Many governments and citizens are shocked by the civilian casualties resulting from Israel's bombardment and invasion of Gaza, Israel's response to Hamas' attack on Israel. On October 10, Palestinian envoy to the UN, Riyad Mansour, described Israel's actions as “nothing short of genocidal.” Iran and Iraq have also accused Israel of genocide. Politically, it is clear why Israel's enemies should invoke this heinous crime. Accusations have also been made by countries that have generally been friendly to Israel. Colombia, Honduras and South Africa have all withdrawn their ambassadors from Israel, accusing the government of committing “genocide”.
Read all our coverage of the war between Israel and Hamas
Protesters and commentators in the West also use the term. “It is now clear that Israel is engaged in a genocide of the Palestinian people,” argued M. Muhannad Ayyash, professor of sociology at Mount Royal University in Calgary, Canada. Craig Mokhiber, director of the New York office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, wrote on October 28: “This is a textbook example of genocide.” Israel has both denied genocide and accused Hamas of the crime. Gilad Erdan, Israel's permanent representative to the UN, said on October 26: “This is not a war with the Palestinians. Israel is at war with the genocidal terrorist organization Hamas.” What exactly is genocide, and how, if at all, does the term apply to the current conflict?
In December 1948, in the aftermath of World War II, the UN adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The convention defines a genocide as acts intended “to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.” Contrary to popular understanding of the term, the UN says it's not just the killing that counts. the living conditions of the group intended to bring about its physical destruction do so, as do the infliction of 'serious physical or mental harm', 'measures intended to prevent births' and 'the forcible transfer of children from the group to another group'. genocide has legal implications: for example, the International Criminal Court can charge someone with the crime.
Interpretations of the treaty differ because it is formulated so broadly. So what atrocities constitute genocide? The systematic murder of six million Jews by the Nazis was genocide. So was the organized slaughter of perhaps 500,000 ethnic Tutsis by Hutu militias in Rwanda in 1994. In both cases the intention, to destroy a people, was clear. Yet the case of Darfur, in Sudan, where some 300,000 people died in the years after fighting broke out there in 2003, is less clear. America called this a genocide. But in 2005, a UN commission concluded that the Sudanese government had “not pursued a policy of genocide” (although some individuals may have acted with “genocidal intent”). Donald Trump's administration called the Chinese government's treatment of Uighurs in Xinjiang a genocide, but others disagreed. This newspaper concluded that China's persecution of the Uyghurs was “horrific” but not genocidal.
According to the UN definition, Hamas is a genocidal organization. The founding charter, published in 1988, explicitly commits the country to destroying Israel. Article 7 states that “The Day of Judgment will not occur until Muslims fight the Jews and kill them.” Article 13 rejects any compromise, or peace, until Israel is destroyed. Hamas fighters who invaded Israel on October 7 and killed more than 1,400 people Israelis (and other nationalities) carried out the letter of their genocide law.
Israel, on the other hand, does not meet the test of genocide. There is little evidence that Israel, like Hamas, “intends” to destroy an ethnic group – the Palestinians. Israel wants to destroy Hamas, a militant group, and is prepared to kill civilians in the process. And while some Israeli extremists might want to, exterminating the Palestinians is not government policy.
Nor do the Israelis demonstrate any clear intention to prevent Palestinian births. But those accusing the country of genocide point to the large number of civilians killed, at least 10,000 so far, and argue that the blockade of the strip meets the criterion of “living conditions.” The Israelis have clearly “inflicted serious physical or mental harm.” damage” to the Palestinians. They have also expelled people from the north of the strip. If these people are not allowed to return, it could be considered a partial destruction of their territory or, as Jan Egeland, former UN chief of humanitarian and aid efforts , has warned, a forced population transfer.
Even if an army's actions do not cross the threshold of genocide, they can still be wrong. As the UN concluded in its report on Darfur, “crimes against humanity and war crimes committed… cannot be less serious and heinous than genocide.”
© 2023, The Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved. From The Economist, published under license. Original content can be found at www.economist.com
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Published: Jan 10, 2024 3:23 PM IST