Italy’s efforts to clear Slovenes and Croats from the Dalmatian coast. [10] There have been successful prosecutions of individuals for genocide arising out of efforts to destroy the Tutsi population in Rwanda in 1994 [11] and Srebrenica in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1995. [12]  

Numerous prominent human rights authorities, advocates, and scholars have claimed that Israel’s policies and actions with respect to the Palestinian people have amounted to a form of genocide. 

Expulsion and Killing of Palestinians in 1948

With respect to the creation of the Israeli state in 1948, there has been a robust scholarly debate about whether the settlement of Jews and the expulsion of Palestinians in Mandate Palestine could be described as genocide. Sociologist Martin Shaw, one of the most distinguished modern scholars of genocide, has written, “We can conclude that pre-war Zionism included the development of an incipiently genocidal mentality towards Arab society.” [13] “Israel entered without an overarching plan, so that its specific genocidal thrusts developed situationally and incrementally, through local as well as national decisions. On this account, this was a partly decentred, networked genocide, developing in interaction with the Palestinian and Arab enemy, in the context of war.” [14]  

In 2010, the Journal of Genocide Studies hosted a conversation between Martin Shaw and another prominent scholar of genocide, Omer Bartov, on whether the term “genocide” could be reasonably applied to the Israeli treatment of Palestinians, particularly the expulsion and killing of Arabs in 1948. [15] The two scholars took very different positions on the question, but the journal rejected complaints from some quarters that it was an illegitimate, or worse, a bigoted question to pose and debate at all. [16]

Francis Boyle, a professor of international law, testified in 2013 that “The Palestinians have been the victims of genocide as defined by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.” [17] He argued that:

For over the past six and one-half decades, the Israeli government and its predecessors in law – the Zionist agencies, forces, and terrorist gangs – have ruthlessly implemented a systematic and comprehensive military, political, religious, economic, and cultural campaign with the intent to destroy in substantial part the national, ethnical, racial, and different religious group (Jews versus Muslims and Christians) constituting the Palestinian people. [18]

  Long-Term Military Occupation of Palestinian People

When the international community ratified legal rules that would regulate the actions of occupying powers while also protecting the rights of occupied peoples and nations/states, it was understood that military occupation would be a short-lived necessity attendant to armed conflict, and that occupying forces would be withdrawn at the end of the conflict. [19] Israel’s prolonged belligerent occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza for 50 years far exceeds the kind of occupation that animated the creation of legal rules of occupation contained in international law. Given the seemingly permanent nature of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, some human rights experts, including Israeli historian Ilan Pappé, have warned of an “incremental genocide” of Palestinians and the ultimate destruction of Palestinians as a national group. [20] This “incremental genocide” through the policies and practices that have both sustained and served as the hallmarks of Israel’s occupation is accomplished, they argue, by a normalization of the Israeli annexation of Palestinian territory and the exile or absorption of the national group of people who identify as Palestinian. International law is clear that an occupying power may not annex the people or territory it occupies. [21]

The late human rights lawyer and Center for Constitutional Rights Board President Michael Ratner also charged Israel with committing “incremental genocide” against the Palestinian people: “There’s no doubt again here this is ‘incremental genocide,’ as Ilan Pappé says. It’s been going on for a long time, the killings, the incredibly awful conditions of life, the expulsions that have gone on from Lydda in 1947 and ‘48, when 700 or more villages in Palestine were destroyed, and in the expulsions that continued from that time until today. It’s correct and important to label it for what it is.” [22] He argued further, “I want to emphasize today [that] these killings are part of a broader set of inhuman acts by Israel constituting international crimes, carried out by Israel over many years, going back to at least 1947 and 1948. They include crimes that aren’t talked about that much in the media or the press, the crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, and apartheid. These crimes can be prosecuted in the International Criminal Court and are defined there.” [23]

The Russell Tribunal on Palestine, a nongovernmental “people’s body” made up of prominent international human rights experts and advocates, convened between November 2010 and September 2014 to investigate the question of human rights violations in the context of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza. [24] It took testimony and deliberated specifically on the question of whether Israel may have committed genocide in relation to the Palestinian people. The jury concluded that some Israeli citizens and leaders may have been guilty in several instances of the separate crime of incitement to genocide, which is specified in Article 3(c) of the Genocide Convention. “The cumulative effect of the long-standing regime of collective punishment in Gaza appears to inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about the incremental destruction of the Palestinians as a group in Gaza. The Tribunal emphasises the potential for a regime of persecution to become genocidal in effect.” [25]

Military Assaults on Gazan Population

With respect to Israel’s most recent military offensive, the so-called “Operation Protective Edge” launched against Gaza in the summer of 2014, prominent human rights authorities expressed concern that the campaign constituted a violation of international humanitarian law as contained in the Geneva Conventions:

• Amnesty International issued a statement proclaiming “an International Criminal Court (ICC) investigation is essential to break the culture of impunity which perpetuates the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The case for such action is made all the more compelling in the light of the ongoing serious violations of international humanitarian law being committed by all parties to the current hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel.” [26]
• The ICC has jurisdiction over genocide, and the U.N. Special Advisers on the Prevention of Genocide issued a statement two weeks into the 2014 offensive that they were “disturbed by the flagrant use of hate speech in the social media, particularly against the Palestinian population,” finding that “individuals have disseminated messages that could be dehumanising to the Palestinians and have called for the killing of members of this group,” while “remind[ing] all that incitement to commit atrocity crimes is prohibited under international law.” [27]
• Al-Haq, the oldest Palestinian Human Rights organization, found that serious violations of international law were committed in the course of the 2014 Israeli offensive against Gaza. [28] Al-Haq, along with other Palestinian human rights organizations the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, Al-Mezan, and Aldameer, submitted a legal file to the International Criminal Court urging it to open an investigation and prosecution into the crimes against humanity and war crimes committed during the course of Israel’s 2014 Gaza offensive. [29] The crimes suggested for prosecution by these human rights organizations include genocide.
• Dozens of Holocaust survivors, together 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 Israeli military offensive against Gaza, "Operation Protective Edge". [30]
• Others who have charged that Israel committed genocide during Operation Cast Lead include Bolivian President Evo Morales, who recalled that country's ambassador from Israel. He stated, “What is happening in Palestine is genocide.” [31]
• Author and activist Naomi Wolf wrote, “I mourn genocide in Gaza because I am the granddaughter of a family half wiped out in a holocaust and I know genocide when I see it.” [32]

Israeli Government Statements Targeting Palestinians

Finally, prominent Israeli politicians have publicly called for action against the Palestinian people that unequivocally meets the definition of genocide under the 1948 Convention. For instance, in February 2008, Matan Vilnai, Israel’s deputy defense minister, declared that increasing tensions between the Israelis and Palestinians in the Gaza Strip could bring on themselves what he called a shoah , or holocaust, “The more Qassam [rocket] fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they will bring upon themselves a bigger shoah because we will use all our might to defend ourselves.” [33]

Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked posted a statement on Facebook in June 2014 claiming that “the entire Palestinian people is the enemy” and called for the destruction of Palestine, “including its elderly and its women, its cities and its villages, its property and its infrastructure.” Her post also called for the killing of Palestinian mothers who give birth to “little snakes.” [34]

In August 2014, Moshe Feiglin, then-deputy speaker of the Israeli Knesset and member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud Party, called for the destruction of Palestinian life in Gaza and offered a detailed plan for shipping Palestinians living in Gaza across the world. Specifically, he envisioned a scenario where the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) would find areas on the Sinai border to establish “tent encampments...until relevant emigration destinations are determined.” He further suggested that the IDF would then “exterminate nests of resistance, in the event that any should remain.” [35] He subsequently wrote in an op-ed, “After the IDF completes the ‘softening’ of the targets with its fire-power, the IDF will conquer the entire Gaza, using all the means necessary to minimize any harm to our soldiers, with no other considerations.” [36] He continued, “Gaza is part of our Land and we will remain there forever. Liberation of parts of our land forever is the only thing that justifies endangering our soldiers in battle to capture land. Subsequent to the elimination of terror from Gaza, it will become part of sovereign Israel and will be populated by Jews. This will also serve to ease the housing crisis in Israel. The coastal train line will be extended, as soon as possible, to reach the entire length of Gaza.”

            Prominent human rights advocates and scholars have argued that the killings of Palestinians and their forceful expulsion from mandate Palestine in 1948, the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza, and the violence and discrimination directed at Palestinians by the Israeli government have violated a number of human rights protections contained in international human rights law, genocide being among them.   

Download a PDF of this document here.

[1] Raphael Lemkin, Genocide – A Modern Crime , 4 Free World 39 (1945), available at: http://www.preventgenocide.org/lemkin/freeworld1945.htm (emphasis added).

[2] Martin Shaw, Genocide , Oxford Bibliography, September 30, 2013, available at: http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199756384/obo-9780199756384-0029.xml.

[3] Helen Brady and Ryan Liss. Historical Origins of International Law Vol. 3, “The Evolution of Persecution as a Crime Against Humanity,”FICHL Publication Series No. 22 (2015) p. 554, available at https://www.fichl.org/fileadmin/fichl/FICHL_PS_22_web.pdf. Notably, “some scholars suggest[ ] that any distinction [between genocide and persecution] has effectively disappeared,” with the two crimes “offer[ing] two different but related visions of the same harm: in short, a crime against the individual as a member of a group (persecution) or a crime against the group itself (genocide).” Id . at 491.

[4] Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on December 9, 1948 as General Assembly Resolution 260, and entered into force on 12 January 1951, available at: https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%2078/volume-78-I-1021-English.pdf .  The Genocide Convention has 147 signatories, including the United States, Israel and Palestine.

[5] Genocide Convention, Article II.

[6] Declaration Accepting the Jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, Mahmoud Abbas, President of the State of Palestine, Dec. 31, 2014, available at http://www.icc-cpi.int/iccdocs/PIDS/press/Palestine_A_12-3.pdf . On January 6, 2015, the United Nations Secretary General, acting in his capacity as depository for the Rome Statute, accepted Palestine’s accession to the Rome Statute. United Nations, Depository Notification, Ref: C.N.13.2015.TREATIES-XVIII.10, 6 Jan. 2015, available at https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/CN/2015/CN.13.2015-Eng.pdf . On January 16, 2015, the Prosecutor of the ICC, Mrs. Fatou Bensouda, opened a preliminary examination into the situation of Palestine.

[7] Martin Shaw in Martin Shaw & Omer Bartov, The Question Of Genocide In Palestine, 1948: An Exchange Between Martin Shaw And Omer Bartov , 12 Journal of Genocide Research 243, 244 (2010).

[8] Martin Shaw, Palestine In An International Historical Perspective On Genocide , 9 Holy Land Studies 1, 5 (2010).

[9] A. Dirk Moses, An Antipodean Genocide? The Origins Of The Genocidal Moment In The Colonization Of Australia , 2 J. of Genocide Research 89, 90 (2010).

[10] Martin Shaw, Palestine In An International Historical Perspective On Genocide , 9 Holy Land Studies 1, 9 (2010).

[11] See, e.g., Prosecutor v. Jean-Paul Akayesu , ICTR, http://www.icty.org/x/cases/karadzic/tjug/en/160324_judgement.pdf .

[12] See, e.g., Prosecutor v. Radovan Karadžić, ICTY, http://www.icty.org/x/cases/karadzic/tjug/en/160324_judgement.pdf .

[13] Martin Shaw, Palestine In An International Historical Perspective On Genocide , 9 Holy Land Studies 1, 13 (2010), noting the comments of the President of the Zionist Organization Chaim Weizmann’s comment in 1941 “if half a million Arabs could be transferred, two million Jews could be put in their place.”

[14] Id . at 19.

[15] Martin Shaw in Martin Shaw & Omer Bartov, The Question Of Genocide In Palestine, 1948: An Exchange Between Martin Shaw And Omer Bartov , 12 Journal of Genocide Research 243, 244 (2010).

[16] See Gal Beckerman, Top Genocide Scholars Battle Over How To Characterize Israel’s Actions , Forward, February 16, 2011, available at: http://forward.com/news/135484/top-genocide-scholars-battle-over-how-to-character/ .

[17] Professor Francis A. Boyle, The Palestinian Genocide by Israel Before

The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal , August 21-24, 2013, available at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2339254.

[18] Id . at 3.

[19] See Geneva Convention III: Articles 1-4 ; Geneva Convention IV 1907: Section Three – Occupied Territories – Articles 47-56 ; Geneva Convention IV 1949: Section Three – Occupied Territories – Articles 47-78 ; Additional Protocols I and II .

[20] Ilan Pappé, A Brief History of Israel’s Incremental Genocide , in ON PALESTINE (Noam Chompsky and Ilan Pappé ed.; Haymarket 2015) pp. 147-154.  See also, Steve Lendman, Israel’s Slow-Motion Genocide in Occupied Palestine , in THE PLIGHT OF THE PALESTINIANS (William A. Cook ed., Palgrave 2010).

[21]   Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter states that “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”  See also: Convention (IV) relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War. Geneva, 12 August 1949 Section III, Art. 47, “Protected persons who are in occupied territory shall not be deprived, in any case or in any manner whatsoever, of the benefits of the present Convention by any change introduced, as the result of the occupation of a territory, into the institutions or government of the said territory, nor by any agreement concluded between the authorities of the occupied territories and the Occupying Power, nor by any annexation by the latter of the whole or part of the occupied territory.”

[22] Michael Ratner, UN's Investigation of Israel Should Go Beyond War Crimes to Genocide , The Real News, July 27, 2013, available at: http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=12155 .

[23] Id .  See also Saree Makdisi, Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation (Norton 2010) for the notion of a “slow motion” extension and consolidation of the genocidal aspects of 1948.

[24] Russell Tribunal On Palestine, “About,” http://www.russelltribunalonpalestine.com/en/about-rtop.

[25] http://www.russfound.org/RToP/RToP.htm.

[26] Israel and Occupied Palestinian Territories: The International Criminal Court must investigate war crimes, August 1, 2014 http://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/MDE15/019/2014/en/.

[27] UN, Department of Public Information, Statement by the Special Advisers of the Secretary-General on the Prevention of Genocide, Mr. Adama Dieng, and on the Responsibility to Protect, Ms. Jennifer Welsh, on the Situation in Israel and in the Palestinian Occupied Territory of Gaza Strip, July 24, 2014, available at

www.un.org/en/preventgenocide/adviser/pdf/24.07.2014%20Special%20Advisers'%20Statement%20on%20the%20situation%20in%20Israel%20and%20the%20occupied%20Gaza%20strip.pdf .

[28] See , Divide and Conquer: A Legal Analysis of Israel’s 2014 Military Offensive Against the Gaza Strip, 2015, available at: http://www.alhaq.org/publications/publications-index/item/divide-and-conquer .

[29] Palestinian Human Rights Organisations Deliver Submission to the International Criminal Court on Alleged Israeli War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity during 2014 Gaza offensive, Nov. 23, 2015, available at: http://www.alhaq.org/advocacy/targets/international-criminal-court-icc/998-palestinian-human-rights-organisations-deliver-submission-to-the-international-criminal-court-on-alleged-israeli-war-crimes-and-crimes-against-humanity-during-2014-gaza-offensive.

[30] Zachary Davies Boren, Holocaust survivors and their descendants accuse Israel of ‘genocide’ , The Independent, August 24, 2014, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/holocaust-survivors-and-their-descendants-accuse-israel-of-genocide-9687994.html .

[31] Bolivian president: Israel air strikes on Gaza is 'genocide' , July 16, 2014, http://www.itv.com/news/update/2014-07-16/bolivian-president-israel-air-strikes-of-gaza-is-genocide .

[32] Naomi Wolf walked out of synagogue when they had nothing to say about Gaza massacre , July 22, 2014, http://mondoweiss.net/2014/07/synagogue-nothing-massacre.html .

[33] Israeli minister warns of Palestinian 'holocaust' , The Guardian, February 29, 2008, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/feb/29/israelandthepalestinians1.

[34] Text of Shaked’s Facebook post (in Hebrew), since deleted, is available here: https://electronicintifada.net/sites/default/files/styles/original_800w/public/2014-07/ayelet-shaked-facebook-post-30-june-2014-genocide.jpg?itok=k5yvVqQp&timestamp=1448949295 .

[35] Jill Reilly, Israeli official calls for concentration camps in Gaza and 'the conquest of the entire Gaza Strip, and annihilation of all fighting forces and their supporters' , Daily Mail, August 4, 2014, available at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2715466/Israeli-official-calls-concentration-camps-Gaza-conquest-entire-Gaza-Strip-annihilation-fighting-forces-supporters.html .

[36] Moshe Feiglin, My Outline for a Solution in Gaza , Arutz Sheve, August 15, 2014, available here: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/15326#.VCLljPldXTo.

Attachments  

Last modified  

The bigger picture, spread the word, support ccr.

Join us on the front lines for social justice!

A girl carrying a bird cage reacts as people flee following an Israeli strike in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on November 23, 2023.

The Nation Publishes Gaza Genocide Article Killed by Harvard Law Review

"palestine brings to legal analysis an unmasking force: it unveils and reminds us of the ongoing colonial condition that underpins western legal institutions," argues rabea eghbariah..

The Nation this week published a piece about Israel's genocidal war on the Gaza Strip that the Harvard Law Review commissioned from a Palestinian scholar but then refused to run after several days of internal debate, a nearly six-hour meeting, and a board vote.

The essay—"The Ongoing Nakba: Towards a Legal Framework for Palestine ," by Rabea Eghbariah, a human rights attorney and doctoral candidate at Harvard Law School—begins: "Genocide is a crime. It is a legal framework. It is unfolding in Gaza. And yet, the inertia of legal academia, especially in the United States, has been chilling."

The controversy over Eghbariah's own piece helps prove his point. In an email to Eghbariah and Harvard Law Review president Apsara Iyer, online chair Tascha Shahriari-Parsa, one of the editors who commissioned the blog article, called the bid to kill it an "unprecedented decision" by the academic journal's leadership.

The Intercept reported on that email and others from those involved:

"As online chairs, we have always had full discretion to solicit pieces for publication," Shahriari-Parsa wrote, informing Eghbariah that his piece would not be published despite following the agreed-upon procedure for blog essays. Shahriari-Parsa wrote that concerns had arisen about staffers being offended or harassed, but "a deliberate decision to censor your voice out of fear of backlash would be contrary to the values of academic freedom and uplifting marginalized voices in legal academia that our institution stands for." Both Shahriari-Parsa and the other top online editor, Sabrina Ochoa, told The Intercept that they had never seen a piece face this level of scrutiny at the Law Review . Shahriari-Parsa could find no previous examples of other pieces pulled from publication after going through the standard editorial process.

In a statement, the Harvard Law Review said that it "has rigorous editorial processes governing how it solicits, evaluates, and determines when and whether to publish a piece. An intrinsic feature of these internal processes is the confidentiality of our 104 editors' perspectives and deliberations. Last week, the full body met and deliberated over whether to publish a particular blog piece that had been solicited by two editors. A substantial majority voted not to proceed with publication."

According to The Nation , 63% of editors who participated in the anonymous vote opposed publication.

"At a time when the Law Review was facing a public intimidation and harassment campaign, the journal's leadership intervened to stop publication," 25 editors said in a statement shared with The Nation and The Intercept . "The body of editors—none of whom are Palestinian—voted to sustain that decision."

"We are unaware of any other solicited piece that has been revoked by the Law Review in this way," they added. "This unprecedented decision threatens academic freedom and perpetuates the suppression of Palestinian voices. We dissent."

Eghbariah wrote in an email to an editor: "This is discrimination. Let's not dance around it—this is also outright censorship. It is dangerous and alarming."

It is also part of a broader trend identified by more than 1,700 lawyers and law students. In a letter to the American Bar Association last week, they noted "increasing instances of discrimination and censorship faced by Palestinian, Muslim, Arab, South Asian, Black, Indigenous, immigrant, and other communities within law schools, universities, law firms, and other corporate entities, particularly due to their expression of support for the Palestinian people."

Since Israel declared war in response to a Hamas-led attack on October 7, genocide experts around the world have used the term to describe Israeli airstrikes and raids that have killed more than 14,500 Palestinians in Gaza—among them over 6,000 children—and destroyed infrastructure including residential, educational, medical, and religious buildings.

"Some may claim that the invocation of genocide, especially in Gaza, is fraught . But does one have to wait for a genocide to be successfully completed to name it? This logic contributes to the politics of denial ," Eghbariah wrote in his essay.

After pointing to both statements from Israeli politicians and the forming consensus among genocide scholars, he stressed that "genocide is the material reality of Palestinians in Gaza: an entrapped, displaced , starved , water-deprived population of 2.3 million facing massive bombardments and a carnage in one of the most densely populated areas in the world."

"And yet, leading law schools and legal scholars in the United States still fashion their silence as impartiality and their denial as nuance. Is genocide really the crime of all crimes if it is committed by Western allies against non-Western people?" he added. "This is the most important question that Palestine continues to pose to the international legal order. Palestine brings to legal analysis an unmasking force: It unveils and reminds us of the ongoing colonial condition that underpins Western legal institutions."

Eghbariah also explained the term Nakba, or "catastrophe," which is used to describe the ethnic cleansing of over 750,000 Palestinians during the creation of the modern state of Israel in the 1940s—and argued that "the Nakba is ongoing."

"The Nakba is both the material reality and the epistemic framework to understand the crimes committed against the Palestinian people," he wrote. "And these crimes—encapsulated in the framework of Nakba—are the result of the political ideology of Zionism, an ideology that originated in late 19th-century Europe in response to the notions of nationalism, colonialism, and antisemitism."

"We must imagine that one day there will be a recognized crime of committing a Nakba, and a disapprobation of Zionism as an ideology based on racial elimination . The road to get there remains long and challenging, but we do not have the privilege to relinquish any legal tools available to name the crimes against the Palestinian people in the present and attempt to stop them," he concluded. "The denial of the genocide in Gaza is rooted in the denial of the Nakba. And both must end, now."

Join Us: News for people demanding a better world

• 1,500+ Israelis Urge ICC Action on 'War Crimes and Genocide' in Gaza ›
• UN Experts Warn of 'Grave Risk of Genocide' in Gaza ›
• Netanyahu Accused of 'Genocidal Intentions' in Gaza After 'Holy Mission' Speech ›
• 800+ Legal Scholars Say Israel May Be Perpetrating 'Crime of Genocide' in Gaza ›
• 'We Are Too Humane. Burn Gaza Now,' Says Senior Israeli Lawmaker ›
• Opinion | Israel’s War on Gaza Has Become a ‘Stress Test’ for Academic Freedom | Common Dreams ›
• Ex-Harvard Hillel Leader: 'Stop Weaponizing Antisemitism' ›
• Opinion | Academia’s Compradors of Genocide | Common Dreams ›

[Counterpoint] The Yazidi Genocide: A Conversation About The Role Of NGOs And The International Community

Content Warning: This episode discusses sexual violence and genocide.

This episode explores how non-governmental and other international organizations work to achieve justice and redress for survivors of international war crimes. We speak with Natia Navrouzov, who shares expertise on the role of NGOs, and the international community, more generally, in obtaining redress for Yazidi survivors of genocide.

Thank you to our sponsors

A Textbook Case of Genocide

Israel has been explicit about what it’s carrying out in gaza. why isn’t the world listening.

Palestinians look for survivors after an Israeli air strike in Rafah refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip on October 12th, 2023.

On Friday, Israel ordered the besieged population in the northern half of the Gaza Strip to evacuate to the south, warning that it would soon intensify its attack on the Strip’s upper half. The order has left more than a million people, half of whom are children, frantically attempting to flee amid continuing airstrikes, in a walled enclave where no destination is safe. As Palestinian journalist Ruwaida Kamal Amer wrote today from Gaza, “refugees from the north are already arriving in Khan Younis, where the missiles never stop and we’re running out of food, water, and power.” The UN has warned that the flight of people from the northern part of Gaza to the south will create “devastating humanitarian consequences” and will “transform what is already a tragedy into a calamitous situation.” Over the past week, Israel’s violence against Gaza has killed more than 1,800 Palestinians, injured thousands, and displaced more than 400,000 within the strip. And yet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised today that what we have seen is “only the beginning.”

Israel’s campaign to displace Gazans—and potentially expel them altogether into Egypt—is yet another chapter in the Nakba, in which an estimated 750,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes during the 1948 war that led to the creation of the State of Israel. But the assault on Gaza can also be understood in other terms: as a textbook case of genocide unfolding in front of our eyes. I say this as a scholar of genocide, who has spent many years writing about Israeli mass violence against Palestinians. I have written about settler colonialism and Jewish supremacy in Israel , the distortion of the Holocaust to boost the Israeli arms industry , the weaponization of antisemitism accusations to justify Israeli violence against Palestinians, and the racist regime of Israeli apartheid . Now, following Hamas’s attack on Saturday and the mass murder of more than 1,000 Israeli civilians, the worst of the worst is happening.

Under international law, the crime of genocide is defined by “the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such,” as noted in the December 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. In its murderous attack on Gaza, Israel has loudly proclaimed this intent. Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant declared it in no uncertain terms on October 9th: “We are imposing a complete siege on Gaza. No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals, and we will act accordingly.” Leaders in the West reinforced this racist rhetoric by describing Hamas’s mass murder of Israeli civilians—a war crime under international law that rightly provoked horror and shock in Israel and around the world—as “ an act of sheer evil ,” in the words of US President Joe Biden, or as a move that reflected an “ ancient evil ,” in the terminology of President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen. This dehumanizing language is clearly calculated to justify the wide scale destruction of Palestinian lives; the assertion of “evil,” in its absolutism, elides distinctions between Hamas militants and Gazan civilians, and occludes the broader context of colonization and occupation.

The UN Genocide Convention lists five acts that fall under its definition. Israel is currently perpetrating three of these in Gaza: “1. Killing members of the group. 2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group. 3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.” The Israeli Air Force, by its own account , has so far dropped more than 6,000 bombs on Gaza, which is one of the most densely populated areas in the world—almost as many bombs as the US dropped on all of Afghanistan during record-breaking years of its war there. Human Rights Watch has confirmed that the weapons used included phosphorous bombs , which set fire to bodies and buildings, creating flames that aren’t extinguished on contact with water. This demonstrates clearly what Gallant means by “act accordingly”: not targeting individual Hamas militants, as Israel claims, but unleashing deadly violence against Palestinians in Gaza “as such,” in the language of the UN Genocide Convention. Israel has also intensified its 16-year siege of Gaza—the longest in modern history, in clear violation of international humanitarian law —to a “complete siege,” in Gallant’s words. This turn of phrase that explicitly indexes a plan to bring the siege to its final destination of systematic destruction of Palestinians and Palestinian society in Gaza, by killing them, starving them, cutting off their water supplies, and bombing their hospitals .

It’s not only Israel’s leaders who are using such language. An interviewee on the pro-Netanyahu Channel 14 called for Israel to “turn Gaza to Dresden.” Channel 12, Israel’s most-watched news station, published a report about left-leaning Israelis calling to “dance on what used to be Gaza.” Meanwhile, genocidal verbs—calls to “ erase ” and “ flatten ” Gaza—have become omnipresent on Israeli social media . In Tel Aviv, a banner reading “ Zero Gazans ” was seen hanging from a bridge.

Indeed, Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza is quite explicit, open, and unashamed. Perpetrators of genocide usually do not express their intentions so clearly, though there are exceptions. In the early 20th century, for example, German colonial occupiers perpetrated a genocide in response to an uprising by the Indigenous Herero and Nama populations in southwest Africa. In 1904, General Lothar von Trotha, the German military commander, issued an “extermination order,” justified by the rationale of a “race war.” By 1908, the German authorities had murdered 10,000 Nama, and had achieved their stated goal of “destroying the Herero,” killing 65,000 Herero, 80% of the population. Gallant’s orders on October 9th were no less explicit. Israel’s goal is to destroy the Palestinians of Gaza. And those of us watching around the world are derelict in our responsibility to prevent them from doing so.

Correction: An earlier version of this piece said that Israel dropped more bombs on Gaza this week than the US dropped on Afghanistan in any single year of its war there. In fact, the US dropped more than 7,000 bombs on Afghanistan in both 2018 and 2019; at the time of publication, Israel had dropped an estimated 6,000 bombs on Gaza in less than a week.

Raz Segal is an associate professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Stockton University and the endowed professor in the study of modern genocide.

Also in “Analysis”

Editor’s picks.

A Rebellion Against Law and Civilization: Genocide and Its Accomplices

Civilization is a process that progressively codifies the rules and regulations necessary for living together in peace, the process that continually engenders associations and commissions, mechanisms for monitoring and implementation of the norms.

The United Nations Charter is the best rules-based order we have, a kind of world constitution that all peoples should recognize and all States should enforce. Civilization means the rule of law, due process, transparency, accountability, justice, reparation, reconciliation, and international solidarity.  The survival of mankind depends on good faith implementation of treaties and agreements, on pro-active cooperation, based on a conviction that we all share the same human dignity, the same needs and aspirations, and that we must somehow coexist on this one planet Earth.  With goodwill conflicts can be prevented and grievances can be addressed in a timely fashion and resolved.

The UN Charter and civilization itself are under mortal attack by what I would call an open rebellion against international law and morals.  Provocations, aggressions, escalations, wars culminating in crimes against humanity and genocide as defined in the 1948 Genocide Convention [1] are destroying the fabric of the domestic and international legal order that humanity has woven and interwoven over the centuries.

The deliberate murder of tens of thousands of innocent civilians by Israel in Gaza, the brazen disregard of Security Council and General Assembly Resolutions as well as orders and advisory opinions of the International Court of Justice manifest the general breakdown of international morals.

This revolt against law and justice is further evidenced by the complicity of a number of powerful Western States engaged in aiding and abetting the genocide in Gaza, not only by delivering lethal weapons and ammunition, but also by providing political, economic, diplomatic, academic support to the perpetrators. Among the aiders and abetters of the crimes, are the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom.  Their responsibility is heightened by their endorsement of Israel’s actions in the media and before the United Nations, blocking effective action by the Security Council, and attempting to negate or banalize the genocide.

Some prominent politicians in the US, Germany and UK have engaged in “incitement” to hatred [2] against the Palestinian people, entailing further violations of the 1948 Genocide Convention. This reckless incitement has been echoed and endorsed by many newspapers and media outlets that have thereby become complicit in genocide by contributing to the “culture of hatred” that renders genocide and crimes against humanity possible.

Complicity in the murder of an individual is a grave criminal offense.  The legislation of all civilized countries codify the crime and provide for investigation and prosecution. Facilitating the commission of mass murder, however, is not always perceived the same way.  The enablers of crimes against humanity and genocide, the military-industrial complex, the members of the boards of directors of corporations like Lockheed/Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics and other war-profiteers that earn billions from armed conflict [3] , are not always perceived as felons. Their actions are seen as a form of doing “business” and, if at all, perceived as “white-collar crimes”.

Article III e of the 1948 Genocide Convention lists “complicity” as one of the prohibited crimes, precisely because complicity frustrates prevention and facilitates the execution of the crime. [4] Professor William Schabas elaborates:

“Article III lists four additional categories of the crime of genocide in addition to perpetration as such. One of these, complicity, is virtually implied in the concept of perpetration and derives from general principles of criminal law. The other three are incomplete or inchoate offences, in effect preliminary acts committed even where genocide itself does not take place. They enhance the preventive dimension of the Convention. The most controversial, ‘direct and public incitement’, is restricted by two adjectives so as to limit conflicts with the protection of freedom of expression.” [5]

Complicity may entail military, political, diplomatic, economic, propagandistic, academic support, including the misuse of the veto power in the UN Security Council, e.g. when the veto [6] frustrates the adoption of resolutions aimed e.g. at imposing an arms embargo or enforcing a cease fire [7] .  The frequent use of the veto by the United States to shield Israel from criticism and sanctions by the United Nations constitutes a flagrant abuse of the veto power, and in this case has facilitated the continuation of the on-going genocide in Gaza. Abusing the veto power three times aggravates the crime of complicity and further raises the issue of “conspiracy to commit genocide” pursuant to article III b of the Convention.

The International Court of Justice can make rulings against States concerning State responsibility for genocide and complicity in genocide, as well as fix the level of reparation owed to the victims and their survivors.  The International Law Commission’s Draft Code on Responsibility of State stipulates in its article 16:

“A State which aids or assists another State in the commission of an internationally wrongful act by the latter is internationally responsible for doing so if: (a) that State does so with knowledge of the circumstances of the internationally wrongful act; and (b) the act would be internationally wrongful if committed by that State.” [8]

Whereas the ICJ exercises jurisdiction over States, the International Criminal Court, (as its predecessors, the ad hoc Tribunals established by Security Council Resolution – the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR)), has jurisdiction over individuals.  Moreover, not only governments and government officials, but also officials of intergovernmental organizations like the European Union [9] , and private persons can be guilty of genocide, complicity or conspiracy to commit genocide.  The ICTY and ICTR have relevant jurisprudence on the subject. [10]

Article 25 para. 3 of the Rome Statute (Individual criminal responsibility) provides for the criminal responsibility for complicity of those ‘aiding and abetting or otherwise assisting’ the commission of crimes covered by the jurisdiction of the Court, in the following terms: In accordance with this Statute, a person shall be criminally responsible and liable for punishment for a crime within the jurisdiction of the Court if that person:… (c) … aids, abets or otherwise assists in its commission or its attempted commission, including providing the means for its commission.

According to well-established precedent, numerous US, UK, and EU politicians and diplomats could be indicted by the International Criminal Court, since article 27 of the Statute of Rome discards the concept of functional immunities, stipulating:

1. This Statute shall apply equally to all persons without any distinction based on official capacity. In particular, official capacity as a Head of State or Government, a member of a Government or parliament, an elected representative or a government official shall in no case exempt a person from criminal responsibility under this Statute, nor shall it, in and of itself, constitute a ground for reduction of sentence. 2. Immunities or special procedural rules which may attach to the official capacity of a person, whether under national or international law, shall not bar the Court from exercising its jurisdiction over such a person. [11]

Such immunities had already been discarded by the International Military Tribunal for Nuremberg, and in Article 7(1) of the Statute of the ICTY and article 6(1) of the stature of the ICTR.

Certainly the sale of lethal weapons to a country that is committing genocide constitutes complicity in genocide, and a violation of article 6(3) of the 2014 Arms Trade Treaty, which stipulates:

“A State Party shall not authorize any transfer of conventional arms covered under Article 2 (1) or of items covered under Article 3 or Article 4, if it has knowledge at the time of authorization that the arms or items would be used in the commission of genocide, crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, attacks directed against civilian objects or civilians protected as such, or other war crimes as defined by international agreements to which it is a Party.” [12]

The sale of chemical agents which could be used in armed conflict would also entail a violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention [13] .  There are reports of Israel using chemical weapons [14] against the civilian population of Gaza, and not all of these weapons were produced in Israel.  Accordingly, corporate board members and other persons engaged in the arms trade could be indicted by the International Criminal Court for violations of articles 6, 7 and 8 of the Statute of Rome.

In this context it is worth noting the Resolution adopted by the Human Rights Council calling for an arms embargo against Israel. [15]   On 5 April 2024 the Human Rights Council “demanded that Israel, the occupying power, end its occupation of the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem. The Council also demanded that Israel immediately lift its blockade on the Gaza Strip and all other forms of collective punishment, and called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. The Council called upon all States to take immediate action to prevent the continued forcible transfer of Palestinians within or from Gaza. It called upon all States to cease the sale, transfer and diversion of arms, munitions and other military equipment to Israel and requested the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel to report on both the direct and indirect transfer or sale of arms, munitions, parts, components and dual use items to Israel, the occupying power, and to present its report to the Council at its fifty-ninth session.” [16]

Who is complicit in the on-going genocide in Gaza?  Surely the United States, Germany, Canada, United Kingdom, France and all countries that have delivered the weapons used in perpetrating the genocide.

On 1 March 2024 Nicaragua instituted proceedings against Germany [17] before the International Court of Justice charging Germany with complicity in the genocide of the Gaza populations. Oral hearings were held at the Peace Palace on 8 and 9 April 2024. [18]   In its order of 30 April 2024, the ICJ did not issue the provisional measures of protection requested, but also rejected Germany’s request that the case be struck from the list.  The Court ruled:

20. Based on the factual information and legal arguments presented by the Parties, the Court concludes that, at present, the circumstances are not such as to require the exercise of its power under Article 41 of the Statute to indicate provisional measures. 21. As to Germany’s request that the case be removed from the List …, the Court notes that, as it has held in the past, where there is a manifest lack of jurisdiction, it can remove the case from the List at the provisional measures stage ( Legality of Use of Force (Yugoslavia v. Spain), Provisional Measures, Order of 2 June 1999, I.C.J. Reports 1999 (II), p. 773, para. 35; Legality of Use of Force (Yugoslavia v. United States of America), Provisional Measures, Order of 2 June 1999, I.C.J. Reports 1999 (II), p. 925, para. 29; Immunities and Criminal Proceedings (Equatorial Guinea v. France), Provisional Measures, Order of 7 December 2016, I.C.J. Reports 2016 (II), p. 1165, para. 70). Conversely, where there is no such manifest lack of jurisdiction, the Court cannot remove the case at that stage ( Armed Activities on the Territory of the Congo (New Application: 2002 ) (Democratic Republic of the Congo v. Rwanda), Provisional Measures, Order of 10 July 2002, I.C.J. Reports 2002, p. 249, para. 91; Immunities and Criminal Proceedings (Equatorial Guinea v. France), Provisional Measures, Order of 7 December 2016, I.C.J. Reports 2016 (II), p. 1165, para. 70) . In the present case, there being no manifest lack of jurisdiction, the Court cannot accede to Germany’s request. 22. The Court recalls that, in its Order of 26 January 2024, it noted that the military operation conducted by Israel following the attack of 7 October 2023 had resulted in “a large number of deaths and injuries, as well as the massive destruction of homes, the forcible displacement of the vast majority of the population, and extensive damage to civilian infrastructure” (Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip (South Africa v. Israel), Provisional Measures, Order of 26 January 2024, para. 46). In addition, the Court remains deeply concerned about the catastrophic living conditions of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, in particular in view of the prolonged and widespread deprivation of food and other basic necessities to which they have been subjected, as acknowledged by the Court in its Order of 28 March 2024 (Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip (South Africa v. Israel), Provisional Measures, Order of 28 March 2024, para. 18). 23. The Court recalls that, pursuant to common Article 1 of the Geneva Conventions, all States parties are under an obligation “to respect and to ensure respect” for the Conventions “in all circumstances”. It follows from that provision that every State party to these Conventions, “whether or not it is a party to a specific conflict, is under an obligation to ensure that the requirements of the instruments in question are complied with” [19] . Such an obligation “does not derive only from the Conventions themselves, but from the general principles of humanitarian law to which the Conventions merely give specific expression” [20] . With regard to the Genocide Convention, the Court has had the opportunity to observe that the obligation to prevent the commission of the crime of genocide, pursuant to Article I, requires States parties that are aware, or that should normally have been aware, of the serious risk that acts of genocide would have been committed, to employ all means reasonably available to them to prevent genocide so far as possible [21] . Further, States parties are bound by the Genocide Convention not to commit any other acts enumerated in Article III [22] . 24. Moreover, the Court considers it particularly important to remind all States of their international obligations relating to the transfer of arms to parties to an armed conflict, in order to avoid the risk that such arms might be used to violate the above-mentioned Conventions. All these obligations are incumbent upon Germany as a State party to the said Conventions in its supply of arms to Israel.”

Personally, I think that the arguments presented to the Court by Professor Alain Pellet and Dr. Daniel Müller on behalf of Nicaragua were compelling, and more than sufficient to justify granting the provisional measures requested, a fortiori because of the paramount obligation to prevent the continuation of the genocide.  Personally, I view the decision of the Court as political, not juridical.

For now we need an immediate ceasefire and honest peace negotiations that will aim at reconstruction and rehabilitation with the help of the United Nations and all of its agencies, including UNRWA.

There can be a future in peace for both the Israelis and the Palestinians, but we must work at it, and reject the fulsome apologetics for the crimes of the Israeli government, the attempts by Western politicians and the Western media to camouflage genocide as “self-defence”, the Orwellian destruction of language that we encounter in our waning brave new world.

[1] https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/convention-prevention-and-punishment-crime-genocide

[2] https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2024/05/12/lindsey_graham_it_was_ok_for_america_to_nuke_hiroshima_so_israel_can_do_whatever_you_have_to_do.html

https://www.thedailybeast.com/sen-lindsey-graham-suggests-nuking-gaza-calls-hiroshima-the-right-decision

https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/politics/100000009173179/haley-hamas-israel.html

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/12/david-cameron-bbc-hamas-terrorist-group-hostage

[3] https://www.statista.com/chart/12221/the-worlds-biggest-arms-companies/

[4] https://journals.law.harvard.edu/hrj/wp-content/uploads/sites/83/2020/06/21.2HHRJ241-Dawson.pdf   See also Schabas, Genocide in International Law , Cambridge University Press, 2d ed. 2009.

[5] https://legal.un.org/avl/pdf/ha/cppcg/cppcg_e.pdf

[6] UN Charter, Article 27.

[7] https://www.npr.org/2023/12/08/1218332312/israel-hamas-war-us-ceasefire-veto-un

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/20/world/middleeast/us-vetoes-ceasefire-resolution.html

[8] https://legal.un.org/ilc/texts/instruments/english/draft_articles/9_6_2001.pdf

[9] https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/03/18/open-letter-to-the-eu-leadership-demanding-an-immediate-ceasefire-in-gaza/

Follow-Up to an Open-Letter Demanding Accountability From the EU Leadership for Complicity in Genocide

[10] https://www.icty.org/en/content/ictricty-case-law-database     https://cld.irmct.org/

[11] https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/Publications/Rome-Statute.pdf

[12] https://thearmstradetreaty.org/hyper-images/file/ATT_English/ATT_English.pdf?templateId=137253

HRN signs on to a statement with over 130 other organizations: “Ending complicity in international crimes: A two-way arms embargo on Israel”

[13] https://www.opcw.org/chemical-weapons-convention

[14] https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/10/13/idf-white-phosphorus-oct-2023/

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/13/what-is-the-white-phosphorus-that-israel-is-accused-of-using-on-gaza

https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/10/12/questions-and-answers-israels-use-white-phosphorus-gaza-and-lebanon

[15] https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/04/1148261

[16] https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/04/le-conseil-adopte-cinq-resolutions-dont-celle-demandant-quun-cessez-le-feu

[17] https://www.icj-cij.org/case/193

[18] https://www.icj-cij.org/case/193/oral-proceedings

[19] Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Advisory Opinion , I.C.J. Reports 2004 (I), pp. 199-200, para. 158

[20] Military and Paramilitary Activities in and against Nicaragua (Nicaragua v. United States of America, Merits, Judgment , I.C.J. Reports 1986, p. 114, para. 220

[21] Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro), Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 2007 (I), pp. 221-222, paras. 430-431

[22] ibid., p. 114, para. 168)

Alfred de Zayas is a law professor at the Geneva School of Diplomacy and served as a UN Independent Expert on International Order 2012-18. He is the author of twelve books including “ Building a Just World Order ” (2021) “Countering Mainstream Narratives” 2022, and “The Human Rights Industry” (Clarity Press, 2021).

CounterPunch+

• Fallen Angel
• The Great Resignation
• The War on Humanitarians
• Oh, How Violent: Hollywood, USC, and the Sickness of Denial
• Small Islands, Deadly Stakes

Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, new academic report finds

M iddletown, Connecticut - The University Network for Human Rights on Wednesday submitted a new report to the UN detailing Israel's genocidal acts in the Gaza Strip.

The 105-page report was conducted with independent legal experts at the International Human Rights Clinic at Boston University School of Law, the International Human Rights Clinic at Cornell Law School, the Center for Human Rights at the University of Pretoria, and the Lowenstein Human Rights Project at Yale Law School.

The release coincided with Nakba Day , the anniversary of the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestinians to create the State of Israel.

"After reviewing the facts established by independent human rights monitors, journalists, and United Nations agencies, we conclude that Israel's actions in and regarding Gaza since October 7, 2023, violate the Genocide Convention," the report states.

"Israel has committed genocidal acts of killing, causing serious harm to, and inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza, a protected group that forms a substantial part of the Palestinian people."

These acts include killing over 5% of Gaza's population in seven months and destroying more than 70% of homes as well as hospitals, schools, and other civilian infrastructure.

States urged to avoid complicity in Israel's genocide

The independent legal experts also found ample evidence that Israel has genocidal intent – one of the elements of the crime according to the 1948 convention.

The report states that "officials at all levels of Israeli government, up to and including the Prime Minister, have made remarks that not only express blatant and unequivocal dehumanization and cruelty against Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere, but also explicitly reflect intentions to destroy and exterminate Palestinians as such."

Israeli forces' actions in Gaza only serve to underline that conclusion.

The authors of the report note that compliance with the Genocide Convention requires other countries to avoid complicity in the crime they say is taking place, and to take positive steps to prevent further atrocities against the Palestinian people.

Nevertheless, the Biden administration has continued to support Israel on the world stage and to send billions of dollars in weapons over the last seven months, enabling the slaughter of more than 35,000 Palestinians.

Palestinians and Palestinian Americans have launched a historic lawsuit accusing President Joe Biden and other top US officials of failing in their obligations to prevent genocide. A federal judge in Oakland dismissed the case on jurisdictional grounds in late January but affirmed there is a likely case genocide is happening in Gaza with "unflagging support" from the Biden administration.

Plaintiffs have appealed the dismissal, with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals granting a motion to expedite the case.

The International Court of Justice has also ruled there is a plausible case Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

Give or take a few bombs, US complicity in genocide remains ‘ironclad’

Biden administration’s decision to hold up delivery of 3,500 bombs hardly constitutes a betrayal of the Israeli killing machine.

On Wednesday, May 8, United States Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin became the first senior administration official to publicly confirm that the US government has uncharacteristically paused a weapons shipment to Israel. Over the past seven months, the Israeli military has killed some 35,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip with solid US backing.

Speaking at a Senate subcommittee hearing, Secretary Austin remarked that the pause takes place “in the context of unfolding events in Rafah”, the city in southern Gaza where an estimated 1.4 million Palestinians , including more than 600,000 children, are currently sheltering. The majority of these people were forced to flee to Rafah from other parts of Gaza, in keeping with Israel’s modus operandi of making Palestinians refugees over and over again.

Keep reading

Why is the icc seeking arrest warrants for israeli and hamas leaders, norway, spain, ireland to recognise palestinian state, mapping which countries recognise palestine in 2024, the theatrics of genocidal impunity.

And while Rafah has hardly been spared the terror and slaughter that have characterised the past seven months of Israeli operations in the coastal enclave as a whole, the threat of a full-scale assault on a mass of trapped civilians in the city has made even the global superpower – Israel’s devoted BFF – a bit squeamish.

To that end, news reports began emerging over the weekend that the Joe Biden administration had undertaken to suspend a shipment to Israel of munitions that might be used in a Rafah offensive. The shipment was said to consist of 3,500 bombs, of which 1,800 were of the 2,000-pound (907kg) variety and 1,700 were in the 500-pound (227kg) category.

Certain other weapons transfers to Israel were also said to be under review.

Of course, given that the US has been actively abetting genocide and famine in Gaza for well over half a year with all manner of munitions and money, it’s not exactly clear why the case of Rafah should suddenly elicit such imperial concern. But, hey, it’s potentially good PR.

Prior to Secretary Austin’s remarks on Wednesday, US officials had been noncommittal about the reports of a suspended weapons shipment. In a May 6 news briefing , for example, National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby flat-out refused to confirm whether or not the reports were correct, instead announcing: “All I can tell you is that … our support for Israel’s security remains ironclad. And I’m not going to get into the specifics of – of one shipment over another.”

Indeed, it appears that “ironclad” is the US political establishment’s new favourite word when it comes to describing support for Israel – which means that, at the end of the day, Israel’s habit of massacring Palestinians will always be defended over the right of Palestinians to not be massacred.

Meanwhile, Kirby’s comment about “one shipment over another” is telling, to say the least. After all, there are a whole lot of US weapons shipments to Israel – and holding up delivery of 3,500 bombs hardly constitutes a betrayal of the Israeli killing machine, as some more dramatic members of the US right wing have chosen to portray it.

For starters, Secretary Austin emphasised during his Senate subcommittee appearance that the paused weapons shipment will not affect the $26bn in supplemental aid to Israel that the US Congress approved in April. This is on top of the various billions of dollars already provided annually to Israel by the US – most of which money, the Council on Foreign Relations notes , “is provided as grants under the Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program, funds that Israel must use to purchase U.S. military equipment and services”.

Nor will the suspension impact the additional $827m worth of military goodies that the Biden administration has just authorised for Israel.

In other words, it is mostly business as usual – kind of the equivalent of giving somebody hundreds of dollars on a daily basis and then making a show of withholding five cents.

According to the US Conventional Arms Transfer Policy, the US government is obligated to “prevent … arms transfers that risk facilitating or otherwise contributing to violations of human rights or international humanitarian law”. And yet, what is US foreign policy itself if not one big violation of all of that?

Even prior to the 2001 launch of the massive global violation known as the “War on Terror”, the US had already spent decades enabling mass bloodshed from Latin America to the Middle East and beyond. In the particular case of Israel, consistent US support for the wanton violation of human rights and international humanitarian law in Palestine and Lebanon makes you wonder why anyone ever bothered writing up a Conventional Arms Transfer Policy in the first place.

Now Secretary Austin, too, has reaffirmed the United States’ “ironclad” commitment to Israel even in the face of the paused munitions shipment – which just goes to underscore the largely cosmetic nature of the move, and the perceived need to project some degree of humanitarian awareness and concern.

Biden himself also chimed in on Wednesday with a warning that he will not be supplying offensive weapons to Israel in the event of an all-out assault on Rafah, noting that “civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs”.

Well, yeah.

Genocide is genocide. And give or take a few thousand bombs, US complicity in that genocide is totally ironclad.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.