Palestinian Genocide Accusation

The State of Israel has been accused of inciting or carrying out genocide against the Palestinians in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This accusation is linked by supporters to the conceptualization of Israel as a settler colonial state. Those who take this stance say that Israel has committed genocide due to their anti-Palestinianism, Islamophobia, anti-Arab racism and the proposal to annex the West Bank. Supporters of this claim cite the Nakba, the Sabra and Shatila massacre, the blockade of the Gaza Strip, the 2014 Gaza War and the 2023 Israel–Hamas war. International law and genocide scholars accuse Israeli officials of using dehumanizing language.

Israel, the United States, the Anti-Defamation League and other organizations, and some law and genocide scholars have rejected the assertion that Israel is engaging in genocide. While some scholars describe Palestinians as victims of genocide, others argue they are not victims of genocide, but rather of ethnic cleansing, politicide, spaciocide, cultural genocide or similar; still others argue that none of these have occurred. Critics of the accusation sometimes argue that the charge that Israel is committing genocide, is an assertion commonly made by anti-Zionists, with the aim of demonizing Israel.

History

20th century

Nakba

In 2010, historians Martin Shaw and Omer Bartov debated whether the 1948 Nakba should be regarded as a genocide, with Shaw arguing that it could and with Bartov disagreeing. The former Deputy Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain, Daud Abdullah, has stated that "Given the declared intent of the Zionist leaders, this wholesale destruction and depopulation of Palestinian villages fit easily with the definition of genocide as cited in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide." Several scholars have written that Palestinians suffered ethnic cleansing during the Nakba, but that they did not consider the event to have been genocide.

Complicity in the Sabra and Shatila massacre

In September 1982, between 460 to 3,500 civiliansmostly Palestinians and Lebanese Shia Muslimswere killed in Beirut's Sabra neighborhood and in the adjacent Shatila refugee camp during the Lebanese Civil War. The killings were carried out by the Lebanese Forces, one of the main Christian militias in Lebanon at the time. Between the evening of 16 September and the morning of 18 September, the Lebanese militia carried out the killings while the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had the Palestinian camp surrounded. The IDF had ordered the militia to clear out the fighters of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from Sabra and Shatila as part of a larger Israeli maneuver into western Beirut. As the massacre unfolded, the IDF received reports of atrocities being committed, but did not take any action to stop it.

On 16 December 1982, the United Nations General Assembly condemned the Sabra and Shatila massacre and declared it to be an act of genocide.
The voting record on section D of Resolution 37/123 was: yes: 123; no: 0; abstentions: 22; non-voting: 12. The delegate for Canada stated: "The term genocide cannot, in our view, be applied to this particular inhuman act". The delegate of Singapore – voting 'yes' – added: "My delegation regrets the use of the term 'an act of genocide' ... sthe term 'genocide' is used to mean acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group." Canada and Singapore questioned whether the General Assembly was competent to determine whether such an event would constitute genocide. The Soviet Union, by contrast, asserted that: "The word for what Israel is doing on Lebanese soil is genocide. Its purpose is to destroy the Palestinians as a nation." The Nicaragua delegate asserted: "It is difficult to believe that a people that suffered so much from the Nazi policy of extermination in the middle of the twentieth century would use the same fascist, genocidal arguments and methods against other peoples." The United States commented that "While the criminality of the massacre was beyond question, it was a serious and reckless misuse of language to label this tragedy genocide as defined in the 1948 Convention". William Schabas, director of the Irish Centre for Human Rights at the National University of Ireland, stated: "the term genocide ... had obviously been chosen to embarrass Israel rather than out of any concern with legal precision".

That same year an independent commission headed by Seán MacBride investigated reported violations of International Law by Israel and four of its six members concluded that "the deliberate destruction of the national and cultural rights and identity of the Palestinian people amount dto genocide". In its conclusion, the commission recommended "that a competent international body be designed or established to clarify the conception of genocide in relation to Israeli policies and practices toward the Palestinian people". David Hirst believes that while the decision of the U.N. General Assembly could still be called biased, it was harder to say the same about the McBride Commission, as well as about individuals around the world, especially Jews, who shared the opinion of its four members.

The massacre was also investigated by the Israeli Kahan Commission. The commission concluded that although no Israelis were directly involved in the killings, a number of Israeli government ministers and military were indirectly responsible. They should have taken into account the sentiments of their Lebanese allies after their leader Bachir Gemayel had been assassinated along with 26 other Phalangists in a bomb attack 2 days earlier, and also have taken decisive action to stop the killings when the first information was received. The commission's findings were reluctantly accepted by the Israeli government, amid violent, rival, pro- and anti-government protests.

21st century

Blockade of Gaza

In 2005 and again in 2007, Israel imposed a blockade with the support of the Egyptian government on the movement of goods and people in and out of the Gaza Strip. Israeli New Historian Ilan Pappé has argued that genocide "is the only appropriate way to describe what the Israeli army is doing in the Gaza Strip". And in his 2017 book, ''Ten Myths About Israel'', Pappé wrote
"Israel’s claim that its actions since 2006 have been part of a self-defensive war against terror. I will venture to call … an incremental genocide of the people of Gaza." In an article written in 2023 in the ''International Journal of Human Rights'', Mohammed Nijim voiced his belief “that Israeli policies that were enacted after the introduction of the Blockade of the Gaza Strip amount dto slow-motion genocide".

2014 Gaza War

The 2014 Gaza War, also referred to as Operation Protective Edge, was a military operation launched by Israel on 8 July 2014 in the Gaza Strip. Al-Haq, a Palestinian Human Rights organization, concluded in a report that serious violations of international law were committed in the course of the 2014 Israeli offensive against Gaza. The organization, along with other Palestinian human rights organizations the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights and Addameer, submitted a legal file to the International Criminal Court encouraging it to begin an investigation and prosecution into the crimes against humanity and war crimes committed during the course of Israel’s 2014 Gaza offensive. The crime of genocide was referenced as an Israeli crime by these groups. Additionally, dozens of Holocaust survivors, along with hundreds of descendants of Holocaust survivors and victims, accused Israel of "genocide" for the deaths of more than 2,000 Palestinians in Gaza during the 2014 Gaza War.

2021 Israel–Palestine crisis

During the 2021 Israel–Palestine crisis, a video circulated on social media showing Israelis celebrating at the Western Wall, whilst a tree near the Al-Aqsa Mosque burns in the background. A large crowd of Israeli Jews gathered around a fire near the mosque on 10 May, chanting '' yimakh shemam'', a Hebrew curse meaning "may their names be erased". IfNotNow co-founder and B'Tselem USA director Simone Zimmerman criticized them as exhibiting "genocidal animus towards Palestinians — emboldened and unfiltered". ''The Intercept'' described the video as "unsettling" and an example of "ultranationalist frenzy". Ayman Odeh, a member of the Knesset for the Joint List, said the video was "shocking".

In 2021, the accusation of genocide was rejected as 'ridiculous' and 'baseless' by several Jewish and Israeli human rights lawyers, including some who were ordinarily critical of Israel's policies.

In an opinion survey of American Jews, commissioned by the Jewish Electorate Institute following the 2021 crisis, 22 percent agreed that "Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians."

2023 Israel–Hamas war

The 2023 Israel–Hamas war began after Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October 2023, killing around 1,200 people, most of whom were civilians; this led to an Israeli counteroffensive. Israel formally declared war on Hamas a day later. Some Palestinians immediately expressed concern that this violence would be used to justify genocide against Palestinians by Israel. According to ''Time'', there is currently a disagreement as to whether or not this war can be attributed with the label of a genocide against the Palestinians. On 15 October, TWAILR published a statement signed by over 800 legal scholars expressing "alarm about the possibility of the crime of genocide being perpetrated by Israeli forces against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip" and calling on UN bodies, including the UN Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect, as well as the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to "immediately intervene, to carry out the necessary investigations, and invoke the necessary warning procedures to protect the Palestinian population from genocide."
On 19 October 2023, 100 civil society organizations and six genocide scholars sent a letter to Karim Khan, Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, calling on him to issue arrest warrants to Israeli officials for cases already before the prosecutor; to investigate the new crimes committed in the Palestinian territories, including incitement to genocide, since 7 October; to issue a preventative statement against war crimes; and to remind all states of their obligations under international law. The letter noted that Israeli officials, in their statements, had indicated "clear intent to commit war crimes, crimes against humanity and incitement to commit genocide, using dehumanizing language to describe Palestinians." The six specialist genocide scholars that signed the document were Raz Segal, Barry Trachtenberg, Robert McNeil, Damien Short, Taner Akçam and Victoria Sanford.
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* The same day, lawyers at the Center for Constitutional Rights