The Israeli government swore vengeance after the October 7 massacre by Hamas, which killed almost 1,400 innocent people, on Israel. According to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have declared war on the internationally recognized terrorist group Hamas and have no intention of stopping until the group is eliminated.
Thousands of innocent people, including women and children, were killed when Israel started attacking Hamas in Gaza. Those who think Israel is carrying out genocide have been enraged by the air campaign and the subsequent ground war. After WWII, when Adolf Hitler committed genocide, the United Nations convened a group to examine the problem of mass murder. Accusations of US support for Israeli activities were leveled by one panelist.
Panel Discussion
Panelists gathered on December 12 for a meeting of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP), titled “2023 War on Gaza: The Responsibility to Prevent Genocide.” The panelists contended that Israel was willfully committing genocide, and that their military actions, which have devastated cities, satisfy the legal criteria for that designation.
According to Raz Segal, a professor at Stockton University, at least a thousand Israelis were killed by Hamas in the strike on October 7. But he said the Israeli response to the war was like the Holocaust and the genocide in Rwanda. Claiming that statements by senior Israeli officials indicating their intention to destroy Hamas constitute “genocidal intent,” he used these quotes to bolster his argument.
The Israeli Defense Forces are causing “forced displacement” according to Segal, since they are attacking Hamas in residential neighborhoods. Even if it’s not necessarily a genocidal act, he said that it’s typically a component of the “genocidal processes.” He called it “ethnic cleansing.” According to him, the Holocaust was defined by the “eventually escalated into genocide” that occurred when people were herded into certain locations.
Accusation Against America
A member of the panel raised the issue of the US and claimed that Washington backs Israel’s purported genocide. The argument that “the United States has crossed the line into complicity” is being advanced by Katherine Gallagher, an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights. It is not necessary for the complicit entity to “share the specific intent to commit genocide,” as she pointed out. She emphasized the importance of knowing the motivations of the perpetrator.
Recent US defeat of UN resolution urging Israel to implement a ceasefire prompted uproar. The United States maintained that this action would have been ineffective in resolving the Gaza conflict.
