In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
- Killing members of the group;
- Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
- Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
- Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
- Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Note that to meet this definition, the following conditions must be met (among others):
1. Intent to destroy must be present.
2. The intent must be to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group.
3. The destruction can be serious bodily or mental harm, or it can mean creating conditions calculated to bring about the destruction of the group in whole or in part.
This means that:
- people that believe that genocide must be about a race is misguided (it can be about a nationality, and Palestinians identify as a nationality that is recognized by over 75% of the countries in the UN);
- the fact that there are Palestinians elsewhere (the West Bank and Jordan, as two examples) isn't relevant to deciding whether this is a genocide (since genocide can be about destruction targeted at a part of a group); and,
- there are many examples of Israeli ministers and government personnel stating goals that sound genocidal, which people interpret to affirm intent.
IANAL, and genocide is a legal term, so I am not weighing in on this with a personal opinion, but it seems reasonable that laypeople, at least, can read that definition and reach the conclusion that Israel is committing genocide. The fact that various genocide scholars (including Omer Bartov at Brown); the Lemkin Institute (named after the Lemkin who coined the term genocide); HRW; Amnesty; MSF; and other institutions have called this a genocide is also probably helping laypeople believe the claim.
Finally, there is not just a moral imperative but a legal requirement under the Geneva Convention to feed people. Article 55 states that an occupying power is responsible for this.
Thank you for your opinion (stated as a fact, I'll add) that Israel doesn't occupy Gaza. Can you please state your source for this belief?
To state why I believe Israel is occupying Gaza, I'll point out that Israel’s continued status as an occupying power has been affirmed repeatedly by the United Nations, the International Court of Justice, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and human rights groups. Do you believe all of these entities are incorrect?
Hamas did steal from some of the smaller organizations that donated aid, as those groups were not always on the ground to oversee distribution, according to the senior Israeli officials and others involved in the matter. But, they say, there was no evidence that Hamas regularly stole from the United Nations, which provided the largest chunk of the aid.
What is your source to justify your claim (stated as a fact) that Hamas is diverting supplies and then selling them? Here [1] is a recent article in the NYT this week quoting two unnamed Israeli military officials saying Israel has found no proof of this claim despite Israeli officials repeatedly stating otherwise, and that the UN had been largely successful (via UNRWA) in feeding the Gazan population.
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
- Killing members of the group; - Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; - Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; - Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; - Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Note that to meet this definition, the following conditions must be met (among others): 1. Intent to destroy must be present. 2. The intent must be to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group. 3. The destruction can be serious bodily or mental harm, or it can mean creating conditions calculated to bring about the destruction of the group in whole or in part.
This means that: - people that believe that genocide must be about a race is misguided (it can be about a nationality, and Palestinians identify as a nationality that is recognized by over 75% of the countries in the UN); - the fact that there are Palestinians elsewhere (the West Bank and Jordan, as two examples) isn't relevant to deciding whether this is a genocide (since genocide can be about destruction targeted at a part of a group); and, - there are many examples of Israeli ministers and government personnel stating goals that sound genocidal, which people interpret to affirm intent.
IANAL, and genocide is a legal term, so I am not weighing in on this with a personal opinion, but it seems reasonable that laypeople, at least, can read that definition and reach the conclusion that Israel is committing genocide. The fact that various genocide scholars (including Omer Bartov at Brown); the Lemkin Institute (named after the Lemkin who coined the term genocide); HRW; Amnesty; MSF; and other institutions have called this a genocide is also probably helping laypeople believe the claim.
Finally, there is not just a moral imperative but a legal requirement under the Geneva Convention to feed people. Article 55 states that an occupying power is responsible for this.