Israel committing genocide in Gaza, world’s top scholars on the crime say

[Everexpanding]

An overwhelming majority of members of the world’s leading genocide scholars’ association have backed a resolution stating that Israel’s actions in Gaza meet the legal definition of the crime.
Eighty-six per cent of those who voted in the 500-member International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) supported the motion. The resolution states that “Israel’s policies and actions in Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide in article II of the United Nations convention for the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide (1948).”

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/01/israel-committing-genocide-in-gaza-worlds-top-scholars-on-the-say

Why do terrorists have to be killed, rather than captured and brought to trial?
Where is the evidence that there are terrorists there at all?
What is the the definition of a terrorist?

Open support for a proscribed terrotist organisation, which is what this post is, is illegal in this country. I trust everyone who swears they are anti Hamas will condemn this post.

7 October was a declaration of war. An invasion. That is why Israeli retaliation was justfied and legal under international war. Whether you believe the war has been justified as it has gone in is something people disagree about. That is not the point in this instance

Thank you for this. Provides a real insight into the propaganda machine.

I don’t think @hkathy is showing support for a terrorist organisation she is raising a valid point about how the rule of law is being thrown out the window as soon as someone is labelled a terrorist, and just who controls who is designated a terrorist. With the rise in the use of drones for extrajudicial killings and also the use of AI as in Gaza these are pertinent points. We are becoming used to the rule of law being disregarded, Guantanamo Bay breached human rights law. Obama’s use of drones for extrajudicial assassinations breached human rights law. We are being conditioned to accept these things. I am no fan of fundamentalists of any persuasion but I cannot just go out and kill them but governments are doing this

@Everexpanding questioning whether there are terrorists in Gaza is denying that Hamas is a terrorist organisation and suggesting they are legitimate. That is support.

Hamas is a proscribed terrorist organisation. Its members are terrorists.

Hamas's attack on Israel was a declaration of war. The legitimate, legal response was a military one.

The suggestion that Israeli authorities should go into Gaza and arrest Terrorists is a nonsense legally and practically and shows no understanding of the politics of the region. Israelis would just be killed.

If they weren't killed they would be storing up thousands of people in jail just to be exchanged in the next peace deal. When Israel would yet again be having to give up cold blooded terrorists, releasing them to come back and murder more Israelis.

So, come on all of you who claim to condemn Hamas. Lets see some condemnation.

What did I just read????????

Yes, let them eat cake.

Oh, no evidence at all.

I'm guessing one of your slogans is "but Israel are the real terrorists"?

This utter gaslighting of the Jewish people following the most genocidal massacre since the Holocaust is absolutely repugnant.

It deserves to be reported, but it also deserves to stay visible as a prime example of the noxious infuence of Hamas propaganda on (young?? are you young|???) hearts and minds.

So come on all of you who claim that you do actually care about Palestinian women and children, lets see some condemnation of their deliberate starvation, of Israel’s breaches of international law, of genocide.

no one here has condoned Hamas’s actions, plenty have excused Israel’s

No one is "controlling" who I view as a terrorist, it's pretty fucking obvious.

And, given the way Hamas propaganda has controlled the narrative ever since 7 Oct, Israel is right to worry about its social media representation and remind us all of the very real dangers of radical Islam, which is the #1 security threat to Europe as well as Israel.

Based on the "Oh, but SO MANY MORE people have been killed in Gaza" argument, their only alternative is to let Hamas in for another glorious spree and then saturate the world's media with photos of the results.

I don't want to see that, any more than I can bring myself to look at the evidence in the link I shared earlier. But maybe you feel that would be a fairer strategy? The mind boggles.

no one here has condoned Hamas’s actions

Really???

Someone above literally questioned whether Hamas were terrorists at all!

Its appalling. Utterly disgraceful gaslighting. Questioning whether Hamas are fucking terrorists at all.

Of course Hamas are terrorists after there actions on Oct 7th. Any statement denying it should be rejected.

I wonder if this poster was musing on whether one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter? I don’t agree by the way, before I get jumped on - in my book Hamas is a disgusting terrorist organisation - but I wonder (hope?) if it was just badly worded and coming from a philosophical stance! I guess only the poster can answer that though.

Well, yes... but that's the trouble: Hamas paint themselves as "freedom fighters" when it's clear they are terrorists who carried out revolting atrocities. It is really alarming to see that propaganda swallowed hook, line and sinker.

I dint think the innocent citizens of Israel and Palestine need the philosophical musings of the priveleged right now frankly.

I think the question re capturing and trialling terrorists is fair. It’s similar, in a way, to my disgust at terror suspects being tortured: there are processes we stick to re our treatment of people. There are awful, violent criminals in the UK who we don’t torture for info or kill for their actions and I think that should always be our approach to people regardless of where they come from. BUT, Hamas escalated the conflict on 7/10 and that means that they have to accept the consequences (military push back from Israel). War means people die. Israel couldn’t have peacefully gone into Gaza and rounded everyone up for trial. A fight was inevitable. The reason Israel went into Gaza isn’t ‘unfair’ or unnecessary.

“Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of violence against non-combatants to achieve political or ideological aims.” Hamas fit this definition exactly. For 7/10 and for violence/rhetoric before this. I think questioning whether there are terrorists in Gaza is absurd.

It’s totally fair to question who is and isn’t a terrorists in Gaza and to question Israel’s approach to getting rid of Hamas members. It’s also fair to criticise Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and the WB. It’s also fair (and important) to question why radical Islam could embed in Gaza and to assess the relationship between the two places in the decade before 7/10.

Perhaps you were posing those questions for a reason and you can clarify what you meant or the point you were trying make @hkathy

Yes in normal situations many terrorists in Israel are arrested and put on trial. This is a war, started by an act of war committed by Hamas.

”Israel’s policies and actions in Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide.’

Over 60,000 people have died, mostly women and elderly people and HALF of whom are children.

It is to chilling to find on mumsnet people who are unable to express compassion for the massacred Palestinians.

I didn't see the deleted post, must have been juicy!

No one wants to see women and children suffer in wartime. I've said I wished there was a magic sieve to safely extract the innocents from Gaza. Hamas, unfortunately, ensures the opposite. And they are evil people who I very much want dead. (Don't you? There seems to be a lot of support for these "freedom fighters" on this thread.)

The #bekind option of somehow locating and removing the terrorists with kid gloves, as proposed earlier, is made impossible by the fact that Hamas ensures no one can tell the difference between them and civilians, and complicated by the fact that civilian mobs helped to carry out the attacks that declared war on Israel.

You know, it is possible that more than two things can be true at once.
Hamas are an evil terrorist organisation who wants to destroy Isreal.
Israel is committing a genocide.

I'm not sure why people are arguing these as if they contradict each other.

This isn't an action film with goodies and baddies.

The debate here, specifically on this thread, is about whether Israel is in fact committing genocide. It's a term used emotionally and politically, but has no legal weight at the moment.

Hiding among civilians doesn’t make mass deaths lawful- Israel is still legally required to protect innocent lives, and tens of thousands of children killed shows that hasn’t happened.

yep.

But it also calls into question the validity of laws being applicable here that were designed for conventional military combat where armies fight each other. Maybe the legal experts will come up with something that is fair for a conflict with terrorists who fluidly shapeshift into civilians, and vice versa.