Molly Quell
AP / September 1, 2025
THE HAGUE, Netherlands – The largest professional organization of scholars studying genocide said Monday that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
The determination by the International Association of Genocide Scholars — which has around 500 members worldwide, including a number of Holocaust experts — could serve to further isolate Israel in global public opinion and adds to a growing chorus of organizations that have used the term for Israel’s actions in Gaza. Israel has repeatedly rejected the accusation.
“Israel’s policies and actions in Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide,” as well as crimes against humanity and war crimes, according to group’s resolution, which was supported by 86% of those who voted. The organization did not release the specifics of the voting.
“People who are experts in the study of genocide can see this situation for what it is,” Melanie O’Brien, the organization’s president and a professor of international law at the University of Western Australia, told The Associated Press.
Genocide was codified in a 1948 convention drawn up after the horrors of the Holocaust that defines it as acts “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” The United Nations and many Western countries have said only a court can rule on whether the crime has been committed. A case against Israel is before the U.N.’s highest court.
Israel — founded in part as a refuge in the wake of the Holocaust, when some 6 million European Jews were murdered — has vehemently denied it is committing genocide. It has called the accusation an antisemitic “blood libel,” and said that Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack that sparked the war was itself a genocidal act.
In that attack, Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted 251. Forty-eight hostages remain in Gaza, around 20 of whom Israel believes are alive.
The scholars organization’s resolution begins with an acknowledgment that the attack “constitutes international crimes.”
Israel’s Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In Israel’s offensive since Oct. 7, 2023, large swaths of Gaza have been leveled and most of the territory’s 2 million people have been displaced. More than 63,000 Palestinians have died, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not say how many were fighters or civilians but that around half have been women and children.
The ministry is part of the Hamas-run government and staffed by medical professionals. The U.N. and independent experts consider it the most reliable source on war casualties. Israel disputes the figures but has not provided its own.
Israel says it makes every effort to avoid harming civilians and blames Hamas for their deaths because the militants fight in densely populated areas. It says Hamas is prolonging the war by not surrendering and releasing the hostages.
Israel’s supporters point out that its powerful military could kill far more Palestinians if it wanted to. Genocide scholars say there is no numerical threshold for the crime.
The scholars group, founded in 1994, has previously held that China’s treatment of the minority Muslim Uighurs and Myanmar’s brutal crackdown on Rohingya Muslims meet the threshold for genocide.
In 2006, the organization said statements by then-Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in which he called for Israel to be “wiped off the map,” had “genocidal intent” and called for urgent action to be taken.
In July, two prominent Israeli rights groups — B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel — said their country is committing genocide in Gaza. The organizations do not reflect mainstream thinking in Israel, but it marked the first time that local Jewish-led organizations have made such accusations.
International human rights groups have also levelled the allegation.
Meanwhile, South Africa has accused Israel of breaching the Genocide Convention at the International Court of Justice — an allegation Israel rejects. A final ruling could take years.
The court does not have a police force to implement its rulings but if a nation believes another member has failed to comply with an ICJ order, it can report that to the U.N. Security Council.
The council has tools that range from sanctions to authorizing military action, but all actions require support from at least nine of 15 council nations and no veto by a permanent member — the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France. U.S. President Donald Trump, whose country is Israel’s staunchest backer, has said he does not believe genocide is taking place.
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Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, scholars’ association says
Stephanie van den Berg
Reuters / September 1, 2025
THE HAGUE – The world’s biggest academic association of genocide scholars has passed a resolution saying the legal criteria have been met to establish Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, its president said on Monday.
Eighty-six percent of those who voted among the 500-member International Association of Genocide Scholars backed the resolution declaring Israel’s “policies and actions in Gaza” had met the legal definition set out in Article II of the 1948 UN convention on genocide.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry called the statement disgraceful and “entirely based on Hamas’ campaign of lies”. Israel has in the past strongly denied that its actions in Gaza amount to genocide and says they are justified as self-defence. It is fighting a case at the International Court of Justice in the Hague that accuses it of genocide.
Israel launched its assault on the Gaza Strip in October 2023, after fighters from Hamas, the Palestinian militant group in control of the territory, attacked Israeli communities, killing 1,200 people and capturing more than 250 hostages.
Since then, Israel’s military action has killed 63,000 people, damaged or destroyed most buildings in the territory and forced nearly all its residents to flee their homes at least once. A global hunger monitor relied on by the United Nations says parts of the territory are now suffering a man-made famine, which Israel also denies.
The three-page resolution calls on Israel to “immediately cease all acts that constitute genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity against Palestinians in Gaza, including deliberate attacks against and killing of civilians including children; starvation; deprivation of humanitarian aid, water, fuel, and other items essential to the survival of the population; sexual and reproductive violence; and forced displacement of the population.”
It also states that the Hamas attack on Israel which precipitated the war constituted international crimes.
“This is a definitive statement from experts in the field of genocide studies that what is going on the ground in Gaza is genocide,” the association’s president, Melanie O’Brien, a professor of international law at the University of Western Australia who specialises in genocide, told Reuters.
“There is no justification for the commission of war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide, not even self-defence,” she added.
CONVENTION ADOPTED IN WAKE OF HOLOCAUST
The 1948 U.N. Genocide Convention, adopted in the wake of the mass murder of Jews by Nazi Germany, defines genocide as crimes committed “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such”. It requires all countries to act to prevent and stop genocide.
Since the genocide scholars’ association was founded in 1994, it has passed nine resolutions recognising historic or ongoing episodes as genocides.
The IAGS publishes a journal and holds regular international conferences of scholars studying genocide, and is considered the largest academic group in the field. Another group, the International Network of Genocide Scholars, also holds conferences and publishes a journal but does not issue similar resolutions.
Ismail al-Thawabta, head of the Hamas-run Gaza government media office, welcomed the resolution’s “prestigious scholarly stance”, which he said “places a legal and moral obligation on the international community to take urgent action to stop the crime, protect civilians, and hold the leaders of the occupation accountable”.
Sergey Vasiliev, a professor of international law at the Open University in the Netherlands who is not a member of the association, told Reuters the resolution showed that “this legal assessment has become mainstream within academia, particularly in the field of genocide studies”.
Several international rights groups and some Israeli NGOs have already accused Israel of committing genocide. Last week hundreds of UN staff at the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk wrote to ask him to explicitly describe the Gaza war as an unfolding genocide, according to a letter reviewed by Reuters.
Reporting by Stephanie van den Berg; additional reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi; editing by Hugh Lawson and Peter Graff
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International Association of Genocide Scholars: Israel is committing genocide
Brad Reed
Common Dreams / September 1, 2025
The organization passed a resolution with the support of 86 percent of members who voted on it.
Israel’s actions in Gaza “meet the legal definition of genocide,” an overwhelming majority of the world’s leading scholars on the subject said on Monday.
The International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) has passed a three-page resolution that outlines a wide range of Israeli actions that it says constitute genocide, including deliberate attacks against civilians, starvation, deprivation of humanitarian aid, sexual violence, and forced displacement of the population.
In addition to the actions of the Israeli military, the resolution also references statements by high-level Israeli government officials as proof of genocidal intent.
Specifically, the resolution cites “Israeli governmental leaders, war cabinet ministers, and senior army officers” who “have made explicit statements of ‘intent to destroy,’ characterizing Palestinians in Gaza as a whole as enemies and ‘human animals’ and stating the intention of inflicting ‘maximum damage’ on Gaza, ‘flattening Gaza,’ and turning Gaza into ‘hell.’”
The scholars also note Israeli officials’ support for a plan floated by US President Donald Trump to expel all Palestinians from Gaza, which they contend “amounts to ethnic cleansing.”
The resolution, which passed with the support of 86% of IAGS members who voted on it, concludes by calling on the Israeli government to stop all genocidal actions in Gaza; comply with the provisional measures orders issued earlier this year by the International Court of Justice; and “support a process of repair and transitional justice that will afford democracy, freedom, dignity, and security for all people of Gaza.”
Melanie O’Brien, president of IAGS and professor of international law at the University of Western Australia, told The Guardian that the scholars’ resolution is “a definitive statement from experts in the field of genocide studies that what is going on on the ground in Gaza is genocide.”
The IAGS resolution comes just a little more than a week after the United Nations-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Initiative (IPC) declared a famine in Gaza that it warned was projected to get even worse in the coming weeks.
“Between mid-August and the end of September 2025, conditions are expected to further worsen with famine projected to expand to Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis,” the IPC stated. “Nearly a third of the population (641,000 people) are expected to face catastrophic conditions (IPC Phase 5), while those in emergency (IPC Phase 4) will likely rise to 1.14 million (58%). Acute malnutrition is projected to continue worsening rapidly.”
The Gaza Health Ministry currently estimates that more than 330 people in Gaza, including over 120 children, have so far died from severe hunger as a result of the Israeli blockade that has for months prevented the delivery of humanitarian aid.
Brad Reed is a contributor at Common Dreams
