Allegations of genocide in the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel | |
---|---|
Part of the Israel–Hamas war | |
Location | Gaza envelope, Southern District, Israel |
Date | 7–8 October 2023 |
Target | Israelis |
Attack type | Mass shooting, immolation |
Deaths | 1,163 killed [1] |
Defenders | Israel |
Accused |
Allegations have been made that the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel constituted a genocidal massacre against Israelis. In the course of the assault, Palestinian militants attacked communities, a music festival, and military bases in the region of southern Israel known as the Gaza Envelope. The attack resulted in the deaths of 1,163 Israelis and foreigners, two thirds of whom were civilians.
Various legal experts and genocide studies scholars cite a multitude of reasonings for their allegation of genocide, including claims that victims were targeted for their Israeli-Jewish identity, [2] that Hamas still adheres to the antisemitic language of its founding charter, [3] [4] [5] or that the alleged intent to destroy the Israeli people "in part" fits the legal definition of genocide. [2] [6] Comparisons of the attack to the Holocaust have been made. [7] [8] Criticisms against the allegation include citing the taking of hostages as proof that there was no genocidal intent, or that the attack was likely intended to kill and instill fear in Israelis, instead of destroy them. [9] [10]
A legal complaint that Hamas committed genocide was brought to the International Criminal Court in November 2023. [11] [12] Draft ICC arrest warrants for Hamas leaders claimed that the group committed extermination. [13]
Both Israel and Palestine frequently accuse the other of planning to commit genocide. [14] [15] American counterterrorism analyst Bruce Hoffman, writing for The Atlantic , suggested the attacks were carried out with genocidal intent, pointing to Hamas' founding charter from 1988, which called for the destruction of Israel and featured antisemitic language. [3]
On 7 October 2023, coinciding with the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel from the Gaza Strip. Around 6,000 Palestinians breached the border in 119 places and infiltrated Israel, including 3,800 from the Hamas "elite Nukhba forces" and 2,200 Palestinian civillians and other militants. [16] 1,163 Israelis and foreigners were killed, [1] including 859 civilians, 282 soldiers, 57 policemen and 10 Shin Bet members. [17] [12]
The militants stand accused of various atrocities, including sexual violence. [18] [19] About 250 Israeli civilians and soldiers were also taken as hostages to the Gaza Strip, including 30 kidnapped children. [20] The Hamas assault prompted an Israeli counter-offensive in Gaza. The day is considered the bloodiest in Israel's history and the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. [21] [22]
Al-Qassam militants extensively recorded their actions through body cameras, probably for propaganda purposes. [23] They also stole victims' phones to livestream their deaths on social media. Additionally, they posted messages or media on victims' social media accounts and went as far as calling relatives to taunt them. [12]
Documents discovered on the bodies of Hamas operatives in Israel indicated that carrying out massacres was a key objective of the invasion. Israeli first responders reportedly found instructions on the bodies of the operatives, directing them to target civilian populations, including elementary schools and a youth center, with the explicit order to "kill as many people as possible." The documents also outlined the directive to take hostages for future negotiation purposes. [24] [25]
Ghazi Hamad, a senior Hamas official, stated in a late October 2023 interview that the October 7 attack against Israel was just the beginning. He vowed to launch "a second, a third, a fourth" attack until the country is "annihilated," asserting, "We are victims - everything we do is justified." [26] [27] [28]
On 16 October, an open letter signed by around 240 legal experts, including jurists and academics, declared the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023 as a "crime of genocide." [6] According to the letter, "as these widespread, horrendous acts appear to have been carried out with an intent to destroy, in whole or in part a national group – Israelis – they most probably constitute an international crime of genocide". The letter was endorsed by legal experts from prominent institutions, including Harvard and Columbia Law Schools, King's College London, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Dan Eldad, former acting State Attorney of Israel from February to May 2020, played a key role in drafting the letter. The Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, chaired by former Canadian Justice Minister Irwin Cotler, also signed the letter. [29] [30] [31]
Genocide Watch has accused both Hamas and Israel of committing acts of genocide in the Israel-Hamas war. [32] On 17 October 2023, Genocide Watch published a "Genocide Emergency Alert", stating that "Hamas targeted Israelis simply because they were Israelis. It was the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have expressed their genocidal intent to destroy the nation of Israel. The massacres by Hamas constituted acts of genocide. The attacks were also crimes against humanity and war crimes." [33] On 24 October 2023, Genocide Watch issued a new statement. In the statement, scholars of Holocaust studies and genocide studies and prevention, including Gregory H. Stanton and Israel Charny asserted that Hamas' actions against Israeli civilians qualify as genocide and crimes against humanity. The statement calls on the United Nations Human Rights Council, the UN General Assembly, the UN Office of Special Advisors for the Prevention of Genocide, and the UN Security Council to investigate, condemn, and refer the situation to the International Criminal Court (ICC). It also advocates for the recognition of these acts as genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. The call extends to UN member states to use national courts for legal proceedings against those responsible for the genocide. [34]
In an opinion article for The Hill , Arsen Ostrovsky, a human rights lawyer, and Stanislav Pavlovschi, a former judge at the European Court of Human Rights, asserted that Ghazi Hamad's statement that Hamas would repeat the October 7 massacre "again and again" was evidence of the group's genocidal intentions. [28]
American counterterrorism analyst Bruce Hoffman opined that Hamas has consistently maintained genocidal intentions. [3] The Economist has argued that Hamas fighters who conducted the attack on October 7 were carrying out actions in line with their genocidal intentions outlined in the group's founding charter. [4]
In an interview with Al Jazeera in December 2023, former ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo said that the attack on October 7 was "probably genocide, because Hamas has intention to destroy Israelis as a group". [35]
Sociologist Martin Shaw viewed Hamas' attack as "a wave of 'genocidal massacres,' localized mass killings whose victims were defined by their Israeli-Jewish identity", adding that the concept of the genocidal massacre, first proposed by Leo Kuper, was "a logical extension of the notion in the convention that genocide can include destroying a group 'in part.'" [2] Stephen D. Smith, a specialist in genocide, also characterized the massacres on October 7 as a genocide. [36] Adam Jones, author of a textbook on genocide, said Hamas' "wild and indiscriminate killing" qualified as a "genocidal massacre" that should be "acknowledged and condemned as such," but the very restrictive intentionality requirement in the legal definition of genocide was still a "high evidentiary bar to reach". [9] Israeli historian and holocaust specialist Raz Segal similarly said, "I definitely see intent to kill a significant number of members of the group, to instill unbelievable trauma and terror among members of the group. But I don't see intent to destroy in relation to the Hamas attack that would render it an act of genocide." [9]
Historian and professor of genocide studies Uğur Ümit Üngör noted that "many commentators rightly pointed out that Hamas committed a genocidal massacre", while also highlighting the killing of Arab Israelis and Bedouins during Hamas' attack as evidence that it may not have been "group selective". [37] He suggested that the attack might fall under the category of "subaltern genocide", [lower-alpha 1] drawing comparisons to the mass killing of pied-noirs in Algeria. [37] Political scientist Abdelwahab El-Affendi refuted the "subaltern genocide" thesis, pointing to a "near-consensus" in the field of genocide studies that "genocides are almost invariably perpetrated by states", which does not apply to the Gazan enclave. [39] He stated that the attacks were consistent with terrorism and mass violence, but that the taking of hostages for prisoner exchanges indicated that the intent of the attacks was not genocidal. [10]
British historian Niall Ferguson characterized the events of 7 October as indicative of Hamas' intent to re-enact the Holocaust, and stated that Hamas should be "destroyed" to prevent this. [7] [40] Gideon Greif, a Holocaust historian, drew parallels between the October 7 attacks and the Holocaust in an article for Maariv. He highlighted the infliction of extreme suffering, including immolation, mutation, alleged rape, and the kidnapping of babies; the shared antisemitic hatred between Nazis and Hamas as evident in recorded statements of Hamas operatives proudly announcing the murder of Jews; and the extreme lack of mercy displayed by the attackers. [8]
Israeli historian Havi Dreifuss wrote that: "Even though Hamas is unable to replicate the scale of the Holocaust, one cannot ignore the numerous voices that rightly point to experiential elements and ideologies that exhibit similarities," also adding that "These men, women, and children weren't murdered for their actions, but rather, as in the Holocaust, for their very existence." [41]
By contrast, British academic Omar McDoom wrote in the Journal of Genocide Research that comparisons between the Holocaust and 7 October are indicative of a pro-Israel bias in sections of the Holocaust studies community. McDoom argues that the comparison is "problematic" because "the Germans were not an occupied and oppressed people. And Gaza is not a powerful, expansionary state. To the contrary." [42]
In an opinion article for WSJ, Qanta A. Ahmed shared her firsthand experience as a human-rights observer in Israel following the October 7 attacks, branding the assaults by Hamas as a "genocidal massacre", and argued for the attacks to be legally designated as such. [43]
In a December 2023 survey conducted by Harvard CAPS and the Harris Poll, 73% of American respondents viewed Hamas attacks against Jews as genocidal in nature, and 74% believed that Hamas harbored intentions of committing genocide against Jews in Israel. [44] [45]
John Kirby, US National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications, accused Hamas of "genocidal intentions against the people of Israel. They would like to see it wiped off the map, they said so on purpose. And they've said that they're not going to stop. What happened on the 7th of October is going to happen again and again and again. And what happened on the 7th of October? Murder; slaughter of innocent people in their homes or at a music festival. That's genocidal intentions." [46]
At the UN's European headquarters, Yeela Cytrin, a legal advisor at the Mission of Israel to the UN in Geneva, emphasized, "The attacks by Hamas on October 7 were motivated by a genocidal ideology". [47]
In November 2023, French diplomat and lawyer François Zimeray, representing the families of nine Israeli victims of the 7 October Hamas attacks, filed a complaint at the International Criminal Court (ICC) accusing Hamas of genocide. Zimeray affirmed that he and his legal team had verified the legitimacy of the "genocide" accusation in accordance with the law. [11] [12]
In February 2024, a separate complaint was filed with the ICC by a delegation of family members of Israeli hostages being held in Gaza, accusing Hamas of committing war crimes. The head of the legal team, Shelly Yeviv Aini, stated that "these crimes, including genocide, hostage taking, enforced disappearance, torture and sexual violence cannot and should not go unpunished." [48]
The Islamic Resistance Movement, abbreviated Hamas, is a Palestinian nationalist Sunni Islamist political organisation with a military wing called the Ezzedeen Al-Qassam Brigades. It has governed the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip since 2007.
Crimes against humanity are certain serious crimes committed as part of a large-scale attack against civilians. Unlike war crimes, crimes against humanity can be committed during both peace and war and against a state's own nationals as well as foreign nationals. Together with war crimes, genocide, and the crime of aggression, crimes against humanity are one of the core crimes of international criminal law and, like other crimes against international law, have no temporal or jurisdictional limitations on prosecution.
Yoav Gallant is an Israeli politician and former military officer who has served as Minister of Defense since 2022. Gallant was an officer in the Southern Command of the Israel Defense Forces, serving in the Israeli Navy. In January 2015 he entered politics, joining the new Kulanu party. After being elected to the Knesset he was appointed Minister of Construction. At the end of 2018 he joined Likud, shortly after which he became Minister of Aliyah and Integration. In 2020 he was appointed Minister of Education, and the following year became Minister of Defense.
The State of Israel and the Republic of Turkey formally established diplomatic relations in March 1949. Less than a year after the Israeli Declaration of Independence, Turkey recognized Israeli sovereignty, making it the world's first Muslim-majority country to do so. Both countries gave high priority to bilateral cooperation in the areas of diplomacy and military/strategic ties, while sharing concerns with respect to the regional instabilities in the Middle East. In recent decades, particularly under Turkey's Erdoğan administration, the two countries' relationship with each other has deteriorated considerably. However, diplomatic ties were reinstated after a normalization initiative in mid-2022. Relations soured again after the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel, Turkey condemning Israel and condoning Hamas.
Omer Bartov is an Israeli-American historian. He is the Samuel Pisar Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University, where he has taught since 2000. Bartov is a historian of the Holocaust and is considered one of the world's leading authorities on genocide. The Forward calls him "one of the foremost scholars of Jewish life in Galicia."
The notion of a "second Holocaust" or "Another Holocaust", also known in white supremacist parlance as Anudda Shoah, is an assertion that the Holocaust or a similar event is recurring or will recur. It is often used to discuss real or perceived threats to the State of Israel, the Jewish people, or the Jewish way of life.
Ismail Haniyeh was a Palestinian politician who served as chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau from May 2017 until his assassination in July 2024. He also served as prime minister of the Palestinian National Authority from March 2006 until June 2014 and Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip from June 2007 until February 2017, where he was succeeded by Yahya Sinwar.
The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Fatou Bensouda, on 20 December 2019 announced an investigation into war crimes allegedly committed in Palestine by members of the Israeli military or Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups since 13 June 2014.
Genocide justification is the claim that a genocide is morally excusable/defensible, necessary, and/or sanctioned by law. Genocide justification differs from genocide denial, which is an attempt to reject the occurrence of genocide. Perpetrators often claim that genocide victims presented a serious threat, justifying their actions by stating it was legitimate self-defense of a nation or state. According to modern international criminal law, there can be no excuse for genocide. Genocide is often camouflaged as military activity against combatants, and the distinction between denial and justification is often blurred.
Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people in whole or in part. The term was coined in 1944 by Raphael Lemkin. It is defined in Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG) of 1948 as "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's conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."
On 7 October 2023, Hamas and several other Palestinian nationalist militant groups launched coordinated armed incursions from the Gaza Strip into the Gaza Envelope of southern Israel, the first invasion of Israeli territory since the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. The attack coincided with the Jewish religious holiday Simchat Torah. Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups named the attacks Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, while in Israel they are referred to as Black Sabbath or the Simchat Torah Massacre, and internationally as the 7 October attacks. The attacks initiated the ongoing Israel–Hamas war.
Israeli war crimes are violations of international criminal law, including war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of genocide, which the Israel Defense Forces have committed or been accused of committing since the founding of Israel in 1948. These have included murder, intentional targeting of civilians, killing prisoners of war and surrendered combatants, indiscriminate attacks, collective punishment, starvation, the use of human shields, sexual violence and rape, torture, pillage, forced transfer, breach of medical neutrality, targeting journalists, attacking civilian and protected objects, wanton destruction, incitement to genocide, and genocide.
The State of Israel has been accused of carrying out a genocide against Palestinians at various times during the longstanding Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Debate on whether Israel's treatment of Palestinians since the Nakba meets the definition of genocide is ongoing; and whether such actions are continuous or limited to specific periods or events. This treatment has also been characterised as "slow-motion genocide", as well as a corollary or expression of settler colonialism and indigenous land theft.
Since the start of the Israel–Hamas war on 7 October 2023, the UN Human Rights Council has identified "clear evidence" of war crimes by both Hamas and the Israel Defense Forces. A UN Commission to the Israel–Palestine conflict stated that there is "clear evidence that war crimes may have been committed in the latest explosion of violence in Israel and Gaza, and all those who have violated international law and targeted civilians must be held accountable." On 27 October, a spokesperson for the OHCHR called for an independent court to review potential war crimes committed by both sides.
Experts, governments, United Nations agencies, and non-governmental organisations have accused Israel of carrying out a genocide against the Palestinian people during its invasion and bombing of the Gaza Strip in the ongoing Israel–Hamas war. Various observers, including Francesca Albanese, have cited statements by senior Israeli officials that may indicate an "intent to destroy" Gaza's population, a necessary condition for the legal threshold of genocide to be met. A majority of mostly US-based Middle East scholars believe Israel's actions in Gaza were intended to make it uninhabitable for Palestinians, and 75% of them say Israel's actions in Gaza constitute either "major war crimes akin to genocide" or "genocide".
South Africa v. Israel is an ongoing case that was brought before the International Court of Justice on 29 December 2023 by South Africa regarding Israel's conduct in the Gaza Strip during the Israel–Hamas war, that resulted in a humanitarian crisis and mass killings.
Israel has been accused of committing genocide in the Israel–Hamas war, and the United States has been accused of complicity in the Gaza genocide. The complicity accusation has been made in court, by federal staffers, human rights organizations and academic figures around the world. The US has also been accused of enabling the Gaza Strip famine.
On 1 March 2024, Nicaragua instituted proceedings against Germany at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) under, inter alia, the Genocide Convention, concerning Alleged Breaches of Certain International Obligations in Respect of the Occupied Palestinian Territory arising from Germany's support for Israel in the Israel–Hamas war. It sought the indication of provisional measures of protection including the resumption of suspended German funding of the UNRWA and the cessation of military supplies to Israel.
Since the beginning of the Israel–Hamas war in 2023, the Israeli military and authorities have been charged with committing war crimes, such as indiscriminate attacks on civilians in densely populated areas ; genocide; forced evacuations; the torture and executions of civilians; sexual violence; destruction of cultural heritage; collective punishment; and the mistreatment and torture of Palestinian prisoners. Humanitarian organizations such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, B'tselem, and Oxfam, as well as human rights groups and experts, including the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry and United Nations special rapporteurs, have documented these actions.
The Great Rebellion and the Haitian slave uprising are two examples of what we refer to as 'subaltern genocide': cases in which subaltern actors—those objectively oppressed and disempowered—adopt genocidal strategies to vanquish their oppressors.
Additionally, 84% of Americans said they believe that the October 7 massacre was a terrorist attack, with almost three-fourths (73%) saying it was genocidal in nature and 73% saying it was not justified by the grievances of Palestinians." "Additionally, almost three-fourths (74%) of Americans said they believe Hamas wants to commit genocide against the Jews in Israel, although only 58% of those between the ages of 18-24 said the same.