[Salon] The Genocide Debate - ArabDigest.org

[Salon] The Genocide Debate - micheletkearney@gmail.com - Gmail The Genocide Debate Summary: those who call what the IDF is doing in Gaza a genocide are accused by supporters of the Israeli war effort of being anti-Semites and that charge can be enough to stifle legitimate criticism. The debate on whether it is fair and appropriate to call Israel’s pummelling of Palestinians trapped in the Gaza Strip a genocide took a revealing turn in America when on 18 November the Harvard Law Review (HLR) pulled an already editorially approved article written by Rabea Eghbariah a Palestinian human rights lawyer and doctoral law student at Harvard. The article, had it run, would have been the first ever by a Palestinian scholar published in the prestigious and influential journal. In a thoughtful and well argued piece, subsequently published by The Nation, Eghbariah makes the case that the carpet bombing and the ground invasion that have caused a massive number of civilian casualties together with efforts over decades to “erase the group dynamic: the attempt to incapacitate the Palestinians from exercising their political will as a group” constitutes a genocide. He cites the UN Genocide Convention and numerous experts including the first chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno Ocampo. Ocampo argues that “Just the blockade of Gaza—just that—could be genocide under Article 2(c) of the Genocide Convention, meaning they are creating conditions to destroy a group.” The Intercept in analysing why HLR pulled Eghbariah’s article arrived at the conclusion that the reason was fear, fear that student editors who run the journal and number 100 would be targeted and doxed with accusations that they were supporters of Hamas and therefore supporters of terrorism. They were also concerned about career damage. One of the editors who asked to remain anonymous told The Intercept: Editors expressed that they supported the piece and wanted to uplift marginalized voices but were voting against publishing it because they were afraid of the consequences and had worked too hard to now risk their futures. Some also expressed concerns that the blowback to the piece would discriminatorily target editors of colour more than others. Presciently Eghbariah had begun his article thusly: Genocide is a crime. It is a legal framework. It is unfolding in Gaza. And yet, the inertia of legal academia, especially in the United States, has been chilling. Clearly, it is much easier to dissect the case law rather than navigate the reality of death. It is much easier to consider genocide in the past tense rather than contend with it in the present. Legal scholars tend to sharpen their pens after the smell of death has dissipated and moral clarity is no longer urgent. And he asks a challenging question: “does one have to wait for a genocide to be successfully completed to name it?” 111 Palestinians are buried in a mass grave in Khan Yunis, November 22 [photo credit: Andalou Agency] The veteran Israeli opinion writer Gideon Levy is one who is not waiting. In a scathing piece in Haaretz yesterday he denounced the language used by a retired Major General and current advisor to the Defense Ministry Giora Eiland. In a piece Eiland wrote for Yedioth Ahronoth the general advocated for the killing of women: “Who are the ‘poor’ women of Gaza? They are all the mothers, sisters or wives of Hamas murderers.” Levy was particularly repulsed by Eiland’s statement that “the spread of severe epidemics is a legitimate means of warfare.” Eiland had written: The international community warns us of a humanitarian disaster in Gaza and of severe epidemics. We must not shy away from this, as difficult as that may be. After all, severe epidemics in the south of the Gaza Strip will bring victory closer and reduce casualties among IDF soldiers That was evidence of what Gideon Levy called a “Nazi proposal” and he went on to write: Anyone who attributes genocide to Israel is anti-Semitic, after all. Just imagine a European general proposing to starve a nation, or to kill it with an epidemic – the Jews, for instance. Imagine spreading a plague because it would promote the war effort. All is fair in war, and now it’s ok to suggest anything and everything you’ve dreamed of and never dared to bring up. Political correctness has been turned upside down. Anyone can be Meir Kahane, nobody may be human. It’s ok to propose genocide, but wrong to pity the children of Gaza. It’s ok to propose ethnic cleansing, but it's wrong to be shocked by Gaza’s punishment. Rabea Eghbariah titled his article “The Ongoing Nakba” and he concludes it with these words: “The denial of the genocide in Gaza is rooted in the denial of the Nakba. And both must end, now.”