It is still too early to know how the events we are witnessing will unfold, but I have no doubt that they will fundamentally stain and haunt Israeli history and also Jewish history for generations to come. I write this in enormous pain. From here
Palestinians in Gaza in whole or in part in a way that would satisfy the legal high bar. But even those who are not certain about this( but also not certain that not), for example like Philippe Sands, mostly argue that substantively genocide is taking place in Gaza because there is intentional destruction of a national collective even if there is no intent to murder each of its individual members and even if the legal proof for this intent might not satisfy the very high bar that the courts set. However, recently there has been a change. Even cautious voices like that of William Schabas, who is perhaps the most significant legal scholar of this topic and hesitated greatly for long months to decide on the issue, recently argued that in his opinion this is the strongest and most well-founded case brought before international tribunals on charges of genocide. The unequivocal determination of the UN committee headed by Navi Pillay that I mentioned only strengthens this argument. This adds to the more than ten lengthy reports by various serious organizations( including two Israeli Human Rights organizations) and many dozens of scholars that a genocide is taking place in Gaza.
And I wish to add one more comment. Genocide does not need to look like the Holocaust in order to be genocide. If one reads the writings of Raphael Lemkin, one understands that what he conceived as genocide is the erasure of a collective through various means including mass murder but also destruction of the physical infrastructures and social, cultural, and political frameworks that create a collective from a collection of individuals. He also believed it is a process that can take decades. This is what is happening today in Gaza and this is the point for example Philippe Sands makes. Destruction of an entire collective not only physically but of all the physical, medical, religious, social, and political infrastructures, including destruction of the elites( journalists, officials, doctors, lecturers, etc.) and including systematic destruction of all the buildings that created the personal and collective lives of 2.2 million people. The intention is evident in endless genocidal utterances made by the highest officials, army officers and regular soldiers. It can also be discerned from what courts call " the pattern of conduct " including systematic and overwhelming acts of humiliation and countless incidents of sexual crimes. Those indicate that the Palestinians were stripped off their humanity in Israeli eyes. Anyone who does not see that there is a full destruction here is denying the horror. They are not interpreting the reality or the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide differently. In Turkey there are historical institutes that produce endless " knowledge " of Armenian genocide denial. This does not make what they write historically legitimate or equivalent to the true history written about the Armenian genocide.
7. From your dual perspective as an Israeli citizen and a genocide scholar, do you perceive this as a historical moment that could mark a turning point both in the history of the country and in the broader understanding of mass atrocities?
It is still too early to know how the events we are witnessing will unfold, but I have no doubt that they will fundamentally stain and haunt Israeli history and also Jewish history for generations to come. I write this in enormous pain. From here
on, we will all need to examine retroactively what in Jewish culture, religion, and history— especially in the way they were interpreted and understood in Israel and by its unconditional supporters— brought about and enabled the genocide. But this is not only a matter of Israel. The Jewish world is very divided in its relation to the genocide in Gaza, which is also spilling over, meanwhile at low intensity and in the form of slow but steady ethnic cleansing, to the West Bank. Many Jews, mainly abroad but also in Israel,
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Observing Memories ISSUE 9