Appendix 1 – The reasons underlying my definition of Israel’s actions in the war as genocide
Last updated: June 18, 2024
Disclaimer: Unlike other sections in this document which summarize the evidence about the war, this one explains my position about understanding Israel’s actions in it as genocide.
My definition of genocide builds upon my understanding of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. This Convention defined genocide as “any of the [specified] acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.” It requires two interconnected elements:
1. The commission of one or more specific acts against a group:
a. Killing members of the group
b. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
c. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
d. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
e. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group
2. The intent behind the commission of one or more of the aforementioned acts.
I believe that both these conditions have been met during the war. Israel has committed acts 1a, 1b, and 1c above. The killing of almost 2% of the population of the Gaza Strip (not including the thousands of missing Gazans) that I describe in the section above on massacring Palestinians fits act 1a. As I describe in the same section, the wounding of over 3% of the population of the Gaza Strip, as well as the collective trauma resulting from the repeated attacks on the tiny and densely populated Gaza Strip fit act 1b. The starvation of Gaza, which I describe under the section on causing the deaths of civilian populations, fits act 1c. The ‘deliberate’ aspect of act 1c is clear from the descriptions of Israeli officials and IDF members that I quote in the section about Israeli discourse and de-humanization of Palestinians.
With regards to intent, I believe that a series of statements by top Israeli officials including the Prime Minister and President that took place mostly during the beginning of the war, but continued with subsequent statements by somewhat lower-ranking officials until the recent past, imply a general intention that both presented the “commander’s spirit” and legitimized disproportionate violence against Palestinians in subsequent months. Many testimonies from IDF troops – particularly middle- and low-ranking officers – as well as other parts of Israeli civil society ranging from rabbis to entertainers demonstrate that themes of genocide, for example through repeated reference to biblical Amalek, and ethnic cleansing, for example through repeated references to resettling the Gaza Strip, are common in discourse. The fact that nobody, to the best of my knowledge, has been indicted or even openly censured for such extreme messages indicates the legitimacy of these messages among Israeli state officials and broader society.
Based on the available evidence as of writing, I believe that Israel has attempted to do some combination of: (1) remove Gazans from the Strip, especially its northern parts; (2) make large parts of the Strip uninhabitable, hoping that this would contribute to the former objective; and (3) kill Gazans through direct violence, starvation, or prevention of aid or support, at least partially as part of the de facto policy of revenge, and at least partially as a way to facilitate the removal of Gazans from the Strip. I interpret the policy of using starvation as a weapon of war – acknowledged at least since December by some NGOs1 and now widely by international officials and lawyers2 – as an attempt to bring about the physical destruction of Gaza as a political entity and population group, particularly to further the objective of cleansing Gaza from its inhabitants. The wholescale destruction of targets with no military value such as archives, libraries, universities, mosques and heritage sites – as well as the broader destruction of the civilian infrastructure as well as over half the buildings throughout the Gaza Strip – all contribute to the objective of making Gaza uninhabitable.
I do not believe this policy was meticulously planned or put in writing. Rather, high officials in the state and military have defined the war as explicitly lenient towards exacting inordinate revenge immediately at the beginning of the war, allowing local commanders (middle and lower-ranking officers and NCOs) to act as they see fit. The same high officials both put some policies in place, such as the starvation or approval of systematic attacks on hospitals, while purposefully maintaining some level of deniability and attempting to diffuse their responsibility, at least to the public. At the same time, the high officials are unwilling3 (and likely unable) to prevent serious acts of killing and destruction on the ground, as well as the use of genocidal language among some cultural and religious public voices, resulting in the persistence of these acts.
Orders by commanders on the ground are often to just shoot every man of fighting age, as a senior Israeli journalist said on CNN.4 Other Israeli journalists pointed out the same policy in which “everyone in Gaza sets the rules for themselves” in their own reporting based on speaking to commanders and soldiers in the field. This purposeful vagueness – with the additional backdrop of strong language supporting genocide and/or ethnic cleansing by some political, cultural and religious elites – absolves the Israeli higher command from accountability, while diffusing responsibility among lower commanders on the field. As one reserve officer put it: “the standing orders don’t matter in the field… Just about any battalion commander can decide that whoever moves in his sector is a terrorist”.5 A sapper added “the only limit to the number of buildings we blew up was the time we had inside Gaza”.6 Together with the absence of almost any attempt to restrain commanders or soldiers at the ground level, this results in a reality in which atrocities that are conducted at the ground level can nonetheless be superficially portrayed as “against procedures” by the high command.
The key to all of this is the pervasive dehumanization of Palestinians. Palestinians are widely seen as less than human, based on discourse, behavior and opinions supporting the use of more force in Gaza. Therefore, violent actions against Palestinians are condoned and are often encouraged publicly, especially by key individuals such as the Minister for National Security, who is particularly popular among younger audiences and soldiers.7