Experts: Mass Slaughter of Palestinians

in Gaza Constitutes Genocide

highlight: The Palestinian journalists’ syndicate

From October 7, 2023, through 5 March 2024, Israel had killed over 30,631 Palestinians in Gaza, 70% of them women and children. Over 1.7 million people (75% of the population of Gaza) have been displaced by Israeli violence. Due to Israel’s siege on the Gaza strip, 2.2 million Palestinians are at imminent risk of famine and over 1.3 million are facing emergency or catastrophic levels of food insecurity. UN human rights experts warn that Gazans make up “80% of all people facing famine or catastrophic hunger worldwide, marking an unparalleled humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip amid Israel’s continued bombardment and siege.” Hospitals and schools, sheltering large numbers of civilians, are under heavy strikes from Israeli forces. 625,000 students, or 100% of students in Gaza, have no access to education and 90% of all school buildings in Gaza have been significantly damaged by Israeli forces.

As of February 6, 2024, Israel had killed over over one percent of Gaza’s total population. The proportion of journalists and media workers killed is even more staggering. Of the 1,200 Palestinian journalists and media workers based in Gaza at the start of the genocide, at least 115—or nearly ten percent—had been killed as of January 28, 2024. 

The Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate (PJS) is the only trade union representing Palestinian journalists across the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), including the approximately 1,200 journalists who were based in Gaza at the start of the genocide. In December 2023, PJS and the University Network filed an amicus brief in U.S. federal court to document Israel’s systematic targeting and killing of Palestinian journalists in Gaza.

To learn more about Israel’s lethal attacks on journalists, listen to PJS member Anan Quzmar on Democracy Now! and the Useful Idiots podcast.

 

Following Israel’s ongoing violence against Palestinians in Gaza, respected and authoritative sources have classified the conduct of Israeli forces in Gaza as meeting the international definition of genocide. These include:

  • The International Court of Justice (determining that Israel’s conduct in Gaza could plausibly amount to genocide.)

  • Raz Segal, Israeli genocide scholar (who, on October 13th, stated that Israel’s campaign is a “textbook case of genocide.”)

  • The Center for Constitutional Rights (which filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration for failure to prevent and complicity in Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.)

  • A U.S. federal court (finding that “the current treatment of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip by the Israeli military may plausibly constitute a genocide in violation of international law…”)

  • William A. Schabas, the world’s leading legal expert in genocide (stating that there is “much direct evidence” that Israel’s actions and statements meet the international legal definition of genocide.)

  • Seventy seven human rights organizations from around the world including the American Association of Jurists, the Movement for Black Lives, and the National Lawyers Guild (concluding that “a genocide, or at the very least, a serious risk of genocide, of Palestinians in Gaza is unfolding.”)

  • The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Arab Resource & Organizing Center, Council of American-Islamic Relations, California, and Arab-American Civil Rights League (supporting the CCR case against U.S. complicity in Israel’s genocide by stating, “There is no greater public interest than preventing or stopping a genocide.”)

  • Three leading Holocaust and genocide scholars John Cox, Victoria Sanford, and Barry Trachtenberg (finding that “much evidence points to the crime of genocide in Israel’s attack on Gaza after October 7, 2023.”)

  • Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on Palestine (stating that genocide is unfolding and noting that the figures on the ground are unparalleled and unmatched.)

  • 1,046 scholars and practitioners of international law, genocide studies, and international studies (supporting South Africa’s application to the ICJ and calling for an end to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.)

  • The International Federation for Human Rights (recognizing that “Israel’s actions against the Palestinian people constitute an unfolding genocide.”)

  • Craig Mokhiber, former top United Nations official (resigned due to the UN’s failure to address the “text-book case of genocide” against Palestinians in Gaza.)

 

OPEN LETTERS SIGNED BY THE UNIVERSITY NETWORK (IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER):

 
 
 
 

University network Statement published October 2023

The world is witnessing the Israeli government and military commit population transfer, forced displacement, collective punishment, and ethnic cleansing—actions that together constitute genocide in Gaza, according to scholars and legal experts.

Since Hamas’s recent attacks against Israeli civilians, Israel has leveled residential neighborhoods, deployed white phosphorus bombs in densely populated areas, damaged critical civilian infrastructure, and blocked water, food, electricity, medical supplies, and aid from entering the region, exacerbating an already severe humanitarian crisis. After ordering a 24-hour population transfer of 1.1 million Palestinians from North Gaza, Israel has bombed those evacuating; air strikes continue to kill others in the south. This is all while Israeli leaders call Gazans “human animals” and openly signal their intent to commit mass atrocities, U.S. leaders cheer on the devastation and pledge unconditional support for Israel’s actions, and members of the global media report as fact unsubstantiated allegations that fan the flames of war. 

This catastrophe follows a year of intensifying violence, a sixteen-year blockade of the people of Gaza, and decades of Israeli occupation and apartheid. A majority of the population of Gaza are themselves or are descendants of people who were forcibly expelled from their homes in present-day Israel in 1948 and who have been denied their legally protected right to return. Many Palestinians in Gaza now fear that they are reliving the catastrophic events of 1948.

We call upon the international community to withhold all aid from Israel while it commits grave breaches of the most basic laws of war. We urge a lifting of the blockade and an immediate ceasefire—at the very least, a 48-hour humanitarian ceasefire—and we condemn the refusal of the United States to work toward de-escalation. 

We demand that the United States and other powerful nations exercise the full extent of their influence to stop this devastation. History will judge those enabling genocide in Gaza.

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