The United Nations hosted a panel discussion on Tuesday in which panelists accused the state of Israel of genocide – and implicated America for its support of the country – in its ongoing war against the jihadist terrorist organization Hamas.
The panel, taking place on the sidelines of expected United Nations General Assembly discussions, was titled, “War on Gaza: the Responsibility to Prevent Genocide” and was organized by the “Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People.” It convened panelists arguing that statements against Hamas by Israeli government officials and operations in urban areas in Gaza fulfilled the legal requirements of the definition of genocide.
Panelists claimed that Israel’s military operation in Gaza, the Hamas stronghold, to ensure that the terrorist group ceases to pose a threat to civilians after the killing of 1,200 people and abduction of about 250 others on October 7 constituted genocide on the grounds that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have targeted seemingly civilian structures such as hospitals and schools. One panelist accused the United States of being complicit in genocide due to weapons sales to Israel.
“The indiscriminate bombing of Palestinian people, medical services not being able to respond to the people who are still under the rubble, and we have lost connection with most of our coleagues in Gaza,” Hannah Bruinsma of Law for Palestine asserted, claiming it was “clear” that Israel was conducting genocide.
In reality, the IDF have published evidence that Hamas uses such facilities as terror hubs, stockpiling weapons there, carving out elaborate tunnel systems, and using civilians as human shields.
Hamas’s use of Palestinian civilians as human shields did not come up during the prepared remarks of panelists at the meeting. Nor did the explicitly genocidal nature of the 1988 Hamas charter, which calls for the “obliterating” of Israel and cites a hadith, or Islamic writing, calling for the killing of all Jews to bring about the “day of judgment.”
Only one panelist, Stockton University Professor Raz Segal, acknowledged the scope of the mass killing on October 7 in prepared remarks, though he went on to compare Israel’s self-defense response to the Rwandan genocide, German ethnic cleaning in early 1900s Africa, and the Holocaust.
Segal quoted senior Israeli officials vowing to annihilate Hamas, stating that they had openly displayed “genocidal intent” and acted on it through the bombardment of Hamas terror hubs and calls for civilians to evacuate areas where the IDF was planning to conduct anti-terrorism operations, which he referred to as “ethnic cleansing.”
“Forced displacement, what is more commonly called ethnic cleansing, is not in itself an act of genocide, but we know that historically it has figured in genocidal processes,” Segal said. “Indeed, the process of pushing unwanted people into designated areas that eventually escalated into genocide characterized the Holocaust.”
Jehad Abusalim, the executive director of the Jerusalem Fund and a Palestinian from Gaza, accused Israel not just of alleged genocide following the Hamas attacks, but “ongoing genocide” since 1948.
“The ongoing genocide in Gaza is part of a much deeper history of Israeli agression against Palestinians as part of the broader context of Israel’s violent settler colonialism and occupiation of Palestinian land,” he claimed.
“Before, during, and after Israel’s establishment, the explicit goal of the Israeli enterprise has always been to create and sustain a Jewish demographic majority and deny Palestinians their rights,” Abusalim asserted. He did not address the existence of non-Jewish Israelis, prominently including Israeli Arabs.
Katherine Gallagher – a senior staff attorney for the Centre for Constitutional Rights, an organization that is participating in a lawsuit against President Joe Biden and the United States government for alleged genocide – expanded the condemnation of the panel from Israel to the United States.
“I would argue the United States has crossed the line into complicity,” Gallagher said. “It is important to emphasize here that for complicity or aiding and abetting, the complicit individual or state need not share the specific intent to commit genocide. What it needs to do is know that the committer has that specific intent, i.e. those statements we heard from Israeli officials.”
“The United States is the largest provider of military, economic, and political assistance and – I would argue – political cover that has the ability to use its considerable influence and unique position to take all measures to stop Israel’s unfolding genocide,” she told the panel. “Of course, the United States is not the only country that has such influence and such ability. Instead, though, the United States at every opportunity has done the opposite.”
Gallagher also suggested pressuring the International Criminal Court (ICC) to issue “arrest warrants for those who are committing and those who are aiding and abetting the crimes of genocide,” presumably including American political leadership up to American President Joe Biden.
Elsewhere in her remarks, Gallagher also urged listeners to consider that the elements of the crime of genocide do not require a certain number of people to be killed.
“When we look at what the elements of genocide are, and especially this creation of conditions of life to destroy the group in whole or in part – you do not have to achieve that goal, thankfully, to actually have committed genocide,” she said, comparing the anti-Hamas operation to “the killing of over 7,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in the context of Srebrenica. That is genocide, so I think to have a number in your head is the wrong way to approach what the crime of genocide is.”
The United Nations has a prolific record of anti-Israel activity and has focused on condemning Israel’s operations against Hamas, failing to take a firm stand against the atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7 – which included gang rape, the killing of infants, mutilations, desecration of corpses, and other heinous acts. One of the U.N.’s top officials on the Palestinian issue, Special Rapporteur for Human Rights Francesca Albanese, asserted in November that Israel’s right to self-defense against genocidal terrorists was “non-existent” because Hamas is headquarted in Gaza, “a territory it [Israel] occupies.” Albanese has a history of attending Hamas events and making antisemitic statements, including claiming that America is “subjugated by the Jewish lobby.”
WATCH — Graphic Content Warning: Home Where Hamas Murdered an Israeli Family in Kibbutz Be’eri
Joel B. Pollak / Breitbart News
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