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

I think that one of the things exposed by the Palestinian Genocide is the impotency of the legal structures built around the codification of the crime of genocide. What Israel is doing is, beyond question, genocide, and the general consensus that this is the case in discursive scholarship does not simply conclude that genocide is being committed as it would be prosecuted under the GC, but rather that genocide is being committed as it is understood within genocide scholarship.

This being the case, it exposes the holes in both the codification of genocide as a crime, as well as the failures of the international structure to prevent genocide, given that genocide scholarship exists to inform codification. To this end, if Israel is not held to account for their genocide, then it says more about the legal establishment than it does about the crime committed by Israel. Israel's genocide is textbook genocide. If it avoids prosecution, then we have a big problem.

I do agree that his work has value. He sort of gives me the creeps, though, to be honest. I wish he would acknowledge his plagiarism, which verges on academic dishonesty. I also feel he exploits his own trauma credentials for narrative capital in the highly profitable field of holistic therapy, which tends to be anecdotal and does not demand the specific credentials that are required for evidence-based research.

Prosecutions twenty years hence will be welcome if they ever occur but we need a proper mechanism to halt genocides before they are completed.

To be fair, you could argue that that's why Israel is at war.

Yeah, exactly. And those are the mechanisms that are supposedly in place. But they have failed time and again.

We know, now, beyond a doubt, that there are countries who may pursue political and economic goals through genocide and won't face accountability. Any scholar of 20th century genocides (e.g. 1950-70 US-led genocides in Indochina and 1950s British settler-colonial genocide of Kikuyu in Kenya) will know this already, but it is deeply disturbing to see it play out in real-time in the 21st century.

Who are Scholars for Truth about Genocide? A quick Google seems to suggest that they are an organisation that quickly set themselves up just to say that Israel are not committing genocide but surely that isn't true?

Only if you believe that the only available recourse to dismantle Hamas was this punitive war.

I think that you would have a hard time making that argument, given that 23 months of the most destructive war of the 21st century has failed to destroy Hamas. We know what would dismantle Hamas: the end of Israel's belligerent occupation of Palestine and the end of the subjugation of the Palestinians.

Thanks @dairydebris .

I see your points. However I would argue that there are many similarities, the genocidal rhetoric by many Israeli politicians who have made no bones about destroying Palestinians, the period of time when aid was completely withheld and the evidence that shows that airstrikes have not been targeted, instead causing massive loss of life.
The conditions of life being imposed on Palestinians in Gaza at the moment (devastation of hospitals, schools, water desalination, crops and livestock etc) are calculated to bring about physical destruction of the population in whole or part.

But I agree that Hamas actions are also genocidal in nature.

Certainly not a body I'd ever heard of before yesterday.

@Beachtastic ??? Think collective punishment, slaughter of 1,000s, starvation of a civilian population not usual methods employed by international bodies?

Israel will say that the conditions of life being imposed upon Gaza are intended to bring about the destruction of Hamas, not civilians specifically. If their demise comes about, its a sad side effect, but wasn't the intent.

Plausible deniabilty at the very least 😬.

I think its an important conversation to keep having- but its not simply a numbers or atrocities count as many on here would have it.

True. Hard to see how it is not their intent but I see where you are coming from.

I would presume the onus will be on them then at a later stage to prove their actions were a direct target on Hamas and not civilians.

To this I would offer up Tony Barta's "construing intent through action" framework. You're risking giving the same dolus specialis/dolus eventualis argument given in the above shared article from the Times of Israel. A diversionary argument which misunderstands intent. You cannot double-effect genocide.

Academics do sometimes collaborate in response to an earlier "consensus statement" and use an umbrella term to describe their own group. The urgency with which they have done this suggests deep concern that facts have been misrepresented and boundaries overstepped.

Agreed, and given the content of the response (no substantive deviation from the same apologist talking points we've heard for nearly two years), it feels pretty trivial to dismiss.

The onus ( as I understand it ) would be on the accusers to specifically prove the intent was to destroy the group, in whole or in part. I honestly think that will be near on impossible to prove given that efforts ( however token ) have been made to move civilians out of the way, and its a tactic of Hamas to try to keep civilians in place. Its almost as if Hamas WANT Israel to be seen to commit genocide. Its such a unique conflict ( but yes all conflicts are unique I guess ).

And the aid situation again for example is truly terrible, but again the intent is to cut revenue streams to Hamas etc, and Israel can truthfully say they are trying to feed civilians... personally I think its morally indefensible but my moral feelings aren't enough for a legal finding of intent to destroy etc etc.

But also, a lot will depend on what happens to the Gazan Palestinians after the war ends... if they're put on buses and dissappear god knows where for example... or if somehow alternative Palestinian leadership arises and is allowed to flourish...then that has a massive impact on any legal conclusions of what the intent always was... the conflict isnt over yet.

I think its a pipe dream to hope for otherwise.

Nations always act in their own self interests. Use of military force is always hugely expensive, and sending 'our boys' to fight somewhere far away, someone else's war, is always a very difficult political sell.

Humans are selfish assholes who like to tell themselves stories about how much better than that they are.

This risks misrepresenting the threshold for intent as it relates to genocide. Mladic made very similar arguments in his defence at the ICTY: that he took every reasonable step to protect civilians, and provided video and written evidence to back this up. This, he claimed, proved that intent was not destruction, even in part. His defence argued that the prosecution would need a direct, line-for-line chain of intent. However, this is not the threshold necessary for the demonstration of intent - though it is usually the framing offered up by genocide apologists.

It is not necessary to demonstrate a direct chain of intent from, say, Gallant's spoken genocidal intent, down through the chain of command to the operational level of the IDF. Though this is, of course, possible in this war and is in e.g. the South Africa application document, there for anyone to see.

There is a kind of view in the general public consciousness that genocide requires a Final Solution style documentation in order to establish intent. This is not necessarily the case. It is possible to determine intent through action. Always easier when (as the Israeli political and military leadership do) they tell you straight up what they're wanting to do, but far from necessary.

I believe that the most insurmountable barrier to those international structures working as they ought to is the unequal accountability under the international rules based order/the unequal application of IHL: there are countries who are protected by the rules but not bound by them, and there are countries who are bound by the rules but not protected by them.

Palestine generally (and the acceleration of the Palestinian Genocide in Gaza this past 23 months specifically) is the most articulate demonstration of this inequality in the international community at the moment (certainly the most visible). It is my hope that by addressing Israel's impunity, we might take a meaningful step towards addressing the above inequalities. And if we do, we might have a shot at building effective accountability structures and more effective international legal mechanisms.

Wasn't Mladic found guilty of genocide ( amongst others ) for Srebrenica?

I cant take seriously any argument that he wasn't guilty when he deliberately separated women and children from men, then had those men bused out to various sites around the town, then mass murdered them all, and buried them in mass graves.

Obviously after doing all that, any argument that he used to insist that wasn't his intent would have been faulty. I cant see how that relates to this conflict.

Where Israel says that wasn't its intent, and the facts on the ground dont directly contradict that, it will be a much easier position to defend.

As I say. Plausible deniabilty.

Well, I dont share your optimism I'm afraid. But I'm glad you have it- because it'd be better to have people like you in charge than people like me 😊.

Yes, and it was perfectly possible to demonstrate the genocidal intent without the need to have a declaration of intent, or the chain of intent from leadership to operational level.

It is important to bear in mind that the "a foreseeable but unintended consequence of an action" argument - as in the double-effect doctrine - has never worked as a defence against the commission of genocide.

The point is, it is the actions which can be used to demonstrate intent. Systematic destruction of civilian infrastructure, of hospitals, the prevention of those things as are necessary to life, the systematic destruction of homes, places of worship, work, and congregation, the forced displacement and dispossession of an entire population: these, together, are a demonstration of intent.

If you do everything that needs to be done to effect the destruction of a distinct group, then you will have no reasonable grounds to deny intent to destroy that group.

Hahaha I promise you, I will always do everything I can to be as far away from "in charge" as possible.

Gramsci said (I'm paraphrasing): "pessimism of the intellect, but optimism of the will." I believe that is a valuable worldview. Also, Chomsky (again, paraphrasing): "tactically pessimistic, strategically optimistic."

The problem is have with this argument is that for every example you give above, another can be given to show no genocidal intent. Warning civilians to leave. Warning sound bombs. Attempts to feed civilians. Many comments from government that the aim is to destroy Hamas, not Palestinians. Hamas' presence in civilian targets.

I simply dont believe you can use Mladic / Srebrenica as an example. The Bosnian Serbs intent can be inferred from what they did. The same cant be said for Israel in my opinion. They are after Hamas. Not Palestinian civilians. Although they dont seem to much care how many civilians get killed in the process.

I do keep revisiting how I think about this- time will tell.

I guess my feelings on this are the opposite, it seems to me that intent is easier to demonstrate precisely because of Israel's poor explanations and arguments. Take the warning civilians to leave: Forensic Architecture's report, A Cartography of Genocide (forensic-architecture.org/investigation/a-cartography-of-genocide) details precisely how, rather than being a humanitarian mechanism for putting civilians out of harms way, the evacuation orders were used as a way to ensure maximum civilian harm. Therein lies the demonstration of intent.

The attempts to feed civilians is also a clear example of genocidal intent: humanitarian organisations were doing a good (if imperfect) job of delivering and distributing aid. It is since Israel blockaded humanitarian aid work (inc. the atrocious decision to proscribe UNRWA) that famine has accelerated in Gaza. No serious claim of Hamas responsibility for the looting of aid etc. has been found legitimate.

Neve Gordon and Nicola Perugini have a good article on Jewish Currents called A Legal Justification for Genocide, which does a good job of dismantling the attempt to obfuscate intent that the whole human shields, embedded terrorists, etc. argument makes. Again, the fact that those arguments are being given, and yet are so easily dismantled, is a clear indicator of genocidal intent. jewishcurrents.org/human-shields-gaza-israel-a-legal-justification-for-genocide

To me, the ease with which you can discredit Israel's claims makes the intent all the more easy to demonstrate, rather than it being the other way round. Yes, there is as much that is dissimilar about the Bosnian genocide to the Palestinian genocide as there are similarities. I only used that example because it is possible to read Mladic's defence at the ICTY, so you can see the parallels with the attempt at genocide apologism presented by Israel. For the mechanics of the genocide specifically, the Palestinian genocide has more in common with (and so we might have more to learn from), say, the Tamil genocide and the genocide of Rohingyas.