By Stephanie van den Berg
THE HAGUE (Reuters) -The world’s leading genocide scholars’ association has passed a resolution saying that the legal criteria have been met to establish Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, its president said on Monday.
Eighty-six percent of those who voted among the 500-member International Association of Genocide Scholars backed the resolution declaring: “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)”.
There was no immediate response from the Israeli foreign ministry. Israel has in the past strongly denied that its actions in Gaza amount to genocide and says they are justified as self defence. It is fighting a case at the International Court of Justice in the Hague that accuses it of genocide.
Israel launched its assault on the Gaza Strip in October, 2023, after fighters from Hamas, the Palestinian militant group in control of the territory, attacked Israeli communities, killing 1,200 people and capturing more than 250 hostages.
Since then, Israel’s military action has killed 63,000 people, damaged or destroyed most buildings in the territory and forced nearly all its residents to flee their homes at least once. A global hunger monitor relied on by the United Nations says parts of the territory are now suffering a man-made famine, which Israel also denies.
In Gaza, Hamas welcomed the resolution: “This prestigious scholarly stance reinforces the documented evidence and facts presented before international courts,” said Ismail Al-Thawabta, director of the Hamas-run Gaza government media office.
The resolution “places a legal and moral obligation on the international community to take urgent action to stop the crime, protect civilians, and hold the leaders of the occupation accountable,” he said.
Since its founding in 1994, the genocide scholars’ association has passed nine resolutions recognising historic or ongoing episodes as genocides.
The 1948 U.N. Genocide Convention, adopted in the wake of the mass murder of Jews by Nazi Germany, defines genocide as crimes committed “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such”.
It requires all countries to act to prevent and stop genocide.
Criminal acts comprising genocide include killing members of the group, causing them serious bodily or mental harm, creating conditions calculated to destroy them, preventing births, or forcibly transferring children to other groups.
The three-page resolution adopted by the scholars calls on Israel to “immediately cease all acts that constitute genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity against Palestinians in Gaza, including deliberate attacks against and killing of civilians including children; starvation; deprivation of humanitarian aid, water, fuel, and other items essential to the survival of the population; sexual and reproductive violence; and forced displacement of the population.”
The resolution also states that the Hamas attack on Israel which precipitated the war constituted international crimes.
“This is a definitive statement from experts in the field of genocide studies that what is going on on the ground in Gaza is genocide,” the association’s president, Melanie O’Brien, a professor of international law at the University of Western Australia who specialises in genocide, told Reuters.
Sergey Vasiliev, a professor of international law at the Open University in the Netherlands who is not a member of the association, told Reuters the resolution showed that “this legal assessment has become mainstream within academia, particularly in the field of genocide studies.”
Several international rights groups and some Israeli NGOs have already accused Israel of committing genocide. Last week hundreds of U.N. staff at the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk wrote to ask him to explicitly describe the Gaza war as an unfolding genocide, according to a letter reviewed by Reuters.
(Reporting by Stephanie van den BergAdditional reporting by Nidal al-MughrabiEditing by Hugh Lawson and Peter Graff)
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