In Gaza, we are witnessing the ruthless eradication of life, and the conditions which support it, including through use of advanced technology warfare, repeated targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure, deliberate starvation, and the destruction of healthcare and education facilities. After years of blockade, Gaza was already considered by many to be the largest prison on earth, but Israel has now reduced this land to what one UN expert has called “a wasteland of rubble and human remains”.

The definition of genocide

According to the Genocide Convention, genocide is any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) killing members of the group;

(b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

The evidence

Global Justice Now believes there is evidence that Israel has carried out actions amounting to genocide under the first three of these definitions at least: killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, and deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction. Crucially, these actions have been targeted at and carried out on Palestinian civilians in Gaza, not simply combatants.

Israel has killed more than 44,000 people in Gaza by conservative counts. This number doesn’t include the thousands of bodies still buried under the rubble of buildings Israel has destroyed, nor the people who have died as a result of Israel’s deliberate destruction of health facilities, food systems and other infrastructure necessary to keep people alive. A UN Commission reported in October that Israel has carried out “relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities.” By May, its forces had destroyed or damaged 31 out of 36 functioning hospitals in Gaza. Mothers are now three times as likely to die during childbirth. Doctors have been helpless to prevent children dying of cancer as medicines run out. One study estimated the true death could exceed 186,000.

Israel has attacked food and water facilities, razing farms and orchards, and destroying water, hygiene and environmental infrastructure. It has prevented desperately needed aid getting into Gaza and on several occasions bombed and killed aid workers who were in the process of delivering it. By September, more than two-thirds of Gaza’s cropland had been damaged. The amount of water available in Gaza has plummeted by 94%. Israel has been using starvation and the denial of water as a method of warfare.

The UN’s special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories Francesca Albanese said of this wide-ranging and targeted violence: “Israel has pursued a pattern of conduct ‘deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction’”.

While this violence is particularly extreme in Gaza, Israel has also unleashed tremendous violence against civilians in Lebanon, as well as long-standing, routine violence against civilians in the West Bank.

Just as important, Israel’s intent has also been made clear. When the International Court of Justice began hearings into Israel’s operations in Gaza in January, South African lawyer Tembeka Ngcukaitobi said: “the evidence of genocidal intent is not only chilling, it is also overwhelming and incontrovertible”. The mass killing has been accompanied by genocidal statements by members of Israel’s government, attempts to dehumanise Palestinians and a stated intention to “eliminate everything”. There have been repeated calls, for example, by senior members of the Israeli government not to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza.

South Africa has been joined by more than 60 supporting countries in taking Israel to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for alleged genocide. They are supported in their opinion by the UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, hundreds of genocide and international law scholars, Amnesty International, and dozens more UN experts

A political failure

Despite this evidence, numerous British politicians have used evasive language to obfuscate and downplay Israel’s crimes. In late October, UK Foreign minister David Lammy denied that Israel was committing genocide, wrongly framing his definition around the number of people killed, even though the Genocide Convention contains no numerical threshold. We believe the word ‘genocide’ is unsayable for the British government, because admitting a genocide is taking place would force the government to change its policy towards Israel, and open up senior officials here to legal claims of complicity. For this reason, being clear on the genocidal nature of what is currently taking place is important because it makes the obligations of countries like the UK crystal clear: they must legally do all they can to prevent it.

We think the current failure of our political establishment to use the term ‘genocide’ to apply to what is happening in the occupied Palestinian territory also points to something deeper – an assumption that, with the exception of the Holocaust, genocides are carried out by global south governments, as opposed to the West and its allies. And yet many of the most powerful Western countries, including the USA, Australia and Canada, were built upon genocidal policies, as were the colonial projects of European countries including Britain. Working to recognise what is happening in Gaza and beyond as a genocide is not only important in bringing the horror to an end, and holding those responsible to account, it is also an important step to recognising our own history and thereby building a world where we can truly say ‘never again’.