The question has been before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague since December 2023, where South Africa has taken Israel to court. But a verdict is expected to take several years. In the meantime, the war in Gaza continues, with tens of thousands of deaths as a result.
Melanie O'Brien points out the indiscriminate bombing of civilian areas, destruction of healthcare facilities and infrastructure, and Israel's blockade of food and water to the civilian population as reasons for her answering yes.
When you deny someone access to food, it only leads to one thing: starvation and death. The turning point was the first time they (Israel) blocked emergency aid from entering. And now they're doing it again, she says.
Besides being the chairperson of IAGS, which gathers around 700 academics researching 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 about what he believes to be genocide since October 2023.
One of the most important factors for him 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, counting up the same factors as Melanie O'Brien.
Ugur Ümit Üngör, professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Amsterdam University, also sees Israel's warfare in Gaza as genocide, due to the cumulative violence the population is subjected to. Almost all genocide experts worldwide agree on this, according to Üngör, who also notes that "Israeli leaders openly advocate for categorical destruction."
"Consensus has emerged"
American historian Deborah Dwork, founder of the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University in Massachusetts, points to 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 Hamas-ruled Gaza, including at least 16,500 children, she believes that criterion is fulfilled.
That at least 122,000 Palestinians are reported to have been injured, civil infrastructure such as schools, hospitals, factories, and water systems destroyed, and aid blocked, means that other criteria in the convention are also fulfilled, according to Dwork.
"A consensus has emerged among genocide researchers that Israel's actions in Gaza constitute a crime against humanity, and most likely genocide," she writes to TT.
But there are divergent assessments.
Intent determines
Hilly Moodrick-Even Khen is a lecturer in international law and founder of the Center for Genocide Studies at Ariel University in Israel, built on an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank. He does not see Israel's actions in Gaza as genocide. Unlike his colleagues, he does not think Israel has shown the special intent to exterminate a group 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 in international law is fulfilled, and therefore whether a guilty verdict can be expected in The Hague. However, he, and according to him, a number of other researchers in the field, believe that the definition needs to be broadened.
It is such a comprehensive destruction of Gazans as a group, and Palestinians as a group, that it should be counted as genocide, he says.
"Doesn't matter"
Both Deborah Dwork and Raz Segal, however, warn against focusing solely on the genocide issue.
When your child is torn to pieces, it doesn't matter whether what you've been subjected to is defined as a crime against humanity or genocide, says Segal.
Sophie Tanha/TT
Facts: This is how genocide is defined
TT
Genocide is defined in international law as acts intended to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group as such. In addition to killing or seriously harming members of the group, the acts can also consist of: + Intentionally imposing living conditions on the group that are intended to bring about its physical destruction + Implementing measures intended to prevent births within the group + Forcibly transferring children from the group to another group The intent is crucial for the above acts to be defined as genocide. The crime was established after the Nazis' attempt to exterminate, among others, Jews and Roma during World War II. Source: UN
In the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, a legal process has been ongoing since December 2023, where South Africa accuses Israel of genocide. At the end of May last year, ICJ ordered Israel to immediately stop war actions 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 obligated to act already when there is a risk of genocide, to prevent such from occurring. The convention, which Sweden has signed, does not require a court to have established that genocide has occurred for the world to act.
Parallel to the ICJ process, another lawsuit about war crimes and crimes against humanity is ongoing in the International Criminal Court (ICC), also in The Hague. ICC has issued international arrest warrants for Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the country's former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and now deceased leaders within the terrorist-stamped Hamas.
Source: ICJ, UN
