The International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) says it has passed a resolution declaring that Israel has “engaged in systematic and widespread crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide.”
On Monday, the IAGS President emphasized that the resolution calls on Israel to “immediately cease all acts that constitute genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity against Palestinians in Gaza.”
The resolution stated that “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 IAGS said the “deliberate destruction of agricultural fields, food warehouses, and bakeries and other violence that prevents food production, in conjunction with denial and restriction of humanitarian aid, indicate the intentional infliction of unlivable conditions resulting in starvation of Palestinians in Gaza.” Eighty-six percent of voting members of the 500-strong IAGS supported the motion.
The genocide scholars also noted that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu had endorsed a plan by US President Donald Trump to forcibly expel all Palestinians from Gaza with no right of return—what Navi Pillay, head of the UN Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, has described as “amounting to ethnic cleansing.”
This comes as Israel’s actions in Gaza have drawn condemnation from human rights groups and governments worldwide. Last week, Palestine’s leading human rights group presented further evidence of genocide in Gaza, accusing Israel of seeking to annihilate Palestinians in the besieged strip.
In a 204-page report titled Voices of the Genocide, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) concluded that Israel had committed four of the five acts prohibited under the 1948 Genocide Convention, with the intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza as a group.
PCHR has previously labeled Israel’s conduct in Gaza as a genocide, but Thursday’s report is the culmination of the organization’s documentation of genocidal evidence over the past 22 months.
The report mirrors findings by other major international rights groups, which have also described Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide and called for urgent measures to halt the crime.
Leading experts in international law and Holocaust studies have affirmed that Israel’s conduct meets the legal threshold for genocide.
Last month, famine was officially declared in the besieged territory after months of severe, Israel-enforced food shortages.
[ SOURCE: AL JAZEERA and NEWS AGENCIES ]
