A week after the start of Israel’s war on Gaza, 800 prominent academics and legal practitioners have sounded the alarm that genocide is imminent in the territory. What made this warning both powerful and frightening was that so many legal experts came to this grim conclusion together. This is not an easy statement to make.
Since the publication of this letter, the situation in Gaza has only gotten worse. The death toll has surpassed 11,000, while some 2,650 people, including around 1,400 children, are missing, potentially trapped or dead under the rubble. Tens of thousands of injured people overwhelm struggling medical facilities. The humanitarian situation has reached appalling levels, made worse by the lack of food, water, fuel and electricity.
To understand what is happening in Gaza, we must turn to the main legal frameworks that define genocide: Article 6 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and Article 2 of the Genocide Convention.
According to these documents, genocide involves acts committed with the specific intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. These acts include the killing of members of the group, causing them serious harm and the imposition of living conditions aimed at the physical destruction of the group, in whole or in part, among other underlying acts. In particular, the targeted people may constitute a geographically limited part of the group.
The devastating reality of Gaza reflects these elements of the genocide. Although it claims to only target Hamas, Israel is engaged in an all-out attack against the entire population of Gaza. In just the first week of its relentless assault, they dropped more than 6,000 bombs on the Gaza Strip, almost as many as the United States used in Afghanistan in an entire year.
The use of high-impact munitions in one of the most densely populated regions in the world inevitably leads to high numbers of civilian deaths, as we have already seen in Gaza. In one month, Israeli bombings killed more than 4,400 children and 2,900 women, with most of the men in these horrific statistics also being non-combatants.
The Israeli military also abandoned any pretense of “precision strikes,” as its spokesman Daniel Hagari said the focus was “on damage, not precision.”
It also targeted civilian buildings en masse, including hospitals and schools housing displaced people. It bombed residential buildings, eliminating entire families from the population register; more than 45 percent of homes were destroyed or damaged, most of them in the so-called “safe zones” in the south, to which the Israeli army had ordered Palestinians to evacuate.
This massacre of civilians is accompanied by the imposition of living conditions clearly aimed at the physical destruction of the Palestinian people. Israel has besieged Gaza completely, without electricity, without food, without water, without gas, as Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant declared.
Israeli bombing of hospitals, targeting of their solar panels and blocking of fuel deliveries indicate an intention to prevent Palestinians from accessing vital health care. More than a third of hospitals and two-thirds of primary health care services in Gaza have already closed.
Israel’s refusal to allow sufficient quantities of much-needed humanitarian aid – including food and water – indicates that it is prepared to allow the Palestinian population to succumb to starvation and disease.
Israeli government and military officials have also verbalized their genocidal intent towards the Palestinian people. On October 9, in announcing the total blockade, Gallant called Gaza’s 2.3 million residents “human animals.” On October 29, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used Jewish scriptures to justify the killing of Palestinians. “You must remember what Amalek did to you, says our Holy Bible,” he said, quoting a verse that continues: “Now go and strike Amalek… kill the man and the woman, the child. »
On November 5, Heritage Minister Amihai Eliyahu said that one of Israel’s options in Gaza was to drop a nuclear bomb. He also explained that no humanitarian aid should be provided to Palestinian civilians because “there are no uninvolved civilians in Gaza.” Although his statement was criticized by Israeli officials, the concerns raised were primarily centered on the potential impact on “Israel’s image” rather than recognizing the serious implications of such remarks as a potential tool of genocide.
There have been a litany of other official statements employing dehumanizing language toward Palestinians, as well as calls by ordinary Israelis for the “annihilation of Gaza.” These reveal the intent to commit war crimes, crimes against humanity and, of course, genocide.
In the words of genocide expert and Bosnian genocide survivor Arnessa Buljusmic-Kastura: “This kind of rhetoric is not uncommon when it comes to cases of genocide. This is obviously one of the most important steps when you really think about it, and hearing the blatantly dehumanizing language spoken so fervently in the media by government leaders, but also by ordinary people, is horrifying and all that. takes us to where we are. We are in the current situation, which is that what is happening in Gaza is a genocide. »
While what is happening in Gaza shares common characteristics with other previous genocide situations, it also has particular elements of its own. Among these distinct features are the enduring occupation of Palestinian land, the continuing siege of Gaza, and the staggering proportion of the Palestinian nation already displaced by previous acts of ethnic cleansing.
Moreover, at the heart of this tragedy is a discourse of dehumanization, serving as both a strategy and an outcome. The long-standing anti-Palestinian discourse, ongoing since the founding of Zionism, has systematically denied the existence and rights of Palestinians. The narrative of Israel as “a land without a people, for a people without a land” has effectively erased an entire indigenous population, along with their history, heritage, and grievances.
At the same time, Palestinians have been systematically demonized by narratives that portray them as terrorists, anti-Semites and even Nazis. By evoking absurd claims of “Nazification of the Palestinians,” Israel, a powerful colonial state that presided over the longest occupation in modern history, is attempting to present itself as a victim; his tormentor – the people he has systematically oppressed and dispossessed for decades.
It is imperative to grasp these distinct aspects of the ongoing genocide in Gaza as we confront and respond to it. We must not forget that what is happening now is part of a long history of Israeli actions against Palestinians, which extend beyond the Gaza Strip, with genocidal intentions and practices targeting other Palestinian communities.
We must not forget this as Israel and its allies attempt to decontextualize what is happening in Gaza and present it as a war “provoked” by the Hamas attack on October 7.
Discourses about Israel’s self-defense dominate Western rhetoric, with minimal regard for human lives and respect for the rules of armed conflict, not to mention the 56 years of military occupation and 16 years of siege of Gaza. This constitutes a fundamental flaw in the assessment of these events and, therefore, in the ability to address their root causes, as subtly alluded to by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in his speech on October 24 at the Security Council.
The lessons of the Holocaust were meant to serve as safeguards against state violence and genocide, particularly for vulnerable groups. However, what we are witnessing today is an unprecedented global campaign of dehumanization against Palestinians, pushing their stories, experiences and history to the margins.
Historically, the launch of such campaigns has often been a precursor to genocide. It is therefore imperative to restore the humanity of the Palestinian people and recognize their common history and rights, as a people, as we fight for an immediate cessation of the ongoing genocide.
We are witnessing a rapid growth of anti-Palestinian sentiment, not only in Israel but also in many European countries, clearly visible in the way authorities are handling protests and support for the Palestinian people. It is up to the international community to tackle this hatred with the same vigor that it tackled anti-Semitism.
While the 1949 Geneva Conventions require all state parties to “respect and ensure respect” for these conventions in all circumstances, the Genocide Convention imposes a legal obligation on each member state to prevent and punish even the attempt to commit this heinous crime, without waiting for it to fully manifest itself.
“Never Again” was meant to be a warning to future generations, and yet we have seen genocides occur since the Holocaust, met in global silence. It is time to make “never again” a living principle, an urgent call to action.
In Gaza, “never again” is now.
The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.