Leading genocide scholars have ruled that Israel’s actions in Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide. In a resolution issued Sunday by the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS), the scholars argue that Israel’s actions in Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide under the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. That document, which has been ratified by more than 150 member states, characterizes genocide as crimes “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” The IAGS resolution cites several figures and examples from Israel’s war in Gaza to make its cases: More than 59,000 reported fatalities and 143,000 reported injuries, according to the UN; deliberate attacks on journalists, aid workers, and medical professionals; the aid blockade; and the destructions of Palestinian schools and cultural sites. The resolution calls on the Israeli government “to immediately cease all acts that constitute genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity against Palestinians in Gaza” and asks both the Israeli government and the UN “to support a process of repair and transitional justice that will afford democracy, freedom, dignity, and security for all people of Gaza.” It also calls upon members of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to “surrender any individual subject to an arrest warrant,” seemingly referring to the arrest warrants the ICC issued last year for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. The resolution comes as international condemnation of Israel’s actions are ramping up: Several countries recently announced plans to recognize Palestinian statehood, with Belgian becoming the latest as of Tuesday morning. Amnesty International also concluded Israel is committing genocide in Gaza in a 300-page report issued in December, as my colleague Noah Lenard reported at the time, and the Israeli human rights groups B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel both determined the same in July. South Africa is also pursuing a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice in the Hague. And last month, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a coalition of 21 organizations—including Save the Children, UNICEF, the World Bank, and the World Health Organization—confirmed that an “entirely man-made” famine is taking place in Gaza City and that other nearby cities are also at risk. The US, though, has consistently remained an outlier as other countries have moved to speak out against Israel and call for peace. President Donald Trump, for example, has not publicly addressed the IPC’s designation of famine in Gaza, though he has previously acknowledged starvation in Gaza. Spokespeople for the White House and the State Department did not immediately respond to an inquiry from Mother Jones on Tuesday about the IAGS resolution. The US has funded Israel’s war to the tune of nearly $18 billion since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which killed more than 1,200 people and took more than 250 hostages, including a dozen Americans. (The IAGS resolution also says the Oct. 7 attack “constitutes international crimes.”) On Sunday, the same day the IAGS resolution was issued, the Washington Post reported that a postwar plan for Gaza circulating throughout the Trump administration would put it under US control for a decade and would include the so-called “voluntary” displacement of Palestinians—a plan that experts have called ethnic cleansing. Israeli officials have repeatedly denied allegations of genocide against Palestinians. On Monday, the Israel Foreign Ministry slammed the IAGS resolution in a statement on X, calling it “an embarrassment to the legal profession and to any academic standard” and alleging that the claims within it were unverified and “entirely based on Hamas’s campaign of lies.” Tim Williams, the vice president of IAGS and professor of insecurity and social order at the University of the Bundeswehr in Munich, told the UK’s Channel 4 News that the organization’s were not surprised by the Israeli reaction, but hoped their determination would provide “a certain amount of academic credentials to anyone now claiming that it is genocide.” As my colleague Noah Lanard has written, the definition of what constitutes a genocide has been both contested and narrowed since its original formulation: > The word “genocide” was coined in 1941 by Raphael Lemkin, a Jewish lawyer from > a Polish family, who combined the Greek word for a people (genos) and the > Latin translation for killing (cide). At its most basic, genocide meant > systematically destroying another group. Lemkin laid it out as a two-phase, > often colonial process in his 1944 book, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: First, > the oppressor erases the “national pattern” of the victim. Then, it imposes > its own. Genocide stretched from antiquity (Carthage) to modern times > (Ireland). > > […] > > Since the Genocide Convention’s adoption, international courts have arrived at > a narrow reading of the already narrow interpretation of Lemkin’s concept, > says Leila Sadat, the James Carr Professor of International Criminal Law at > the Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. The emphasis of the law > is determining whether a country or individual has killed massive numbers of a > group of people, and whether they did so with a provable intent to destroy > that group. This poses a problem for prosecutors since most perpetrators of > genocide are not as transparent as Adolf Hitler.   Williams gestured towards these difficulties in his appearance on Channel 4 News: > Genocide is not just mass killing. It’s also other crimes, like I was saying, > for instance, also the deliberate destruction of foundations of life. But also > there is a high bar set by the intent to destroy. The perpetrators of genocide > have to want to eradicate the target group in whole or in part, I think that’s > where there’s been most debate. But we have seen many [Israeli] government > leaders, cabinet ministers and senior army officials making explicit > statements over the last now almost two years. And through that, I think > eventually our members see that the bar has been fulfilled.

The ceasefire agreement between Hamas and Israel, instituted in mid-January, was always shaky. It could even be argued it never fully existed. Sixteen days ago Israel imposed a total blockade on Gaza, prohibiting any food or medical supplies from entering the territory, and cutting off electricity to Gaza’s water desalination plants. At the beginning of March, Israeli negotiators refused to move into the second—more durable—phase of the ceasefire agreement. Three days ago, Israeli airstrikes killed dozens of Palestinians, including a group of journalists. In total, between the ceasefire’s start on January 19th and yesterday, Israeli forces killed at least 170 Palestinians. Then, the official break: Over the past day, Israeli airstrikes killed over 404 Palestinians and wounded 560, targeting residential areas and reportedly wiping out entire families. Now, it is inarguable. The ceasefire is dead. > “We haven’t had any meat or chicken in Gaza for the last two weeks.” The United States was helpful throughout to its partner. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in direct consultation with US President Donald Trump’s administration as he ordered airstrikes, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said. In late February, Trump bypassed a congressional review to authorize $3 billion worth of arms transfers—mostly, 2000-pound bombs—to Israel. (Netanyahu benefitted personally, too; he was excused from a scheduled court hearing for his corruption trial today. And the mass killing has paid other dividends—ultranationalist right-wing minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, in an apparent response to the airstrikes, said today that he will rejoin Netanyahu’s governing coalition.)  Netanyahu has called the offensive “open-ended,” making it unclear whether this means another ground assault into Gaza, where Palestinians have hardly begun rebuilding from the previous sixteen months of nearly nonstop bombardment.  “This is only the beginning,” Netanyahu said Tuesday. Future ceasefire talks, he said, will take place “only under fire.” Gazan doctors being trained by an international delegation to perform ultrasounds.Dr. Sabrina Das Trump’s justification for his “full backing” of these airstrikes was that Hamas has not released all of the scheduled Israeli hostages. But many hostage families are decrying the resumption of violence. Bombing the place where their family members are being held hostage puts relatives in danger. The international condemnations are rolling in, too. United Nations Human Rights Commissioner Volker Türk described this round of bombing as “adding tragedy onto tragedy.” Palestinians themselves want more than condemnations, though. As Palestinian UN ambassador Riyad Mansour told his colleagues Tuesday, “You are the Security Council. Act. Stop this criminal action. Stop them from denying our people food in the month of Ramadan. You have resolutions. Act. You have power. Act.” Throughout both the bombardment and the ceasefire the only internationals allowed into Gaza have been doctors and aid workers. Two of those doctors called me from Gaza and told me what they saw. Sabrina Das, an OBGYN from the UK, entered Gaza earlier this month hoping to be part of the rebuilding effort. She was there to train primary healthcare workers in using ultrasound machines for prenatal care. She traveled from south to north Gaza each day to go to the clinic. > “All I could think was: We’re going to go back to this, and the world is going > to continue to not care.” The training was “really, really successful,” Das said. “There’s just been this real thirst for knowledge and development, and also, you know, just normalcy.” She was planning to bring handheld ultrasound machines to the north Gaza clinic where she holds the training “within the next couple of days.”  But, in the middle of the night on March 18th, she woke up to the sound of bombs—and the news that the Netzarim Corridor between north and south Gaza was closed once again. That meant she wouldn’t be able to deliver the ultrasound machines after all.  A damaged UNRWA clinic.Dr. Sabrina Das “I mean, my brain knew that the ceasefire might or might not hold,” Das said. But her colleagues’ hope to rebuild their lives was infectious. “I’d just gotten so caught up in the optimism all around me.” She and her colleagues plan to go to Nasser Hospital and serve as extra hands while they can. And for some of those doctors, this all feels familiar. Dr. Tammy Abughnaim, from California, has been to Gaza three times in the past year.  “I think ceasefire is a very loose term,” Abughnaim said. “Although the frequency of air strikes was minimized, that did not necessarily guarantee our safety.” When she arrived, the infrastructure around her was still demolished—and, two weeks before today’s bombings, Israel stopped letting food into Gaza. “I wouldn’t say we entered Gaza at a time of peace and quiet.”  “We haven’t had any meat or chicken in Gaza for the last two weeks,” she said. “There’s only so many ways that you can make canned tuna, and they’re utilizing all of them.”  Nonetheless, Abughnaim said, the day before the bombing was the most normal she had ever felt in Gaza. She had the chance to walk on the beach, and she even planned to take a bus north to visit friends. People sold goods out of pop-up market stalls in front of the hospital complex, and children played in the streets. There was, for once, “a semblance of people returning to life around us.”  Then they woke up to the bombs.  “We were up from two to 6 a.m., maybe got a half-hour of sleep, and all I could think was: we’re going to go back to this, and the world is going to continue to not care,” Abughnaim said. “I don’t know why more people aren’t burning shit down over this, I really don’t.” She has tried to talk to her legislators about Gaza, she said, but is met with canned responses that Israel has the right to defend itself. El Shifa hospital, destroyed in previous attacks.Dr. Sabrina Das Meanwhile, she said, she was receiving dispatches from colleagues across the strip. One doctor, at Shifa Hospital, went out on the balcony after a night spent intubating children and counted 50 bodies in the courtyard.  “I’ve gotten messages from nurses saying, this is the worst night we’ve experienced in a very, very long time,” Abughnaim said. Today, outside the guest house where the foreign physicians are staying, there were no children playing.  “Americans need to know that the Trump administration has signed off on all of this,” Abughnaim said. “They need to know that Israel has violated the terms of the ceasefire by this unprovoked attack, and they need to know that the ceasefire itself was not, in reality, a ceasefire.  It has been a time of strategic mass starvation for the Palestinian people. I don’t know what kind of ceasefire agreement includes provisions for mass starvation, but it’s not one that any reasonable person would accept.” 

On October 1, 2024, as Israel began a ground incursion of Lebanon and Iran prepared to fire missiles into Israel, Foreign Affairs published a piece from Secretary of State Antony Blinken on “America’s strategy for renewal” in a “new world.”  Like policy adviser Jake Sullivan’s essay in the same magazine a year ago—boasting of a “quiet” Middle East—Blinken’s manifesto had an ironic twist. It was published right as fighting broke out. > A different mood has begun to creep back into the US discussions of foreign > policy: the glee of the big war to change the Middle East. In the essay, Blinken promised a way forward that was actively failing. Over the past fifteen days, the Biden administration’s putative plan to avoid regional war has collapsed. Here is how Blinken described (in one long-winded sentence) the goals of US foreign policy in the Middle East: > The Biden administration, for its part, has been working tirelessly with > partners in the Middle East and beyond to end the conflict and suffering in > Gaza, find a diplomatic solution that enables Israelis and Lebanese to live in > safety on both sides of the border, manage the risk of a wider regional war, > and work toward greater integration and normalization in the region, including > between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Every single thing Blinken said the administration is working “tirelessly” for is the opposite of what is happening: There is not a ceasefire, nor an end to suffering in Gaza; there is more conflict between Israel and Lebanon; there is a growing likelihood of a full regional war; and Saudi Arabia has now said it won’t normalize diplomatic relations with Israel until Palestinians get a state (something Israel has no plans to allow). As Blinken’s plans have failed—and Israel has ignored stern warnings from Biden that did not carry consequences—an old hope has returned. In the three days since the Secretary of State’s essay, a different mood has begun to creep back into the US discussions of foreign policy: the glee of a potential big war to change the Middle East. After the killing of Hezbollah’s leader, the US has seen a rhetorical push—from background administration sources, former government officials, op-ed columnists, and TV pundits—for a reshaping of the Middle East through large conflict (and away from the immediate goal of just stopping the death in Gaza). The war hawks are back in full force. In newspapers and speeches, there has been a return of neoconservative talking points and even repeated requests for Israel, or the United States, to attack Iran.  Politico reported that top Biden advisors Amos Hochstein and Brett McGurk privately supported Netanyahu as he shifted Israel’s strategy towards “reshaping the Middle East.” Jared Kushner, current son-in-law and former adviser to Donald Trump, had a similar idea. He called Israel’s actions in Lebanon “brilliant, rapid-fire technical successes” and said that “there is not an expert on earth who thought that what Israel has done to decapitate and degrade [Hezbollah] was possible.” Kushner began to see the possibility of a total reconfiguration of the Middle East in the wake of the bombings, he said on X. “Well, I don’t exactly know what Israel’s plans in Lebanon were,” John Bolton, famous war enjoyer, said Tuesday, “but their plans should not be for a limited incursion.” In the New York Times, Bret Stephens suggested that America “absolutely” should escalate directly and attack Iran. (He then proceeded to name specific missile complexes he believes Biden should be planning to destroy.) Stephens said he is looking forward to when Israel “completes Hezbollah’s decapitation in Lebanon and Hamas’s evisceration in Gaza.”  On Tucker Carlson’s podcast, Sen Mike Lee (R-Utah) seemed to suggest that the Biden administration should stop calling for ceasefires altogether. He described Biden’s current position as deeply self-contradictory: “On the one hand, they want to be seen as pro-Israel. On the other hand, they’re constantly telling Israel: ceasefire. That’s very, very strange.”  Other Republicans chimed in on which places to bomb first. “I would urge the Biden Administration to coordinate an overwhelming response with Israel, starting with Iran’s ability to refine oil,” Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina suggested. “This is a moment of choosing for the free world regarding Iran.” > “Charred bodies and severed limbs,” a source in Gaza texted me, “all of this > is just normal news to the outside world.” It seemed US politicians were inching towards a cross-partisan embrace of Israel’s reported “de-escalation through escalation” strategy. Much of this began in mid-September, when official Israeli Defense Force messaging shifted from “return the hostages,” to “regain control of northern Israel.” It was then that Israel blew up hundreds of pagers and cell phones in Lebanon and Syria, killing both Hezbollah members and civilian children. The attacks injured thousands. In the following week, Israel dropped hundreds of bombs on southern Lebanon, and Hezbollah continued launching missiles at Israel, attacking further south, aiming for Haifa and Tel Aviv.  On September 26th, the US and France proposed a 21-day ceasefire with Lebanon. Netanyahu scuttled the plan. The following day, the Israeli Prime Minister gave a speech at the UN in which he made it clear that “Israel’s war on Hamas and Hezbollah will continue unabated,” until “total victory.”  That same day, Israel reportedly dropped more than eighty bombs on four residential buildings in Beirut. They announced that they’d killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in the process. Within days, Israeli forces went further and entered Lebanon. But this escalation has not brought de-escalation. On Tuesday, Israel formally began a ground “offensive” in Lebanon, and Iran fired approximately 180 missiles at Israel (most of which were reportedly intercepted by the US and Israeli militaries). The only person killed in the attack was a Gazan laborer with an Israeli work permit who spent the past year stranded in the West Bank. Damage was also reported at a school in central Israel. In Lebanon, officials say over a thousand people have been killed, and one million displaced.  Throughout all this, the Israeli military’s incursion into Gaza continues. As bombardment in the city of Khan Younis increased, I received panicked messages from Palestinians in European Gaza Hospital who were hearing F-16s outside and witnessing mangled corpses arriving at the emergency room. (“Charred bodies and severed limbs,” one person texted me, “all of this is just normal news to the outside world.”) Indeed, global attention is shifting away from Gaza toward everywhere else in the region. At this point, at least four other countries are involved in Israel’s war that began with a goal of eliminating Hamas: Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, and Iran. Netanyahu’s government is expected to directly retaliate against Iran soon.  Now, the question is whether America will merely fund that barrage, or more actively join in. The hawks—from background sources to Bolton—seem eager to broaden the violence. Sullivan, the same man who once called for  “red lines” in Rafah and hailed a “quiet” Middle East right before October 7th, spoke from the White House mid-day Tuesday of “consequences” for Iran; and not just doled out by Israel, but potentially levied by the United States and the Biden administration.  “We are proud of the actions that we’ve taken alongside Israel to protect and defend Israel,” he said. “We have made it clear that there will be consequences—severe consequences—for this attack, and we will work with Israel to make that the case.” 

When Benjamin Netanyahu took the stage at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City on Friday morning, he looked out over a world transformed by almost a year of unabated bombing and tens of thousands of civilian deaths in Gaza. Several delegations walked out of his speech and throngs of people outside protested his presence in the city.  The way the world views Netanyahu, and Israel, has changed. But the man’s view of the world remains seemingly unaltered. After a year of war, global pressure to stop bombing Gaza, protests in Israel to make a peace deal bringing hostages home, and an Israeli military whose soldiers are exhausted and stretched thin, Netanyahu is not preparing for peace. Instead, he’s planning further war. “Israel’s war on Hamas and Hezbollah will continue unabated,” until “total victory,” he told the UN. As he gave his speech, reports showed Israel had bombed a neighborhood in southern Lebanon targeting, they said, Hezbollah’s headquarters. Images of destruction flooded social media. This was seemingly, as Israeli sources reportedly said earlier this week, the plan for “de-escalation through escalation.” Peace, Netanyahu told the UN, would come from war. > This stuff is so exhausting. No, Netanyahu doesn't "share the aims" of US > policy in Lebanon or Gaza. He wants to bomb the shit out of both places, > ignore all US concerns about civilian casualties or regional escalation, and > then demand more American weapons and money. https://t.co/jj7oZHShqd > > — Tommy Vietor (@TVietor08) September 27, 2024 “They put a missile in every kitchen, a rocket in every garage,” Netanyahu told the UN, casting Lebanese civilian homes as legitimate targets. “As long as Hezbollah chooses the path of war, Israel has no choice, and Israel has every right to remove this threat.”  The day before his UN speech, the Israeli Prime Minister spoke of “sharing the aims” of American policy but rejected a US-backed proposal for a ceasefire with Lebanon. That same day, the US signed off on $8.7 billion more military funding for Israel.  Netanyahu’s battles are now expanding on at least three fronts: Gaza, Lebanon, and the West Bank. Despite that, he is still speaking the same way he did a year ago.  In September 2023, he brought a map labeled “the new Middle East” to his UN speech, in which he spoke of two paths forward for the region: a “blessing,” in which Israel is powerful and allied with Saudi Arabia, and a “curse,” in which it is not. In 2024, as an arrest warrant from the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court for war crimes hung over his head, Netanyahu spoke as though the past year simply had not happened.  Just as he did in 2023, he waved around maps as props. (Once again, the maps did not include Gaza or the West Bank—two places whose residents hardly merited a mention in his half-hour speech.) Once again, he said this was justified because of Iran, not only calling for sanctions as he did last year, but suggesting that Iran funds the protests against him: “Who knows? Maybe, maybe some of the protesters, or even many of the protesters outside this building now.”  Netanyahu spent more time berating the United Nations for antisemitism than addressing the prospect of a ceasefire with either Hamas or Hezbollah. “For the Palestinians, this UN house of darkness is home court,” Netanyahu said. “They know that in this swamp of antisemitic violence, there is an automatic majority willing to demonize the Jewish state on anything.” He dismissed his own potential ICC arrest warrant as nothing other than “pure antisemitism.”  Israeli National Security Minister and lifelong anti-Arab extremist Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has threatened to boycott Netanyahu’s governing coalition if the prime minister signs a temporary ceasefire with Lebanon, tweeted his approval of Netanyahu’s speech minutes after it concluded.  > "נצח ישראל לא ישקר" > חזק ואמץ ראש הממשלה > > — איתמר בן גביר (@itamarbengvir) September 27, 2024 As he gave his address, Israel launched a massive bombing campaign across Beirut, a city that only days ago the IDF told Lebanese civilians to flee to for their safety. Reports said that Netanyahu personally approved these bombings from New York, in order to target Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Netanyahu’s office released an image of him sitting in a New York hotel room before his speech, making the call for bombs to come down.