Updated 18 October 2024
Definition of Genocide in International Law
Genocide is defined in Article II of the Genocide Convention of 1948 as committing various acts with intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group as such, in whole or in part. The specified acts are:
- killing or causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group,
- deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculation to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
- imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
- forcibly transferring children of the group to another group
The same definition is used in Article 6 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
Intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group in whole or in part is the characterising element of the crime. Killing a large number of people without this intent is not genocide according to this definition.
Hamas
Hamas’s leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, has apparently stated “The leaders of the Occupation [i.e. Israel] should know, October 7th was just a rehearsal”. Hamas’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Ghazi Hamad, has been reported as stating that it will repeat the massacres of 7-9 October 2023 again and again until Israel is annihilated. Hamas’s Interior Minister, Fathi Hammad, said in 2019: “We must attack every Jew on the planet – slaughter and kill”. A copy of Hitler’s Mein Kampf translated into Arabic, in which sections calling for the slaughter of Jews were marked up, was found in a room in the northern Gaza Strip used as a base by members of Hamas.
Together with the deliberate targeting of all civilians within reach in the massacres led by Hamas on 7-9 October, these matters could support a case that Hamas members killed and caused serious harm to Jews and Israelis with an intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial and/or religious group in whole or in part, and were thus guilty of the crime of genocide.
Israel
There is no evidential basis for asserting that members of the Israel Defence Forces have conducted operations with intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group in whole or in part, and the facts indicate the contrary.
The Israeli government has repeatedly stated that its objective is to destroy Hamas. Hamas is not a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. No Israeli leader with authority over the conduct of the military operation has indicated an intention to destroy the Palestinian people. Claims to the contrary are based on misinterpretations of misleadingly abridged statements taken out of context.
Judge Donoghue, then President of the International Court (ICJ), has confirmed that it did not find there was a plausible case of genocide by Israel, as had been suggested by some incorrect media reports.
The IDF evidently has power to kill most of the population of the Gaza Strip but has not done so. Although serious and tragic, the number of Palestinian civilians killed so far, including those killed by Palestinian fire, is less than 1% of the population of the Gaza Strip. Fewer Palestinians have been killed (by any munitions, including Palestinian fire) than the number of strikes by the Israeli air force – i.e. on average each air strike has killed less than one Palestinian. Israel has repeatedly urged and helped Palestinians to move to safer areas and has also taken extraordinary care to provide warnings to evacuate particular targets.
Israel has facilitated the supply of large quantities of humanitarian aid enabling starvation to be avoided. Reports of famine in the north of the Gaza Strip in March 2024 overlooked major sources of food and were found implausible in an official review published in June 2024.
For further analysis of claims that Israel is guilty of genocide, see our Notes “Is Israel Guilty of Genocide? – A Discussion of South Africa’s Claim” and “Is Israel Guilty of Genocide? – A Discussion of Raz Segal’s Claim”