The use of the term “genocide” is still very limited in France, as it carries a degree of exaggeration. However, the accuracy of this term to describe the ongoing massacre since October 7 in Gaza is clear by referring to international law, and indeed the International Federation for Human Rights adopted a resolution He considers Israel’s actions against the Palestinian people to be “ongoing genocide.”
This is how the “Orian 21 website” summarized a political article by the French-Lebanese researcher and academic Ziad Majed, in which he tried to recall the definitions of terms and concepts used by international law, such as “war crime,” “crime against humanity,” “ethnic cleansing,” or “genocide.” To demonstrate its applicability to the brutal war waged by Israel in the Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023.
War crimes
International and humanitarian law define war crimes in great detail, dividing them into 3 categories, mentioning all possible violations of the Geneva Conventions signed in 1949, which could occur during military operations, whether conflicts of an international or national nature.
On this basis, any deliberate killing and targeting of civilians, any deliberate destruction of their property, hospitals, educational and religious institutions, exposing them to hunger, and preventing them from obtaining humanitarian aid, as well as any large-scale attack on cities or villages that have no military justification, and any ill-treatment or torture of prisoners, constitute a war crime. Or detainees, non-combatants, or even combatants if they lay down their weapons, any systematic and forced transfer or displacement of populations, any unjustified attack on the centers and representatives of international organizations, peacekeeping organizations, and humanitarian organizations, and any use of internationally prohibited weapons.
Indeed, several well-known international human rights and humanitarian organizations have indicated the existence of possible war crimes, including crimes committed against their crews, and the International Committee of the Red Cross even expressed its concern, in a rare public position, about Israeli military actions and measures prohibited by the Geneva Conventions and the Two Additional Protocols.
crimes against humanity
As for crimes against humanity, they can occur during or outside military operations, and they include murder, genocide, forced deportation, deprivation of liberty, torture, rape, persecution of any specific group or community for political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious or sexual reasons, and forced disappearance. Apartheid and other inhumane acts of a similar nature.
It can be said – according to the author – that there is evidence confirming the legitimacy of the allegations directed against Israel of committing crimes against humanity, whether in the current war on Gaza with its widespread attack and inhumane acts, or in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, under provisions that refer to apartheid.
The researcher referred to new terms such as “political murder”, and gave him an example of the Israeli policy towards the Palestinians, when its clear goal was to destroy the conditions for the existence of a Palestinian state, and such as “territorial annihilation”, which is targeting urban spaces with the aim of destroying them or making them uninhabitable, and he gave him examples. With the destruction that the Russians did in the Second Chechen War, and that Syria did in Aleppo, and that Israel did in the southern suburbs of Beirut, and that it is doing now in Gaza.
More recently, some researchers have adopted the term “domestic killing” to refer to a harsher Israeli policy towards Palestinians, targeting their intimate places of residence, in order to prevent them from having a stable existence in a space with its borders, as the writer says.
Genocide
As for the term “genocide,” it means, according to the First International Convention against Genocide, any of the following acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, such as killing its members, seriously harming their physical or mental integrity, or deliberately subjecting them to poor living conditions: Meaning its physical destruction, in whole or in part, or measures aimed at preventing births within it or the forced transfer of children from one group to another.
Based on what has been documented and reported – according to the researcher – several elements can be brought to bear that prove Israel’s implementation of genocide in Gaza, given the scale of the devastating bombing and direct targeting of Palestinians in a specific area through killings, sieges, and mass physical and psychological torture, and it manages living conditions with complete or total abolishment. Partial water, electricity, fuel and communications, total or partial prevention of the entry of humanitarian food and medical aid, attacks on hospitals and ambulances and the death of patients and children due to the impossibility of their treatment.
According to the Ministry of Health in Gaza, the toll of Israeli attacks until December 11, 2023 shows more than 18,000 martyrs, including more than 7,000 children and 5,000 women, more than 7,000 missing under the rubble, and more than 49,000 wounded, and 60% of The homes of the Gaza Strip were destroyed or damaged. The occupation targeted 262 mosques and 3 churches, and 27 hospitals and 55 health care facilities were bombed, as well as 55 ambulances.
United Nations and humanitarian organizations lost more than 100 employees, doctors, and civil servants, who were martyred as a result of Israeli bombs. 86 journalists were also killed, and were sometimes directly targeted by Israeli fire.
Proof of intent
However, for genocide to be recognized as such, intent to commit must be proven, and this element is often the most difficult to determine, because it will be necessary to prove that the perpetrators of the acts in question were intent on the physical destruction of a group or part of the group, so case law This intention is linked to the existence of a plan or policy desired by the state or entity.
Some human rights activists consider that the official Israeli statements and explicit calls for revenge and killing against the Palestinians – as Palestinians – are clear decisions to reinforce the siege of Gaza by including prohibited materials, as Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant said on October 9, 2023, knowing that no life is possible without These materials (water, electricity, fuel, etc.), and the implementation of all of this by the Israeli army, prove the desire for extermination and the transition from declaration to implementation.
We can add to this the presence of a recurring “genocidal tendency” in the official speeches of the government of Benjamin Netanyahu and some representatives of his majority, and all of the speeches were photographed and copied in the press, such as invoking the “war against the forces of evil and barbarism,” stripping the Palestinians of their humanity, describing them as animals, and claiming that there is no There are civilians in the Strip, calling for the use of nuclear weapons against Gazans if necessary, deporting survivors to Egypt, destroying Gaza and turning it into a “big football field,” etc.
The Israeli historian specializing in the Holocaust, Raz Segev, was the first to confirm that we are facing “a typical case of genocide,” and the director of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in New York, lawyer Craig Mokheiber, resigned from his position in protest of the silence regarding “a typical case of genocide in Gaza.” Nine United Nations experts also warned that Israeli military violence and the intentions of some officials in Tel Aviv constitute a “threat of genocide against the Palestinian population.”
For his part, the former Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, confirmed that the crimes committed by Israel could constitute a case of genocide, and dozens of Palestinian, Arab, African, Asian, American and European academics have published editorials and press releases in recent weeks evoking similar positions.
In addition to the requests that some of them addressed to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to investigate these crimes, 5 countries: South Africa, Bangladesh, Bolivia, the Comoros, and Djibouti officially approached the court “to demand an investigation into possible Israeli crimes in Gaza and the West Bank.”
