The question has been pending in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague since December 2023, where South Africa has brought Israel to court. However, a verdict is expected to take several years. In the meantime, the fighting in Gaza continues, with tens of thousands of dead as a result.
Melanie O'Brien highlights the indiscriminate bombing of civilian areas, the destruction of healthcare facilities and infrastructure, and Israel's blockade of food and water to the civilian population as reasons why she answers yes.
When someone is denied access to food, it only leads to one thing: starvation and death. The turning point was the first time they (Israel) blocked humanitarian aid from entering. And now they're doing it again, she says.
In addition to being the president of IAGS, which brings together around 700 academics who research genocide, she is a lecturer in international law at the University of Western Australia.
Dehumanization
Israeli Raz Segal agrees with her. He is a historian and lecturer in Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Stockton University in the USA, and has warned of what he believes to be genocide since October 2023.
One of the most important factors for him at the time was statements from Israeli politicians and military leaders in leading positions that dehumanize Palestinians.
Today, 19 months later, we have all the components required for it to be classified as genocide under international law, he says and lists the same factors as Melanie O'Brien.
Ugur Ümit Üngör, professor in Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Amsterdam, also sees Israel's waging of war in Gaza as genocide, due to the cumulative violence inflicted on the population. Almost all genocide experts worldwide agree on this, Üngör says, also pointing out that "Israeli leaders openly advocate for categorical destruction."
"Consensus has been reached"
American historian Deborah Dwork, founder of the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University in Massachusetts, points out how the UN Genocide Convention from 1948 describes the killing of members of an ethnic group as a criterion for genocide. With over 54,000 Palestinians reported dead by the health department in the Hamas-controlled Gaza, including at least 16,500 children, she believes that criterion is met.
That at least 122,000 Palestinians have been injured, civil infrastructure such as schools, hospitals, factories, and water systems have been destroyed, and humanitarian aid is blocked, means that other criteria in the convention are also met, according to Dwork.
"A consensus has been reached among genocide researchers that Israel's actions in Gaza constitute a crime against humanity, and most likely genocide," she writes to TT.
However, there are dissenting opinions.
The intention decides
Hilly Moodrick-Even Khen is a lecturer in international law and founder of the Center for Genocide Studies at Ariel University in Israel, which was built on an Israeli settlement on occupied West Bank. She does not see Israel's actions in Gaza as genocide. Unlike her colleagues, she does not believe that Israel has shown the special intent to exterminate a group of people that is required for the actions in Gaza to be classified as genocide.
Shmuel Lederman teaches genocide studies at Israel's Open University. He is unsure whether the requirement of intent set by international law is met, and therefore whether a guilty verdict can be expected in The Hague. However, he believes, and so do many other researchers in the field, that the definition needs to be broadened.
It's so extensive extermination of Gazans as a group, and Palestinians as a group, that it should be counted as genocide, he says.
"It doesn't matter"
Both Deborah Dwork and Raz Segal warn, however, that we should not focus too much on the genocide issue.
When your child is torn apart, it doesn't matter if what you've suffered is defined as a crime against humanity or genocide, Segal says.
Sophie Tanha/TT
Facts: How genocide is defined
TT
Genocide is defined in international law as acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group as such. In addition to killing or seriously injuring members of the group, the acts can also consist of: + Willfully imposing on the group living conditions intended to cause its physical destruction + Carrying out measures intended to prevent births within the group + Transferring children from the group to another group by force The intention is decisive for the acts to be classified as genocide. The crime was introduced after the Nazis' attempt to exterminate, among others, Jews and Roma during World War II. Source: UN
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague has been hearing a case since December 2023 in which South Africa accuses Israel of genocide. At the end of May last year, ICJ ordered Israel to immediately stop military operations against Rafah in southern Gaza and to keep border crossings open for aid shipments. Israel has not followed the court's ruling. According to the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide from 1948, countries are obliged to act even when there is a risk of genocide, in order to prevent it from happening. The convention, which Sweden has signed, does not require a court to have established that genocide has occurred for the outside world to act.
Parallel to the ICJ case, another trial is underway in the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, also dealing with war crimes and crimes against humanity. The ICC has issued international arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and deceased leaders within the Hamas-designated terrorist organization.
Source: ICJ, UN
