Repudiating a BDS attack on a Holocaust center

A heinous, spuriously entitled “Declaration of Intent” addressed to the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre (JHGC) by a collection of South African anti-Israel, pro-Hamas groups leaves little to the imagination. Not content that the JHGC is hosting the 17th Biennial Meeting of the International Association of Genocide Scholars this week – more on this organization below – the authors of this declaration “demand” that the JHGC formally designate the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza as a genocide, something the JHGC has steadfastly refused to do.

A reality check seems to be in order. To begin with, at least a modicum of historical accuracy is urgently needed. On October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists ravaged Israeli towns and settlements on the Israeli side of the Israel-Gaza border, murdered some 1,200 women, children, and men, raped and violated Jewish women and girls, and took over 200 hostages into captivity in Gaza. This, not the creation of the State of Israel on May 15, 1948, nor the advent of the modern-day Zionist movement, nor any other event of the past century-and-a-half, sparked the Gaza war that has now seemingly come to an end.

For the past two years, critics of this particular war, presumably including the authors of the above-referenced declaration, have been calling for a cease-fire as a first step toward ending the hostilities. Now that such a cease-fire is in effect, one might have expected them to be at least mildly pleased that their desired goal has been accomplished. One might have expected them to be at least mildly pleased that humanitarian aid is flowing into Gaza, and that Gaza’s civilian population is no longer in the cross-fire between the Israel Defense Forces and Hamas.

Instead, Messrs. Nigel Banken, Farnaz Veraval, and Steven Friedman, the South Africa BDS Coalition, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Queers for Palestine, South African Jews for Palestine, and the rest of the motley individuals and groups that generated the declaration are showing their true colors: they are utterly uninterested in whether or not the Gaza military confrontation constitutes a genocide as a matter of prevailing international law. Nor do they appear to care that Hamas is presently murdering Palestinians in Gaza. Obsessed by a vitriolic hatred of the State of Israel, all they care about today, and all they have cared about since long before October 7 and the subsequent war, is Israel’s delegitimization. Full stop.

Their Declaration of Intent is in line with the “Resolution on the Situation in Gaza” adopted by the IAGS on August 3 that asserted that “Israel’s policies and actions in Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide” as set forth in the 1948 Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. This is simply not the case.

I write as someone who has been teaching about the law of genocide at Cornell Law School since 2008 and at Columbia Law School since 2011. I don’t know whether this qualifies me as a “genocide scholar” – I am not, have never been, and do not aspire to be a member of the IAGS – but I am quite certain that it enables me to recognize the multiple flaws in both the IAGS resolution and in the aforementioned Declaration of Intent.

I am and have been sharply critical of many of the policies and actions of Israel’s present government. I am a longtime supporter of and occasional participant in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. In December 1988, I was one of five American Jews who broke the taboo on interactions with the Palestine Liberation Organization by meeting with Yassir Arafat and other leaders of the PLO in Stockholm. This meeting resulted in the PLO’s first public “acceptance” of Israel as a state in the Middle East.

I, too, am horrified by the suffering and deaths of Palestinian civilians, including children, in Gaza over the course of the past two years. There is no question that women, children and the elderly have been subjected to the violence of a war over which they have no control whatsoever. Nor is there any question that hospitals throughout Gaza have been rendered inoperative, alongside the destruction of homes, schools, and pretty much the entire territory’s infrastructure.

Still, none of this qualifies as genocide. Under Article II of the Genocide Convention, this particular crime requires the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.”

In its 2007 ruling in Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro (Bosnia v. Serbia), the International Court of Justice held that “The specific intent [to commit genocide] is also to be distinguished from other reasons or motives the perpetrator may have. Great care must be taken in finding in the facts a sufficiently clear manifestation of that intent [i.e., intent to commit genocide].” Thus, the ICJ went on to hold that

The dolus specialis, the specific intent to destroy the group in whole or in part, has to be convincingly shown by reference to particular circumstances, unless a general plan to that end can be convincingly demonstrated to exist ; and for a pattern of conduct to be accepted as evidence of its existence, it would have to be such that it could only point to the existence of such intent.

In other words, one cannot as a matter of applicable international law infer an intent to commit genocide from actions or even a pattern of conduct that are the result of another intention altogether, such as, in the case of Israel in its war against Hamas, the intention to eliminate a murderous terrorist organization – Hamas – as an existential threat to its existence and to the lives of Israel’s population.

Moreover, neither the IAGS in its resolution nor the authors of the Declaration of Intent acknowledge anywhere that it is Hamas, not Israel, that has used Palestinian civilians in Gaza, including children, as human shields; that Hamas terrorists savagely raped Israeli women and girls on October 7; and that it was Hamas, not Israel, that established military installations behind schools and hospitals, making them legitimate targets in Israel’s wholly legitimate efforts to eliminate the threat posed by such military installations.

By declaring that “This is not a moment for dialogue between ‘both sides,’” the authors of the Declaration of Intent have demonstrated conclusively that they are nothing more than Hamas acolytes. Their goal is to exacerbate, not defuse, the complex and multi-faceted Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In sharp contrast, the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre is to be commended for its refusal to allow itself to become a pawn in an orchestrated, disingenuous anti-Israel campaign that is utterly indifferent to the actual interests of the Palestinians.