Leading Genocide Experts Declare Zionist Entity Committing Genocide in Gaza
The world’s leading genocide scholars’ association has passed a resolution saying that the legal criteria have been met to establish the Zionist entity is committing genocide in Gaza, according to a statement by its president on Monday.
Eighty-six percent of those who voted among the 500-member International Association of Genocide Scholars backed the resolution, which declares “Israel’s policies and actions in Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide in Article II of the United Nations Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948)”.
The Zionist occupation’s genocidal war in Gaza has killed at least 63,459 Palestinians, and wounded 160,256 others, according to Gaza Health Ministry.
The occupation raids also damaged or destroyed most buildings in the territory and forced nearly all its residents to flee their homes for many times. Additionally, a global hunger monitor relied on by the United Nations says parts of the territory are now suffering a man-made famine.
“This is a definitive statement from experts in the field of genocide studies that what is going on on the ground in Gaza is genocide,” the association’s president, Melanie O’Brien, a professor of international law at the University of Western Australia who specialises in genocide, told the Reuters news agency.
The IAGS declares that the Zionist occupation’s actions in Gaza “constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity as defined in international humanitarian law and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.”
Accordingly, the three-page resolution adopted by the scholars calls on the Zionist occupation to “immediately cease all acts that constitute genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity against Palestinians in Gaza, including deliberate attacks against and killing of civilians including children; starvation; deprivation of humanitarian aid, water, fuel, and other items essential to the survival of the population; sexual and reproductive violence; and forced displacement of the population.”
In Gaza, the Palestinian group Hamas welcomed the resolution: “This prestigious scholarly stance reinforces the documented evidence and facts presented before international courts,” said Ismail Al-Thawabta, director of the Gaza government media office.
The resolution “places a legal and moral obligation on the international community to take urgent action to stop the crime, protect civilians, and hold the leaders of the occupation accountable,” he said.
Since its founding in 1994, the genocide scholars’ association has passed nine resolutions recognising historic or ongoing episodes as genocides.
The 1948 U.N. Genocide Convention defines genocide as crimes committed “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such”, requiring all countries to act to prevent and stop genocide.
Criminal acts comprising genocide include killing members of the group, causing them serious bodily or mental harm, creating conditions calculated to destroy them, preventing births, or forcibly transferring children to other groups.
