Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing: The Receipts

For nearly two years, American and western politicians and mainstream media outlets such as the New York Times have consistently declined to use the word “genocide” to describe what has been going on in Gaza since October 2023. It is simply not possible to deny it any longer. Oh, there are still some holdouts. But the vast majority of people are believing their eyes, and believing American and British doctors who have seen first-hand Israel’s systematic destruction of civilian infrastructure, deliberate mass murder and planned starvation. Still, there always have been some who have said, “The determination of genocide is something that should be left to the genocide experts.” Well, now we have heard from them. Australian independent journalist Caitlin Johnstone has assembled a list of 10 of the most prominent humanitarian institutions, including the UN entity which must research the question and declare its findings. Here they are:

• United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory

• The International Association of Genocide Scholars

• B’Tselem (Israeli)

• Physicians for Human Rights (Israeli)

• Amnesty International

• Doctors Without Borders

• The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights

• Human Rights Watch

• The International Federation for Human Rights

• The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention

Many more could be added, including Palestinian and Israeli human rights organizations Al Haq and Yesh Din. There are others as well. Individual Holocaust and Genocide Studies Scholars such as Raz Segal and Omer Bartov (both Israeli) have published their conclusions that Israel is indeed committing genocide in Gaza. Segal, early on, said it was “a textbook case,” and Bartov, in a recent, highly influential NY Times opinion article, said, “I know one when I see one.” The UN Commission of Inquiry report painstakingly documented the case. Soul-crushing details. Here is but one example: “Israeli security forces shot at and killed civilians, including children who were holding makeshift white flags. Some children, including toddlers, were shot in the head by snipers.”

The verdict is in. There is no longer any justification for genocide-denial. Even if, throughout these past two years, one wished to give skeptics the benefit of the doubt, even if one withheld judgment in order to allow ample time for exhaustive research to be done, those allowances have long since run their course. Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. As Caitlin Johnstone has put it, “This is a fact, not an opinion.” So, the question becomes, “now what?” What does it mean for the vast majority of people to say conclusively that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza?

It means what it has always meant: that all efforts must be taken to prevent it from continuing. I have long thought that this was what was behind the reluctance on the part of many people close to power to concede that Israel was committing genocide. Because once genocide has been established, there can be no justification for allowing it to continue. And people close to power – in Israel, in the United States, in European countries, in Arab countries, wealthy corporations, weapons manufacturers – anyone who is gaining personally by allowing it to continue, will resist this finding. No matter how undeniable it has long been. So they published bald-faced lies about beheaded babies and mass rape. And repeated the lies again and again. They demonized students standing up for Palestine. They jailed and tried to deport dissenters. They assassinated journalists and health care workers. They attempted to bury the truth and the truthtellers. All to keep the false narrative going, and the “golden goose” producing profits and preserving political careers. Anything but change their ways. But it is failing. Not fast enough. But the truth will out. The tide is shifting.

Please also take the time to study this map of the Occupied West Bank:

This is fascist Israeli government minister Bezalel Smotrich’s Annexation Plan for the Occupied West Bank. He calls it “Annexation,” but what it really is is “Ethnic Cleansing.” Note that the plan is to concentrate the largest number of Palestinians into 5 major urban “Population Centers” – in and around Ramallah, Jericho, Hebron, Nablus, and Jenin. This is the latest iteration of what Jeff Halper, Israeli anthropologist and long-time activist for Palestinian justice, has called “the matrix of control.” Note also the “dots” scattered everywhere throughout the West Bank. These are Israeli “settlements,” better described as “colonies.” The current population of these Palestinian cities and their immediate surroundings is about 1.5 million. The plan is to ethnically cleanse the rest of the West Bank Palestinians from small villages, drive them into these “ghetto-cities,” and steal their land in the rural areas. Settlers are currently waging a guerilla-style war on isolated, defenseless West Bank villages, burning the olive groves, demolishing Palestinian homes, and seizing the land. This will increase. The “dots” will increase. The “facts on the ground” will expand. Smotrich’s plan is for this to become “the new normal.” It is incumbent upon all of us, on people of conscience throughout the world to resist the normalization of this horrific injustice. What we need is a coordinated global “anti-normalization” campaign, as described by Palestinian activist and advocate Sam Bahour and Israeli activist and advocate Jeff Halper. More about this in subsequent VJP newsletters.