By Stephen Rohde
As the Palestinian people suffer annihilation, the least the rest of us can do is risk being falsely labeled “antisemites” as we do everything in our power to end Israel’s genocide and US complicity.
A vitriolic debate is raging in the Jewish community and far beyond over whether Israel’s unrelenting 26-month military assault on Gaza constitutes genocide. Too often the debate deteriorates into name-calling with defenders of Israel labeling their opponents “antisemites.” The slur of antisemitism is shameful, and it is unjustified. In fact, the accusation of genocide against Israel finds substantial support in international law, and anyone in the United States who accuses Israel of committing genocide in Gaza is protected by the First Amendment of our US Constitution.
The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 9, 1948. Israel and the United States are signatories and contracting parties to the Convention. The Convention defines genocide as any of five specified acts “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” The acts are killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. The Convention provides that “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.”
In addition to genocide, the Convention also makes punishable conspiracy to commit genocide; direct and public incitement to commit genocide; attempt to commit genocide; and complicity in genocide.
Furthermore, the IAGS noted that the International Court of Justice found in three separate orders in the case of South Africa v. Israel that “it is plausible that Israel is committing genocide in its attack in Gaza and ordered Israel to take all measures within its power to prevent and punish the direct and public incitement of genocide and to ensure the provision of humanitarian assistance to civilians in Gaza.”
Given that “international civil society has a responsibility to prevent genocide by encouraging and assisting states to fulfil their obligations under the Genocide Convention to prevent, suppress, and punish genocide,” the IAGS declared 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),” and that “Israel’s policies and actions in Gaza constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity as defined in international humanitarian law and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.”
The authoritative findings of the IAGS is consistent with the conclusions of the UN Human Rights Council’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry, UN Special Rapporteurs Francesca Albanese, Michael Fakhri, and Balakrishnan Rajagopal, as well as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) (MSF), Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), Save the Children, Oxfam, Center for Constitutional Rights, and the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention. Likewise, B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group, and Physicians for Human Rights Israel have reached the same conclusion, as have Al-Haq, a Palestinian human rights group, and Palestinian Centre for Human Rights.
One of the most poignant perspectives came from Omer Bartov, an Israeli-American historian and the Dean’s Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University. After reciting much the same evidence cited by the IAGS, Bartov wrote,
My inescapable conclusion has become that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people. Having grown up in a Zionist home, lived the first half of my life in Israel, served in the I.D.F. as a soldier and officer and spent most of my career researching and writing on war crimes and the Holocaust, this was a painful conclusion to reach, and one that I resisted as long as I could. But I have been teaching classes on genocide for a quarter of a century. I can recognize one when I see one.
When Benjamin Netanyahu labeled pro-Palestinian protests on US campuses as “antisemitism,” Sen. Bernie Sanders fought back. “No Mr. Netanyahu, it is not anti-semitic… to hold you accountable for your actions.” As the Palestinian people suffer annihilation, the least the rest of us can do is risk being falsely labeled “antisemites” as we do everything in our power to end Israel’s genocide and US complicity.
