Leading Global Experts Accuse Israel of Genocide in Gaza

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The world’s biggest academic association of genocide scholars has passed a resolution saying the legal criteria have been met to establish Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

Eighty-six per cent of those who voted among the 500-member International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) backed the resolution declaring Israel’s “policies and actions in Gaza” had met the legal definition set out in Article II of the 1948 United Nations convention on genocide.

Israel’s foreign ministry called the statement disgraceful and “entirely based on Hamas’ campaign of lies”.

Israel has in the past strongly denied that its actions in Gaza amount to genocide and says they are justified as self-defence.

Israel is currently defending itself in a case at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, where it stands accused of genocide. These allegations are firmly denied by Israel, which states that its operations are focused on eliminating Hamas, a group it claims is active among Palestinian civilians.

Israel has bombarded Gaza since Hamas’s October 7 attack in 2023, in which more than 1,200 people, including an estimated 30 children, were killed and over 200 hostages taken, according to the Israeli government.

More than 63,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s subsequent campaign against Hamas in Gaza, according to Palestinian health officials, and flattened much of the densely populated strip, which is home to more than two million people.

The October 7 attack was a significant escalation in the long-standing conflict between Israel and Hamas.

A global hunger monitor relied on by the UN says parts of the territory are now suffering a man-made famine, which Israel denies.

The three-page resolution 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”.

It also states that the Hamas attack on Israel, which precipitated the war, constituted international crimes.

Melanie O’Brien, an Australian international law professor and head of the IAGS, said: “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.”

“There is no justification for the commission of war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide, not even self-defence,” she said.

Convention adopted in wake of Holocaust

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.

Since the genocide scholars’ association was founded in 1994, it has passed nine resolutions recognising historic or ongoing episodes as genocides.

The International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) is known for publishing a journal and organizing frequent international conferences for experts in genocide studies, making it the largest academic organization in this area. Meanwhile, the International Network of Genocide Scholars also conducts conferences and releases a journal, but it does not pass comparable resolutions.

Ismail al-Thawabta, head of the Hamas-run Gaza government media office, welcomed the resolution’s “prestigious scholarly stance”, which he said “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”.

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 “this legal assessment has become mainstream within academia, particularly in the field of genocide studies”.

Several international rights groups and some Israeli NGOs have already accused Israel of committing genocide.

Last week, hundreds of UN staff at the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, wrote to ask him to explicitly describe the Gaza war as an unfolding genocide, according to a letter reviewed by Reuters.