Genocide label crucial in addressing atrocities in Gaza: Legal scholars

Two years into the war on Gaza, legal scholars have emphasised the importance of labelling the mass atrocities Israel is committing against Palestinians as a genocide due to the legal and political implications of the determination.

Additionally, experts stressed that it is the most accurate description of the Israeli campaign, and even some of Israel’s staunchest supporters acknowledged that the country has committed war crimes in Gaza.
But experts said Israel’s brutal assault is more than individual violations of the laws of war; it represents a push to destroy the Palestinians and must be described as what it is – a genocide.

Former United Nations official Craig Mokhaiber said genocide involves the violation of core rights that apply without exception; it also invokes an international responsibility to stop it.

“The obligations apply to all states,” Mokhaiber told Al Jazeera. “All states in the world are obliged to use whatever means they have in order to put an end to the genocide and to punish the perpetrators of the genocide and to prevent the genocide in the first instance.”

He noted that the formal name of the 1948 UN Genocide Convention is the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

Adopted by 153 countries – including the United States, all Western powers and Israel – the convention is the ultimate international law on genocide.

“The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish,” it reads.

What is a genocide?
The convention defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”.

Genocidal acts include killing and injuring members of the targeted group, prevention of births and imposing “conditions of life calculated to bring about” the physical destruction of the group.

Any one of the acts listed in the convention can amount to carrying out a genocide. It does not need to be all of them.

In the case of Gaza, UN investigators and rights groups have found Israel to be carrying out several of the acts listed in the convention.

“The Israeli authorities intended to kill as many Palestinians as possible through its military operations in Gaza since 7 October 2023 and knew that the means and methods of warfare employed would cause mass deaths of Palestinians, including children,” a UN commission of inquiry said in a report last month.

The UN investigators also pointed to a long list of Israeli officials and military commanders calling for collective punishment and mass violence against Palestinians as proof of genocidal intent.

The findings added to the growing consensus by rights groups and international legal scholars that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

Amnesty International, B’Tselem, Human Rights Watch, UN experts and the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) have all accused Israel of genocidal acts in Gaza.

So has the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention, which is named after Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin, who is credited with coining the term genocide after the Holocaust.

Israel has turned most of Gaza into rubble, killing more than 67,000 people and injuring nearly 170,000 more.

Repeated forced displacement orders by the Israeli military have rendered nearly all of the territory’s population homeless, and a strict blockade on humanitarian aid has sparked a famine in the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli military has also been targeting medical facilities across Gaza while blocking fuel and medical supplies needed for the operation of hospitals in the enclave.

But Israel rejects accusations of genocide, often dismissing them as anti-Semitic, claiming that it is carrying out a self-defence campaign against Hamas.