Alarmingly Close in Gaza
During a visit to Ramallah a year ago
while the Israeli bombardment of Gaza was underway, I shared my fears
with a close Palestinian friend. “It may sound insane, but I think the
Israelis’ real objective is to see them all dead.”My friend told me not to be silly, the assault was horrific, but it was
not mass killing. I said that wasn’t the issue: This was a population
already very vulnerable to disease, ill-health, and malnutrition after
years of siege, with its infrastructure rotted, its water and food
contaminated. Israel’s war would surely push the people over the brink,
especially if the siege was maintained — as it has been.
In other words, Israel would not directly kill tens
of thousands of Palestinians, but it would create the conditions for
tens of thousands to die. Any epidemic could finish the job. My friend
fell silent at these words, but still shook his head in disbelief.Two things have changed since last year: More people have started to
apply the term “genocide” to what Israel is doing to Gaza. And not only
is Israel being directly accused but also, increasingly, Egypt.Is it genocide? “The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the
Crime of Genocide” — a clear, concise document adopted by the United
Nations in December 1948 — states that genocide is any of five acts
committed “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national,
ethnical, racial or religious group.”Three acts appear to apply to the situation in Gaza: “(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.”Legal scholars disagree about how to interpret the Convention’s
articles and it has proven difficult, over the years, to define crimes
as genocide, let alone to prevent or end them. In line with the Bosnia
precedent — the only authoritative legal treatment of genocide to date
— it would be necessary to establish deliberate intent for an
accusation of genocide against Israel to stand up in court.Israel’s leadership has not, of course, issued a declaration of intent.
However, many leading Israeli officials can be said to have done so.
For example:• Putting the Palestinians of Gaza “on a diet” — Dov Weisglass, chief aide to Ariel Sharon, in 2006.
• Exposing them to “a bigger shoah (holocaust)” — Matan Vilnai, former deputy defense minister, in 2008.
• Issuing religious edits exhorting soldiers to show no mercy — the Israeli army rabbinate during the actual conflict.
Such declarations echo at least three of the “8 stages of genocide”
identified by Genocide Watch president Gregory Stanton in the 1990s
after the Rwanda genocide: Classification, dehumanization, and
polarization.Then there is the deliberate destruction or barring of means of
sustenance as Israel has done on land and at sea. Already, the
Goldstone Report has said that depriving the Gaza Palestinians of their
means of sustenance, employment, housing and water, freedom of
movement, and access to a court of law, could amount to persecution.Since the December-January assault, there have been many authoritative
reports by human rights and environmental organizations on the impact
of the war and the ongoing siege on the people, soil, air, and water,
including the increase in cancers, deformed births, and preventable
deaths. The death toll in Gaza from swine flu reached nine in
mid-December and 13 a week later — an epidemic in waiting.The eighth stage of genocide Stanton identifies is denial by
perpetrators “that they committed any crimes.” Ironically, Stanton
headed the International Association of Genocide Scholars during the
conflict, which shut down discussion of Israel’s actions despite
protests by, among others, genocide scholar and author Adam Jones.
Jones and 15 other scholars had posted a declaration stating that
Israeli policies were “too alarmingly close” to genocide to ignore and
calling for an end to the silence.Alarmingly close is right. Here is how Raphael Lemkin, the
Polish-Jewish legal scholar who pushed for the genocide convention,
defined it in 1943:“genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a
nation…. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of
different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of
the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups
themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be the disintegration
of the political and social institutions, of culture, language,
national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national
groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health,
dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such
groups.”It is hard to conceive of a better description of what is going on in Gaza.
All UN member states have the duty to prevent and stop acts of
genocide. What is needed is a country brave enough to take the lead,
before it is too late.– Nadia Hijab is an independent analyst and a senior fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies.
Published in CounterPunch on January 5, 2010.