For the past two-and-a-half years, I have spent much time and effort on this Substack documenting the Israel-Hamas war and commenting on its developments. If you have been paying attention to my 'Memeing The World' segment, you may have noticed the weekly report on conflicts in the Middle East. Older subscribers may also recall my special comments and articles, which analyzed and critiqued issues surrounding the war in Gaza.
Throughout the development of the war, I have repeatedly condemned Israel’s actions, and I have written that I believe they already constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity. During the initial year of the Gaza war, I was very hesitant to use the word “genocide” to describe what was happening. I would argue it reaches the threshold of ethnic cleansing, but back then, due to the word’s historical meaning, linguistic weight, and legal analysis at the time, my hesitancy won out on using such language.
But now, the situation has changed.
Among the recent appalling news coming out of the Gaza war:
Palestinian deaths in Gaza rose significantly when the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) began distributing aid.
An AP report quoted two US contractors who described chaos and gunfire at Gaza’s aid distribution sites, saying their colleagues used live ammunition and stun grenades against hungry Palestinians.
According to a report by the FT, Boston Consulting Group modelled the costs of “relocating” Gazans and entered into a multimillion-dollar contract to help launch a new aid scheme. In one estimate, BCG hypothesizes more than 500,000 Gazans would leave the enclave after receiving “relocation packages” worth $9000 for each person, which calculates to around $5 billion in total.
Netanyahu defended Trump’s plan to relocate Palestinians from Gaza in a controversial post-war development plan.
An Israeli reservist soldier who served three terms in Gaza says his unit was often ordered to shoot anyone entering no-go zone areas defined by the IDF, regardless of whether they posed a threat. Aside from arbitrary killings, the soldier described a prevailing belief among troops that all Palestinians living in Gaza were terrorists, which was often endorsed by commanders and wasn’t challenged by many soldiers.
The GHF proposed building camps called “Humanitarian Transit Areas” for displaced Gazans, located both inside and outside of the Gaza Strip.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said he has instructed the IDF to prepare a plan to move all Palestinians in Gaza into a camp located in the southern region of the territory. The plan is so bad that the former Israeli PM Ehud Olmert said it would essentially be a concentration camp for Palestinians.
An IDF strike killed a group of women and children waiting to receive nutritional supplements outside a clinic in central Gaza.
The head of Israel’s Mossad spy agency visited Washington this week, with spy chief David Barnea telling White House envoy Steve Witkoff that Ethiopia, Indonesia, and Libya are interested in taking deals to move Palestinians out of Gaza.
As Israel’s efforts to target humanitarian hubs continue, the World Food Programme’s Palestine representative told Al Jazeera that Gaza malnutrition levels in recent weeks are “never seen” before.
The BBC, AFP, AP, and Reuters wrote they are “deeply alarmed” and “desperately concerned for our journalists in Gaza.”
While hungry aid staff are fainting in Gaza, the head of UNRWA warned that “the entire humanitarian system is collapsing,” while the WFP says at least one in three Palestinians is not eating for days.
Far-right politicians in Israel were scheming a “master plan for settlement in the Gaza Strip,” which involves displacing Palestinians and building a high-tech resort city out of annexed territory.
Those are selected news headlines from just the past few weeks! And then there is the news that came out just in the first three days of the week:
As international criticism mounts on Israel’s starving campaign against Palestinians in Gaza, Trump urged Netanyahu to ensure civilians “get the food, every ounce of food.” He adds, “That’s real starvation, I see it, and you can’t fake that.”
The Gaza Health Ministry announced more than 60,000 Palestinians have died since the start of the war, as the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification said the “worst case” scenario of famine is now unfolding in front of our eyes.
Within Israel, 31 high-profile Israeli public figures called for “crippling sanctions” on their country in a letter concerning the starvation in Gaza.
Marjorie Taylor Greene became the first Republican to call the Gaza war a “genocide,” joining only 9 Democrats in using that label.
Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said a Jewish resettlement in Gaza is a “realistic plan,” claiming his country is applying de facto sovereignty in the West Bank.
Even for those on the sidelines of calling Israel’s war actions in Gaza a “genocide,” myself included, what happened this week is more than just the final straw; It is the latest manifestation of war crimes and humanitarian crises escalating into a full-blown man-made catastrophe.
The list of people and groups calling the Gaza war a genocide is growing, as Zeteo documented in this useful article.
Most notably, genocide scholars have been more open in calling what is happening in Gaza a genocide in recent days, including experts who were reluctant to call it that way just months ago.
Omer Bartov, a Brown University professor who is dubbed “one of the world's leading specialists on the subject of genocide,” wrote in the NYT that “I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It.”
My inescapable conclusion has become that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people. Having grown up in a Zionist home, lived the first half of my life in Israel, served in the I.D.F. as a soldier and officer and spent most of my career researching and writing on war crimes and the Holocaust, this was a painful conclusion to reach, and one that I resisted as long as I could. But I have been teaching classes on genocide for a quarter of a century. I can recognize one when I see one.
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Some might describe this campaign as ethnic cleansing, not genocide. But there is a link between the crimes. When an ethnic group has nowhere to go and is constantly displaced from one so-called safe zone to another, relentlessly bombed and starved, ethnic cleansing can morph into genocide.
Amnesty International called the war a genocide by the end of last year. And this week, two leading Israeli human rights groups, B’Tselem and the Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI), said the Gaza conflict “Our Genocide.”
An examination of Israel’s policy in the Gaza Strip and its horrific outcomes, together with statements by senior Israeli politicians and military commanders about the goals of the attack, leads to the unequivocal conclusion that Israel is taking coordinated, deliberate action to destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip. In other words: Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
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Genocide always occurs within a context: there are conditions that enable it, triggering events, and a guiding ideology. The current onslaught on the Palestinian people, including in the Gaza Strip, must be understood in the context of more than seventy years in which Israel has imposed a violent and discriminatory regime on the Palestinians, taking its most extreme form against those living in the Gaza Strip. Since the State of Israel was established, the apartheid and occupation regime has institutionalized and systematically employed mechanisms of violent control, demographic engineering, discrimination, and fragmentation of the Palestinian collective. These foundations laid by the regime are what made it possible to launch a genocidal attack on the Palestinians immediately after the Hamas-led attack on 7 October 2023.
The assault on Palestinians in Gaza cannot be separated from the escalating violence being inflicted, at varying levels and in different forms, on Palestinians living under Israeli rule in the West Bank and within Israel. The violence and destruction in these areas is intensifying over time, with no effective domestic or international mechanism acting to halt them. We warn of the clear and present danger that the genocide will not remain confined to the Gaza Strip, and that the actions and underlying mindset driving it may be extended to other areas as well.
The recognition that the Israeli regime is committing genocide in the Gaza Strip, and the deep concern that it may expand to other areas where Palestinians live under Israeli rule, demand urgent and unequivocal action from both Israeli society and the international community, and use of every means available under international law to stop Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people.
For some pro-Palestine critics, they would argue the war turned into a genocide much earlier than this week or even after Israel's assault on Gaza after October 7, 2023. Others would quote the famous Omar El Akkad post that “One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This” as an “I told you so” moment.
As a person who values accountability, I do take responsibility that although I have criticized the Gaza war and documented its tragedy for the past two years, I could have done better in identifying when it turned from ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity to genocide.
With an ongoing genocide and famine developing in front of our eyes, it seems Israel’s political unaccountability seems to be reaching an end. France has announced it will recognize Palestine’s statehood in the UN General Assembly in September, which is co-signed by the UK and Canada just this week. In the US, aside from Trump’s criticism of Netanyahu’s claims that there was no famine in Gaza and far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene’s comments, a majority of Democrats voted to stop arming Israel, despite the proposal being voted down in the Senate by all Republicans and some Democrats.
There is more to be said about what is developing in the Israel-Palestine conflict in the days moving forward, but we need to recognize the depressingly clarifying reality: We are witnessing a genocide in Gaza.