The Growing Consensus, "Yes, it is genocide"

Reflections on the official statement of The International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS)

Compare these two satellite images of northern Gaza, taken within 5 weeks of each other, 17 July 2025 and 25 August 2025. It shows that bombed buildings have been flattened, reduced to rubble, now being cleared by Israeli contractors in preparation for occupation and settlement. These images are from Haaretz’s important report.

Look. Stop. Think about it… they represent buildings, properties, homes, title deeds, human beings, bombed and massacred, flattened and murdered, bulldozed into oblivion. Women. Children. Personal possessions. Precious history. Forever gone. Taken over by Israel. Another Nakba (meaning catastrophe, the ethnic cleansing of 750,000 Palestinians from their homes in 1948).

BUT… God sees. God knows. Their tears reach heaven. The Judge of All hears their cries in the heavenly court. God knows every name, every man, woman, mother, father, child, sister, brother, baby… killed and buried under the rubble, or displaced elsewhere. God sees every face, every smile, keeping every tear-drop, as David lamented when the Philistines seized him Gath: “You have kept count of my tossings (misery); put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your record?” Psalm 56:8 NRSV.

What has happened, and is happening is too overwhelming. Beyond words. Yet I and we write words, hoping the world will hear and intervene for good, for justice, for peace, for sheer humanitarian compassion. My only hope, my ultimate anchor, my final court of appeal, is that God knows the truth of all that’s happened. God will judge. The wicked will be held accountable. Justice will come.

My post is prompted by the release on 30 August 2025 of an official statement by the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS). The full statement here.

They say the legal criteria have been met to establish Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. After presenting their case, they conclude with…

Therefore, the International Association of Genocide Scholars:

Declares that Israel’s policies and actions in Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide in Article II of the United Nations Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948);

Declares that Israel’s policies and actions in Gaza constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity as defined in international humanitarian law and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court;

Calls upon the government of 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;

Calls upon the government of Israel to comply with the Provisional Measures orders of the International Court of Justice;

Calls upon the state parties of the International Criminal Court to comply with their obligations, cooperate with the Court, and surrender any individual subject to an arrest warrant;

Calls upon all states to actively pursue policies to ensure respect for their obligations under international law, including under the Genocide Convention, the Arms Trade Treaty and international humanitarian law, with regards to Israel and Palestine;

And Calls upon the government of Israel and all other United Nations members to support a process of repair and transitional justice that will afford democracy, freedom, dignity, and security for all people of Gaza.

This statement has, of course, immediately been questioned and discredited with counter arguments as to the credentials of the IAGS and the content of their statement. See The Times of Israel and Washington Institute’s analysis. Yes, they raise some valid questions and criticisms.

But, for me, it’s the age-old tactic of discrediting the messenger to disqualify the message, dismissing the essential message. Prof William Schabas comes from a family of holocaust survivors and is one of the world’s foremost authorities on international criminal law and genocide studies. Read what he said, confirming the IAGS statement, and warning that the US, Germany, and others could be held liable as accomplices to Genocide in Gaza.

The Israeli Center for Human Rights, B’Tselem, received the same treatment - and worse - when in July 2025 they published their comprehensive 88 page documented report, painfully concluding, “yes, it is genocide”. You cannot read it - the evidence - and remain indifferent, or neutral, or dismiss it as misrepresentation.

As a South African, I remember every report by Human Rights organisations on atrocities by the Apartheid government was dismissed in the same self-protecting way. We had the equivalent of Israel’s Hasbara propaganda wing, spinning truth for winning hearts in the ideological war in social media and the public mind.

Prof Amos Goldberg, highly respected expert on the Holocaust and genocide at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, was one of the first Israeli academics to speak out. As early as 17 April 2024, he published an article, “Yes, it is genocide”. He wrote in Hebrew for Israeli citizens to read and got the same treatment - called a “self-hating Jew”, a “terrorist lover”, and so on - totally discredited and disparaged.

Internationally recognised Israeli historian, Lee Mordechai, also at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, on 6 December 2024 published a report, “Bearing Witness to the Israel-Gaza War”. In its English translation, it is 124 pages, containing over 1,400 footnotes. Using eyewitness evidence and reports, video footage, articles, photographs, and other investigatory material - much of it recorded by Israeli soldiers - Mordechai has produced what Haaretz calls “the most methodical and detailed documentation in Hebrew of the war crimes that Israel is perpetrating in Gaza”. His unequivocal conclusion is that Israel is committing genocide.

Ori Goldberg, another Israeli academic and commentator (PhD lecturer on Middle East Studies), said yesterday (4 September) on his X feed:

The complacency and indifference with which Israel kills compound its murderous intent. Israeli policy is that all deaths in Gaza are the responsibility of Hamas. How do I know that? Because Israel says so and because no Israeli has been investigated and found guilty of a war crime. If the policy is that Israel is not responsible for any death in Gaza (akin to a policy that the sun shines at night), then Israel effectively intends to kill as many Palestinians as Israel can while getting away with it. The declarative dissonance with reality decrees a functional reading of the reality. In reality, Israel kills with abandon. Indifference is not dispassion, nor is it "factual". Indifference is a conscious position towards reality. In Israel's case it amounts to a genocide.

Netanyahu’s logic:
Hamas kills 1,200 = Genocide!
Israel kills 63,000 and starves the rest = Self-defence!

Insane! The best we can say about that is that two wrongs don’t make a right! Yes, Hamas committed war crimes on Oct 7. And they have committed other atrocities. But must one always have to hammer Hamas before being heard, let alone taken seriously, regarding any criticism of Netanyahu?

Israel made its (genocidal) intent clear from day one in Netanyahu's logic - taking it further: "NOTHING justifies what Hamas did on Oct 7 - it was genocide. Oct 7 justifies EVERYTHING we've done since, to this day - it is self-defence."

That’s a self-signed blank check to do whatever he wants by means of “the most moral army in the world”. Netanyahu and his far right messianic Zionists use holy scripture to justify their holy war: Their ‘theological policy’ of extermination of the Amalekites (Hamas/Palestinians/Gazans) is ‘sanctified’ as ‘self defence’. But it is a lie.

Fr. David Neuhaus SJ, a Jew who lives and works in Israel, has written a helpful article on this issue, Reading the Bible After the Destruction of Gaza. Being a Jesuit, he is “deeply repentant for the way it (the Bible) has been used as a weapon against Judaism and Jews”. But Neuhaus shows how, beginning with David Ben-Gurion, Zionism has used the Bible as their mandate to justify whatever they have had to do to establish the state of Israel, including the violent Nakba of 1948. Now the Nakba of 2024/5.

It is weaponising the Bible to justify genocidal ethnic cleansing. Their nationalist Zionist ideology of Jewish identity and security is an idol - a god that Netanyahu and, it seems, the majority of Israelis worship. Despite their claim to biblical Israel and Jewish theology, they do NOT worship HaShem of Judaism. They do NOT serve Adonai of the Hebrew Bible. Their holy war theology is an evil ideology that spiritually blinds the mind to justify the deluded logic of Netanyahu's genocide.

Let’s be abundantly clear:
Zionism is NOT Judaism.
Zionism is an ethnocentric political ideology.
Judaism is a moral theological faith.
Judaism stands ethically AGAINST what Netanyahu has done and is doing.

To blame everything on Hamas - literally everything Israel has done in Gaza and the West Bank - will not stand the test of human history, and it certainly will not stand in the Day of Judgement before HaShem.

It is nothing but genocide in full view of the world, and nobody - least of all those with power or influence - can say they didn’t know at the time.

Let us pray that God intervenes.
Pray for a ceasefire.
Pray for relief for all who are starving.
Pray for mercy and justice.
God have mercy.