Is Israel committing genocide? |
“Genocide” Is Not a Protest Chant — It Is a Legal Accusation. Prove It.
Within days of October 7 — before the bodies were buried, before families finished identifying their dead — a new accusation began circulating with astonishing speed:
Israel is committing genocide.
Not “may be.” Not “needs investigation.” Not “serious concern.”
The most severe charge in international law. The crime associated with Auschwitz, Rwanda, Srebrenica.
Since then, the claim has hardened into orthodoxy in certain circles. NGOs repeat it. Activists chant it. Academics endorse it. Social media amplifies it.
But genocide is not defined by outrage. It is defined by law.
Under Article II of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, genocide requires specific intent “to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.”
Those last two words matter: as such.
The International Court of Justice has repeatedly emphasized that this special intent (dolus specialis) is what distinguishes genocide from other grave crimes. In Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro (2007), the Court held that genocidal intent must be “the only reasonable inference” from the pattern of conduct (ICJ, Judgment, para. 373). The Court reaffirmed that standard in Croatia v. Serbia (2015), para. 148.
Not one possible inference. Not a politically convenient inference. The only reasonable inference.
So the central legal question is straightforward:
Is the only reasonable explanation for........