Yes, it's a genocide. Led by Donkeys

[bodydrain]

I support Israel and I support Palestine. I pray for Peace

“Dear friends,

This morning, we filled the entirety of Parliament Square in London with a banner quoting a leading Israeli Holocaust Professor who says Israel’s assault on Gaza now constitutes a genocide.

Professor Amos Goldberg has researched and taught the Holocaust, genocide and state violence for 30 years. In a statement issued to coincide with the Parliament Square protest, the respected author and scholar says: “Yes, it’s a genocide. And once you come to this conclusion you cannot remain silent.”

All of our projects are considered carefully as we develop and deliver them, but perhaps none more so than this one because of the seriousness of the indictment. But as Professor Goldberg says, once you are clear in your own mind that a genocide is being committed, it becomes imperative to speak up and name it.

Professor Goldberg is not the only Israeli scholar to say the assault on Gaza is a genocide. Professor Omer Bartov is a Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University in the US. He says: "This is clearly an operation whose goal is to destroy the ability of Palestinians to live in that area as a group. And in my definition, that is genocide."

You can hear Professor Goldberg's words in the film of today's intervention or read his statement in full below.”

My name is Amos Goldberg. I am an Israeli Professor of Holocaust Studies. For nearly 30 years I have researched and taught the Holocaust, genocide and state violence.

And I want to tell whoever is willing to listen, that what’s happening now in Gaza is a genocide.

A year ago when October 7th happened, like all Israelis I was in shock. It was a war crime and a crime against humanity. 1200 people - more than 800 of them civilians - were killed in one day. Children and the elderly were among those taken hostage. Communities were destroyed. It was outrageous, traumatizing, personal. Like most Israelis, I know people who were killed, who lost loved ones or whose loved ones were taken hostage.

But immediately afterwards came Israel’s response and within weeks thousands of civilians were killed in Gaza. It took me some time to digest what was unfolding before my eyes. It was agonizing to confront that reality. I was reluctant to call it a genocide.

But if you read Raphael Lemkin – the Jewish-Polish legal scholar who coined the term ‘genocide’ and was the major driving force behind the 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention – what is happening in Gaza now is exactly what he had in mind when he spoke about genocide.

It does not need to look like the Holocaust to be a genocide. Each genocide looks different and not all involve killing of millions or the entire group. The United Nations Genocide Convention explicitly asserts that genocide is the act of deliberately destroying a group in whole or in part. Those are the words.

But there does need to be a clear intent.

And indeed, there are clear indications of intent to destroy Gaza: Israel’s leaders - including the prime minister and the minister of defence - and many high-ranking military officers, media personalities, rabbis as well as ordinary soldiers were very open about what they wanted to achieve. There were countless documented incitements to turn the whole of Gaza into rubble and claims that there are no innocent people living there. A radical atmosphere of dehumanization of the Palestinians prevails in Israeli society to an extent that I can’t remember in my 58 years of living here.

Now that vision has been enacted. Tens of thousands of innocent children, women and men have been killed. Over a hundred thousand were wounded. There is a near total destruction of infrastructure, intentional starvation and blocking of humanitarian aid. There are mass graves and reliable testimony of summary executions. Children that were shot by snipers. All the universities and almost all hospitals are gone. Almost all the population is displaced. There have been numerous bombings of civilians in so-called ‘safe zones’. Gaza does not exist anymore. It is completely destroyed. Thus, the outcome fits perfectly with the stated intentions of Israel’s leadership.

Lemkin - that scholar who coined the term ‘genocide’ - described two phases of a genocide. The first is the destruction of the annihilated group and the second is what he called “imposition of the national pattern” of the perpetrator. We are now witnessing the second phase as Israel prepares ethnically cleansed areas for Israeli settlements.

And therefore, I have come to the conclusion that this is exactly what a genocide looks like. We don’t teach about genocides in order to realize it retrospectively. We teach about it in order to prevent it and to stop it.

But like in every other case of genocide in history right now we have mass denial. Both here in Israel and around the world.

But reality cannot be denied.

So yes, it is a genocide.

And once you come to this conclusion you cannot remain silent.

Amnesty International agree.

Most of what you’ve shared is propaganda . There’s endless evidence that Israel tells people to evacuate them and then bombs or shoots them as they’re fleeing. They’re told to go from a to b and then b is bombed . Hospitals have been bombed with patients including babies in incubators who cannot evacuate . Medical staff have been told to leave those who cannot evacuate behind.
have you heard the testimony of the extremely respected Dr Nazim Mamode. A highly respected surgeon . He was in tears when he spoke in front of MPs of seeing Israeli drones and quadcopters targeting children in crowded areas and shooting them to kill them. There’s enough testimonies from
medical staff of other nationalities to know that this is 💯 a genocide. Drones targeting children to
kill them is a genocide. I trust Dr Nazim Mamode who has been there more than what you think sat in your cosy house sprouting Israeli propaganda!

Im not really sure what 'self defence' means leagally in this context and not sure its what most people say is happening.Israel's military objective has always more than self defence as far as I know - its always been to destroy Hamas so that they can't attack Israel again.

It has been to get revenge and occupy Gaza again and ethnically cleanse as many Palestinians as they can. Do you know that whole neighbourhoods and towns in the north of Gaza are purposefully being destroyed? The civilians were forcibly displaced and now whoever is left is being indiscriminately murdered, which coincides with the right wing government plan of building settlements there.

That's your view. I was responding to someone else's with my understanding of the facts. Nothing more.

The writing is on the wall for those who are willing to read it

Moshe Ya'alon who served for three decades in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), including in the elite Sayeret Matkal commando unit, and as the military’s chief of staff, also said that he believed Israel was losing its identity as a liberal democracy and becoming a “corrupt and leprous fascist Messianic state.”
“Conquering, annexing, ethnic cleansing – look at northern Gaza,” Ya’alon told Israel’s Democrat TV.
The interviewer expressed surprise at Ya’alon’s use of the phrase “ethnic cleansing,” asking, “Is that what you think – that we’re on the way there?”

“Why ‘on the way?’” he responded. “What’s happening there? There’s no Beit Lahia. There’s no Beit Hanoun. They’re currently operating in Jabalya, and essentially, they’re cleaning the area of Arabs,” he said, referring to the IDF

https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/02/middleeast/israel-idf-gaza-moshe-yaalon-palestinians-ethnic-cleansing-intl/index.html

Also BBC verify reporting on the massive road being paved in northern Gaza which indicates that they are not planning to leave any time soon. There is a real concern that they are looking to cut off Northern Gaza from the rest.

From Sky News on same subject:
Satellite imagery has mapped the creation of a new corridor in northern Gaza that is almost a kilometre wide in some places. The IDF has bulldozed farmland, orchards and buildings to create the corridor, while denying Gazans access to their homes.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cewlqpk9e99o

There were many who warned this would happen when israel first ordered evacuations at the start of war from the North. They were accused of exaggerating when it was called the second nakba and now look. This was always the plan from the start.

That's Israeli propaganda, not evidence.

It does, and the report is extremely detailed on both the evidence and law.

But (and it's a massive but), the report also says it finds the definition of genocide used by the ICJ "too cramped" and so jt applies a different, lower, standard to reach its conclusion that there is genocide.

It's a report worth reading, which makes clear that Amnesty believes: i) this is something appalling that Amnesty would term genocide, and ii) it doesn't reach the standard for genocide as defined in international law.

To my mind, the report would be stronger had it not repurposed a term that we need to keep its meaning if we believe in a rules-based international order.

Shades of Stonewall pronouncing on the law as it would wish it rather than as it is. In the end that did not serve the people it was meant to help.

I haven't read the whole report, just the summary which gave their definition for genocide. It seems to be the standard definition.

First they established whether Palestinians are one of the protected groups and then they focused on three criteria. They used substantial evidence for establishing genocide and backing up that criteria.

As far as I can see, it does reach the standard for international law.

Please can you explain what you think is the difference between a war and a genocide? It seems to me that you’re using a different definition to the standard one. What differences would a civilian on the ground experience? Are bombs always genocidal in your definition? Are shortages always genocidal? If not, what makes Israeli bombs and Palestinian shortages more genocidal than the same conditions when they occur in other locations?

"Shortages". Good grief.

@username299

Yes, it's a big report. The section starts on page 101, called State Intent. There is a section called "ICJ's Threshold for Inferring Genocide". The ICJ has held that the “intent to destroy the group, in whole or in part, must be the only reasonable inference which can be drawn from the pattern of conduct."

Amnesty believes that the 'only reasonable inference' standard is too high, so it uses a different one, with support from a dissenting opinion from an ICJ case.

It is of course legitimate to debate what the standard in international law is or should be, and it's legitimate for Amnesty to have a view. But to publish a report stating in the headline there is genocide that then explaining deep into the document that it has used a minority definition not the ICJ's is, at best, misleading.

I'm not expert enough to have a very confident view from first principles.

But the report gives me very high confidence that under ICJ jurisprudence this isn't genocide (because Amnesty says so even though it disagrees).

As for what the definition should be, I'm not expert enough either. But I think it's very important that we support and reinforce stable concepts in law, not use them as campaigning tools, as the concepts are there for very important reasons (like deterring and prosecute genocide, which could hardly be more important).

This is a very interesting perspective, thank you, and Im sorry I haven't read the report yet. Its worth saying Amnesty's reputation is not what it was, and has not been for well over a decade.

The issue no-one seems to consider is how far the contribution of the "victim" can influence the question of genocide. Hamas take the pipes that were sent as aid for a sewage system and use them for weapons, or they loot the aid before it reached the population. Does this affect the Israelis' responsibilities to provide clean water and food ? Hamas have said that they will repeat October 7 "a thousand times". So it's scarcely surprising that the Israelis wish to clear an area close to the border to stop it happening again. If it's a matter of accused of war crimes or being slaughtered in their beds, most Israelis would take the former.

Its a very blatant double standard. Whatever cards Israel are dealt by Hamas they are just expected to suck it up & consistently Hamas are absolved of any responsibility.

Who on here has absolved Hamas of their crimes?

If 'clearing a border' that constitutes of massacres and ethnically cleansing the entire north of Gaza combined with talks of building Israeli settlements after all of that barbarism, is fine with you, then I don't have anything further to say to you.
The rhetoric we see time and time again that minimises the crimes against humanity perpetrated by Israel to the Palestinians, shows the deep levels of dehumanisation of the Palestinians that has festered.

Are you confusing Hamas with Gazan civilians?

I don't think Israelis are massacring anyone in North Gaza. They told people to leave and cleared it. Of course, Hamas didn't have to celebrate Oct 7th and promise a repeat. But there don't seem to be any costs to doing so, as everyone just says that whatever Hamas do doesn't absolve Israel.

Hamas officials have also been charged with crimes against humanity. I think the two who were are now both dead so possibly more wil be indicted.

The issue no-one seems to consider
I'm pretty confident the legal experts deciding on this will consider everything. Why would you assume anything would be overlooked

You can think what you like I guess but the facts don't back up your thoughts.

What you're describing there by the way is ethnic cleansing.

Deflection AGAIN!!

You care a lot about the women and girls of Afghanistan but not enough to create a new thread.