Palestinian genocide accusation

[16] In March 2024, the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, issued a report stating that there were "reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating the commission" of acts of genocide had been met.

[32] During the foundational events of the Nakba in 1948, dozens of massacres targeting Arabs were conducted and about 400 Arab-majority towns and villages were depopulated;[33] with many of these being either completely destroyed or repopulated by Jewish residents and given new Hebrew names.

[62] William Schabas, director of the Irish Centre for Human Rights at the National University of Ireland,[64] stated: "the term genocide ... had obviously been chosen to embarrass Israel rather than out of any concern with legal precision".

[62] That same year an independent commission headed by Seán MacBride investigated reported violations of International Law by Israel and four of its six members concluded that "the deliberate destruction of the national and cultural rights and identity of the Palestinian people amount[ed] to genocide".

[67] David Hirst believes that while the decision of the U.N. General Assembly could still be called biased, it was harder to say the same about the McBride Commission, as well as about individuals around the world, especially Jews, who shared the opinion of its four members.

They should have taken into account the sentiments of their Lebanese allies after their leader Bachir Gemayel had been assassinated along with 26 other Phalangists in a bomb attack 2 days earlier,[69] and also have taken decisive action to stop the killings when the first information was received.

[71] In interviews with film director Lokman Slim in 2005, some of the fighters of the Lebanese Christian militias reported that, prior to the massacre, the IDF took them to training camps in Israel and showed them documentaries about the Holocaust.

[130] Additionally, 100 civil society organizations and six genocide scholars[c] petitioned Karim Khan, Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, to investigate new crimes in Palestinian territories and issue arrest warrants against Israeli officials.

[189] It is alleged that Israel has attacked Palestinians using collective punishment,[190][191] airstrikes (including in refugee camps),[192][193][194] famine,[195][196][197] forced displacement (ethnic cleansing),[198][199][34] looting,[200] psychological warfare,[201][202] rape and sexual violence,[203][204] and the deliberate and systematic infliction of life-threatening conditions by military siege.

[219] Genocidal actions listed in the suit included the mass killing of Palestinians in Gaza, the destruction of their homes, their expulsion and displacement,[h] as well as the Israeli blockade on food, water and medical aid to the region.

Additionally, South Africa noted the Israeli imposition of measures preventing Palestinian births through the destruction of essential health services vital for the survival of pregnant women and their babies.

[226] According to a May 2024 report by the University Network for Human Rights, "actions taken by Israel's government and military in and regarding Gaza following the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, constitute breaches of the international law prohibitions on the commission of genocide.

[42] In 2010, in considering the case of Palestinians in Gaza, historian and sociologist Uğur Ümit Üngör pointed to the extreme asymmetrical nature of violent conflict as the core element of genocidal dynamics, which he found present in the history of Israel and Palestine.

[229] Human rights scholars Haifa Rashed and Damien Short have voiced their belief that Lemkin's original concept of genocide can be used to analyse "the historical and continuing, cultural and physical, destructive social and political relations involved in the Israel/Palestine conflict".

[231] The trio stated: "Discriminatory land and planning policies" could be viewed using the lens of a government repressing "minority rights" of Palestinian Israelis, but this "does not preclude individual victims experiencing this as genocidal".

[243] Political scientist Ian Lustick in 2006 described the Nakba as "the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes and refusal to allow them to return", and stated that "It was a tragic and unjust and opportunistically accelerated unfolding of the logic of circumstances, not a genocidal campaign.

[268][269][270] Boyle's argument is that Israel has "ruthlessly implemented a systematic and comprehensive military, political, and economic campaign with the intent to destroy in substantial part the national, ethnic, racial and different religious (Muslim and Christian) group" of Palestinians.

[275] On November 13, Defence for Children International, Al-Haq, and Palestinians living in Gaza and the United States, represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights, filed a lawsuit against Joe Biden, Antony Blinken, and Lloyd Austin for failure to prevent genocide, citing Israel's "mass killings," targeting of schools and hospitals, collective punishment, use of chemical weapons, forced expulsion, and blockage of food, water, electricity and other basic needs.

[292][293] Palestinian-American U.S. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib accused President Biden of supporting this "genocide,"[294] leading to a resolution for censure against her by the Republican caucus, sponsored by Marjorie Taylor Greene.

The Honduran ministry of foreign affairs stated "Honduras energetically condemns the genocide and serious violations of international humanitarian law that the civilian Palestinian population is suffering in the Gaza Strip".

Writer Jazmine Hughes left The New York Times Magazine after signing an open letter condemning Israel's actions in Gaza calling them "an attempt to conduct genocide".

"[320] Mexican actress Melissa Barrera was reportedly fired from "Scream VII" for social media posts supporting Palestine and labelling Israel's actions as "genocide and ethnic cleansing".

[323] In December 2023, Olly Alexander, set to represent the United Kingdom in the Eurovision Song Contest 2024,[324] signed a letter by the LGBT association Voices4London accusing Israel of genocide against Palestinians.

[l] Noah Lanard of Mother Jones describes verses discussing Amalek as among the most violent in the Bible and that they have a long history of being used by Jews on the far-right, such as Baruch Goldstein, to justify killing Palestinians.

[340] On 9 October 2023, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced that Israel would launch a "complete siege" of Gaza, with plans to cut off electricity, food, water and fuel supplies, saying, "We are fighting human animals and will act accordingly.

[126] It was such statements that led to Raz Segal's characterization of Israel's conduct in the 2023 war in Gaza as a "textbook case of genocide", stating to Vox: "If this is not special intent to destroy, I don't know what is.

[350] Likud Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel wrote an op-ed in The Jerusalem Post saying that the international community should promote the "voluntary resettlement" of Palestinians in Gaza to sites around the globe.

[357][358] CAIR-Florida Executive Director Imam Abdullah Jaber said in a statement: "This chilling call for genocide by an American lawmaker is the direct result of decades of dehumanization of the Palestinian people by advocates of Israeli apartheid and their eager enablers in government and the media.

[407] This sentiment was later supported by Mark Levene applying A. Dirk Moses' analysis that "absolute securitization lends itself to collective targeting of human groups, more precisely civilians, regardless of issues of ethnos or genos.

[419] In February 2024 lawyers representing Palestinians in Germany filed a criminal complaint against various senior politicians including Olaf Scholz, Annalena Baerbock, Robert Habeck, and Christian Lindner for "aiding and abetting" the genocide in Gaza.