"Yes, it is a genocide," says an Israeli Holocaust scholar

Mehdi’s Monday Memo on Gaza, the UK’s Rwanda plan, and a new Zeteo podcast

Apr 29, 2024

Genocide.

It is the G-word that dare not speak its name in plenty of Western liberal political and media circles. For months now, since the South African government accused Israel of genocide in Gaza, Western government officials and media pundits have lined up to denounce the charge as, among other things, “meritless” and “despicable.” The New York Times, according to an internal memo obtained by the Intercept, has advised reporters covering the conflict in Gaza to limit their use of the term “genocide.” The more fanatical supporters of Israel have even claimed that accusing the world’s only Jewish state of committing genocide is a new “blood libel” against the Jewish people.

And yet, from the very beginning of this conflict, as the mainstream media looked the other way, Israel’s own Jewish scholars of the Holocaust were warning of a genocide in Gaza.

Raz Segal, associate professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies and endowed professor in the Study of Modern Genocide at Stockton University, called Israel’s post-Oct. 7 assault on Gaza “a textbook case of genocide.”

Brown University historian Omer Bartov, “one of the world's leading specialists on the subject of genocide,” signed onto a public statement sounding “the alarm about the possibility of the crime of genocide being perpetrated by Israeli forces against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”

And now, over this past weekend, leading Holocaust scholar Amos Goldberg, professor of Holocaust History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has written a blistering essay in which he argues that the ongoing violence in Gaza does not need to resemble the Holocaust to be classified as a genocide.

Here’s how he begins his piece:

Yes, it is genocide. It is so difficult and painful to admit it, but despite all that, and despite all our efforts to think otherwise, after six months of brutal war we can no longer avoid this conclusion. Jewish history will henceforth be stained with the mark of Cain for the ‘most horrible of crimes,’ which cannot be erased from its forehead. As such, this is the way it will be viewed in history’s judgment for generations to come.

Goldberg’s essay is an important intervention in the heated debate over the G-word. Also over the weekend, prominent online supporters of Israel gleefully shared a clip from a BBC interview with Joan Donoghue, the former president of the International Court of Justice, in which she says that the ICJ’s order in the South Africa case did indeed emphasize “that there was a risk of irreparable harm to the Palestinian right to be protected from genocide, but the shorthand that often appears, which is that ‘there is a plausible case of genocide,’ isn’t what the court decided.”

Put aside both the appropriateness of a judge discussing the ICJ’s ongoing deliberations in a TV interview, and the fact that she has no right to speak on behalf of all the other (still-serving) ICJ judges, plenty of legal analysts have pointed out that Donoghue’s “hairsplitting” words have only muddied, not illuminated, this debate.

In a long, detailed, and useful Twitter thread, King’s College’s Alonso Gurmendi says Donoghue’s “very nuanced legal point does not actually add clarity, it adds confusion,” adding: “So while this may be the correct legal jargon, in practice it does not leave us at a different place than the one we started off from. ‘What Israel is doing puts the right not to be genocided plausibly at risk’ is not really different from ‘there is a plausible case of genocide.’”

Palestinian-American lawyer Noura Erekat, of Rutgers, told me that she believes Donoghue, a former adviser to Hillary Clinton’s State Department, is “basically trying to create a route for herself to be able to stay in favor of American decision-makers who have the capacity to award her with honors, to invite her to be on boards… while still not throwing the rest of the [ICJ] panel under the bus.” Nevertheless, per Erekat, Donoghue is still saying that “the facts are the same, the irreparable harm is the same… but rather than saying that it’s ‘plausibly genocide’ she just said that it is ‘plausible that Palestinians need protection from genocide.’ It’s such a thin, thin line… but it doesn’t change the weight of the ICJ decision.”

Let me finish by returning to Amos Goldberg, the Israeli historian, who responds to the legal arguments in this very powerful and compelling way:

It will be several years before the court in The Hague will hand down its verdict, but we must not look at the catastrophic situation purely through legal lenses. What is happening in Gaza is genocide because the level and pace of indiscriminate killing, destruction, mass expulsions, displacement, famine, executions, the wiping out of cultural and religious institutions, the crushing of elites (including the killing of journalists), and the sweeping dehumanization of the Palestinians — create an overall picture of genocide, of a deliberate conscious crushing of Palestinian existence in Gaza.

Rishi’s Recklessness on Refugees and Rwanda

I cannot help but think of the words “sweeping dehumanization” when I see the way in which Western democracies like the UK continue to treat refugees and asylum seekers. As invaders; as aliens; as The Other.

Last week, Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak won a political victory when it became clear in parliament that his controversial and much-delayed Rwanda bill had the votes to finally become law. The goal of the ‘Safety of Rwanda Act,’ as it is officially dubbed, is to deport some asylum seekers to the East African nation of Rwanda, now deemed a “safe country” by the Conservative government, if they arrive in the UK through what are deemed illegal routes.

An unpopular Sunak is now moving fast – and recklessly. On Sunday, the The Guardian reported:

The Home Office will launch a major operation to detain asylum seekers across the UK on Monday, weeks earlier than expected, in preparation for their deportation to Rwanda, the Guardian can reveal.
Officials plan to hold refugees who turn up for routine meetings at immigration service offices or bail appointments and will also pick people up nationwide in a surprise two-week exercise.
Lawyers and campaigners said the detentions risked provoking protracted legal battles, community protests and clashes with police – with officers in Scotland put on high alert.

To be clear, the UK’s Conservative government is about to implement a scheme that a former Conservative home secretary has called “brutal” and “impractical”; that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) “remains firmly opposed to”; that King Charles reportedly has called “appalling”; and that the Archbishop of Canterbury has said does not stand “the judgment of God.”

Plus, a reminder: In 2018, according to Human Rights Watch, Rwandan police “fired live ammunition on refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo,” killing 12 of them. Rwandan authorities have never held any of those police officers to account.

But, sure, the ‘Safety of Rwanda Act’ it is.

What We Have Been Up To At Zeteo

Last week, we launched our new podcast, ‘We’re Not Kidding,’ in which I talk to funny people about serious issues. Our first episode was guest co-hosted by the one and only Bassem Youssef, who is now also an official Zeteo contributor. You can listen to the episode on Apple or Spotify or watch it here on our website (and it’ll be on YouTube later this week). Please do leave us a positive review!

We published a viral first-person op-ed from Jon Ben-Menachem, a Jewish PhD student at Columbia University. Speaker Mike Johnson was asked about Menachem’s piece for Zeteo on CNN on Wednesday night! (How’s that for impact in our second week?)

I interviewed Cornel West and Zeteo contributor Cynthia Nixon on ‘Mehdi Unfiltered,’ while Zeteo contributor Rula Jebreal spoke to Yale University professor Jason Stanley, who is Jewish himself, about accusations of antisemitism on campus for a new Zeteo segment called ‘The Exchange.’

This week, we’ll publish essays from Zeteo contributors Spencer Ackerman, Viet Thanh Nguyen, and Diana Buttu, and launch a new video segment with the one and only Naomi Klein called ‘Unshocked.’ Stay tuned!

Where I Have Been Interviewed

It was a super-busy media week for me last week, as I continued to promote Zeteo and talk about Gaza on a wide array of media outlets.

On Tuesday, New York magazine released a whopping 6,600-word profile of me, complete with a super-serious photo shoot. In it, reporter E. Alex Jung mentions my love for interviewing and Jason Statham movies, and writes: “He crisscrosses the country like a politician stumping for votes, only in this case he’s recruiting subscribers for Zeteo.”

On Wednesday, I was interviewed by the Daily Beast, which noted how in “its infancy, Zeteo has already become a rousing success” and quoted me calling the mainstream media’s coverage of the pro-Palestine campus protests “shameful.”

On Thursday, I appeared, alongside three comedians, on Crooked Media’s ‘Lovett or Leave It’ podcast, which was taped in front of a live audience in DC’s Lincoln Theatre. I may have shared some very profound thoughts on everything from Joe Biden’s disastrous Gaza policy to why I’ve never tried sushi!

On Friday, I was on the new Don Lemon show for an hour, discussing campus protests, genocide in Gaza, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Elon Musk, and Marvel movies with the ex-CNN anchor.

What I Am Quoting

“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” - poet and author Maya Angelou

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