‘Definitive’: Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, leading experts declare

The Hague: 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, the organisation’s president said.

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 UN convention on genocide.

Palestinians struggle to get donated food at a community kitchen in Khan Younis, Gaza on Monday.Credit: AP

“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,” said IAGS president Melanie O’Brien, a professor of international law at the University of Western Australia who specialises in genocide.

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

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

“The IAGS has set a historic precedent – for the first time, ‘genocide scholars’ accuse the very victim of genocide – despite Hamas’s attempted genocide against the Jewish people,” it said.

A makeshift tent camp for displaced Palestinians stretches across an area near the Gaza City port.Credit: AP

Israel has in the past strongly denied that its actions in Gaza amount to genocide and says they are justified as self-defence. It is fighting a case at the International Court of Justice in The Hague that accuses the country of genocide.

Israel launched its assault on the Gaza Strip in October 2023, after fighters from Hamas, the Palestinian militant group controlling the territory, attacked Israeli communities, killing 1200 people and capturing more than 250 hostages.

Since then, Israel’s military action has killed 63,000 people, damaged or destroyed most buildings in the territory and forced nearly all its residents to flee their homes at least once, according to local health authorities. A global hunger monitor relied on by the United Nations says parts of the territory are now suffering a man-made famine, which Israel also denies.

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The IAGS’s 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.

The 1948 UN Genocide Convention, adopted after 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. It has also previously held that China’s treatment of the minority Muslim Uyghurs and Myanmar’s crackdown on Rohingya Muslims meet the threshold for genocide.

In 2006, the organisation said statements by then-Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in which he called for Israel to be “wiped off the map”, had “genocidal intent”.

Palestinians fleeing the northern Gaza Strip on Monday.Credit: AP

The IAGS publishes a journal and holds regular international conferences of scholars studying genocide, and is considered the largest academic group in the field.

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 and who is not a member of the association, said the resolution showed that “this legal assessment has become mainstream within academia, particularly in the field of genocide studies”.

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Several international rights groups and some Israeli non-government organisations 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.

Meanwhile, Israel launched strikes across the Gaza Strip on Monday, killing at least 31 people as it presses ahead with a major offensive in the territory’s largest city, according to health officials in Gaza.

Airstrikes and artillery shelling have echoed through Gaza City since Israel declared it a combat zone last week. On the city’s outskirts and in the Jabaliya refugee camp, residents have observed explosive-laden robots demolishing buildings.

“Another merciless night in Gaza City,” said Saeed Abu Elaish, a Jabaliya-born medic sheltering in the north-western side of the city.

Israel says it only targets militants and blames Hamas for civilian casualties because the militant group – now largely reduced to a guerrilla organisation – operates in densely populated areas.

Reuters, AP

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